Showgirls (1995)

Showgirls is surely the best bad movie ever made. It doesn’t matter which way you look at it, it’s a really shit movie, but it is sooooo shit that it is humiliatingly enjoyable. I advise from experience that anybody watching Showgirls with a partner or group do so from the outset: I have been driven mad by the many idiot friends I had squatting in my house in the past, who would wander in halfway through and say, ‘What’s this fucking porn you’re watching?’ I guess writers Verhoeven and Eszterhas would be thrilled at the prospect, but it wore my patience thin.
Nomi Malone (Elizabeth Berkley from Saved by the Bell) hitches her way to Las Vegas to be a ‘dancer’, and gets her suitcase stolen. Somehow, by vandalising a car and almost getting mowed down by another car, she attracts the affection of seamstress Molly, even when she is breathing vomit breath like….right into her fucking face. Molly’s a good friend. A few weeks later, the girls are best friends. Molly works on the show Goddess sewing costumes, while Nomi has found gainful employment at the gentlemen’s club The Cheetah (ref: Roger Ebert’s definition of a gentlemen’s club). Nomi dances like a hot epileptic on amphetamines. But she gets naked and I guess that’s what the johns pay to see, so she somehow makes a living this way.

Gross

Meanwhile, she naturally dreams of rising to the top, and becoming the headline star of Goddess. Obnoxious glamorous redneck Crystal Connors (Gina Gerschon) is top of the bill, in the bosses’ high esteem, and the squeeze of sleazy hotel promoter Zach (Kyle MacLachlan). Nomi’s sociopathic attitude makes her a perfect fit in Vegas and a perfect match for the slimeballs she has to audition for to wiggle her way to the top. But her outrageous behaviour, which must surely place her somewhere high on the autistic spectrum, is good for laugh-a-minute comedy. Consider the fate of the poor French fries, having found their way into Nomi’s cardboard tray outside a diner. She is angry at being questioned by Molly, and having practically disembowelled a bottle of ketchup with a single thrust, she sets about the poor innocent fries and shoves them all over the table in a frustrated jerk. This must be some new trendy kind of eating disorder. Everything she orders hits the deck before she even unwraps it!

Showgirls is bad, like I’m bad, chamone, you know it. And almost every line makes me laugh for all the wrong reasons. When it’s not dialogue that’s making you bite your tongue, it’s usually one or another factor of Berkley’s frenetic physical delivery. The infamous pool sex scene between Nomi and Zack leaves us all wondering how she escaped the debacle without either a broken back or water on the lungs; while her licking the strip pole of the Cheetah club leaves us all wondering if she escaped the debacle without several venereal diseases.

I have long wondered to what extent Showgirls portrays the true Vegas underground. I mean, who could resist auditioning for a guy whose opening line is ‘A lot of people say that I’m a prick – I AM a prick!’? What fat slobbery male in the rabid audience of the Cheetah could fail to spunk his pants over the riddle ‘Ya know what they call that useless piece of skin around a twat? A woman!’? That is apparently meant to be a joke, but quite frankly, I have heard funnier things during biopsies. At some point you have to ask yourself how Ezsterhas ended up being the highest paid writer in Hollywood in the mid-‘90s, when his most rousing one-liners were the likes of ‘Dancing ain’t fucking’ and ‘You ain’t just a pain in my head and a pain in my dick, you also a pain in my ass!’ I am of the educated assumption that his status has slipped somewhat in the years since.

However, some of the characters and their whole beings are caricatures created entirely for the LOLs. Al, the slimy cigar-chewing manager of the Cheetah club was born to be in the business, and beautifully describes his profession to new girl Penny in the elevator pitch of the century. ‘He pays, you take him in the back. You can touch him, he cannot touch you. Unless he gives ya a big tip. If he cums, it’s OK. If he takes it out and cums all over ya, call the bouncer. Unless he pays ya. You wanna last a week, you gimme a blow job. First I get ya used to the money, then I make ya swallow.’ Don’t call us Al, we’ll call you.

Nomi, bless her dumb liplined little heart, is an unwitting source of comedy in her idiocy. From her now-legendary mispronunciation of Versace, to her hideously OTT reactions to most situations, she is comedy gold. Of course, in real life, she would have no friends and considerably more mutilations. She talks to people like shit, throws and smashes things continually, and is in the habit of making men feel instantly uncomfortable by talking about her period. Take that Al – your misogynist shit is no match for period talk!

She also has the oddest ideas about what turns people on. Her dance routines are absurd, her boning technique probably the cause of many a fractured penis over the years, and her stripteases are more like paid face-rapings. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for Zach having been humped to within an inch of his life in a strip club, who now had to try and enjoy the rest of his night out with cum in his pants. I mean, is that what his girlfriend paid $500 for? The logistics of this could have been better planned, methinks.

Showgirls has to be seen to be believed, and loved. It stands as a favourite of many cult figures such as Elvira and Michelle Visage, and enjoys the same sort of midnight cult following that Rocky has embodied for decades. It is the sort of movie that should be enjoyed responsibly with a crate of beer and some pizza – while you sit back and secretly thank your stars for Nomi not being there… that pizza would be under the wheels of the nearest pick-up truck before the box was even opened.

1408 (2007)

The movie 1408 came out at a pivotal time in my adolescence: my sister and I went to see it in our crappy two-screen local town cinema with our boyfriends, and it was one of the most terrifying cinematic experiences we had ever experienced, or have since. We were both avid Stephen King enthusiasts and were just blown away with this adaptation of his short story. It was not only a movie that made you jump, but gave you chills right to the core.


Mike Enslin (John Cusack) is a paranormal investigator/writer/skeptic/world's sloppiest envelope-opener, who once had a career as a legitimate author. He makes his living visiting supposedly haunted hotels and houses and officially debunking all attached theories. One day he finds a mysterious postcard from the Dolphin Hotel in New York City, warning him not to enter room 1408. His manager (Tony Shalhoub) uses a lawyer to bend the hotel's resistance to Mike's demand for the room, and when he arrives, Mike faces further defensiveness from the hotel manager Mr Olin (Samuel L Jackson). Eventually, Mike gets into the room, and his mental and physical undoing commences.

Olin describes Mike as 'an intelligent man who doesn't believe in anyone or anything but himself',

and the writer's skepticism lasts a surprisingly short period, after which Olin's guarantee that 'nobody has ever lasted more than an hour in that room' will be fulfilled, as visualised by a ghostly digital bedside clock. For as long as a logical cynically-atheist man possibly can, Mike tries to apply the laws of physics to his ordeal, and his theory that Olin gifted him spiked whiskey seemingly holds up throughout. In the midst of his wildest nightmare scenarios, there are periodic shots portraying Mike in a perfectly untouched hotel room in hysterics.

Although the entire movie is your average decent-budget-with-several-big-names-attached in terms of style, it serves the space-bending narrative perfectly, and makes good use of perspective in the form of both newspaper articles and 1408 room paintings, all looking back at Mike as he examines them. As his ordeal (I apologise for my frequent use of this word; only I can think of no effective alternative) intensifies, there are some particularly wonderful works by the set designers and constructors, in a movie which, generally, I think was probably pretty cheap to make as the majority of the action takes place in a moderately-sized hotel suite that could be easily replicated on sound stages.

One thing I did not expect this evening was to end up crying at a horror movie I had seen a few times before. But I suppose every other time I had seen it, I was not the mother of an eight-year-old daughter like I am now. The central trauma that underpins Mike's ordeal in 1408 is the death of his young daughter Katie, and the child's implied resignation to her illness as a result of belief in God and Heaven. A sequence in which Mike is approached by a vision of his dead child - one he knows is not real - and holds her, crying hysterically and assuring her of his unending love. Cusack is an incredible actor, and both his sorrow and his terror are so tangible from the beginning of the movie to the very end.

1408 is mainly a one-man show by Cusack, and he is perfect. The role allows him to have fun with many emotions and attitudes in the same character, while Jackson's (sadly) minimal role allows him to oppose Cusack's determined disbelief... and deliver at least one joyously gratuitous 'fuckin'. It's a really good, tense and scary movie.

Grave Encounters (2011)

Found Footage is often snubbed by a certain faction of the movie-going world, considered dull, unoriginal and unwatchable due to the 'shakey camera' cliche; I maintain that it is the same as basically any other subgenre, in that there are a few really good examples and many bad ones, but the subgenre itself does not inherently make a movie bad - or good, for that matter. I have quite a few post-Blair Witch favourites of FF, which include Crowsnest, Apollo 18 and the Grave Encounters movies. The duology is unprecedented proof of that rare wonder: the sequel that lives up to its original. Writers/directors The Vicious Brothers are very much my kind of filmmakers: my generation, grungy as fuck, and worshippers of all good horror. They are the sort of dedicated and learned auteurs that you would be happy to see succeed, and they did exactly that with the Grave Encounters films.

"It's the gayest show in the fucking world!"

In a throwback to the format of the very first FF movie Cannibal Holocaust, the footage that constitutes the main narrative of the movie is set to a realistic framework, in which a TV producer explains to a documentary camera that the following picture was compiled from 76 hours of footage found after the disappearance of his crew on a job at an abandoned and supposedly haunted asylum. The show is Grave Encounters, and it is basically Ghost Hunters, as depicted by South Park ("It's the gayest show in the fucking world!"). Host Lance Preston and his colleagues pout at the camera, desperately try to look hard, and contrive non-existant ghostly experience, while we see their many outtakes in which their disbelief in the paranormal and generally unprofessional attitude is made evident.

They have arranged to spend the night - eight hours - locked in Collingwood Asylum, with the cooperation of the building's caretaker, who chains the door from the outside, and promises to return for them in the morning (how is this very notion somehow unsettling?). For a while they go about their media-whore jobs, but they inevitably soon come to realise that the ghosts they have spent five previous episodes simulating do actually exist, and they are none too satisfied with this revelation.

If you can't figure what happens in the next two seconds, you
have not seen a movie this side of the millennium.

I have yet to investigate any special features on my DVD, but have previously watched behind-the-scenes featurettes on the sequel, and it is very insightful. One of the main objectives that the Vicious Brothers had was that the many old horror tropes would be null and void in their line of narrative.

Like a souped up 1408, the asylum is an entity in itself, and shifts its shape to fuck with its captives. Every supposed escape and exit leads to another dark corridor. When 'rules' no longer apply, we the audience are unable to judge the characters' choices, because there is basically no way out and no way to fight. It is an inescapable nightmare, and this makes for a brilliantly tense viewing experience.

Jaws 2 (1978)

After I had discovered Jaws, my Pop told me and my sister about Jaws 2 and Jaws 3. A good seven or

eight years later, he and his wife were at the beginning of an unprecedented divorce, and Pop took us to HMV to buy some DVDs to keep us occupied while he and his wife had terrible post-marital discussions (true story). We chose Jaws 2, Jaws 3 and Billy Elliot. I watched Jaws 2 a lot as an adolescent, and finally got a cheap copy of it this weekend, having burnt out the old copy years ago, and watched it for the first time with actual attention. You see, as a kid, I watched all of the Jaws movies, and pretty much zoned out during all of the long boring talky bits, and came back when the shark appeared. As I matured, I came to appreciate all the discreet details that made Jaws what it was, and in a lot of important ways, made Jaws 2 an almost worthy sequel.

Jeannot Szwarc directs this sequel (Spielberg's resistance to sequels of his own work, excepted only with The Lost World: Jurassic Park II, is famous), and his employment on this picture went down as somewhat controversial; Roy Scheider, forced into reprising Martin Brody by his five-picture contract with Universal, had an infamously aggressive working relationship with Szwarc, who comes across as a rather stubborn director to work with. But in the face of it all, Szwarc does a pretty sterling job of crafting a movie that feels like a natural extension of Spielberg's, with similar visuals, themes and a great musical contribution, again, by John Williams.

Four years after the ordeal on Amity Island, two divers are expired by an unseen aquatic evil, while their huge underwater camera spontaneously clicks its own shutter multiple times. Martin Brody is past his glory days as the hero of Amity, and doing his best to be a good chief to the Island, and a good husband to Ellen (Lorraine Gary), who is now on the town council and trying to sell the place to tourists. When several cool gory killings take place, and photos from that magic diver camera get developed, Brody becomes convinced that a shark is terrorising the Island once again, much to the repetitive and monumentally unwise denial of the incorrigible Larry Vaughn (Murray Hamilton), who apparently didn't learn his lesson back in 1975.

Meanwhile, Brody's son Michael is now a high schooler, and the local teens enjoy a cruising culture in boats the way most kids do in cars, making them the perfect bait for the latest great white lined up to feast upon some New England chowder. As with Jaws, Szwarc allows a good half of the movie to be allocated to setting scene and establishing characters, making both adults and teens surprisingly well-rounded characters. There are a good dozen teenagers who set out on doomed boat journeys, all of whom are very realistic, both in looks and in performances. Ann Dusenberry and Donna Wilkes, as Tina and Jackie respectively, are particular standouts in conveying histeria.

In spite of some silly moments - including the one in which the hydraulic innards of the pursuing

shark are very obviously visible - Jaws 2 is a solid picture, and marks the finish line of the success of the franchise. Joe Alves, who served as production designer on the first two Jaws movies and did an excellent job both times, went on to helm Jaws 3 as director, and somehow turned out one of the stupidest, most laughable pictures in movie history. Watching Jaws 2 and being reminded of Alves' involvement, I wonder where the hell it all went wrong for him. I must review Jaws 3 sometime in order to elaborate on exactly why it is such a dumb movie. I knew it when I was 13, and I definitely know it now.

The Hills Have Eyes 2 (2007)

REVIEW
THE HILLS HAVE EYES 2

Any reader of my stuff knows of my love for Wes Craven’s work, in particular his directorial debut Last House on the Left, which is my favourite horror ever. Any reader of my stuff also knows that the ‘70s are my time, and how many articles of that decade are very much up my street. Craven’s second horror The Hills Have Eyes (1977) came after an unsuccessful attempt to break out of the indie horror genre, and established him in the genre, at least until A Nightmare on Elm Street. People seem to completely forget my beloved Last House, which stings so much as it still comes across as Craven’s strongest movie ever. The remake of The Hills Have Eyes was a very passable noughties horror, made stronger by the likes of Ted Levine (AKA Buffalo Bill), but a patch on the original, which boasted teenage boys in short-shorts doing somersaults and Michael Berryman’s establishment into the horror genre, making the most of his genetic disorder.

The Hills Have Eyes 2 is a mediocre effort, particularly by Craven’s standard. Funny thing is, this one has major Craven power, with Wes and his son Jonathan (the kid whose balloon Krug pops with his cigar in Last House), concocting the script within a month. Unfortunately, this boast is evident. Wes wrote Last House in a similar timeframe, and allowing all of the admitted ad-lib that went on on-set, it was a far stronger script, and picture in general, back in 1971, with no permits, a meagre drip-fed budget, and no professional credentials. This isn’t to say, though, that The Hills 2 isn’t enjoyable.

I first saw this movie on late night TV years ago, and recently bought it in a cheap DVD shop. I suppose I spoiled the viewing pleasure a little by watching the Making Of featurette (a pathetic 12-odd-minute thing) before the actual film, thereby revealing all of the best jump scares. But this is a good starting point in a horror review – this movie relies a lot on jump scares, far more than the subgenre generally dictates. Hillbilly cannibals were practically invented by Craven, and have gone on to enjoy a prolific, decades-long career in horror, but the FX and utter grossness that they usually entail relieve the need for jump scares: being hunted down by super-strong beings who are also fuck-ugly is enough to put anybody’s teeth on edge.

A synopsis: National Guard recruits are training in the desert of New Mexico where they come across an abandoned camp that was supposed to have people in it, and a mysterious mirror reflecting SOS signals from the mountaintop. The original remake already detailed in its admittedly effective credit sequence the reckless nuclear testing that took place in this area and the devastating effect it had on the remaining occupants of the vicinity, but of course, these are horror characters who have never even heard of a horror movie, so clichés of the field are water off a duck’s back. I needn’t elaborate on the plot from here.

What I will say is that this is a very modern and diluted version of the Hills Have Eyes concept, and I guess Wes knew that when he volunteered his services to a studio in need of a lucrative movie franchise. Money makes the world go round, mein herr. The original movie, and even the remake, did not jump ship for the phoney paranormal technique, but built a tangible atmosphere of dread and fear. This remake should have done the same.

“Oh, my son and I could write that in a month,” quoth Wes to the production studio in need of a cash cow. I regret to say that this movie is unworthy of Craven. True, my like for his work grew lesser as his budget and mainstream acclaim grew, but The Hills 2 is so generic that it could have been one of those many debuts by an ‘80s kid filmmaker that grew up on Freddy.

Effects and make-up are good, as are sets when you find out what is real and what isn’t. The cast and crew alike endured unpleasant conditions to churn out a movie that is, to quote Lita Ford, ‘middle of the road, pansy-ass shit’. It is just one of those movies that teenagers for years to come will say, ‘Oh, how about this?’ to. A sleepover cult favourite for the future perhaps, but a blip on the modern horror landscape for now, it certainly is.

Jaws 3 (1983)

Where did it all go wrong for Joe Alves? His visual work was central to the success of Jaws and, to a considerable extent, Jaws 2. When Jaws 3 came around he landed the director's chair, and turned out a movie that is still hailed as one of the worst ever. It's questionable how much of this is his fault: the plot is silly, the script is terrible, and the visuals are some of the worst I have seen in any movie, but as director, it is all 'his' ideal, so officially he must take some of the heat for this.

SeaWorld's Worst Dolphin Feeder 1983

Michael Brody, son of Chief Martin and Ellen, and his little brother Sean, are the two common threads that run through the entire franchise, and despite all their collective trauma at the fins of killer sharks, only one of them seems to show any signs of wear and tear. Michael (this time Dennis Quaid) works in some senior role or other at SeaWorld, but seems to know nothing of even basic aquatic science, and can't even drop a fish right. His girlfriend Katherine is a marine biologist at the park, and when he lands a dream job, he implores Kat to 'give up your life and follow me'. Cute guy!

For whatever reason, Sean comes to visit, and the three get on like a house on fire, hanging in a local bar and indulging in plenty of 'champagne of the working classes' (i.e. beer). I'm not sure just how 'working class' being a doctor of marine biology is, but it's a fun analogy nonetheless! Sean meets a girl, Kelly (Lea Thompson), a water-skiier at Seaworld, and they hit it off.

Meanwhile, SeaWorld has been madeover since being taken over by business moghul Calvin Bouchard (Lou Gossett Jr.) and is now being reopened to the public to much media attention, following once again the classic Jaws theme of mass hysteria under high public scrutiny. SeaWorld is on the ocean, with pretty flimsy metal gates keeping the open water off-limits...or so we think! For whatever reason, a shark slips through the gate one night and finds itself locked in an all-you-can-eat buffet!

But this isn't any great white shark - this is a naturally-reared, wild North Atlantic great white shark...and it's up the duff! ('Oh, she was such a nice shark - how does that happen?!') First she takes out some SeaWorld operative who is charged with closing that damn gate, and then two rascals who sneak onto the property and venture out in the pissiest little rubber dinghy you ever saw! Credit to the fish, it takes out said dinghy in record time.

As one might imagine, all hell breaks loose when it becomes evident to SeaWorld guests that a killer shark is after them, causing Michael to crash no fewer than three vehicles, ruin a perfectly good picnic, and punch a man to carjack his quadbike - all in an effort to help! The second half's many underwater sequences pick all the stitches on the first half. Any veterans will recall that Jaws 3 was released as Jaws 3D, and the early-'80s film technology that went into achieving that brought overall production quality back several decades. Consider, for example, this CGI shot of a mini submersible turning in the water, with half of the craft dissolving as it goes:

Sadly for Alves, most of the live-action above-surface footage scrubs up into an almost-passable movie. Monster movies don't often require the laws of science to apply, but Jaws 3 takes the cake. As any good shark fan knows from Deep Blue Sea, sharks cannot swim backwards as it causes water to flood their gills and drown them. This young hussy of a shark, however, butt-slams her way through a bolted cage and proceeds to escape it backwards. She then goes on to roar underwater (an inaccuracy Jaws the Revenge took to another level by roaring out of water). Physical bloopers are scattered throughout the movie, while bad dialogue and puzzling theories throw us further off course.

Back when I first saw Jaws 3, at the age of 13, I thought it was a shit movie, and enjoyed taking the piss out of it with my family. As with Jaws 2, my DVD copy from back in the day got burned out many moons ago, so I bought a new copy the other day. I still think it is a shit movie, and it is not often that I have come to this conclusion after twelve-odd years of film education. I am often able to identify redeeming features in bad movies, but Jaws 3 has so very few, and if nothing else, it is good for the movie's long-term health for me to promote it as a shit movie that is worth seeing. It is a good laugh, but it is no Jaws.

The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

Among the furore IMDb caused when they shut down their discussion boards – I am among many who have all but abandoned the long-beloved site now as it became apparent that the forums were its main appeal and function – I went in search of an alternative, finding MovieChat.org. It has the advantage of having transferred all of the old existing IMDb discussions over, so if we can remember the movies we enjoyed discussing, we can find our old posts. On the boards recently, I found quite a bit of talk of The Silence of the Lambs having become outdated; some even argued that Anthony Hopkins did not deserve his Best Actor Oscar. This surprised me not only as a oldtimer lover of the film, but as a general fan of cinema. This movie has been considered for decades already, and it is a pretty contemporary picture. I decided to revisit this old favourite of mine for a review.

At the age of 14, I went through a real tomboy phase, during which I worked out profusely, wore boys’ clothes, and wanted to be a Mighty Morphin’ Power Ranger (had I not become a parent and found my energy levels depleted for evermore, I would still probably be living this dream!), and Clarice Starling became another ideal of this phase. A girlfriend and I obsessed over this story, and more specifically the tangibly erotic relationship between Starling and Lecter, which encapsulated pretty much all of our collective teenage fantasies. I have always been into older guys, but some eleven years on, I still get thrills from Hopkins as Lecter, and his undeniable sex appeal in the face of psychosis.

Starling meets a match

Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) is a trainee at the FBI academy – a serious, enthusiastic young woman, whose presence in the patriarchal landscape of the federal agencies is underpinned with continual clever use of cinematography. From being, in the words of Ebert, ‘a short woman in an elevator full of tall men’, to her visual POV adopted by cameras during verbal exchanges, in which her male counterparts break the fourth wall and talk directly into the camera, while she retorts slightly off-camera. Starling, notably, only finds three intellectual matches that warrant her direct eye contact: her sole female colleague Ordelia (Kasi Lemmon), Hannibal Lecter, and the wanted serial killer Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine).

Starling’s sharp wit and academic strength prompt her superior Crawford (Scott Glenn) to recruit her assistance in the pursuit of Buffalo Bill, who kidnaps fat women, skins them and dumps their bodies, and has now captured the daughter (Brooke Smith) of Senator Martin (Diane Baker). It becomes evident that the bureau guys think that at least Lecter’s professional capacity as a psychiatrist will lend insight to the case – if not his direct personal knowledge - and feel that Starling fills the specific criteria of being physically endearing while being critically minded enough not to be manipulated and remember to do her job.

Eyes that make you want to fuck

In a chilling and prolonged game of cat and mouse, or quid pro quo, Lecter guides Clarice cryptically to the identity of Buffalo Bill, demanding personal anecdotes in return for his clues. Through his carrot-on-a-string bargaining, Lecter wiggles his way into Clarice’s mind in a sinister but oddly paternal fashion. When Lecter later escapes custody and kills several in the effort, Clarice assures Ordelia that he will not target her, explaining that ‘he would consider that rude’, and strangely, in spite of the several elaborately executed murders we have now seen the doctor commit, we know this to be true. There is some bizarre affection between Lecter and Starling that endears him to her and guarantees her safety and success.

Jodie Foster won Best Actress at the Oscars for her performance, fully establishing herself as perhaps the first and only really successful transition from leading child actor to leading adult actor. Foster is most remarkable in her simultaneous professionalism and friendliness. While undoubtedly polished in her craft and a very serious committee to it, she is charming, funny and approachable. On top of all of this, she is trilingual, graduated an esteemed university at the standard age, all while maintaining a hugely successful and publicly forward acting career.

Ted Levine is a tremendous talent, and what strikes me more and more all the time is just how audacious he was to take such a role as Buffalo Bill. Set among the height of the AIDS epidemic and an increasingly mainstream gay culture, the film drew some criticism (as Verhoeven and Ezsterhas experienced a few years later with Basic Instinct) due to some overly sensitive people considering it homophobic or transphobic. I wonder if now they would even consider approaching such topics in such a politically correct world. But even back then, it would seem that criticism was selective. In addition, every young actor knows not to be too bold in their role choices if they want to carry on, for fear of stigma. Levine storms the set and throws his all into Bill, and his subsequent success should stand as testament to his enormous daring and ability.

Lecter, speaking in learned psychological terms, explains to Clarice that Bill believes he is a transsexual because of a much deeper seeded need for transformation, as manifested in the symbolic moths he uses as calling cards. Bill’s blurred sexual orientation and gender identity are made clear as delusions consequent of his true psychotic condition, and because of this are quite incidental. It continues to stun me when people jump to quick conclusions that films are sexist because one female character is bad, or are racist because one black character is idiotic. Based in some part on the antics of mentally-scarred Mummy’s boy Ed Gein, logic need not apply, as we are looking at a character who is not of the conventional psychological capacity. Bill may like to apply make-up and tuck his penis between his thighs, but is that any more relevant to his killing of women than his love of fluffy dogs or his immense tailoring skills? In these terms, no. Consider the exchange in which Lecter puts to Clarice, ‘what does Bill do?’ Her response is that he kills women, but in psychological terms, that is not the answer. ‘He covets’, Lecter explains. Bill’s rooted covetousness is the main driver of every other characteristic. He covets that which he cannot be or have – the body of a woman being his main focus. Within his mental arena, this same fixation could have been upon children, animals, inanimate objects, whatever. But this twisted character bending the barriers of conventional gender are in no way an indication of wide held view of all gay/transgender people being psychotic murderers. Case closed.

In spite of Lecter’s high regard as a figure of the horror genre, it is questionable whether this is a horror story. It occurs entirely within reality, and its format and focus is much more on the criminal perspective, the investigative thrills. None of the horror sequences – mutilations, that is – are either implied or occur off-screen, and in this way SOTL found its way into the annals of classic horror, scarring people for years to come, in the same way that Texas Chainsaw Massacre did, by allowing the audience to feel the hysteria of the unknown. Had this been intended as a horror, we would see Bill ‘skin his humps’, or Lecter literally deface (LOL, sorry) Sergeant Pembry. This is a sophisticated crime thriller, and plays out in that way, with dramatic red herrings popping up, diverting federal and audience attention, just as the antagonist intends.

Hannibal Lecter – thanks to the collective works of Thomas Harris, Anthony Hopkins and the various screenwriters who revised the script that eventually ended up on the screen – has gone down in history as a horror icon for one prominent reason: the shrewd intellectualism that renders him practically invincible. We are used to the antagonists who pull of elaborate action sequences and blow up opponents in crazy ways; we are used to the retarded or otherwise faceless bogeymen that stalk neighbourhood babysitters and high school girls. What we are not used to is a very human psychopath, who actually can be reasoned with and is capable of developing emotional attachments to other living beings. And we are not used to them using so little violence, and so much intellect, in their murderous endeavours. Hannibal Lecter embodies the level of mental capacity so high that its perceptions border on the clairvoyant, that any audience member surely envies in some way. 

Hopkins’ later performance in Hannibal, that I could never grow to love due to Julianne Moore’s replacement of Foster, ignited the erotic tension that SOTL encapsulated. Although the movie deviated from the novel, when Clarice handcuffs herself to Lecter in Krendler’s house and he traps her hair in the fridge, and their faces are so close, and he asks her, ‘Would you ever tell me, “Stop; if you loved me you’d stop”?’… that is the kind of sexual tension I could get off to every night for the rest of my life. The dynamic between Lecter and Starling is electrifying, and Hopkins and Foster somehow hit on the most explosive formula. Their on-screen relationship is one of those that seems so perfect that the universe must have prophesised it millennia previously, like John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John, or Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw and Richard Dreyfuss.  

Blair Witch (2016)

I’d be willing to bet that few proper film fans out there were actually excited when a third Blair Witch movie was made – I wasn’t, but I figured it was going to be an hour and a half’s worth of moderately-entertaining stuff that I wouldn’t necessarily regret watching.

There are few movies out there with quite the cult status of The Blair Witch Project: although a tried-and-tested schtick even in the ‘90s, the concept of a film that blurred the lines between fiction and reality really hit home hard, especially when it coincided with the true advent of the internet. The web provided never-before-exploited marketing opportunities, and step by step, the makers had assembled something of a snuff film whose authenticity could be verified by all other sources – as well as the fact that the ‘actors’ seemed to have dropped off the face of the earth. It was a true sensation, the likes of which has barely been emulated, if at all, since.  This is why it was a bold choice for a sequel, especially since the first one flew very much under the radar, and no one had ever attempted anything like it since.

The premise of the film is that James (James Allan McCune), the younger brother of Heather Donahue - our original protagonist of the dribbly nostril and considerable lung capacity – was a small child when his sister disappeared, and all these years later is using the mystery for his friend Lisa (Callie Hernandez) to base her college film project on. James has spent an unspecified time obsessing over the idea that his sister is still alive in the haunted woods of Burkittsville, prompting him to mull over mysterious internet videos and other clues that might affirm his suspicions.

 

His online musings have seen him make contact with a guy who uploaded mysterious footage of a woman running through a house that police searches of the area could never locate. Despite the woman’s face obviously not being that of Heather Donahue, this video gives James all the motivation he needs, and he sets out to team up with the internet guy to find his totally-still-alive sister. Where would a horror movie be without an overambitious assumption to set the ball rolling?

For diversity and that insulting bit of tokenism, they bring two black friends along – Peter (Brandon Scott) and Ashley (Corbin Reid) – whose sole purpose, it seems, is to complain about the imminent danger they are in. Oh, well, and of course to be the first ones to die. You didn’t think we’d moved past that old chestnut, didya? Not one black death, but two. This must be some kind of record.

This being a thoroughly modern murder mashup, the kids come prepared. Where Heather, Josh and Mike had weighty mid ‘90s VHS film equipment to lug around, these guys have earpiece cameras that don’t fall out, handheld cameras, GPS, cell phones, walkie-talkies and even a drone: about as well prepared for potential supernatural encounters as you can be. Equipment-wise, at least.

You remember that episode of South Park in which the plotline of the latest Indiana Jones movie is compared to our favourite archaeologist being sexually assaulted by Spielberg and Lucas? You might make a similar comparison with Blair Witch. Post-Millennial horror has become an incredibly formulaic experience, with a standard that is a million miles from everything that the original movie was, and it seems that the makers just couldn’t help themselves when it came to ‘modernising’ the beloved product. First night there are creepy noises outside – guy sits up to investigate – BOOM! It’s only his friend descending in a loud and stupidly unannounced fashion on his tent. It’s like the camping version of ‘Oh, its only the cat. Phew!’ Ashley cuts her foot when they decide to wade barefoot (?!) through a river, only for a closer inspection to reveal *GASP* something wiggling under her skin! Is this Blair Witch or fucking Alien? This whole build-up for no pay off is not only a waste, but totally ill-fitted to the genre.

The final act of the movie is where it loses all its rhythm. One of the major strengths of the original Blair Witch movie is that basically all of the horrors were unseen, so by the end we are not only terrified, but wondering quite what went on. What did happen to Josh? Why was Mike not fighting? Who left the goodies outside their tent? One thing we can establish onscreen is that all the action is contained within a very real and reliable world. Sure, they get lost in the woods and go round in circles, but that’s easy to do. Blair Witch decides to go down a more definitive route, and takes a leaf out of the book of…well, basically every found footage movie to be made in the past 15 years that took place in some sort of abandoned building. Grave Encounters et al.

The morning hours come but it is eternal darkness outside. We see tents being thrown through the air by unseen forces. Characters age years in a matter of hours. Yup, it’s one of those time- and space-bending theories that sounds like it should have a technical name but I haven’t managed to find it. Once again, it’s overkill. Being preyed upon by an unseen malevolent entity through seemingly endless woods is bad enough, and this twist really does nothing to enhance the plot – it just feels disjointed, like a rejected transplant organ.

The Blair Witch Project followed in the footsteps of some of the best horror/thrillers of our time, by using that classic Hitchcockian technique of keeping the antagonist off-camera. Psycho and Jaws are great examples of this, and the sheer horror created by The Blair Witch Project relied very heavily on letting our imaginations do the work. We were fed many influences, from the opening interviews with local townspeople and other folklore, giving us a haunting image of the witch and her atrocities, and we were taunted with terrifying sounds and the characters’ reactions to their surroundings. Never once did we see the Witch. Was she even real? This is the kind of direction strong horrors take.

Not only does Blair Witch break this golden rule, but it changes the story. You’ll recall Mary Brown telling Heather, Mike and Josh about her childhood encounter with the witch, and describing her as being a person covered in fur-like hair, whose feet never touched the ground. Lane and Talia - the internet guy and his girlfriend - shit all over this long-held impression, instead telling us that the Witch’s death at the hands of the townspeople saw her stripped naked and suspended from a tree, rocks weighing her arms and legs down - effectively a makeshift rack. When we finally get a look at the Witch (which we never should), she is the standard product of a modern horror movie: a pale, long-limbed humanoid that we have seen in a million other supernatural horror movies this side of the Millennium.

Research informs me that director Simon Barrett tried to make out like this creature wasn’t actually the witch, leading fans to deduce that this creature may in fact have been Heather, mutilated and controlled by the Witch. I call BS on this one, for the reason that Barrett made his utter ignorance of the entire Blair Witch mythology known in the DVD featurette exploring the sets. He seemed under the impression that the original house was still standing ‘somewhere in Maryland’, but this assumption seemed to have no bearing on his decision to build a set to replicate it (even though the set doesn’t replicate it at all). 

Were he any sort of fan, he would know that the historic Griggs House in Granite was demolished some years ago, before which it had gained a considerable cult following, with fans exploring and recreating classic scenes for their own photo albums. He struck me, sadly, as the type to rewrite history because he was too cool or important to actually learn the facts. After the film got a lukewarm reception – with many critics and fans agreeing that the introduction of the creature onscreen killed all tension – I reckon he was just looking to create a bit of a stir, which his ‘revelation’ managed to do. This reckless style of his is evident throughout the movie, always trying to add themes or take the mythology in a new direction, or just start again from scratch. His script is puzzling, and not in the good way that actually encourages theorisation, but in the bad way that is simply incoherent.

The Dyatlov Pass Incident [AKA Devil's Pass] (2013)

I feel bad for Renny Harlin: has any other relatively mainstream director ever been so consistently middle-of-the-road throughout a thirty-odd-year filmmaking career? Boasting five Razzie nominations for Worst Director, and of course, the Guinness-certified Biggest Box Office Flop of All Time (Cutthroat Island), Harlin has done well just to keep working in this business. But the saddest part is that he obviously has real talent: almost all of his pictures have some strong elements, and often, they seem like great movies from a distance. But they are always plagued with silly little problems that bring the main product down. Consider Deep Blue Sea: even on its release it was the go-to shark movie after Jaws, and it has maintained a strong cult following, at least among my own generation. But despite the movie’s many strengths, it is difficult to forget the critical reception, or to forget what we all knew: it was a silly, silly film, with many logical inconsistencies. This, sadly, is a pattern that seems to stalk Harlin throughout his career. 

With the Dyatlov Pass Incident (A.K.A. Devil’s Pass), Harlin had rather unique opportunity to really have fun. For anybody not familiar with the events of 1959 in the Ural Mountains, a group of nine students – all experienced hikers and mountaineers – set out on a trek and never came back. A short time later, rescue teams found all nine dead, under mysterious circumstances. Some were partially undressed, some had massive internal injuries without any outer trace of struggle, and examination of their tent found it had been cut open from the inside and fled from in the middle of the night. No official explanation has ever been offered, in spite of rampant speculation and conspiracy theory – ranging from yeti and UFO to military experiment and infrasound – making this incident an absolute dream to turn into a film, which nobody has ever done. And Harlin, in his classic style, starts off well and ends well, but loses his footing somewhere in between.

It’s a found footage movie, which is just as laborious a filmmaking technique as any other nowadays. In fact it is the Dolly Parton of filmmaking: you have no idea how expensive it is to look this cheap! Behind the scenes featurettes show Harlin crawling around in the snow looking for the most appropriate camera angles, crossing off requirements and scenes from the storyboards – FF is a surprisingly technical process. Unfortunately for the most part, this movie underutilises the format, which in the second act seems to simply serves as a means to masking breaks in continuity. A good FF will take advantage of the moods and emotions you can create by adopting a handheld POV (The Blair Witch Project), but almost nothing here is done with this extra dimension. At least until the end.

So how would Dyatlov Pass and FF go together? Ding-ding-ding ‘College documentary project’! Holly (Holly Goss) reckons she’s 21 when she’s at least a decade past that, and has had Richard Dreyfuss in Close Encounters-style premonitions of the Ural Mountains all her life. She has apparently been given a project grant by the University of ARE-gan where she is a student (she and almost all the actors are British and acting American, and Goss’ accent is slippery at best). So she takes a few friends to Russia and off they hike. Either Holly is very disoriented with her facts, or the writers made the least effort possible to change key information, as she recounts the Dyatlov Pass events inaccurately, attributing one victim's injuries to another and so forth. 

The group's overnight stay at the site where the Dyatlov group's bodies were found kicks off the horror but doesn't keep it going. Explosions set off an avalanche that kills one and breaks the legs of another of Holly's friends, but not only are they now fighting for survival with no equipment in some seriously harsh conditions, they are also subject to what lies behind the mysterious door Holly found in the side of the mountain. Here Harlin goes and stamps his trademark silliness all over what was shaping up to be a respectable picture. And it's not even the time travel twist that bothers me: it's a good twist, as limited as my comprehension of time paradoxes is. What bothers me is the introduction of lurking humanoid creatures. As I told about in my review of the sequel Blair Witch, as a modern horror viewer I am sick to death of lanky, pale, glowing-eyed, quadroped humanoid creatures. From I Am Legend and The Descent to basically every creature movie of this decade, it has been done a thousand times, and never very distinctively. Come up with a new monster, or do a different kind of horror.

It happens that these monsters are relative to the time travel theme, but even then, they are badly done with CGI and suddenly bring the entire quality of the movie down. I actually sighed and rolled my eyes, it was so poor. This idiotic Resident Evil-style sequence takes place, and it's nowhere near as terrifying as, say, the chase by the hooded and armed assailants who originally chased them was. The entire movie could have done much better were it not for the creature feature.

People on discussion boards have presented an interesting array of ideas and interpretations that the time travel theme has prompted, as well as on how sloppily it is executed. The second act of the movie takes on that annoying horror habit of telling rather than showing. So the remaining characters talk the audience through their patchy theory on what is going on and what they should do next. For example, tell me what's wrong with this suggestion: they theorise that the wormhole they have discovered will take them anywhere that they think of hard enough, so they should think of the place that's freshest in their minds that they recall vividly, for the best chances of success; they decide on outside of the door, on the side of the mountain. Answer: well, everything. Let's assume their theory that the wormhole can take them anywhere is somehow correct. How do we know all you have to do is picture your destination to get there? Secondly, if they are going for a place that they can recall vividly, how about home, thousands of miles away from this hellish situation? How about anywhere but back out into the Russian wilderness with still no supplies or equipment? What exactly is the plan once they get back out onto the side of the mountain, where they managed to lock out the two hooded assailants earlier? 

Just this face... for 90 long minutes

Renny Harlin seems to suffer from over-confidence. His behind-the-scenes dialogue always boasts of things we don't see as an audience: how frightening that scene was, how fantastically talented the actors were. Here he was determined to hire unknowns (that's fine, lots of horrors like to do that), but he also reckons that they were the cream of the crop. Performances are mediocre at best, but the prize here goes to Holly Goss for being terrible. She never ever seems scared when she finds herself in terrifying situations, and has this gormless look on her face throughout. Plus, as early implied, her accent is not great. 

You know what this movie should have been? An account of the real Dyatlov group and their doomed expedition, without the found footage format. Just a straight up narrative of what we know happened, and then perhaps a fictionalised account of what could have caused the group to flee their tent and eventually die. Because the appeal of the Dyatlov Pass incident is that it is a real life event that still doesn't make much sense, and feels like one of those unsolvable mysteries. There you have your perfect movie! You don't need to modernise it and make it about American college students for it to be interesting. 

Grave Encounters 2 (2012)

What’s the best sequel of all time? While it may not be Grave Encounters 2, I would argue that it’s one of the strongest horror sequels we’ve had for some time. If I’m honest, I remember little of the first movie, but this is for good reason. It is one of a slurry of found footage horrors based on paranormal investigator TV crews getting lost in the bowels of an abandoned hospital/asylum/prison, and how often has a movie like this turned out a truly memorable character that you can instantly distinguish without having to subconsciously label them Brunette 1 and Brunette 2? The first Grave Encounters is one of these, and it’s a lot of fun and has plenty of good jump scares; the sequel manages to top itself by taking on the same fictitious reality as used in the Blair Witch Project 2, in which the first movie is acknowledged as a movie.

Alex (Richard Harmon) is an uptight obsessive who is working on his own horror movie while

Nothing unsettling about this guy

becoming engrossed in the mysteries surrounding the movie Grave Encounters, and soon abandons his own project in favour of an investigative piece, in which he aims to prove that the movie was reality and that a whole TV crew are dead by ghostly means. OK, let’s take an obligatory moment right here to appreciate the one eventuality that characters in these sorts of plotlines always seem to take for granted: they go somewhere dangerous and creepy to prove that ghosts exist, and then when they get that startling proof, they are far from overjoyed. In fact, one might venture to say that they bite off more than they can chew in the ghost-hunting business and give Yvette Fielding a run for her money on the screamometer. One time it might be cool for one of these crews to actually show some sort of spiritual efficiency when faced with ghosts.

19th century-style filmmaking

Anyhow, Alex brings along his small crew of friends and they break into the same abandoned asylum. But this isn’t just any asylum, this is a shapeshifting, time-bending asylum from M&S, so prepare for the mindfucks. What really made me look again at this movie was the featurette on the DVD, which gives you behind the scenes footage and interviews with director John Poliquin and writers/producers The Vicious Brothers. Part of a small gaggle of modern horrormakers that miss the spit-and-sawdust levels of filming and reach into the past for their inspiration, the Vicious Brothers detail the tremendous technical measure that goes into making a movie look so small-scale, and the box of tricks they use to pull it all off, including such Victorian wonders as forced perspective. Consider, for example, the simple genius that goes into designing a shot in which a creature twice the size of the characters comes crashing down a corridor like a huge house spider, by using a particularly tall and lanky actor in a scaled-down set. It’s just pure excellence.

A supernatural version of a Welcome Mat

There is further method to the madness: by introducing the building as a weird entity that seems to dangle between dimensions and is capable of manipulation, all classic audience reactions are suspended. The hackneyed knowledge of running outside instead of upstairs or not believing the bad guy is really dead is long forgotten once physical rules no longer apply, leaving the audience with little option but to sit tight and hope for the best. It’s filmed very well, and FF opponents will have to try harder than the ‘shaky camera’ excuse with this one, as it’s coherent even given the context. It is a gripping and watchable movie, and has a couple of really fantastic Oh Shit moments, which are particularly important in a film that is brimming with jump scares.

I suppose it would be beneficial to watch Grave Encounters before embarking on this interesting sequel, and if you’re here and interested in the sorts of movies I write about, it probably wouldn’t be a waste of 90 minutes of your life. But if all else fails, watch it so you can watch the second one and get it, because it’s a really good movie, and a rare example of a sequel outshining its predecessor. 

Wrong Turn 2 (2007)

Star of the show, Mr Wayne Robson

Wrong Turn has got to be one of my favourite post-millennium horrors. I don’t think it has anything to do with my longtime love of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre or any of its contemporaries, but don’t mutated hillbillies make excellent villains? When Roger Ebert reviewed the remake of The Hills Have Eyes, he humorously and very knowingly detailed his concept of the Wrong Gas Station, which has applied to horror movies for decades, and applies to Wrong Turn: a ramshackle arrangement of cracked wooden planks that looks torn straight out of the ‘40s, with a crackly old hick in denim dungarees as its proprietor, who is always trusted despite his ominous nature and deliberate attempts to have his customers picked off by hick associates. You’d think the only gas station for miles around would make the most of its meagre custom – fat cigar stumps don’t pay for themselves, you know!

Ain't nobody got time for that!

The first Wrong Turn is a fun, tense, creepy movie with some great effects and good actors (Jeremy Sisto’s hair, anyone?). It’s one of those movie series, rather like Final Destination, at which you can look and wonder exactly when the makers decided they were not making a serious movie anymore. The first one can pass for pretty much straight horror slasher; the second decides to take it from a more wink-wink-nudge-nudge approach, both in theme and in specifics. The central disdain for the curse that is reality TV allows us all to share a laugh about the ludicrousness of modern media, while the hideously inventive death sequences allow us to share a laugh about the ludicrousness of modern splatter.

Wrong Turn 2, I assume, takes place in a location close to the first one, and is centred on a group of (mostly) dickheads who are taking part in a survivalist reality show. Among them is the slut, the horny pest punching way above his weight, the mousy girl and the moronic male – classic lineup. Tokens include a black guy who survives and a hot lesbian who doesn’t. Heading the gang is the Colonel (Henry Rollins), a retired Marine who plays to the camera but fights like a champ. The first fantastic kill has taken place before the opening credits, and kicks things straight off with over-the-top deaths constructed with amazing effects and buckets of corn syrup blood. One thing you can always count on Wrong Turn for is memorable death sequences.

Before long, the local family of mutated hillbillies (which now extends beyond the original’s freaky fraternal trio to include…girl hillbillies!) are wreaking havoc and pulling contestants apart with their unnatural strength and durability, but certainly not missing out on any opportunities to fuck each other and birth worm-like babies. These are, after all, no ordinary hillbillies like the banjo kid in Deliverance; these are genetically-mutated cannibal hillbillies who have an unhealthily iron-rich diet and could definitely do with some vegetables. And that means that brothers fuck sisters in public places and sisters birth incest babies that consume toxic waste from a bottle. Although this family of hillbillies seems to have actually learned to speak a few words, they do still do a lot of their stupid manic laughter and hollering.

What can I say? Wrong Turn 2 just gives and keeps on giving for any good horror fan. Tons of splatter, lots of unexpected moments and an outstandingly good performance from Wayne Robson as Old Timer, the shrill patriarch of the family. There are characters you root for, and others whose untimely deaths you anticipate with bated breath. It’s fun, fast-paced, well filmed and done with enthusiasm as a directorial debut from Joe Lynch, and a very worthy successor of the original Wrong Turn.