Favourite classic horror films? (anything before 1980)....

So many great films choose from, so few remaining memory cells! Ignoring that terrible feeling I'm forgetting some favorites, a random ten that occur to me right now would be - The Abominable Doctor Phibes, Captain Kronos Vampire Hunter, The Wolf Man, The Phantom of the Opera (silent Lon Chaney Snr version), Carnival of Souls, Dr Terror's House of Horrors, The Innocents, Night of the Demon, Bride of Frankenstein, and Dracula AD 1972 .

Ask us anything

HYPNOBOBS 25 - The Lives & Times of Dr Phibes Part I

This week, Mr Jim Moon embarks on an art deco odyssey into the world of the Twentieth Century's most remarkable man - musician, lover, inventor and murderer - yes, it's the abominable Doctor Anton Phibes!

DIRECT DOWNLOAD - HYPNOBOBS 25 - The Lives & Times of Dr Phibes Part I

Find all the podcasts in the HYPNOGORIA family here -

HYPNOGORIA HOME DOMAIN - Full archive, RSS feed and other useful links

HYPNOGORIA on iTunes

HYPNOGORIA on STITCHER

CLICK HERE FOR DETAILS

HYPNOBOBS 18 - From Beyond The Grave

This week Mr Jim Moon proudly presents a celebration of the life and works of Britain's Prince of Chill, Mr R CHETWYND- HAYES. As well as delving through his biography and bibliography, we'll also be examining the two anthology movies his works inspired - From Beyond the Grave (1973) and The Monster Club (1981)

DIRECT DOWNLOAD - HYPNOBOBS 18 - From Beyond The Grave

Find all the podcasts in the HYPNOGORIA family here -

HYPNOGORIA HOME DOMAIN - Full archive, RSS feed and other useful links

HYPNOGORIA on iTunes

HYPNOGORIA on STITCHER

CLICK HERE FOR DETAILS

AN ARTIST DID IT! Exit Through the Gift Shop: Bullshit or Not?

Modern art often gets something of a bum rap. And frankly with graduates from trendy art colleges getting bundles of cash that would choke a sperm whale for sticking a pair of melons on a chair and calling it a feminist statement, it’s not hard to understand why. However amid these new Brit Art sensationalists and their tired cracker joke “conceptual” art works, while Damien Hirst and co. where raiding Dewhursts the Butchers for artists’ materials and denting Saatchi’s bank balance, a new hot name emerged - Banksy.

Although sometimes lazily bundled in with the concept crowd Banksy, and other so called “street artists”, are a very different breed. Although his works may share a similar sense of subversion and provoke questions whether they are in actually art or just jokes, Banksy is literally streets ahead of most recent conceptual art. Firstly his work has gained critical kudos outside of the usual right art school to hip gallery route. Secondly through his rise from the grass roots he has gained popular appreciation too; with his art work appearing in public places he has brought art to the masses and built a following from ordinary people who normally have nothing to do with art exhibitions. And thirdly, his work shows real craft.

And this final point is not to be underestimated. As the astute reader can probably guess, I have limited time for conceptual art. And while some works such as the Chapman Brothers oeuvre is consistently interesting, many others strike me as lazy and one dimensional. To pick a famous example, Damien Hirst’s pickled shark is only vaguely qualifies as art because of the pretentious title it bears “The Physical Impossibility of Death In The Mind of Someone Living”. And that’s the sum of its artistic merit – some one had the balls to stick a museum exhibit in a gallery, whack on a massive price tag and faux intellectual title and call it art.

Now there is the old “I could have done that!/Ah but you didn’t!” argument but frankly to me, and indeed it would seem to many people outside the bubble universe of the modern art scene, this doesn’t really cut the mustard. So while no doubt some will award this endeavour more creative merit than I do, the problem is the art is purely in the concept - the physical object itself fails as art as you don’t need to see the piece in order to grasp said concept. And unfortunately the same goes for Tracey Emin’s bed and many similar works foisted on us by the Young British Artists and other conceptualists. Such works fail to create an striking image or merit a visit to see them in real life.

However Banksy’s work is doing far more than assembling any old tat and calling it art. Firstly there are proper old school creative skills on show – composition, draughtsmanship and brush work and secondly his concepts are far more intelligent and incisive and their placement adding further layers of complexity. Take for example this piece Naked Man -

On a surface level it’s a marvellously amusing piece of trompe l’oeil that delights passers-by. However the image is given additional weight when you discover the wall it adorns belongs to a sexual health clinic – suddenly Naked Man becomes more than just an archetypal scene from classic British farces but a commentary on our attitudes to sexuality.

Hence a Banksy piece not only looks good as a print or poster but it gains impact and value when you see it in situ – as all good art should. And the fact that this piece was painted in a pubic space only goes to further impress when one considers the time and trouble it took to create it. Whereas you could take Hirst’s title card and go round the Natural History Museum, or even down your local supermarket and create countless new works of ‘art’ that make exactly the same artistic statement, which demonstrates just how inherently vacuous many concept artworks really are.

And while much such pieces rely on the cult of personality, with the likes of Hirst and Emin notching up far more column inches through their hobnobbing with the celebs du jour than actual discussions of the art, Banksy remains an enigma; we know very little about him or who he really is. In an age where the media is clogged up with people famous for being famous, Banksy’s staunch avoidance of the spotlight leaves us only with the work itself to concentrate on.

So then when I heard that Banksy was making a documentary entitled Exit Through The Gift Shop, I was obviously highly intrigued. Would this be the big reveal of his true identity? A chance to hear the man himself talk about his work? Better than Damien bloody Hirst’s directorial debut, the embarrassing arsefest that was Blur’s ‘Country House’ video?

And the quick answers are – No, no and absolutely yes!

Now first off, let’s address the elephant in the room which we have actually noticed as it’s crapped on the carpet – obviously there was never much chance of him unmasking but this is a very Banksy light film - if you are coming to Exit Through The Gift Shop hoping to learn anything substantial about him and his art, forget it. Visit the Wiki page instead.

Although we get an overview of the whole street art scene and fascinating footage such as Banksy pulling off the Disney Incident, this film is only tangentially about the mystery artist himself. Essentially this is a documentary about Thierry Guetta, an obsessive camcordist who was originally making a film about street art. And after documenting the work of several other prominent street artists, Thierry eventually managed to get in touch with the elusive Banksy. But the aerosol wizard found Thierry’s own story to be much more fascinating, and so documentarian and subject ended up switched roles.

However it’s not a case of “this is not the Banksy film you are looking for… Move along now”, as you can understand why this reversal of roles occurred as Thierry’s story is truly remarkable. We follow Thierry’s story as he begins contacting street artists and filming them at work. And as the film progresses we get to witness his transformation into a guerrilla artist in his own right, becoming Mr Brainwash. It’s completely intriguing, often funny and in the end quite inspirational.

So then it’s a good solid if somewhat offbeat documentary, and if you can get over the disappointment of it not being focused on Banksy himself, is very rewarding viewing. However as this a Banksy production, it’s not quite that simple…

…As many have alleged that the whole thing is one massive hoax and that Thierry Guetta/Mr Brainwash himself is an invention of Banksy and his elves. Now the evidence of these claims largely seem to rest on the fact that this is a Banksy film, and indeed this interpretation is largely favoured by those of feel that the Bristolian Man of Mystery is more prankster than artist and Exit Through The Gift Shop is a leg pull too far.

Several have pointed out the “damning” evidence that in the shots where Thierry is being interviewed on camera there’s a reproduction of the Laughing Cavalier visible in the background and point out the derivative nature of Mr Brainwash’s art.

Hardly conclusive proof of hoaxing, I think you’ll agree. The appearance of Frans Hals’ famous portrait could just be a little joke in itself and considering some of the tired old bullshit art critics have been lapping up for years; conceptual pieces that are just lazily riffing on Duchamp’s urinal and Magritte’s Pipe, it seems a little unfair to suddenly be claiming that being derivate is a bad thing. You definitely get the feeling that perhaps the certain sectors of the arts world have taken umbrage to this piece by Banksy entitled “I Can’t Believe You Morons Buy This Shit”.

However as the film unfolds one does begin to wonder how much is actually true. There are several details and revelations that may start alarm bells ringing, but despite the received wisdom on the film being that it is a hoax, there’s nothing really solid to confirm the fake allegations. But does it really matter?

Just because Exit Through The Gift Shop may be deliberately messing with us, it doesn’t invalidate the film in the way some seem to think it does. Let’s consult an expert… But as this is a piece on Banksy we shan’t be consulting the likes of Brian Sewell, instead let’s see what Mr Nobody, the leader of The Brotherhood of Dada, a group of surrealist super villains, have to say on the matter of fakes…

click to embiggen

from Doom Patrol #51 script Grant Morrison, art by Richard Case

So then in the light of this expert testimony, it seems clear that the whole Mr Brainwash circus cannot strictly be said to be a hoax or a prank, for even if Mr Brainwash and his works are a fabrication, they are still all Banksys! And in the world of modern art where the viewer’s own reactions and interpretations are so often left to endow trite conceptual pieces with the veneer of art, Banksy’s own intentions are quite irrelevant.

Harold Pinter was once asked about the socio-political subtexts of his play The Caretaker, and he replied that it was written purely as he heard the characters speak in his head and the story unfolded form there, and tartly added that if wanted to make a political point he’d have written a manifesto not a drama.

And this same impulse spurs on artists – it’s the desire to capture a particular vision, to show the world in the light they see it, and to bring into the world the imagery their imaginations create. By its very nature, visual art, whether it be a painting, sculpture or indeed a piece of graffiti, is a wordless medium and therefore any work that needs to be explained by its artist, that needs a gloss of theory and to be elucidated with sound bites in order to be appreciated by the eye is failing.

Now I am quite sure that Banksy is aware of the multiple interpretations that many be inspired by his works, however I am equally sure that that when he creates a piece, it’s the image that is paramount not some species of theorising. All his works are marked by a playful attitude and a sense of fun, and although there are undoubtedly different levels of meaning to be interpolated from any given piece, the essential creative spark is that the image amuses him primarily.

And viewing Exit Through The Gift Shop in this light, I don’t think the object of the exercise is to purely poke fun at the art establishment. Considering how the film is weighted, if Mr Brainwash is just an avatar of Banksy, the purpose of creating a ‘fake’ artist is probably more a satire on Banksy’s own rise to prominence, that strange journey from the streets to the galleries, than setting up an Emperor’s new clothes sting for the art world. The way the film is structured appears to me to showcase Banksy’s own feelings about art – that is should appeal to the public, that it should enrich the lives of ordinary people, that is should be entertaining, and most importantly, anyone can find a form of creative expression and become an artist. Rather than mocking the elitism of the art world, this film is stressing the egalitarian aspects of art; that art is in the eye of the beholder, so why not get up and give it go yourself!

And finally, regardless of how factual Exit Through The Gift Shop is, on a cinematic level it still works as a film. It’s solidly structured and there’s definitely some truth in there, and whether you accept it as fact or as fiction, it is equally effective. And whatever the truth actually is, this documentary/mockumentary (delete as applicable) presents a host of inspiring questions on what actually constitutes art and what it means to be an artist. And even if you have no time for smart arse aesthetic discussions, the film still delivers an off beat and truly fascinating story. And hence regardless of its veracity Exit Through The Gift Shop is far from bullshit.

JASON GOES TO HELL - The Final Friday... Honest

There will be spoilers and there will be blood!

It seemed like Jason was finally dead. That ill fated trip to the Big Apple has succeeded where countless cops and final girls had failed and everybody’s favourite psychopathic slaphead was finally resting in pieces. After Friday 13th Part VIII – Jason Takes Manhattan garnered dismal box office returns and a poor reception from even the fans of the series, Paramount had decided enough was enough, and plugged the plug on the ailing saga. It looked like Jason had his room booked in the Famous Monsters Retirement Home, destined to swap stories of the glory days with the Gill Man and other movie creatures whose franchises were long dead.

Years rolled by and just when it seemed like Jason was forever condemned to playing Scrabble with Dr X and giving the similarly recently retired Michael Myers evil looks, rescue came from an unlikely source. New Line Cinema (RIP), the home of Jason’s arch rival, Mr Frederick Krueger, acquired the rights to his character and promptly arranged a reunion with his long lost stepfather Sean S. Cunningham. And needless to say Mrs Voorhees’ little boy was delighted to be heading back to the silver screen.

But there was an air of apprehension surrounding the project. While it was good that Daddy Cunningham was back in the executive producers’ chair overseeing this long overdue resurrection, Jason was a little perplexed by the title. Due to legal wrangles, that he certainly could have sorted out quickly with his trusty machete if they’d only bothered to ask, New Line didn’t actually have the rights to the title ‘Friday 13th’ and so his 1993 return would be titled Jason Goes To Hell – The Final Friday. But that date was his birthday dammit! And what was this ‘final Friday’ business? Was he to be freed only briefly?

Well at the time New Line was keen to acquire the rights to other iconic horror characters; they’d also bagged Leatherface in this period, seemingly keen to set up shop as a modern day house of horrors studio. But the real motivation for getting the rights to Jason was that at long last they could pit him against their boy Freddy. If you recall previous editions in this series of reviews, Friday 13th Part VII – The New Blood was originally planned realise the fanboy dream of seeing Jason and Freddy go head to head. However back then, New Line and Paramount failed to reach an agreement both studios were happy with.

But the dream lived on, and so when the rights to Jason appeared on the market, New Line was quick to snap them up in order to proceed with their plan to stage this epic clash of the terror titans. However as four years had passed since his last slaying spree, it made sense to turn Jason loose again in a solo venture first and hopefully reignite his popularity with the movie going public.

However, while the movie that writer/director Adam Marcus delivered certainly kept the Voorhees name alive, the project somehow ended up missing its target. Aside from the somewhat short sighted aim to finish off the Friday saga, quite why they chose to give us a film that actually delivered very little Jason is something of a mystery.

Recall if you will the general reaction to Friday 13th Part 5 – The New Beginning - despite lots of Jason action, the revelation that the slayings were being perpetrated by a fake still incenses fans to this day. Even though we have a hulk in a hockey mask dishing out the carnage, many still feel it’s a cheat it’s not Jason himself behind the battered face piece.

So then, if you are looking to relaunch Jason’s career the decision to make a movie that only has our deformed antihero at briefly at the beginning and end is a puzzling one. Considering the loud and vociferous fan damnation The New Beginning provoked, it’s surprising no one at New Line said “hang on guys, this making Jason a demonic body hopping slug... Are we sure this is what the fans want?”

Yes, you did read that right. Demonic body hopping slug... But we’ll get to that in a moment.

The movie opens well enough. A pretty college age girl – i.e. typical Jason fodder - is faffing about in a cabin in the woods, with the camera stalking her as she goes about her ablutions. Its classic Friday 13th shenanigans, with the cinematography making it clear to the audience that at some point Jason is going to pop up and dispatch her horribly. It’s very reminiscent of the opening of Friday 13th Part 2 and like that pre-credits sequence even features a spring loaded cat fake out scare. So far, so good.

However when Jason finally does lurch into shot and sets about terrorising his prey, the film throws us the first of many curve-balls. Our favourite masked killer pursues the girl out of the cabin into the woods and then is spectacularly ambushed by the FBI. Jason steps into a clearing and is riddled with a barrage of bullets and finally taken down with high explosives. Legally speaking, I believe this is what they refer to as 'terminated with extreme prejudice'...

Now it’s a fabulous sequence but by the time the credit roll our villain is literally in pieces. No doubt some of the original patrons of the movie would have been sat in the dark of the theatre wondering if the projectionist had had the ultimate visit from Mr Cock-up and shown the final reel first. So far Jason had risen from the dead at least twice and recovered from seemingly fatal wounds many times, but literally pulling himself together from a bin liner full of bloody kibble was a lot to expect, even given the notorious physical resilience of slasher killers.

How were Adam Marcus and co. going to get out of this plot corner? Well in a scene that is both creepy and downright bizarre, the coroner conducting the autopsy on Jason’s remains sees his blackened heart begin beating and then promptly is drawn to devour the reanimated organ. And subsequently he becomes possessed by our undead killer and the killings begin again.

However Jason’s new body quickly begins to degenerate and so throughout the movie we have him hopping from host to host, appearing as a slimy devil worm slithering from mouth to mouth. And until the finale, all we see of ‘proper’ Jason is when his hosts pass a reflective surface and we see his hockey masked figure in place of them.

Now the reason for all of this turns out to be that apparently Mr and Mrs Voorhees were devotees of the dark arts and somehow Jason is the product of their dabbling in black magic. I say ‘somehow’ as the script never really elaborates on this new origin story – it’s unclear whether Jason was the result of an attempt to create a demonic ‘moon child’ (a human sired by mystical forces for those of you who don’t have a head stuffed full of occult flotsam and jetsam), a family curse akin to the Myers’ druid heritage, or just plain old diabolic possession.

What we do learn though is that Jason can only be properly reborn through the flesh of another Voorhees, hence his host bodies short shelf lives. And the plot of the movie follows the various good guys trying to prevent the undying Jason from body hopping to his remaining kin.

Now a body hijacking psychopath is an intriguing premise for a movie, but that movie was 1987’s The Hidden, a very fun sci-fi horror thriller hybrid, also made by New Line and widely seen as director Jack Sholder’s apology for A Nightmare on Elm Street 2 - Freddy’s Revenge. And sadly it’s just not a good premise for a Friday 13th flick; while I will always applaud an attempt to do something new with an old character, there are limits of what you can do without breaking the core concept that makes said character appealing in the first place.

So while the idea that anyone can become the killer might seem like a decent premise for making a scary movie, when the killer in question is an iconic slasher like Jason, you are effectively removing the main thing the audiences have coughed up their hard earned cash to see. I can understand that at the time Jason and hulking slashers in general had been done to death and so naturally the good people at New Line thought that giving the character a new supernatural twist, and moving the franchise more in line with new horror favourites like Pinhead, the Deadites or Freddy would look like a sound plan on paper at least. And I can even understand that the whole business with the evil devil slug meant they could also mine the body horror seam - Jason Goes to Hell as well as trading on The Hidden also borrows from Cronenberg’s Shivers and The Fly.

However once again you have to wonder why they expected a Jason-less film to play well to an audience who were ponying up cash just to see him. Considering how fleeting the appearance of the ‘real’ Jason actually are you could be forgiven for thinking that New Line were pulling a similar stunt to Dimension Films approach to the later entries in the Hellraiser franchise i.e. taking a script that wasn’t originally penned as a Friday 13th movie and shoe-horning Jason into it. Regrettable this was not the case; it was a brave but ultimately utterly wrong headed approach to revitalize a character mired in his own cliches.

Now we’ll get back to Jason and the muddled mythos this flick introduces a little later, but giving the film a provisional pass as an experimental entry in the saga and looking at the movie in its own right what does Jason Goes To Hell actually deliver?

Well on the plus side, we get some fantastic effects work – there’s bloody kills galore – indeed the most explicit we seen in a while as you can get this one uncut on DVD - and lots of oozy body horror degenerations so there’s at least something for the gorehounds out there to enjoy. There’s also some cheeky references to other famous horror movies thrown into the mix – look out for visual references to Creepshow, The Birds and The Evil Dead*. And as a director Marcus is competent enough, setting up some nice scenes and bringing far more flair to the proceeding than the last two outings. But unfortunately, as is so often the case, the script is just a mess.

While the movie tries its hand at building up some proper characters, unfortunately the script is quite unfocused on which characters we are actually meant to be following. You are never sure whether the lead is supposed be bounty hunter Creighton Duke (Steven Williams), hapless everyman Steven Freeman (John D. LeMay) or TV journalist Robert Campbell (Steven Culp) – too many Steves all round and that’s just the male leads!

Furthermore the characters themselves don’t all seem to fit either. The afore mentioned Creighton Duke in particular seems to have wandered in form an entirely different film and the script doesn’t flirts the idea of satirising true crime television but Campbell and his subplot is never really developed enough. And this lack of a proper dramatic focus or clear plot line leaves the film lurching about between scenes rather than flowing as a good story should.

All in all, even if you can forgive the lack of proper Jason action, Jason Goes To Hell is still a misfire. While it delivers the mayhem is pleasing amounts and if you are of a kindly disposition you may forgive or even enjoy the new additions to the Crystal Lake lore, at the end of the day the script is simply too uneven. There are just too many characters cluttering up the narrative and all the switching between leads wrecks the pace of the movie. And that’s not to mention the plot holes – aside from lack of details on the implied origins of Jason himself, the FBI sting and Creighton Duke leave you wondering where the hell they’ve been for the past eight movies. Duke in particular, although marvellous fun, really needed some kind of back story explaining his history with Jason.

On one hand, there’s enough action and inventiveness to save the movie from being an utter train wreck. Spotting the references to other horror flicks is fun and even when the plot lurches into utter nonsense it’s still a lot of fun. But lacking a solid backbone for its story, the movie ends up drifting from one set piece to another like some gore obsessed jellyfish.

And that’s an assessment based on giving the movie a pass for what it has done to the Jason mythos - which as you may well have gathered, I don’t! Firstly the actual details of all these new occult origins are fudged and the rules are never quite clear. If Jason can be reborn through the flesh of his kin folk, why does he return in the same somewhat battered shape we saw at the beginning? Surely a fresh new body, not bearing the scars of seven other films would be more appropriate. Furthermore it’s never explained why only a Voorhees can kill a Voorhees, or how come Jason has absorbed the souls of those he has slain which see released in the form of optical visual effects? The movie seems to think that just showing the dagger and Necronomicon from The Evil Dead is enough. But if you are going to so radically rewrite the origins of your villain, this just won’t do. I suspect they left the background murky so as not to contradict the first eight films but really having set up Jason’s parents as meddlers in the dark arts, they’d already done that.

Also you have to wonder why having decided to make Jason a hell-born slug thingamajig, they’d didn’t go the whole hog and reveal that this demonic beastie inhabiting our favourite deformed slaphead is one of the same wormy little buggers that Fred Krueger did a deal with in Freddy’s Dead. After all at the very end we get Freddy’s gloved hand dragging Jason’s hockey mask down to Hell, a deliberate set up for the planned Freddy Vs. Jason, so it would make sense to tie this new black magic origin for Jason to the Krueger mythology.

But even when we do get Jason onscreen creating carnage, I wasn’t particularly happy. Basically I just don’t like the look he sports in this film; much like the treatment of the mythos as a whole Jason Goes To Hell just gets it wrong. In general this incarnation is easily my least favourite Jason, and yes that includes Roy! Only the melting monkey mask version seen in Part 8 tops it for sheer awfulness. Now it’s not that the make-up job is bad per se, it’s just that for my tastes he’s just far too lumpy and bumpy to the point where his deformities seems to be swallowing the sides of the his mask. And therein lies the problem: the sides of his bonce are overwhelming the iconic hockey mask. Now you could argue that this new exaggeratedly malformations are due to the toxic waste bath that did him in the last movie but when the script makes no mention of the events of Part 8 or explains how come he’s up and about again, you have to wonder why they bothered keeping in with continuity in the make-up.

But also, aside from him having little to do in this film, I really didn’t like the fact that this Jason grunts and wheezes. Previously Jason has been pretty much mute and part of his effectiveness as a screen monster is that he is the silent implacable killer; however this Jason with his wordless vocalisations loses the eerie silence of the character. Plus there’s a lot more running and lumbering about, which in conjunction with his new found voice, make me wonder whether at some stage the script was intended as a sequel to the earliest films; as the portrayal is saying ‘human deformed maniac’ louder than ‘undead killing machine’ you wonder whether perhaps they initially were planning on ignoring the later sequels much like Halloween H20 did.

Yes, just when you thought the question of whether Jason is alive or dead would never come back, this movie manages to resurrect it! Aside from the questions the performance raises, the fudged mythos leaves us some awkward questions. If Jason can only be truly killed by some one sharing his blood line, how then did he drown in the first place? We’ve never had a satisfactory explanation of whether he did originally die as child or not and like the previous entry you can’t help feeling they missed a chance to consolidate all the mythos once and for all.

And while this new addition to the lore that he will rise again if slain by a non-Voorhees covers his revivals in Part 3 and Part 4, it doesn't sit well next to the ghostly nonsense of Part 8... Oh alright, NOTHING sits well against Part 8 but it still doesn’t jib with the ‘return him to original resting place’ hokum of Part 6.

And so, a disappointing Jason coupled with an unsteady script leaves us with a poor entry in the series. On the plus side though, there is plenty of action and it is a real treat to be able to view this one completely uncut for a change. I’d say there is enough good stuff in it to save it from being a truly terrible film; for all its faults at least it isn’t dull. But it doesn’t really work properly as either as a Friday 13th flick or a horror movie in its own right. It fails on many levels, but it’s an interesting failure; it’s an oddity in the franchise rather than another stinker.

However as any casual movie fan could have told them, the experiment to do a Friday 13th largely sans machete wielding slaphead was doomed to fail. In the box office stakes, Jason Goes To Hell did slightly better than its predecessor but not that much better. Hence the poor ticket sales and generally negative reaction meant it was back to the quiet halls of the Famous Monsters Rest Home for young Jason. It did indeed look like this was to be the Final Friday...

* The crate in the cellar is the same one Fluffy lives in, the jungle gym is the same model as the one in Hitch’s classic.

TONY - London Serial Killer

Serial murder has been a staple of the movies since their infancy; Alfred Hitchcock’s first big success came with The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927), a mystery thriller inspired by Jack the Ripper and one of early cinema’s enduring classics is Fritz Lang’s M (1931) which was based on the crimes of Peter Kürten. And interestingly, the legion of celluloid slayers that have followed in their wake can be split into two groups, based upon the portrayal of the killers in these movies.

The first group take their cues from the Avenger in The Lodger; monstrous figures stalking the shadows whose features are hidden, the midnight prowlers whose true identity is a mystery and are known only by a colourful nom-de-guerre. These are the killers of the thrillers, slashers and chillers and they depict the multiple murderers as a species of walking villainy, as evil personified. And most of the movies’ serial killers fit into this category – the human monster that symbolises our fear of our fellow man, of the other.

The second and more sparsely populated group follows in the footsteps of Lang. They come to their stories armed with criminology and psychology, with the facts and forensics, and they attempt to present a truer picture of the serial murderer. Serial murderers may commit appalling acts, but most of the time they behave like ordinary members of society, leading otherwise unremarkable lives. In fact, one could argue that the real horror lies not within the details of their crimes but in the fact that they are such mundane people, that bar their secret criminal career they are utterly normal - they are not monsters, they are us.

But within this second category, we may also identify a third group – films that focus upon serial murder but do not fall into the thriller or horror genres. Here we find serial killer biopics like In the Light of the Moon (aka Ed Gein) and 10 Rillington Place that soberly reconstruct the facts of the cases they are based on. And it is into this subset that Tony falls.

Although not based on any particular case history, although Dennis Nilsen was an obvious inspiration, Tony is a new British film that follows a week or so in the life of an active serial murderer in the East End of London. Shot almost documentary style, this isn’t your usual fictional killer or your usual serial murder flick, rather it is a haunting slice of life revealing the day to day activities of our eponymous murderer. And as such would–be viewers are warned that Tony does not follow the traditional three act structure; there is a story line of sorts but it is more a loose thread connecting the events we see rather than a proper plot. And also although it is billed as a full feature, this is quite a short film. However it is longer than the average short - Tony is perhaps best described as the cinematic equivalent of a novella - clocking in at just over one hour and ten minutes

But what a compelling 74 minutes it is. Director Gerard Johnson has crafted an elegant little film that lingers in the mind long after the credits rolled. My first impression was that if Mike Leigh ever directed a movie about serial murder then the result would be not dissimilar to Tony, and judging by a quote from Sight & Sound on one of the movie’s posters – “If Mike Leigh remade Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer - I am not alone in that reaction. Like much of Leigh’s work, Tony is fastidiously realistic, travelling through the down-at-heel back streets showing us a side of London you don’t normally see in the movies and meeting the everyday but slightly eccentric characters who dwell there. And similar to Leigh’s work, there is a touch of humour in Tony; capturing the same absurdities of human behaviour and the unconscious comedy of misunderstanding and social awkwardness.

However although Johnston acknowledges Leigh as an influence, in an interview he has revealed that his prime inspiration is the work of another noted British director Alan Clarke. And on a second viewing, you can see the influence of Clarke’s films and TV dramas: Tony focuses on the gritty edges of society where the neglected and disenfranchised are left to their own devices, with the city London becoming a important character in itself. Unemployed and evidently suffering with a great many mental health issues, Tony spends most of his time wandering the streets, trying and failing to forge connections with the people around him. And as we follow him on his travels we see the many different faces of London, from the seedy estates to the glitzy West End, and one feels that in a sense the ancient city is his only real friend. Although his victims are drawn from the same underclass that he inhabits, he is also preyed upon himself by the uncaring authority figures and the general populace who ignore him because he is does not fit in.

Although there are some parallels to the Dennis Nilsen case - like Nilsen Tony kills for company - there are significant differences. Nilsen was a textbook example of the everyday guy in the office who one day is revealed as a monster, but Tony is very different – he is has no ordinary life, no job, no friends; he’s a man who has fallen down the cracks in society and been forgotten about. Whereas Nilsen possess sufficient social skills to hold down a job, Tony is much more obviously mentally unwell, seeming suffering with a kind of social dyslexia – the rules of interaction and communication are baffling to him because he has evidently been marginalised all his life.

We never discover much about his personal history but we do get a few hints about his past and the film is such a vivid character study, we may infer a lot from how he acts and behaves. Apparently, the actor who plays him, Peter Ferdinando, did write up Tony’s personal history which no one else was allowed to see, even Johnson. And this attention to detail is shines through in the strength of his performance - budding psychologists and armchair criminologists will have a field day trying to construct the back-story from what we see on screen.

Ferdinando is simply quite astounding – totally believable and utterly magnetic. His performance takes us into Tony’s world and it is a testament to his acting that most viewers will end up sympathising with the character rather than being revolted. Despite the often shocking violence and horrendous scenes of him cutting up bodies, against all the odds we do end up feeling sorry for Tony. Unlike many serial killers who artfully wear a mask of normality and sanity, Tony is clearly unwell; a broken product of society’s failures, and consequently we feel sadness rather than revulsion.

And Johnson’s direction is equally dazzling – the quality of the cinematography belies the film’s tiny budget. This is a very handsome looking film, brimming beautiful shots that capture the flavour and texture of the forgotten corners of English cities and the subtleties of the performances. According to the fascinating commentary track on the DVD, remarkably much of the street scenes were filmed guerrilla style, something you’d never guess from the careful framing of the shots. Also Johnson is to be commended for spending much of the movie’s development time rehearsing the actors; building up the characters’ depth and allowing the script to grow and develop throughout this process. And having such a long period of rehearsal before shooting commenced pays off beautifully in the finished film with very natural and finely crafted performances from the cast. Like Ink, Tony proves that low budget need not be synonymous with low quality – spending time working with the cast, honing your script and carefully planning your shots costs little other than time and the investment will pay off handsomely.

Johnson and Ferdinando are definitely talents to watch. The DVD of Tony comes with the original short that the feature grew from, and seeing the leap Tony made in this transition, I’m greatly looking forward to what they will produce next. Already they are working on another feature, as yet untitled and this time with a larger budget and a more conventional narrative.

Tony will not suit everybody’s tastes; no doubt some viewers will be frustrated by the film’s open story structure, and indeed some reviewers have slammed it because ‘nothing happens’. And largely I blame the distributers’ addition of the tag ‘London Serial Killer’ to the title for this – it’s is not terribly helpful marketing as it sets up the expectation of the usual slasher/thriller runaround. But Johnston did not set out to make your typical serial killer flick, but a piece of social realist cinema – a genre where a rounded story with a neat resolution is anathema to the director’s goals, and indeed where usually ‘nothing happens’.

But while the movie could be seen as threadbare in terms of a conventional plot, there is actually a lot going on beneath the surface; there is a loose arc to the series of events which will leave the receptive viewer will several tantalising options of what will happen next. And Johnson and Ferdinando have packed so much cinematic craft into the short running time, Tony will definitely reward repeated viewings.

However in the main, Tony is all about mood and character; much like Taxi Driver - another film where nothing actually happens for most of the running time – watching Tony is essentially hitching a ride in a disturbed character’s skull, seeing and experiencing the underside of the big city through the eyes of a forgotten and neglected man. The careful observations of London, the intricacies of Ferdinando’s performance, and a atmospheric score by The The’s Matt Johnson come together to create a compelling journey through the grime corners of both sanity and society.

And although Tony lacks elaborate gore set pieces or jump scares, if you can get onboard with Johnson’s vision, the powerful atmosphere and weighty realism actually make the film far more chilling than your average psycho on the loose – a Tony could well live in the next street to you, something you can’t really say of Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees or Hannibal Lecter. He’s the man you pass in the road and never notice, operating undetected and quietly cutting a swathe through the population…

FRIDAY 13th Part 8 - Jason Takes Manhattan...Allegedly

There will be blood and there will be spoilers

“Dear God no! For the love of Christ no! You can’t do this to me! Make it stop!”

No, that’s not a quote from the movie – that was me when I realised I was going to have to watch this flick yet again before penning this review. If you were wondering exactly why it’s taken so long to get through this marathon of Friday 13th reviews, you can lay the blame squarely on this movie; or rather my reluctance to slip this particular cinematic atrocity into the old DVD player once again.

Yes, this is the film that stank so bad, Paramount finally pulled the plug on the franchise. And it is truly horrible. Yes, they kept cutting back the budget and forcing director Rob Heddon's script through the rewrite mangle, but even so the frequent changes to the story line don’t excuse the huge swathes of nonsense this flick delivers. It’s easily the worst film in the franchise, severed hands down. And while there are a few memorable scenes, on the whole the film is so irredeemably shoddy it doesn’t even cut it in the so-bad-its-good stakes. It’s just plain bad and the only way to get any enjoyment out of this one is to drink heavily and merciless mock the nonsense as it unfolds. So then, let's cry havoc and unleash the dogs of sarcasm…

Right from the start, you know you are in trouble when instead of a proper opening theme we have a very ‘80s slice of pop-rock tosh blithering on about life in the big city. And as we see more of New York in this credits sequences than we do in the rest of the movie, I can only assume the decision to play this even then terminally uncredible song over the top of it was just a vain attempt to justify the film’s title. Look we're in the big city! The electro funk man says so!

You see the biggest problem for this outing is that Jason doesn’t really take Manhattan, in any way, shape or form... And not just because the Muppets had already beaten him to it, or that Leonard Cohen had proposed a similar manoeuvre the preceding year either.

Thanks to Paramount’s budget cuts, scene after scene in the original script were axed. So sequences of Jason wreaking havoc around the Big Apple landmarks, such as Madison Square Gardens, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Empire State building and Broadway, were sliced away one by one until all we were left with was a quick stroll through Times Square in the film’s finale. So instead, we spend most of the running time stuck on a boat. And it is a huge let-down - really this one should have been called Cruise-Alonga-Jason.

Now when you hear the title Jason Takes Manhattan, you instantly start imagining scenes of colossal carnage. Up until now our slaphead anti-hero has been confined to the American backwoods; an isolated milieu where he only ever encountered small numbers of people. And every single person he's ever met, he's attempted to brutally slay. Hence the title of this flick has you picturing him going completely berserk in the metropolis; with tens if not hundreds of people falling to his machete. Entire squads of police dying while trying to halt the unstoppable undead killing machine. The National Guard are called into no avail. CIA, FBI, NSA and sundry other acronyms mobilised and the carnage all builds up to an apocalyptic finale where they have to airstrike a large area of Manhattan in order to stop the tsunani of slashing.

Alright, the studio coffers probably wouldn’t have stretched to all the above mayhem but you get the idea. Jason turning up in Manhattan should have been one long killing spree causing a city wide panic. So then having him stuck on boat for three quarters of the movie was a big disappointment – and for me, more of a slap in the face than The New Beginning and its-not-the-real-Jason Scooby Doo twist.

But it’s no use crying over spilt milk and pondering what could have been. However what we did get unfortunately just doesn’t really cut the mustard either. Now in terms of the direction, in fairness the film is better shot than the hobbled by 3D Part 3, but unfortunately the story contains far more stupidity than Miner’s second Friday flick – some mean feat as that wasn’t going to win any awards for coherence either. Now I’m reliably informed that in the commentary for the US DVD release, director Rob Heddon tells us that his first cut was around the two hour mark, so you may be thinking that in pruning it down to the more acceptable 90 minutes mark accounts for some of the outright weirdness in the plot. However judging from the list of cut scenes on the IMDB trivia page, although the excised material may have built up the characters more, as far as I can see none of the missing material would make sense of some of the highly annoying loopiness the film delivers.

Lordy lordy, where to start… Right, first up the damn boat. Now I can ignore the thoroughly bizarre bending of all the laws of geography of having a lake that leads to Manhattan. We’ll just let that one go, along with the fact that judging from the exterior shots of the ship we see and the interiors we are shown, it would appear that this craft was built with Time Lord technology. Nope, the thing that bothers me most is what the hell happened to the swarms of kids on board? We see a few minor cast members despatched by Jason but the rest vanish into thin air never to be mentioned again. Not even when the ship sinks. What was going on there? An oblique reference to the Marie Celeste?

Next up, why can Jason now teleport? Slasher films are notorious for having their usually slow walking killers catching up with their sprinting prey and popping up in unexpected places, but in Jason Takes Manhattan he does literally appear to have gained to the ability to materialise anywhere he damn well likes. Now presumably this ties into Things That Make Don’t Make A Shred of Sense - Even For This Series #3…

..Which is the whole business of Rennie and her visions of Jason. At first he appears to her as a normal little boy and then throughout the course of the film proceeds to gradually mutate into his more familiar monstrous form. Now firstly in the original movie, we are shown a flashback of Jason drowning and despite the brevity of the shot it is clear he was deformed then, so where on earth this normal Jason fits in is anyone’s guess. The implication seems to be that Rennie has some psychic connection to some deeply buried good side of Jason and that hulking killer we all know is some kind of revenge driven ghost. Yes, I know that sounds nutty but it’s the only thing I can think of to explain what we see on screen. Hedden has stated that the end where we see Jason seemingly transform back to a little boy is meant to represent his spirit going to rest, which sort of fits. I get the impression that this element of the film was meant to clear up the long standing questions over when Jason actually died, and how come if he died as a boy he reappears as a full grown psycho in Part II.

However none of it adds up – if Jason is some vengeance powered apparition, as his teleporting suggests, how come he has a body, which has been buried, sunk at the bottom of a lake and twice revived by electricity? While I applaud the attempt to make some sort of sense of the series’ mythos, it is done in such a way as to actually confuse matters further rather than clarify anything about Jason’s back-story. From the finale, you could be forgiven for thinking that as well as killing him, the toxic waste has caused him to physically regress in age. Indeed on my first exposure to this scene – I caught the second half on late night TV – I assumed that either a) the first half explained this or b) The New Blood - which I hadn’t seen at the time - had something to do with it or finally c) I’d had a bad pint down the pub and was now mildly hallucinating.

And if this wasn’t enough to contend with, there is also the utterly bonkers circumstances leading up to it. According this film, New York flushes its sewer system every night by pumping the afore-mentioned toxic waste through it. Yes, you did read that right! Flushes. Sewer system. With toxic waste. Every damn night. To CLEAN it!!! A large pint of WTF please barman! Considering that the New York Tourism Committee complained about the posters which featured Jason popping through the ‘I heart NYC’ logo, I’m amazed they didn’t sue when they saw the movie itself. One wonders why not … does Heddon know something we don’t?

At this point, I think we can safely say that the case for the prosecution now rests, and this flick is guilty as charged on numerous counts of Grievous Intellectual Harm, and Assault and Battery With A Deadly Weapon to whit the script. All that remains now is sentencing…

Now when watching horror flicks, you do not apply the same laws for assessing story credibility or narrative logic as one does when watching serious cinema. And when watching entries in the Friday 13th saga, we usually are not even apply a version said laws revised for the genre. After the first few entries, this franchise is operating in a bubble universe of its own making, complete with its own rules of cinema. And while the better films in the series, like the original, Final Chapter and Jason Lives, may be fit enough to survive outside this pocket critical environment, most do not. They may only be judged in relation to the following criteria - how cool is Jason, how spectacular are the deaths, is the acting competent rather than howlingly bad, and can you stand any of the characters for more than 10 seconds without wanted to machete off their heads yourself.

So then, is Jason cool is this flick? Well largely no. Kane Hodder stalks and looms well enough but the teleporting antics are frustrating and his look in this movie is frankly poor. After the superb bone-tastic Jason of The New Blood, this rendition just looks cheap - no visibly decay, just a bit of token tattering on his outfit, and mainly he just looks a bit soggy. And as for the unmasking scene, oh dear Lord! Not only does the toxic waste appear to possess the power to restore ones youth, it also has trans-species mutagenic properties too! For when the hockey mask comes off, it appears that Jason is now a melting albino chimp! Were they planning a cross-over with Planet of the Apes? Or was he trying to blend in Manhattan’s Muppet overlords?

In the absence of any sensible answers, let’s move on to the slayings. On the whole, they are fairly standard fare, nothing too shabby but possessing no real wow factor either. That is, apart from Julius’ death. Credit where credit is due, not only is this the best scene in the movie, but one of the best kills in the entire series – Jason literally knocks his block off, decapitating him with a single punch. It’s beautifully set up and executed; spectacular, very funny and a satisfyingly ironic end to Julius, one of the most annoying characters in the movie.

And speaking of which, I’ll also have to give some credit to the characters and acting. The script attempts to give our protagonists some depth and the performances are too bad either. Yes, Julius is a monstrous arse but I think he was meant to be. Jensen Daggett and Scott Reeves are pretty likeable as a leading pair, and special mention must be made of Peter Mark Rickman who has good fun hamming it up as the harsh and overprotective Uncle Charles. As well as chewing the scenery, he bears an uncanny resemblance to Jonathan Harris, in both looks and performance, which just adds to the fun – indeed, on the first viewing I was convinced I was watching Jason hunting down evil Dr Zachery Smith from Lost in Space.

But the trouble is despite trying to create proper characters, the script is so full of errant nonsense, they get very little to do that passes for basic common sense. Even Jason himself acts very out of character on a couple of occasions. As he normally slays anything or anyone in his path, it is somewhat perplexing him to see him seemingly rescue Rennie from those muggers fresh out of Clichéd Street Punk School. Similarly when he encounters the Times Square hoodlum wannabes, he scares them off by raising his mask. While it's understandably they'd leg it sharpish considering the terrifyingly poor make job lurking under there, and it's meant to be a funny scene, it's not nearly as hilarious if he’d kebabbed them all in one go.

And this is another major problem the film has; although there are flashes of humour, there are not nearly enough gags to indicate that we shouldn’t be taking anything that happens on screen too seriously. On the contrary, the stream of nonsense that is masquerading as a plot, with its psychic visions and psychological elements of Rennie’s story arc suggests that Heddon and co. set out to play this straight.

There was a decent concept behind the film which Paramount's budget cuts scuppered, and the script shows some signs that there were some interesting ideas that were mangled on route to the screen. But the problem is, Heddon is simply too competent a director to make the film so bad it’s unintentionally funny, which may be the biggest back-handed compliment I’ve ever given out. All of which adds up to a film that is very unsatisfying and the few good moments in it taunt you with what the movie could have been.

And this is the crux of the matter, Jason Takes Manhattan is just annoyingly bad rather than entertainingly so. It isn't directed with an ironic trash aesthetic which encourages us to laugh WITH the movie, nor is it such misbegotten dreck you can laugh AT it. Admittedly with a few beers, a few chums and an ample supply of Mystic Jim’s Patent Michaels Remover, you could enjoy this flick as a piece of comically bad cinema – but you will just be laughing NEAR the movie and have to supply most of the comedy yourself…

CADMIUM 2 - The Podcast of Cult Britannia

It’s an important but unpopular fact that the reason stereotypes endure is because generally they hold true. And one of the most well known stereotypes about the British is that they as a nation tend towards eccentricity. And indeed we are – an Englishman’s home may be his castle but inside you might find anything from scale models of the Great Western Railway to a collection of novelty umbrellas. From the Sealed Knot to extreme ironing, we are a nation of cultists – being slightly mad is as British as a nice cup of tea. And our indulgence of those who would pursue the eccentric has nurtured generations of inventors, artists and musicians.

And perhaps unsurprisingly, our national love of all things off-kilter has produced all manner of cults in the world of entertainment. Only the British would embrace surrealism not as an art form but as a new mode of comedy thanks to the BBC letting The Goons and later Monty Python follow their own warped muses, and only in the leafy suburbs of England could Syd Barrett mutate the blues into extra-cosmic freak outs.

And it’s very telling that HG Wells was not only a pioneer of science fiction but also managed to invent war gaming with his catchily titled 1911 book Little Wars: a Game for Boys From Twelve Years of Age to One hundred and Fifty and For That More Intelligent Sort of Girl Who Likes Boys' Games and Books. Furthermore, it was a British director Walter Booth who was the first to follow Georges Méliès into cinematic sci-fi, with The Airship Destroyer in 1909. And it was the venerable BBC that first brought this genre to television with an adaption of Karel Capek’s R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots in 1938.

From Lewis Carroll to Edgar Wright, from Day of the Triffids to The Mighty Boosh, British cult fiction is a broad territory spanning many genres. And hence it’s always good to have some reliable guides when venturing into this vast landscape, which is where Cadmium 2 the podcast of Cult Britannia comes in.

Airing fortnightly Cadmium 2 brings you in-depth discussions and critical commentary on all that’s British and cult. As in all things cult, sci-fi, horror and fantasy works tend to predominate but Cadmium 2 does also cover comedies like Hot Fuzz and Carry On films as well some more mainstream fare like the James Bond films that inspire cult followings.

The show is hosted by a trio of very knowledgeable chaps, Andrew Richards, Mike Greaves and Paul Greaves, and with each episode they deliver a comprehensive history of the production, rich in the behind the scenes details, building into a full review. They bring to light the context their subject first appeared in but also assess it plays to a modern audience. However the amiable banter and occasional comedy bickering that ensues prevents the show from becoming overly academic; like the BBC, Cadmium 2 informs AND entertains.

For long running shows like The Tomorrow People, they will devote episodes to individual seasons/series or stories, and for franchises like Bond, single films. And this has led to their greatest undertaking, covering every Doctor Who story since the beginning in 1963. Now as this is such a massive undertaking, roughly every other episode returns to the TARDIS’ travels. However their critical approach really pays off here – by illuminating the production history and assessing the stories in the context of the times of their original screenings, Cadmium 2 isn’t just building up an archive of reviews of all the Doctor’s adventures but creating a series in itself that examines the history of this long running cult favourite.

However, even if you are immune to the charms of Gallifrey’s most famous son, there is plenty more to enjoy. And as well as delving into the worlds of cinema and television they also cover radio and audio productions too. It’s a very diverse menu, covering a nice mix of the well known and the obscure - check out the show list here and see for yourself the cornucopia of delights on offer.

For lovers of cult fiction everywhere, Cadmium 2 is a real treat. Find all the details for subscribing and the latest news at their blog here. Additionally there is also a Facebook group to join and you can follow these fine fellows on Twitter too.

SHUTTER ISLAND

Psychiatrist's notes: Spoiler free and not a danger to the public

The Hollywood big guns has always had a somewhat ambivalent attitude to genre cinema, and to horror in particular - in general, it is seen as something for low budgets and small studios to produce. And for a fan of the macabre this relationship is equally ambiguous; on one hand, you wish there were bigger budgets available and that some of the better film makers currently working would attempt something in the genre, but when they do, you often wish they hadn’t bothered.

A prime example would be Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula; when this was announced we all got excited imagining it was going to be the classic tale of the undead lord told with the artistry and intensity of The Godfather - A Countalypse Now perhaps. But what did we really get? A load of old tat, that’s what. Entertainingly batty old tat, I’ll grant you, but a popcorn flick any journeyman director could have helmed. Coppola clearly didn’t approach the subject matter as one of his ‘proper’ films and I suspect why the movie went out under its mendacious title.

So then when I heard Martin Scorsese was to be helming a psychological gothic horror, I was a little concerned whether we were going see one of the great contemporary American directors deliver a slice of tosh that rather than dousing audiences in terror would splatter his own face with egg. But at the same time, I was very hopeful for the project as Scorsese is a very reliable director who understands the importance of story and has not been content to rest on his laurels and stuff himself up his own overly lauded arse like certain other highly feted auteurs I could mention coughs *Coppola*.

But more importantly, I knew that Scorsese was a huge admirer of Val Lewton. Now for those of you who don’t know, Lewton was a producer of a string of quickie horror features that are now regarded as classics. Although his studio bosses at RKO, would have been more than content with typical B movie fodder full of cardboard castles and knock-off monsters, Lewton had other ideas. He may have been limited by the budgets he was given, but Lewton strongly felt that a lack of time and resources didn’t mean he had to skimp on quality and intelligence as well.

And although Hitchcock has been widely bandied about as an inspiration, and indeed there are many superficial similarities with Hitch’s suspense pictures, the prevailing flavour of Shutter Island is very Lewtonian. While Hitchcock’s work frequently embraced psychological themes, it was often with a criminological emphasis, providing his movies with a gritty true crime edge. However in a Lewton picture, it is the internal conflicts in traumatised psyches that generate atmospheric onscreen terrors; his work is often described as ‘gothic noir’ – a term that fits Shutter Island like a glove.

Based on a novel by respected crime author Dennis Lehane, Shutter Island is a period piece, set in the 1950s, concerning US Marshall Teddy Daniels who is sent to investigate the escape of a prisoner from Ashecliffe Hospital, a high security facility for the criminally insane. It is an age old mystery set up - the missing prisoner, a highly deranged multiple murderess, has vanished from a seemingly locked room. But in a similarly classic plot development, we discover that Teddy has equally enigmatic reasons for accepting this case on the titular isle.

Now although I am keeping this review spoiler free, I will say that if you are a fan of mysteries, familiar with horror, or are even just a tad movie literate, you will probably figure out where the mystery is leading by the halfway mark. In fact, from a quick sampling of other reviews, there is one scene in particular where the penny drops for most people. But Shutter Island is so densely layered, although you may guess the general shape of the ending, I’ll bet there will a great many of the specifics you won’t deduce before the denouement.

And I would stress that this is not a film that lives or dies on the strength of a twist ending – you know, the kind of film whose plotting is purely a game of bluff and counter bluff until it reveals its hand in the last five minutes and it turns out that *gasp!* it was all in the future on a spaceship or some such nonsense. It’s Scorsese we are talking about here after all, not M Night Bloody Shyamalan!

For all the mysteries and riddles Shutter Island presents you with, Scorsese is also giving you an absorbing narrative with real characterisations, some honest-to-god real intellectual themes throughout and most importantly genuine emotional weight. And because of this, unlike many flicks with twist, Shutter Island will repay repeated visits.

Shutter Island is quite simply beautifully crafted on every level. Aside from its masterful plotting, the performances are second to none. Old hands Max von Sydow and Ben Kingsley actually put in some proper performances, rather the retirement fund coasting old thesps are prone to when appearing in a movie that has a whiff of genre about it, while Mark Ruffalo and Michelle Williams showcase their acting chops in roles that require some very carefully measured performances. And there is excellent support throughout from a cast that includes the likes of Emily Mortimer, Ted Levine, Jackie Earl Hayley and Elias Koteas.

However despite the very tough competition, Leonardo DiCaprio owns this flick. His recent other collaborations with Scorsese have seen him stretching his wings as an actor, to soar above those Peter Pan pin-up good looks, and in Shutter Island he really inhabits the role of Teddy Daniels, delivering an astonishing performance that is quite possibly his best to date.

And Scorsese himself is on top form. He ensuring there is real dramatic meat on the bones of the plot; which might sound like business as usual but in the case of Shutter Island this is no mean feat. This is a script which many directors would flounder with, and make the mistake of focusing on building a twist in the tail ending. He masterfully orchestrates the complexities of the storyline and reinforces the plot developments with excellent performances from his gifted cast.

The original novel was written in part as a tribute to both the gothics and the pulps, and the movie honours this completely. Scorsese weaves a powerful and evocative atmosphere, one that is as drenched in hardboiled sweat as it is uncanny mists and midnight tempests. And they blend beautifully on the titular island, with Scorsese building up a believable yet eerie unique location for the story.

Best of all though, he isn’t content to just raid the cliché box and wheel out the standard spooky movie tropes – a recurring problem when Hollywood ventures into genre territory with a big budget or big talent. Though they are entertaining flicks, both Bram Coppola’s Dracula and the recent Wolf Man remake were very lazy directorially, pulling out stereotypical horror movie set ups and shots pioneered by Universal and Hammer. And while you expect this from a journeyman like Joe Johnston, it’s very galling when a supposed auteur like Coppola is displaying such visionary bankruptcy.

So it was a real delight to see Scorsese pulling out all the stops, crafting a film brimming with astounding and inventive cinematography, and creating not only vivid and startling imagery but also taking a refreshingly novel approach to visual story telling. Like Lewton’s pictures, Scorsese grasps the potential in playing with the audience’s expectations of how they expect a film to be shot; subverting the clichés and inventing new approaches on the fly to catch them off guard.

It’s often said that the mark of a good score is that you don’t notice the music in the film, and I often think the same is true of good direction. However I’d contend that the exception to this rule is that truly exceptional direction should leap out and blow you away. And in Shutter Island Scorsese’s direction does just this. The execution flashback and Daniels exploring with matches, to highlight just a couple of examples, are scenes so creatively executed you want to fall to your knees and give tearful thanks to the gods of the silver screen.

Shutter Island’s real strength is that it works on so many different levels. And although there are some critics who have already sniffily dismissed it as a high gloss B-picture, they should really be brained with their own keyboards because Shutter Island is not just first class narratively but a tremendous artistic achievement too. Scorsese at the top of his game, with Marty showing an old dog can not only learn new tricks but actually invent them.

When once asked why the horror film was so lowly regarded by the movie industry, Val Lewton said it was because “it has dealt so childishly with such childishly unreal material. Too many camera tricks were used to show men turning into beasts and so on, and too little trouble to make the horror psychological” with the final result being “mostly tawdry, unreal, and cheap uninteresting movie entertainment”. And these words ring as true today as back then, as the most recent big budget resurrections of both the Count, Frankenstein and Larry Talbot bear witness.

But Scorsese succeeds where the likes of Coppola, Johnston and Branagh failed because he understands that the key to really getting under the audience’s skin is to deliver a cinematic experience that speaks to us on an emotional level. You may entertain your viewers by rounding up the expected elements of blood, thunder storms, heaving cleavage and shouting boo now and then, but if you want ensure your imagery and story will linger long after the popcorn is finished, you have to tap into the fragilities and insecurities of their psyches. You need to provoke thought as well as thrills, and deliver the humanity along with the horror.

And I’m sure Lewton would have applauded a film like Shutter Island that treats both its audience and its material with intelligence. And we should all be applauding Scorsese too for bringing us a perfectly rounded film balances riveting entertainment with artistic and creative depth.

FRIDAY 13th Part VII - THE NEW BLOOD

There will be blood and there will be spoilers

When we last left Jason he was mouldering at the bottom of Crystal Lake, supposedly now at rest having being returned to his original watery grave - although judging from the finale of the last flick being chained to a rock and receiving an outboard motor in the brain seems to have helped more…

Now the ending of Friday 13th Part VI – Jason Lives was one of the better finishes in the series. The supernatural element of laying his murderous spirit to rest by returning his body to the lake establishes a bona fide means of defeating Jason, making him more of a mythic monster like Dracula or the Wolf Man than the average slasher. But of course, part of the elegance of introducing this rule governing Jason’s powers is that there is an easy way to raise him again for another outing – just as the Count may be revived by removing the stake from his mouldering ribcage or by sprinkling fresh blood on his sun-struck ashes, so now Jason is ready to go as soon as something or some one frees his corpse from the water weeds…

So that’s where everyone’s favourite serial slaying slaphead was circa 1988, but what of the franchise itself. Jason Lives had gone down well with the faithful, and although some had a problem with the introduction of humour into the format – still a divisive point today among fans – generally everyone was happy to see the real Jason back and in good killing form. However at the box office, ticket sales had dropped with Jason Lives seeing a notable drop in profits. Undoubtedly the fake Jason shtick of A New Beginning had annoyed many, prompting them to jump ship but there were other factors in play.

By 1987, the slasher genre was in terminal decline as the hundreds of Friday and Halloween clones produced throughout the ‘80s were taking their toll on audience interest levels. The preceding year had seen the release of April Fools Day a horror comedy that sent up the genre and which some credit as ending the slasher gold rush. But more importantly, compared to the visceral imagination and energy of horror trailblazers like Evil Dead 2 and Hellraiser, masked men dicing up cardboard teens looked tedious, cliché bound and, worst of all, safe.

It’s often said that the most frightening films are those whose events could happen – many assert that a human psychopath is scarier than a tana leaf powered mummy, as you could conceivably encounter the former in real life whereas the latter exists only in the imagination. However by the closing years of the ‘80s, cinema audiences had been reminded that plausible does not necessarily equal convincing, never mind frightening, by countless witless teen carve ups. The gritty realism of the early films that form the roots of the slasher genre had ossified into overly familiar tropes; formula had swallowed up the fear.

And worst still for Jason, by 1988 he had some heavy weight rivals. Michael Myers was returning to the screen after a six year vacation in Halloween IV, Leatherface and co and returned after an even longer absence (Texas Chainsaw Masacre 2)1986), The Tall Man was flashing his silver balls again (Phantasm II), and Jim Cameron had unleashed the xenomorphs again (Aliens 1986). Not to mention new kids on the block, the Terminator, Pinhead and the Predator were all encroaching on the killing-everyone-in-your-path territory Jason had dominated for so long. And then there was Freddy…

Making his debut in 1984’s A Nightmare on Elm Street, Wes Craven’s Fred Krueger was a real machete in the guts for slasher films; here was a villain who didn’t just mutely kill, he mocked and taunted. Krueger had not only personality but far more terrifying means of dispatching his prey through reality bending dreams. Tellingly, when he returned for the first sequel Freddy’s Revenge in 1985, audiences and critics alike responded badly to what was commonly seen as turning the character into a run-of-the-mill slasher. Hence when he returned in 1987 for Dream Warriors, the emphasis was back on the dreams, the mythology and the characters rather than just serving up the splatter.

As I remarked in my discussion of Jason Lives, the shadow of Freddy was looming large over the Friday 13th franchise and the introduction of the supernatural elements and an attempt to construct a mythology for Jason as a character can be seen as a direct response to the success of the Nightmare On Elm Street series. Furthermore, some one somewhere having noted all the who would win speculation in fanboy land, decided pitting Freddy versus Jason would be box office gold. And it’s here that we first get the rumblings about this legendary modern monster rally. Yes folks, The New Blood was originally slated to be this epic rumble. But as every horror head knows, an agreement between Paramount and New Line failed to coalesce at this time, and Jason ended up taking a break in ’87 while the studios threw papers back and forth.

However you can clearly see the legacy of this plan in the bones of The New Blood. Now although many have labelled this entry in the saga as ‘Jason Versus Carrie’, I feel the key inspiration was probably Dream Warriors; it borrows the themes and plot accoutrements of a troubled teen and her therapist and more importantly gives her what Charles Fort would term ‘wild talents’; namely precognition and telekinesis, to combat Jason’s undead fury.

The plot for this one centres on Tina who as a child inadvertently kills her abusive father with an outburst of her psychic abilities. Not an event that’s going to make for a psychological stability in later life, I’m sure you’ll agree. Years later she returns to Crystal Lake, with her mom and slightly sinister psychologist in tow to confront her inner demons and unwittingly resurrects Jason from his watery grave with her latent psychic powers…

Helmed by special effects man turned director John Carl Buechler (neigh!*), The New Blood is a troublesome movie to assess. It’s not outrightly awful but neither does it actually hang together well. And coming between of the fan favourite Jason Lives and the next two sub standard entries doesn’t help its cause either, and has resulted as often being fingered as the point of the series decline.

Now previous to landing this gig, Buechler (whinny!) had previous directed a pair of low budget flicks Troll and Cellar Dweller, both of which have garnered more than a few fans among lovers of schlock cinema – sure, they are cheap and camp but do display some imaginative flair and are more fantastic than anatomical in their horrors. And I’m guessing it was a combination of ambitious special effects on a tight budget and phantasmagoria with a sense of humour that landed him the gig.

But The New Blood fell foul of the MPAA so a lot of the FX work ended up on the cutting room floor. As he remarks ruefully in His Name Was Jason cutting out the climax of the kills in a Friday 13th movie is like trimming the punch lines from a comedy, and the censor snips effective hobbled his movie.

However I really think the problems of The New Blood aren’t rooted in the toned down version we saw. In terms of direction, Buechler (neigh!) acquits himself well in the main, but what scuppers the movie is actually the script. Now whether this is a legacy issue from the mooted team–up or just shoddy screen writing is hard to say, and certainly the six month turn around for the picture doesn’t give a director much leeway for fixing problems.

Part of the trouble is that the film seems to have jettisoned the touches of humour that made the previous entry so much fun and appears to be trying for serious horror. However the plot completely botches it’s handling of all the character driven psycho-drama as it’s mixed in with far too many scenes of the same old two dimensional shreddies wandering about waiting to die. And I can’t help feeling that what would make this flick far more effective isn’t restoring the gore – although admittedly that might have helped - but excising completely a third of the cast.

Now obviously you want a high body count in a Friday 13th movie but The New Blood unfortunately doesn’t follow the example set by its predecessor. Jason Lives ramped up its mayhem by including a lot of folk who just appear then die in quick succession, whereas in The New Blood has far too many teens introduced as proper characters. And while I commend the attempt to put flesh on the bones of these disposable characters the simple fact is that there are far too many of them cluttering up the screen, and ultimately detracts from the plot’s main focal points of Tina, her mother, secondary villain Dr Crews and nice guy Nick.

And aside from painting a very crowded picture, the script also fluffs several key plot points. Firstly it’s not entirely clear what Tina is attempting when she returns to Crystal Lake and exercises her wild talents. Is she trying to just recover her father’s body? (As the fine fellows at the Now Playing podcast’s retrospective have pointed out, in this series if someone disappears under the waters of Crystal Lake no bugger is going to even attempt to dredge it!) Or is she actually trying to resurrect him? Surely a bad idea – hasn’t she read WW Jacob’s The Monkey’s Paw?

Equally at the film’s climax when her father rises from his watery grave, is this Tina resurrecting him, puppeting his corpse in a dues ex marionetta fashion, or is it his ghost returning to aid his daughter? It’s particularly confusing as her no-so dear old dad looks none the worse for his sojourn at the bottom of the lake. Now apparently it was originally intended that the returning father was to be a suitable decayed cadaver but they just couldn’t get the make up right in the time they had. However even if you imagine this scene with a rotted version, there’s still a fuzziness around what is actually being depicted. And I can’t help thinking that these twin lapses in narrative clarity serious undermine what the plot is trying to achieve.

And it’s a shame as this movie does have some good ideas and where they really pay off is in the final act. After a lot of arsing about with the usual run about the woods and kill the teens tomfoolery, the movie finally fires on all cylinders and gives us a thrilling battle where Tina unleashes the full force of her telekinetic powers against Jason. It’s a great slice of psychic carnage and it’s very refreshing to see Jason go up against a foe that is as powerful as he is. It’s so good, it almost redeems the rest of the movie.

Equally noteworthy is the depiction of Jason himself. Firstly this is the first outing for Kane Hodder in the role, who brings the character a great sense of boiling rage with his aggressive body language. And secondly, the Jason make-up is excellent. After several years underwater, the maggoty Jason of Part VI has been replaced with a more decayed appearance, with bones now visible in places. It’s a fantastic job and easily my favourite of all the many different looks the character has had over the years.

So on the plus side, we have a great climax with FX and stunts galore, a great Jason in both looks and performance and some interesting plot ideas. But on the downside, the script just doesn’t make enough of the new concepts it has to play with, and as a result we have a very uneven film. Buechler (whinny!) seems to be trying his best but seems hampered by a combination of legacy issues, studio pressures and good old fashioned lack of time and resources.

It feels like the movie is pulling in two different directions at once – on one hand it’s attempting to move in a new direction and embrace the more fantastical vein of horror that was growing in popularity yet at the same time keeps backsliding into the old tired slasher clichés. When things work in the film, such as the tense exchanges between Tina and Dr Crews, the action packed final showdown or even just the brooding sequences in the forest at night, you can’t help feeling that there’s a better film lost in here struggling to get out.

And certainly it a better waste of an hour and a half than the next entry in the series, the hideous tar pit of a movie that is Part VIII - Jason Takes Manhattan…


* Sorry but I’ve seen Young Frankenstein waaaay too many times!