Viscera in Storytelling

I'd like to defend the extreme. The suff which makes us squirm and ooze. I'm not just talking about gore here, either. I'm talking extreme: crossing lines to which few will venture. And you've felt this way, haven't you, while reading a certain book or watching a certain film; the stuff happening is too horrific to be believed, and yet you're helpless to look away.

I have to admit I enjoy fiction and film which explores the outer reaches of human behavior. There is something fascinating about human depravity--I'm think this fascination is, in part, our effort to understand this behavior. At the risk of offending those with strong religious beliefs, I'll say this: some of the worst behavior in the history of man has come from ... religious groups.  Oh, you haven't heard about the Spanish Inquisition? Or maybe you have. My point, though, is that many high officials in the Roman Catholic church continue to pretend as though these events never occurred. And this group, meaning the Roman Catholic church, continues to be outraged that some Germans deny the Holocaust. Not that either group is correct. No, hypocrisy is hypocrisy.

There are several reasons why extreme content is more prevalent now. One is that the rules now allow it (let's face it, folks, we live in a society of sensationalism and voyeurism, thus the popularity of the reality show). Another reason is that it reflects who were are; the adage that truth is stranger that fiction could be no closer to the truth.

In my work in progress (completed, going through its resurrection after it was murdered by me, though in merciful fasion), the antagonist uses the Spanish Inquisition as justification for his own atrocities. He, like the Roman Catholics who committed the atrocities, thinks he is  justified in doing what he is doing. He is punishing Christians for ancient atrocities; that he himself is not a Christian is irrelevant. This antagonist, like any tyrannical dictators, celebrates his own religion, suffers from his own delusions. That communist Russia disavowed religion was a religion all of its own; that it wasn't practiced in a church didn't make it less so.

Not all bad behavior stems from religion.

Jack Ketchum, perhaps my favorite writer of fiction, has based a number of his novels on evil in the real world. In Off Season, a novel which nearly ruined Ketchum's career, he took the Scottish Sawney Bean legend (a family of cannibals purportedly living in Scotland) and transported these nasties to the coast of Maine, where they preyed on our unsuspecting characters. Off Season is a work of unapologetic extreme content and gore in which the nasties even make human soup (hey, cannibals are allowed to cook their food, aren't they?).

 As the years passed, Ketchum's content became even more extreme. His 1989 book, The Girl Next Door, is based on the worst case of child abuse in American history. The real-life perp, one Gertrude Baniszewski (pictured left) spent only 20 years in prison for her horrific crime, which lead to the torture and death of a 16-year-old girl. Ketchum's Girl Next Door, as deeply challenging as a novel could be to read (you will, as a reader, experience the horror of this poor girl), is beautifully written, evoking memories of Ray Bradbury's work in depicting vivid rural settings, and the psyche of a 12-year-old body (the narrator). I can't recommend this book enough, though if you're sensitive, you'd be advised to run in the other direction. Aunt Ruth, Gertrude Baniszewski's fictionalized counterpart, is a sadistic, immoral woman with a deep hatred for the girl.

Ketchum expresses deep outrage at the real-life story on which Girl Next Door is based. Jack Ketchum takes us to places other writers dare not go. Someone has to do it. Someone has to remind of the atrocities which we're capable. In 2007, Ketchum's novel was brought to film in a faithful adaptation of the same name. The film version is hard to watch. There is a moment, near the end, where I nearly stopped the DVD player.

Ketchum's 2001 novel, The Lost, manages to nearly reach the extreme level of Girl Next Door. Ray Pye, the character in the book, is based on real-life Arizona serial killer Charles Schmid (shown right) who was a predator and killer of several teenage girls. Pye is played to perfection to actor Marc Senter. Pye is a narcissistic, self-absorbed psychopath who might snap at any moment--and eventually does.

Explore them if you wish, the demons who inhabit our world, from tyrannical leaders without an ounce of pity in their souls to serial killers who butcher other humans like cattle. Well let's put the unpleasantries behind us, shall we? Some creators explore extreme content for the sake of shocking and entertaining us.

Let's take a trip to Asia. Japanese director Takashi Miike has built a Pandora's Box of films, from extreme comedies to Yakuza films to comic book adaptations. He's even directed a musical. In this side of the Pacific, however, Miike is most noted for his extreme films, from his surreal and perhaps supernatural Gozu to Imprint, a segment he directed for Showtime's Masters of Horror. If you want to hear a hilarious anecdote, Showtime, when they saw what Miike had produced, refused to put Imprint on television (it's available on DVD).

Probably Miike's most notable film--and one no horror fan should be without--is Audition. One viewer described the visceral effects of Audition as the reliving the shock audiences felt in 1960 when they saw Psycho for the first time. Whether Audtion is the most shocking film I've ever seen I don't know. I can say this: it's probably numbed me to extreme films. What starts as a Japanese version of Sleepless in Seattle quick turns into a surreal nightmare of the extreme. Asami, the film's antagonist, shown above, is such a cute, sweet lovely creature--and a monster of menacing proportions. Despite what Miike says, Audition must indeed be about women lashing back at a patriarchal Asian society. And, oh boy does Asami lash back. Complete with hypodermic and piano wire. The last twenty minutes of Audition are extremely difficult to watch--that is, unless you're highly desensitized. Watching this for the first time, I was reminded of the Exorcist, which I first saw on HBO when I was 11. Only with Audition, the element of shock, of absolute disbelief, was stronger. Audition, for all intents and purposes is too real, and not something you'll want to watch as often as, say, It's a Wonderful Life. Watching Audition is like being tied to a chair with your eyes held open while the inquisitor tortures his victims. Sensitive viewers beware: this film is not for you.

Imprint is extreme as well, and you will recognize the same pattern of depravity as in Audition, though Imprint goes further in other ways. Imprint is about a geisha punished for theft, and another geisha who has a bizarre twin. The family of the latter is involved in rather ghoulish service for pregnant women. Imprint is an amalgamation of taboos. Ichi the Killer is based on a comic book and tells the story of a quiet young restaurant worker who, when he's not clearing tables, kills with his razor boots. Ichi also concerns how Yakuza try to use Ichi to their advantage. Ichi is truly a fun film, if you have the stomach for extreme content.

I'll finish this blog with a list showing films you should see if, like me, you have an interest in extreme human behavior. In no particular order:

1. Santa Sangre
2. The Girl Next Door
3. Audition
4. Ichi the Killer
5. Imprint
6. Three Extremes
7. Mum and Dad
8. Inside
9. Deranged 
10. Irreversible
11. Clean, Shaven
12. Laid to Rest
13. Deadgirl
14. The Lost

Horror on Film, part 5: Slice, dice and mutilate

Let's talk about the slasher film. If you haven't delved beyond the obligatory American slasher films--I'm talking Friday the 13th, Nightmare On Elm Street, My Bloody Valentine, et al.--then you probably believe, as do most casual horror fans and critics alike, that Carpenter's Halloween is the most noteworthy slasher film of all time.

You would be wrong.

In fact, by the time Carpenter's Halloween was released theatrically, a better slasher film had already been released in North America. Director Bob Clark, he of Porky's fame, in 1974 released Black Christmas to Canadian audiences. Black Christmas is a wonderful horror film, one of my favorites, and you should stick with the original, not the inane American remake (2006). Black Christmas is about an escaped lunatic who hides in a sorority house. Through a series of phone calls made to the girls in the house, we slowly understand the killer's enigmatic story. What I love is that there are no flashbacks, nor is anything explained. This killer just is. Black Christmas also features some funny bits and a wonderful performance by Margot Kidder as a mouthy sorority sister. John Saxon is strong as a frustrated police Lieutenant dealing with a doofus of a uniformed officer. This doofus of an officer may very well be related to the posters on the IMDB message board for Black Christmas, continuously saying they don't understand the film. I imagine these doofuses wouldn't deal particularly well with an Atom Egoyan film. In this blogger's modest opinion, Carpenter's Halloween gets way too much credit for its poignancy in the slasher genre, Clark's Black Christmas not nearly enough.

If you move further back in American horror film history, you encounter Hitchcock's brilliant Psycho (1960), based on the Robert Bloch novel of the same name. Norman Bates, the antagonist in both the print and film version of Psycho is based loosely--and I mean oh so loosely--on infamous Wisconsin serial killer, Ed Gein. If you want to read more about the ghoulish Ed Gein, check out his story on crimelibrary.com. In truth, Norman Bates is about as close to Gein as President Obama is to Ronald Reagan. About the only similarity is that both were serial killers with mother attachments. Bates, if he were truly a chip off the old block, would have had a house full of bones and body parts. That notwithstanding, Psycho is a masterpiece, and certainly influential in the genre. You can see Hitchcock's style and deft camera work bleeding into the material of Italian horror maestro, Dario Argento.

It was the Italians, after all, who carved the deepest incisions in the slasher genre.

The Giallo
The term has become synonymous with slasher films originating in Italy. The word literally means yellow, and it signifies the source of the giallo film--the pulp comics printed in the 1920's and 30's literally on yellow paper. It took some decades before the giallo came to the screen.

Mario Bava
Mario Bava's The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963) is regarded as the first true giallo film. In 1964, Bava directed Blood and Black Lace, about a killing preying on lovely, young models (shame, shame). Many of Bava's films, in fact, featured beautiful women and lush colors. Bava's violent film, Twitch of the Death Nerve (1971), aka Bay of Blood, has a direct influence on many modern American slasher films, most notably Friday the 13th. If you've seen both films but don't recognize the similarities, you're flat out in denial.

Here are some other notable films by Mario Bava. I don't detail them here because they're not slasher films, but I have to mention them because they are absolutely brilliant.

• Black Sunday (1960) - great dual performance by sexy horror scream queen, Barbara Steele
• Black Sabbath (1963) - great anthology, and the first story, about the revenge taken on a thieving nurse by a dead woman, is alone worth the price of admission. Also starring Boris Karloff, he of Frankenstein's Monster fame

Dario Argento
By the 1970's, Dario Argento, Mario Bava's understudy, came to the forefront of the giallo. While the 1970's was a dry period for Vincent Price, Peter Cushing and other horror legends, it was a golden period of the giallo. If you consider yourself a fan of the horror film, but aren't familiar with these Italian films of the 1970's, I regret to inform you, darling, but you have some catching up to do.

There is just something different about the films of Dario Argento. Few of his films, if any, follow a linear, logical storyline. Experiencing his films is like a wakeful nightmare, the characters odd, the violence visceral and unflinching. In 1970, Argento directed his first film, The Bird With the Crystal Plumage. This is a nice, traditional giallo, and still holds up well today. The hard-working Argento released two more features in 1971, with The Cat o' Nine Tails and Four Flies on Grey Velvet. Neither film is a masterpiece, both both show glimpses of Argento's potential as a filmmaker. In 1975, he directed Deep Red (aka Profondo Rosso), considered by many of his fans to be his greatest achievement as a director. I'm undecided whether Deep Red is my favorite, but it's a brilliant horror film with some creative death scenes and a twisting, turning plot.

Starting with Deep Red, Argento would direct four consecutive films often considered to be the highest achievements on his resume. In 1977, Suspiria, Argento's most famous film, was released. Suspiria is not a giallo in the truest sense, but it has enough giallo elements to make it worth mentioning. Suspiria, the story of an American who attends a Swiss dance academy run by witches, is an intriguing, surreal film with one of the best opening murder scenes in cinematic history. Suspiria was the first of Argento's Three Mother's Trilogy, a trilogy which wouldn't see completion until 2007. In 1980, three years after Suspiria, Inferno was released. Inferno is the second film in the Three Mother's Trilogy, and is about a force of evil spanning from Rome to New York. Inferno is even less of a giallo than Suspiria, but it's a brilliant supernatural film, and perhaps my favorite Dario Argento film. Inferno is truly a nightmare caught on film.

In 1980, Argento returned to his giallo roots with Tenebrae. This is easily one of the best Argento films, features insane camera angles, a pulsating soundtrack and stunning violence. The final murder scene is certainly one of the most violent ever put on film and must have enraged critics in 1980. Tenebrae was released in the U.S. in butchered format under the title of Unsane, but it's since been restored to uncut glory under its original name.

It wouldn't be inaccurate to say that Argento's career started to bottom out at that point, but I think Phenomena (1985) and Opera (1987) are both fine horror films. I also adore The Mother of Tears (2007), the last Three Mother's film, despite some criticism by both fans and critics.

Lucio Fulci
Lucio Fulci, the grand poobah of gore, has made films in a variety of genres, most notably horror. A more experimental filmmaker has probably not existed. Fulci has made spaghetti westerns, zombie flicks (including his wonderful Zombie, aka Zombi 2, aka Zombie Flesheaters), and he also made some fine giallos. His most notable film in the subgenre, at least in my opinion, is Una lucertola con la pelle di donna, aka Lizard in a Woman's Skin (1972). This is a fast-moving film with a twisting, turning plot, and although not as gory as some his other work, as satisfying a film as Fulci has ever made. The following year, Fulci, getting into the act like Dario Argento, directed Don't Torture a Duckling, another fine effort. From there, Fulci really ventured into the supernatural. Ten years after Duckling, he would return to the giallo with New York Ripper, and extremely gory and sadistic film. 


Fulci has made too many noteworthy films to mention here, and they really run the gamut from pure slasher films to zombie and supernatural films--and even a few spaghetti westerns. Fulci's material was typically extreme, both in terms of violence and sex, and the faint of heart would probably not "get him."


The Others
Umberto Lenzi, Sergio Martino, Ruggero Deodato, Lamberto Bava (Mario's son), Pupi Avati and other Italian directors got into the giallo business. Pupi Avati's House With Laughing Windows (1976) is one of my all-time favorite giallos, about an artist, hired to restore some ancient paintings and stumbling into a towns ancient secrets.


The Americans Rush to the Show
They did ... eventually. But, you see, there were already dozens and dozens and dozens of slasher films already made when Carpeter was credited with pioneering the genre with Halloween (1978). Carpenter, to be honest, didn't pioneer much of anything at all; he took the ideas of Hitchcock and the Italian directors and, to his credit, introduced this style of filmmaking to American audiences. Halloween was a really good film, but unfortunately, it probably did more harm to the genre than good; in the years that followed, filmmakers would ignore Halloween's clever techniques, including its filming and its soundtrack. What lesser directors took away from Halloween, unfortunately, was its killer, a fellow who didn't want to die. And nor did Jason of Friday the 13th fame want to die, and nor would Freddie Krueger want to die. This style of film--the American slasher--would become a staple in the genre. Sex-crazed teenagers were murdered one of a time in creative ways--and sometimes not-so-creative ways. 

Horror on Film, part 4: The Zombie Apocalypse

Oh, those shambling zombies. So lovable, aren't they. We can divide zombies on film into roughly two periods, B.G. and A.G. The G in both cases stands for George, as in Mr. Romero, whom, in 1968, influenced heavily by Richard Matheson's novel I Am Legend, put his stamp on a genre, so made it his own, that he's a sure-fire horror hall-of-famer. A.G., starting with Mr. Romero's groundbreaking Night of the Living Dead(1968) created the shambling, rotting creature we all know and love.

Before George (1932 - 1968)
Before George there was no light. Only darkness. Just kidding. Well, things were decidedly different before Romero's NotLD. Zombies were animated by black magic. In 1932, horror legend Bela Lugosi played a diabolical voodoo priest in Haiti who had his own platoon of the dead. The name of this film was White Zombie, and yes, you guessed it--Rob Zombie likes this film. Lugosi's dead were mostly cheap labor. They also provided cheap labor in films which followed White Zombie, including King of the Zombies, Revolt of the Zombies and Revenge of the Zombies.

One of my favorite films from this period is I Walked With a Zombie (1943). In its truest sense, I Walked is a pure horror film more than a zombie film, but it still featured the black magic-animated dead customary for the period. Val Lewton, low-budger producer extraordinaire, produced the film for RKO pictures. A true classic.

Move ahead twenty years where Vincent Price plays the lead in Last Man on Earth (1964), the first film adaptation of Matheson's I Am Legend. The creatures in Last Man were vampires, not zombies, but both the novel and the film were influential on Romero when he would release his momentous Night of the Living Dead.

After George (1968 - present)
IF you haven't seen the original Night of the Living Dead (1968), your zombie gene is deeply deprived. There's nothing more for me to say about the film which hasn't been said; from the black and white filming, to the razor sharp ending, which juxtaposes men and monsters. Night is not a gory, nor even a particularly violent film, but it's infinitely watchable, even now. There's just something earnestly alluring about this film. One of the great American horror films, IMO. Moreover, Night was filmed in two locations which are in close proximity to my home. One of which, Livermore Cemetery, namesake of the now defunct town, flooded by the building the the Conemaugh Dam.

Some clumsy attempts to utilize Romero's slow-walking dead appeared early in the 1970's, but it was Europe which took advantage of Romero's invention. Tombs of the Blind Dead (1971) is a wonderfully atmospheric film in which the nasties were really zombies, but Knights Templar raised from the dead. In 1974, Let Sleeping Corpses Lie shows an English countryside overwhelmed by zombies.

Romero was busy as well. In 1978, he created Dawn of the Dead, the sequel to Night. Dawn raised a lot of eyebrows at the time for its explicit gore at the time. Dawn is a revered film even today, but in this writer's opinion, Dawn is more notable for its central message more than its actual execution. Dawn is a ponderously long film, and you will notice, by today's standards, the makeup and effects in Dawn are not particularly good--the result of budgetary constraints. Romero's social commentary, as with Night, is razor sharp; Dawn is essentially about a new society cannibalizing an existing society. One of his central motifs is consumerism, and this stands up well today, in our shallow, cell-phone-pasted-to-face society.

The best thing Dawn gave us, aside from the social commentary, was an unofficial sequel. In 1979, Lucio Fulci's Zombie was released. This is a notable film for a number of reasons. For one, the fun quotient may be the highest ever in the zombie genre. Second of all, Fulci, himself working under the constraints of a low budget, managed to outstrip the makeup and gore in Dawn, taking things to a new level.

Let's talking about the name of this film. If you're from the U.S., you most likely know this film simply as Zombie. People overseas have seen the names Zombi 2 (Italy) and Zombie-Flesheaters (England). Why so many names? Well, it's complicated, you could say. Romero's Dawn of the Dead, when it was released in Italy, took the name "Zombi". Thus, when Fulci's masterpiece came along, it took the name Zombi 2. In other countries, of course, it fell under different names. The resemblance between Dawn of the Dead and Zombie is rudimentary at best; Zombi goes in its own direction, using the age-old black magic like the earliest zombie films, to animate the dead. Zombie, as is typical of the work of Lucio Fulci, is violent and over the top. Who can't love a film featuring an underwater fight between a shark and a zombie? And who can't love that special Fulci eye moment? The makeup is some of the best I've seen in a zombie film. These zombies truly look, well, dead.

I don't care what the hell others say. Zombie is an absolute masterpiece of splatter cinema. Definitely not for the faint of heart, though; if you're squeamish, avoid this film like the zombie plague.

The 1980's brought some gems to the genre, starting with Dead and Buried (1981), which is kind of a true zombie film, and kind of isn't. But, it's a fun, traditional horror films, and one of my favorites. The famous Evil Dead followed in 1982, but again, I'm not sure this is a true zombie film--just a hell of a lot of fun. 1985 brought the zombie comedy, ever ascending fun quotient called Return of the Living Dead. 1987 offered Evil Dead II, 1988 The Dead Next Door--and we've bypassed one very important film.

In 1985, George Romero followed up with his third zombie film, Day of the Dead. What George Romero's opinion of this film is now, I don't know, especially given that it turned out not to be the film he wanted--oh, those pesky budgetary constraints. My opinion of Day, however is quite clear: Day of the Dead is the greatest zombie film of all time. It also happens to be one of the best American horror films of all time. If you saw Day of the Dead the first time and hated it, watch it again. That very phenomenon happened to me; hate turned to love during my second film. Maybe the reason for this is that Day is a particularly angry film; the survivors are going crazy trapped together in a military bunker. The military loathe the scientists and vice versa. And somewhere between it all is a crazy scientist the military affectionately call Frankenstein (you see, the doctor, not the monster) who has sort of a pet zombie (they call him Bub) who can remember bits and pieces of his past life as a human. Day of the Dead is an inventive and dark nihilistic film which features some of the best gore effects ever seen on film (remember, Hollywood, when we did things the old fashioned way, when we didn't resort to those fake-looking CGI effects which completely fail when simulating human/humanoid creatures? Remember that, hmm?)

Okay, and then after Day, we went into the nineties, and we hit 2000 and more zombie films came and more came and more came. Wait, can't we talk about Day of the Dead some more?

Okay, look, there were a few notables films in the 1990's. Braindead, aka Dead Alive was the effort of Peter Jackson, he of Lord of the Rings Fame, and a film made long before Jackson had begun having masturbatory fantasies about adding more CGI to his films. Dead Alive is really good, actually, and has the feel of an over-the-top gore comedy. The other notable film in this decade is Cemetery Man, aka Dellamorte Dellamore, one of my personal favorites, and sort of a comedy/fantasy/horror film with the deliciously lovely Anna Falchi (come to pappa) and an ending that ... well, you have to see this film.

The 2000's brought some honorable shambling dead including three more films from George Romero, Land of the Dead (2005), Diary of the Dead (2007) and Survival of the Dead (2009). I regret to inform my readers that Mr. Romero's best days may be behind him. Sorry, George, but Land does nothing for me. Good cast, decent story, but it felt as though you were just going through the motions. It doesn't feel as though the characters in Land are ever in serious jeopardy--certainly not like it did in Night, Dawn and Day. Diary of the Dead was marginally better. I actually found it to be somewhat creative, but Day of the Dead it isn't (it seems that, for Romero, the zombie has become an excuse for social commentary). I haven't seen Survival yet, but the initial reports don't look promising, but you know what they say: there's no accounting for taste.

In 2004, we saw Dawn of the Dead, a remake of the original. I must say, I love this film--I actually prefer it to the original (at least we don't have to look at green skin bleeding purple blood; yikes, what truly bad special effects those were; sorry, George). 2004 also offered the effective horror/comedy, Shaun of the Dead. I love this film. This decade also offered 28 Days Later and its sequel, 28 Weeks Later. I've seen 28 Days Later, and I must say, it's a blind spot for me; I don't get the praise. I actually prefer the Aussie film, Undead (2003), which I believe is underrated. Fido (2006) is an interesting film, though it's more social satire than horror film.

So, despite the popularity of the zombie in modern culture, there haven't exactly been a plethora of great zombie films (though there are a plethora of really, really bad zombie films, none of which are mentioned in this blog, are they, Bruno Mattei?)

What will the future bring? Hopefully a film version of Max Brooks's World War Z. The project is scheduled for completion in 2012, but who knows? How they bring a novel of that detail and complexity to film, I don't know. Brooks, unfortunately, doesn't have a creative voice in the project. The original script, leaked on the Internet and called brilliant by those who read it, has been rewritten. If it was that brilliant, why rewrite it? Brooks's novel is an astonishing work of genius and detail, taking the zombie to place I never thought he'd go. Maybe we'll get a film to match, but I'm incredulous. I predict another shallow, CGI-riddled, Hollywood wankfest.

No matter, we still have Day of the Dead (1985). They've just released a special edition blue ray with 100 hours of extras (well, not that many, but a lot). I have to get myself a blue ray player just for that film. I love you, Bub and Frankenstein.