Tuesday 24 September 2013

Thanks, Matthew Coniam for giving me this questionaire.

I've just sat through a load of bad movies, Spanish horror The Nameless (1999, based on a superior Ramsey Campbell novel, sending its Scouse gothic to sunny Spain, with its Liverpudlian haunted family (think a less scary, more humorous haunted version of 80s shitecom Bread) and turned into a tale of Mediterranean passion haunted by ancient cosmic terror, meh! 1986 Grace Jones post-Corman New World claptrap strippers 'n' vampires hokum Vamp, and the rather good 1980 Umberto Lenzi cannibal film Eaten Alive (1980, the only good one, if only for its bizarre Jim Jones-style plot involving Papua New Guineans with blow-darts attacking New York at Christmastime, and though it has some animal cruelty, it is all comparatively mild to Holocaust, bar an alligator-slaying and it is all recycled from other films), and the good old Cronenberg masterpiece from 1983, The Dead Zone, though Canada is clearly the location, despite it supposedly being the US.

Fortunately, king of all things awesome. Pax Romano of Billy Loves Stu, had thoughtfully produced The First Ever Billy Loves Stu Meme for Horror Bloggers and I decided to my own.

Of these horrors, I'd list them from my favourites to least favourites here.
An American Werewolf In London
Bride of Frankenstein
The Omen
The Wicker Man
The Haunting
The Thing
Psycho
Dawn of the Dead
Alien
The Exorcist
The Shining
Rosemary's Baby
Halloween
Night of the Living Dead
The Hills Have Eyes
The Lost Boys
Friday the 13th
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
A Nightmare on Elm Street
Hellraiser


1: In Ten Words or Less, Describe Your Blog:
Cult ramblings of films and such. 
.2: During What Cinematic Era Where you Born?
A: The Classic Horror Era (late 30's to 40's)
B: The Atomic Monster/Nuclear Angst Era (the late 40's through 50's)
C: The Psycho Era ( Early 60's)
D: The Rosemary's Baby Era (Mid to Late 60's)
E: The Exorcism Era (Early to mid 70's)
F: The Halloween Era (Late 70's to Early 80's)
G: The Slasher Era (Mid
to late 80's)
H: The Self Referential/Post Modern Era (1990 to 1999)
Well, I was born in H. The first horrors I remember coming out were possibly the remake of The Haunting, being both terrified and delighted by the childish ghost-cherubs, and also the slashers, Scream 3, Valentine, so on. But Grandfather foisted a love of A, B/C, and that settled it...
.3: The Carrie Compatibility Question:
(gay men and straight women - make your choice from section A)
A: Billy Nolan or Tommy Ross, who would you take to the prom?
(straight guys and lesbians - make your choice from section B)
B: Sue Snell or Chris Hargensen, who would you take to the prom?
I have to say I thought Carrie was twaddle, not De Palma or King's best. No, I'd take my own girlfriend.
.4: You have been given an ungodly amount of money, and total control of a major motion picture studio - what would your dream Horror project be?
.Jesus, I would create a roster of low-budget films all costing less than $5 million, made in different parts of the world. It'd be Tigon, Amicus, Hammer, AIP, 30s-Universal, Monogram, PRC, Towers of London, ITC all rolled into one unholy mixture. But my dream, dream project - a remake of The Medusa Touch in stop-motion animation, that or Stalk, which the remake of Jack The Giant Killer has basically killed, since it too is a retelling of the same myths. But mine'd be darker, and not 'darker and edgier', like those silly Christawful Nolan Sisters' Batman movies. It wouldn't have Jack be growly and psychotic. It'd make the giants scary not comical. They'd be brutish and uncivilised, like snow-Vikings, each one stop-motion animated in the likeness of Brian Glover, in various disguises, huge shoulder-padded leather fur-trimmed suits, like Vikings or Mongols, and ride on seaweed-bearded seadogs, that jump out of the frozen lakes, the snow eventually falling down to become our rain. The land is held together by clouds. The giants would keep a library of humans in little jars, in suspended animation, usually in jam, the giants feeding on human brains so they can gain intelligence, the library controlled by a walk-on typewriter. The giants would be primitive, gas-lamps in their helmets, firing gunpowder pistols, strapped to sleeves, and would ride on rocket-sleds. The beanstalk would be formed out of deadly weed that would cover the giants' icy world, producing goblin-spawn out of the weed.  The giants' fortress would  be rudimentarily built, with crooked walls, as the giants can't plan properly. It would be guarded with a living, screaming, moaning portcullis with clawed blades at its ends. At one point, a giant spider would rise from a crack and attack Jack and the Princess, who only wants him as he's the only attractive young man in the vicinity. Earth would be a nightmarish place called Cornwall, part-Victorian English village, part-consumerist American suburb, cobbled motorways, mini-castles with garages. Jack would not be a blond, handsome Michael York-type insolent fop, but a slightly odd, gangly, black-haired dork who can only survive in the world of the giants as a hunter, because the little humans that are there regard him as a hero, while his people back home regard him as an embarrassment. The witch would trick him into going up, an escaped prisoner-turned-bag lady going around with a shopping trolley full of weed, her only sustenance and food.

5: What horror film "franchise" that others have embraced, left you cold?
Oh, a lot of them are cold fish to me. Elm Street, Texas Chainsaw, Halloween, Friday the 13th, they're all repetitive. Hellraiser's only for kinksters. My favourite instalment of any of them would be Halloween III - The Season of The Witch, only for the fact that its barking mad, has the Irish win against the Americans, wiping out a generation of winsome annoyances known as Hollywood child actors, and the fact it began as a germ of an idea sneezed out by a slightly reluctant Nigel Kneale.
.6: Is Michael Bay the Antichrist?Not necessarily, he hasn't got any ounce of talent, creativity or subtlety, but neither did George Lucas.
.7: Dracula, The Wolf Man, The Frankenstein Monster - which one of these classic villains scares you, and why?Dracula, because he's the only one who is aware of being horrid, and likes that. That is why the 1979 adap with Frank Langella didn't work, because he was essentially the protagonist, Van Helsing and Harker being the villains. It even had a positive-ambiguous ending.
.8: Tell me about a scene from a NON HORROR Film that scares the crap out of you:
Mae West in Sextette...

9: Baby Jane Hudson invites you over to her house for lunch. What do you bring?
HP, fig rolls, Scampi Fries, a Teatime Express or Gateaux cake, bought from Dunne's, an Irish supermarket chain.

10: So, between you and me, do you have any ulterior motives for blogging? Come, on you can tell me, it will be our little secret, I won't tell a soul.Kickstart my career as this generation's Peter Bogdanovich...
.11: What would you have brought to Rosemary Woodhouse's baby shower?
Regan McNeill as a babysitter.
.12: Godzilla vs The Cloverfield Monster, who wins?
Original Toho-era Godzilla, not the one in that fancy-pants kraut Emmerich's pro-US nuclear weapons farce.

13: If you found out that Rob Zombie was reading your blog, what would you post in hopes that he read it?
I think you mean well, but your films are all the same. Do something other than hillbilly bollocks. You may be an 'auteur' but you need to move away from doing stories about demented Southerners with long hair and beards. Just because you have long hair and a beard doesn't mean Michael Myers should have.
Or words to that effect.
.14: What is your favorite NON HORROR FILM, and why?
Ooh, Time Bandits, The Boys From Brazil (is that horror?), The Cassandra Crossing (is that horror?), Moonraker, I don't have an idea.

15: If blogging technology did not exist, what would you be doing?
Rounding up firewood for the father...

That's all.

Saturday 21 September 2013

After failing 3 film schools, I've seen Death Ship - 1980 UK-Canadian horror directed by Alvin Rakoff, and it's special.

This film stars George Kennedy as the Captain, Richard Crenna as his deputy, Sally Ann "Truly Scrumptious off Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" Howes as his wife, some Canadian child actors as their kids, Nick Mancuso and Victoria Burgoyne as lovers, Saul Rubinek as the first victim, an annoying comedian/entertainer/compere and Kate Reid as the Shelley Winters-esque middle-aged widow.

Its about a cruise ship that thanks to recycled footage from the 1959 MGM film The Last Voyage is sunken, rammed by the titular Nazi concentration/torture ship. Seven survivors rescue their captain, who is possessed by the Nazi Captain, board the living but abandoned (seemingly) Nazi ship, and all crazy mayhem ensues.

It was written by Jack Hill, the American director behind among other films Foxy Brown, Coffy (both 1973), Spider-Baby (1968) and the Big DollHouse (1971), but directed by the husband of one-time Dr. Who companion Jacqueline "Barbara" Hill, as he was Canadian unlike Jack Hill (who was American), and plus Rakoff had directed 1977's Harry Alan Towers-produced UK/Canadian/South African potboiler King Solomon's Treasure and the Canadian disaster film City on Fire in 1979 with Henry Fonda, a post-Cassandra Crossing/Earthquake Ava Gardner and the 'serious era' Leslie Nielsen. This is nuts. No other film has death by eating 40-year-old Nazi boiled sweets that turn middle-aged widows into pustule-faced mutants that have walked off the set of Doctor Who - Mawdryn Undead (1983). Or seeing BBC boats 'n' sex soap Howard's Way actress Burgoyne killed merely via blood showered on her Psycho-style, just pure normal Nazi blood. Or having Nazi propaganda films being projected on your chest being fatal!

For trash films, it's recommended with each performance full of insanity, especially the possessed Kennedy. Even the child actors aren't that bad, as they are Canadian not winsome Americans....

Plus it was double-billed in the UK by Barber-Dann with Phobia (1980) by John Huston, starring Paul Michael Glaser, realising if his Starsky and Hutch co-star David Soul did horror well with Salem's Lot (1979), he could go better in Canada with a legendary director, and a script by Hammer vet Jimmy Sangster, plus King Solomon's Treasure and Battlestar Galactica actor John Colicos, but it is rubbish. Huston wastes his talent. It is grey, rubbish, bare of any shock value, and even as a Canadian guilty pleasure, totally fails.