October Horror Day 2 Double Bill Pt 1 - The Lost Boys

 I never saw The Lost Boys when it come out in UK cinemas in 1987. I was 14 but looked 10 years old so there was no chance I was sneaking into a cert 15 film. And yet, when it came on UK TVs on the Christmas of 1990 I think it was the right time for me to see it. I was too busy with Joe Dante, Krull's re-release (bite me) and Spielberg's Amblin films which seemed to be on regularly at the ABC on Lothian Road. Ah, Saturdays...

I was a fragile child and would likely have been put off by some of The Lost Boys - I just didn't connect with teenagers when I was one. By 1990 I was in my final year of high school and, after years of bullying and ostracism, had finally learned precisely how to tell the world to "fuck off" and I was finally getting into music that wasn't movie soundtracks. Frowns were the order of the day ("Smile, Brian!" "Fuck off.") and the time was right for me to appreciate Joel Schumacher's tramp-chic take on vampires and JM Barrie. Not literally Barrie, per se, but I believe the original idea had been, "What if the Lost Boys in Peter Pan never grew up because they were vampires?"

I said before that this season of blogs is about horror movies I've not watched before or at least not watched for a long time. We figured out it had been a lot longer than I thought since I last watched The Lost Boys, although I'm sure some late night drinking session has ended up in the Banshee Labyrinth, in Edinburgh's Old Town, watching it in the cinema there. And yet, I can still insta-quote the film as irritatingly as I could back in the 90s. It's all still there: the rice maggots, motorbikes in the fog, the Frog brothers and their comatose parents, Corey Haim's relentless cheeriness, that reveal, the "Attack of Eddie Munster" and Barnard Hughes final line (my teen self couldn;t help thinking, !Mr Merlin!" upon seeing him. It's probably me and my age but I hasn't aged as badly as it might have, with the obvious exception of Corey Haim's wardrobe, Edward Herrman's jackets and that ridiculous oiled up muscle dude singing with his sax on the beach which surely must rate as one of the most 80s things ever put to film. Crazy sax dude aside, the soundtrack still seems relatively fresh (OK, it's my age); Echo and the Bunnymen's cover of People are Strange (produced by Ray Mazarek, no less) hits exactly the right note. But the less said about Roger Daltry's cover of Don't Let the Sun Go Down On Me the better.

"Something for the weekend, sir?"

The Lost Boys isn't particularly scary, but I will argue that since it is about vampires and people are killed that it is indeed a horror film; the scene at the beach bonfire where Keifer Sutherland's David reveals the gang's true nature to Jason Patric's Michael is an explosion of quickly cut vampire mayhem, with arms ripped off, bald heads bitten into and corpses sizzling on a fire, the aftermath mixing Michael's conflicted revulsion and David's gluttonous appetite clearly sated. Sutherland wipes away what could be a bit of food from the side of his face as though he's just finished a pie eating contest. And Schumacher and his DP Michael Chapman know exactly how to light Sutherland's baby-faced features, giving his appearance real menace and an otherworldy quality. Sutherland's casting is superb. Much of the other casting revolves around the teen idols of the time or pretty faces, alas, with the exception of the Frog brothers. But one gripe I do have with the film is that there doesn't seem to be a main character. Arguably, it's Michael but its hard to care about him, especially when his brother shows him up so spectacularly. Herrmann's Max is suitably sympathising which gives more power to his reveal at the end. And yet, is that what everyting's been about? His speech about family doesn't hold that much water when the rest of his scenes with the gang have been antagonistic.

The film's imagery homages many other movies, notably Psycho with it's predilction for taxidermy with sprinlings of Mad Max through the denizens of Santa Carla and their home made couture. There is a feel of twisted nature to it through the use of gnarled wood in much of the production design, notably, Barnard Hughes home and the vampires' lair. Any of the plastic artifice so synonymous with the 80s is reserved for Max's video store, which the film doesn't seem too keen to spoend a lot of time, instead opting for a grubby nostalgia for times past on the boardwalk. The vampires' victims are shot from above, often very high above, giving us a flying vampires-eye-view of their prey without going to the expense of sticking the actors unconvicingly on wires, something kept for the final showdown between David and Michael among the rafters of his grandpa's home, all kept in shadow and quick cut close ups, a nice bit of cineman to mask any budget deficiencies. I prefer it that approach - nowadays, it's all "easy" and I feel so much is lost of any impressionism cinema can still pull off - it's an emotional experience and we don't necessarily perceive the world in grand, open shots when action is called for, even though some filmmakers take quick cut, close up action way too far these days (oh shit, I'm a grumpy old guy!). Schumacher knew what he was doing with this movie, full of knowing winks without ruining the artifice. The image of a floating boy at the window from Salem's Lot is nicely homaged through one of the film's most famous scenes and endlessly quotable lines that would have been manna from heaven for the film's marketing people and was ideal for its audience:

"My own brother! A goddamned, shitsucking vampire! Well, you wait til mom finds out, buddy!"

October Horror - Day 1: The Pit & the Pendulum

Yep, I'm aware it's the 2nd of October. But we kicked off October horror last night so I'm writing up this post a day later. And so what did we (my wife is in on this) choose to get things going? We went with some classic Vincent Price. Some of his most famous work was with the legendary Roger Corman and their Edgar Allan Poe series. Fopp have a cracking sale on at the moment and I snapped up a bunch the recent Arrow Corman/Poe titles last week. I like to try and go in chronologicla order with these things so The Pit and the Pendulum (1961) was the earliest of the titles I bought.

The image of Vincent Price hovering maniacally nearby while said pendulous blade swings back and forth, close and closer to our hero's torso is an enduring one but there is a lot more to the film than just that. Price's character, Nicholas Medina, begins as a mysterious but ultimately sympathetic character, wracked with grief and eventually misplaced guilt at the loss of his wife, Elizabeth, played by Price's equal in horror, Barbara Steele. Along comes Elizabeth's brother, Frances, looking for answers upon receiving the terrible news. Of course, nothing will seem as it appears on his arrival.

John Kerr plays Frances sporting a permanent pouty frown, whose only other expression seems to involve opening his suspicious eyes wider every now and again. It's difficult to give a toss about him, particularly once the now insane Nicholas has him strapped beneath his monstrous pendulum (oo-er missus). This in stark contrast to Price's performance, which drives the film, ranging from quiet dignity in his grief to bug-eyed histrionics, especially once certain forces begin to finalise their plan to drive him mad. Price's entrance into the film is a great sudden close up when he bursts out of a secret room, uttering the demand, "Who are you?" to Kerr's new arrival. It's this adulterous plot that is revealed in the film's final act, set up to mirror the awful fate Nicholas' father set out for his own wife and her lover. Seeing as it didn't go so well for them, surely the effort to drive insane a man obsessed with his murderous father rates among the poorer plots in horror? Nonetheless, Price duly takes up his character's new outlook with suitable aplomb, as he slowly lowers the pendulum in an attempt to slowly bisect Kerr's Frances - cases of mistaken identity jump around as one person dies only for Price to believe that the next live soul is the same target. He manipulates the awful device with such glee that he could be twirling his ever present moustache while Kerr writhes tied up to a trainline in an old silent. He's marvellous and his performance is a solid reminder of the pathos Price could give us, albeit on an exagerrated scale here.

Luana Anders does fairly well as Nicholas' sister, a role that begs for development. Of course she winds up with Frances, but who cares? It's not that Price just dominates the screen, but that her role as sister isn't all that believable. Her eyebrows, on the other hand, would give Kim Novak's in Vertigo a run for their money; they're just odd. Antony Carbone lends the proceedings a slightly more jovial air early on while Barbara Steele, not onscreen all that long, makes her presence well and truly felt, those big eyes exuding evil and fear in equal measure. She's great. And the reveal of her character's "corpse" is a stunner. However, and this is spoiler territory, the actual identity of the corpse is never given once certain reveals have taken place. Who's desicated husk is that? One of the film;s plot mysteries, along with the disappearance of the maid, Maria. She doesn't disappear in the story, she's just forgotten about.

Corman had been offered the chance to do a Poe adaptation after growing tired of delivering black and white double features for American International. "Give me twice the money and I'll do a far better one in colour," or something like that (not a quote). After kicking off with The Fall of the House of Usher (1960), he moved on to The Pit and the Pendulum, working with a script from Richard Matheson, who took Poe's short tale and gave the horrible scenario an actual story. Corman retained Price after Usher, as the men seemed to enjoy greatly working with each other. Their continued association developed over several more Poe adaptations.

Corman is on the record, I believe, as never having watched a Hammer film before production on Pit started and yet he and the UK studio's features have much in common visually. The great house in which Price lives is rendered well; several beautiful matte paintings represent the exterior of the ominous castle, composited/printed next to a wild and dramatic shoreline. The interior is vast and ranging, taking a switch to the weird in the dark dungeon at the end where said pit and pendulum reside; expressionistic paintings on the dungeon walls show dark hooded figures with red eyes standing in cold judgement combnined with sharp rocky lines Not confined to a location such as Bray studios' Down House (filmed from every concievable angle by Hammer for countless productions), Corman occupies visually similar territory but is freed up by the studio space, allowing for some nifty camerawork and some great whip pan edits, both horizontal and vertical. The flashbacks to the gruesome fates of Nicholas' mother and uncle are done in monochrome, messing around with tilted angles and contorted imagery. It's marvellous stuff, along with the opening and closing titles which mix multi-coloured paint and oil to give us more than the expected scarlet of blood. Corman also brings in rectangular irising, giving us final glances at the terrified eyes of torture victims and some intially odd optical zooms in to Kerr on the torture table that somehow do work to increase the tension - there's something about the increased film grain of the optical zooms that succeeds for me.

Morticia Addams goes a bit extreme.

There is a sense of tragedy running through the film, with Price's grief and ultimate manipulation at the hands of deceptive lovers driving him over the edge. The image of Price dressed in black robes and skull-hood is an enduring one but upon viewing the film his villian is ultimately tragic, created by the lies and desires of worse people. A wonderfully dark tale slightly diminished by the two dull romantic leads and keeping the titular death device only until the very end. Call me sick, but I really wanted to see more of the dreadful device in action. John Kerr had to wear a metal band around his waist when they decided that the rubber blade just wasn't enough and a real metal pendulum was brought in. Stoic sod.

Coming tomorrow, a double bill: Christopher Lee mingles with Barnard Hughes in The Lost Boys & Theatre of Blood.

October Horror Season?

Too many unwatched titles among this lot.

So, it's October. That means much of the UK and US is on Halloween watch. Personally, I prefer to actually celebrate and event like that on or around the actual day (Christmas maniacs, I am looking at YOU). It can drive me crazy. I know some folks like to spread purchases for kids around for a few months as belts are tighter these days but it's that old chestnut about commercially driven crap; the shops are full of Halloween stuff now; sweets, masks and costumes, etc. But it's only once a year so, I figure, why hide from it?

I need something to keep my sanity at the moment and movies are my constant. I feel I don't watch enough anyway so my idea, providing I can prevent myself from sinking into apathy and keep it going, is to watch a horror movie a day in October, preferably ones I've not watched before or ones I've not watched in a very long time and might reappraise like, for instance, John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness. This means I'll also keep blogging, something I've been advised to do (sanity, and all that)

So, here goes. I've got a whole bunch sitting on shelves to watch. Time to bite the bullet, choose one and get this thing rolling.

Me? A Book Contribution? Me?

Book cover by Matt Busch.

Well, lordy lord, my good friend Lou Tambone asked me last year about contributing to a book he's co-editing about science fiction classic Blade Runner, titled The Cyberpunk Nexus: Exploring the Blade Runner Universe. Completely knocked out that I would be asked to offer my thoughts on the movie in published form. A year later, I'm redrafting my essay for the book's publication later this year, hopefully around the time the sequel, Blade Runner 2049, is released.

I'm among some hefty contributors, including Rich Handley and Bryce Carlson and there is a foreword from Paul M. Sammon, legendary writer of the ultimate account of the making of the original film, Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner. The beautiful cover for the book (as featured above) has been created by Matt Busch, an amazing artists who has contributed massively to the art of the Star Wars saga; I am sure I have loads of trading cards somewhere featuring his work.

Not saying anything about the content of my contribution at this time, but I'm utterly nervous about it all. I teach filmmaking and can bend the ear off of anyone about films I love until their urge to kill is overwhelming, but to actually compose a piece of writing and have that be published for all the world to see is a pretty scary thing. But, if I want to make a mark then I guess I have to get it out there, and not be afraid to fail. I suppose that attitude is vital to anyone engaged in a creative endeavour, like writing a novel, making a film or performing in front of people. Maybe I've watched too many Gary Vaynerchuk videos on YouTube.

You can find out more about the book at publisher Sequart's website.

Resurrected!

Three and a half years without a post. Blimey (there's that word again).

Well, since it's Easter Sunday it seems an appropriate day to bring the blog back to life, as it were (waits for lightning bolt to strike him down).

Loads occurring since my last post. A plethora of nieces, with more on the way; health stuff nothing major but I have been sliced up on the table a bit; another feature script done; and I've actually found paid work doing something I love - blethering on about films.

And there's also a good reason as to why I've resurrected the blog.

There've definitely been a lot of good things happening over this time and there's more content to come, both written and filmed.

More to follow soon...

Fiend Without An Identifiable Accent

 "It's as if some mental vampire were at work."

Shot in the UK, doubling for Canada, Fiend Without a Face features some bewildering accents. I don't know. I think I have an annoying ear for them, trying to figure out who's faking, who's from where, who's dubbed by someone else.

In Fiend Without a Face, the local constable in the small Canadian town where the film is set (wherever it is, it's in Manitoba, in CANADA, as signs around the US air force base keep shouting to us) clearly sounded Scottish to my highly critical ear, having trouble with the accent, his mouth twisting to the side because that's how North Americans speak, looking a bit like a skinny Sterling Hayden with a palsy. I found another couple of characters a bit like this, including the town doctor. Some were North American actors, some UK actors, apparently dubbed over.

I'm a bugger for things like this. Because I'm so used to hearing my own Scottish accent mangled time and time again, I'm always on the lookout for someone either getting it right or not making the usual mistakes. Like Scotty in Star Trek; why can't they just get a Scot to play a Scot? Get me pissed enough and I'll speak with an American accent myself. My brain. Not wired right, you know.

Anyway, Fiend Without a Face was a film of legend to me as a kid. I saw a still of it in an ABC of Horror Monsters book a friend had. Every time I went over there, I'd pick up the book and be particularly fascinated by several of the monsters, sticking out like leprous thumbs amongst the other more obvious and bland masks. There was a real sense of revulsion looking at the creature which was essentially a brain and spinal column attacking people, sucking their own brains out and using their form (or "feeding on intellect", as the film rather bloodlessly put it) and that really stayed with me. So when I finally did see the film, of course I felt a tad let down after years of imagining it. But there are still some cracking elements to it, not least the weird scraping sound which heralds the attack of the invisible fiends, and some stop motion to the creatures once they're revealed, which I thought was a bit more ambitious than the fishing wire and bad puppetry of other sci-fi B movies of the era (although the animation quality does drift during the climax). When the brains are shot, black goo pushes forth, which must have been pretty nasty for the time, which appropriately icky sound effects. I still think they're a slightly more imaginative monster design than many others of the same time, even if pretty kooky as well, with their eyes on stalks. The image of the spinal column wrapped around someone's neck made my blood run cold, reminding me of Tom Baker's appearance from a lab with a Dalek mutant wrapped around his own neck - anything that recalls 70s Doctor Who is a winner with me.

Whereas Jon Pertwee had to act with Bubble Wrap, Tom Baker had to deal with green cling film.

In fact, that wasn't the only time Doctor Who recalled Fiend Without a Face. Resurrection of the Daleks had a clearer go at it.

Brainy wee buggers, the Daleks.

Fiend Without a Face is yet another movie where the wonders of the atomic age are shown to have incredible powers over life but only when interfering old British scientists get involved. There is a bit of a feeling of Frankenstein about the creatures and the film, where meddling in new energies unlocks knowledge that gets out of control. And who better to sort that out than the dependable, bland hero, here played by Marshall Thomson, who I found to be a weird cross between Glenn Ford, George Peppard and the kid from Invaders from Mars. Thomson also appeared in It! The Terror from Beyond Space (a film I'm having a bit of difficulty in tracking down in the UK), in a slightly more interesting role as the sole survivor of an expedition to Mars who is under suspicion of killing his shipmates (when it was really Ray "Crash" Corrigan's monstrous It! all along). I think we know which 70s sci-fi horror it partially inspired. But in Fiend, he's kind of bland, with the rest of the cookie cutter characters or varying accents.

But that's not why we watch movies like this. We watch them to see weird brain creatures push themselves along the ground by their prehensile spines to launch at the unsuspecting and suck their goddamn brains out!

Return of the Living Person

Been a long time since I posted a blog. Not since April, it seems. Blimey. Well, I've been teaching filmmaking to young people for the most part as well as writing (but that bit's been very slow) and having some minor surgery this past weekend to sort my voice out. Since the middle of June I've been sound like the late Don Henderson, circa 1980 (his own voice went weirder and up an octave later on). So I wouldn't have sounded out of place amongst squabbling Imperial bureaucrats on board and armoured space station with enough firepower to...you get the picture.

So, still plodding on. There's a new micro-budget feature filmmaking scene starting to take off in Edinburgh, so that'll be something to blog about soon. There was a great panel discussion held at the Filmhouse last month that got a lot of people very excited, myself included. I might have something to say about that soon.

Also very proud of the short films the young people I've been helping to teach. Great to see there's some passion and clear vision out there amongst the selfies and Tumblr obsessions.

I'll blog again.

Great Rewrite Advice

Anyone having trouble reconnecting with their story when emabarking on a rewrite needs to listen to the latest Scriptnotes podcast from John August and Craig Mazin. My current rewrite has been hanging around for far too long, needing a proper kick up its arse and the advice in the new Scriptnotes podcast is great stuff.

It might not work for everyone (there are a gazllion different cups of tea out there for different tastes out there nowadays) but I think it's sound advice from working practicioners of the craft.

I encourage anyone who hasn't already to subscribe to their podcast.

Scriptnotes 140: Falling back in love with your script.

'Tis a tonic, I tell ye!

Ramis

Genuinely saddened at the news of Harold Ramis' death. Actor, writer, director (of one of the greatest comedies ever made) and all round good guy. I was at a screening last night and before I heard the news we were all at the bar discussing how good and important a movie Groundhog Day is for writers.

Goodnight, Dr Spengler, and thank you for making me laugh.

I have a blog?

Well, of course. But it's been a while with a lot of time taken up with teaching and writing. And there is more teaching to come, which is exciting. Being paid to talk to others about a subject you love and are frankly obsessed by is amazing and does wonders for the old self confidence. The folks at Screen Education Edinburgh are a fine bunch.

Lots to do afterwards as well. More short ideas to be hammered into draft form, that 8 sequence approach to Wanted I said I'd attempt (it's coming, Nick, I promise!) and loads more. Life is getting fuller these days, which can only be a good thing, especially with two new nieces to dote on.

So, this is just a quick note to say I'm still here (to the few of you who read me) and the proper blogging will resume soon. In the meantime, I've got a deadline in a week so I'm shutting myself away in my office and will emerge unshaven and shaky in seven days time.