Hannibal (2001)

"People will say we're in love", quoth Dr Lecter to Starling. Well, people did say a lot in response to Hannibal, such as how full of shit author Thomas Harris was when he released a highly anticipated follow-up to The Silence of the Lambs, the film adaptation of which had already become considered a classic of cinema. For Starling and Lecter to end up as lovers and companions, free in the world, was just too implausible and tone deaf for most to swallow. I confess that during my adolescent infatuation with the Starling and Lecter pairing, I revelled in this fan-fic of an ending. It made perfect sense to me, and satisfied the sexual chemistry that had been brewing, in my view, for years between the characters. I still somewhat stand by this, but it really does read like the ending was drawn from a Reader's Wives contest or something.

When the third book in the Lecter series, simply titled Hannibal, was announced for cinematic adaptation, some speculated that parts of the novel were simply too obscene to translate to screen.

Many a book far more extreme than Hannibal has been very faithfully adapted to the screen, but when the writers got their grubby mits on Harris' book, they decided to water it down in very derogatory and inexplicable ways. The novel it takes its material from is far from perfect, but a number of key characters and plot threads that were fairly central to the story never quite made the leap from page to screen. Hannibal is a pretty messy and poorly-coordinated movie, that is far too preoccupied with looking stylish.

Captured that Demme sophistication perfectly

Ridley Scott's professional name has gone through some transition over the years. Alien brought him acclaim as a sharp and effective visual storyteller; someone who could craft characters and cast actors who breathed life into them. His 21st century reputation precedes him as an overly-flashy, technologically-preoccupied director whose grasp on character and sensical plot seems to have slipped. Prometheus characterises this shift in artistic direction. Scott was about midway between these two extremes when he took the directorial helm of Hannibal, and what he turned out was a confused mish-mash of these styles. Far too much time is dedicated to visuals that do not suit the narrative, while the two or three main characters whose lives constitute the emotional weight of the story are diluted to mere silhouettes.

Hannibal, as written by Thomas Harris, is driven by its characters and their experiences. We are a decade on from Starling's ordeal with Buffalo Bill; she is physically and emotionally worn out by the significant influence that media and federal politics have had on the career she has strived so hard for; meanwhile Lecter, having escaped custody at the end of Silence of the Lambs, is living his best life in Italy, seamlessly carrying on as an art curator. His morbid curiosity with Starling is tickled by prominent media coverage of an assignment gone wrong that ended in the deaths of a perp and several of her colleagues, and he drip-drops back into her life via taunting correspondence. The third figure, this book's Buffalo Bill, if you like, is one Mason Verger, a meat empire heir with a history of paying big bucks to cover up his indiscretions, the most heinous being systematic child molestation. He is a hideously disfigured husk of a man whose life depends on a cornucopia of machinery and personal care, provided by his right-hand man Cordell. A sort of mutual, three-way pursuit ensues between Starling, Lecter and Verger. Starling wants to track down Lecter through Verger's inside knowledge and possibly revive her career; Verger wants to take the ultimate revenge on the psychologist who coerced him into cutting off his own face; Lecter... well, he wants to enjoy the finer things in life, and probably to use Starling's professional situation to gain her trust.

Ridley Scott presents Hannibal in Whoville

Now Scott is a filmmaker who knows his way around a good visual, and you'll recall that one of the many weapons in Silence of the Lambs' arsenal was the engrossing cinematography by Tak Fujimoto. The film guides audience sympathy and hints at motives and alliances, all through meticulous use of a camera: the close-up fourth-wall-breaking shots of Clarice as she talks to people, and the way she only makes eye contact with those she considers her intellectual equals. These include Lecter, Ardelia, Jack Crawford, and even Buffalo Bill himself. It was a prime example of how to tell a story visually. Hannibal requires this same attention to detail and emotional drive, but it just doesn't get it. This time John Mathieson is in charge of cinematography, and although he also worked for Scott on Gladiator the year before, it is rather telling that one of his later works was none other than Joel Schumacher's Phantom of the Opera - a movie notorious for visuals that get an A for effort but fall artistically flat. It's all, "oh, that looks pretty cool", and no, "that shot tells me a lot about X, Y or Z". It's not all about looking cool, kids.

I'm generally not one for pointing out dated film techniques, as I like to appreciate art for what it was in the context of its creation. However, Hannibal just screams early-'00s with its approach to visuals. Like the contemporaneous Lord of the Rings movies, the action will suddenly and randomly go into a slow frame rate for a few seconds. It puts silly images not just into the background, but into the foreground of its shots, such as a flock of pigeons forming Lecter's face on the cobblestones. It just throws any shit at the screen to see what sticks, like a first year film student project, as if the director is unsure of his style. And that's what's so damn frustrating. This is Ridley fucking Scott. He knows much better than this. But at least he could give his very talented actors some decent direction, right? RIGHT?

Ohhh, you know I also voiced Caitlyn Jenner?

For whatever reason, Jodie Foster does not reprise the role she gave so much heart to, and honestly, if I'd had my way, they would have just called off this stupid idea then and there. But hey, still gotta make those sweet sweet dollas, amirite? So Julianne Moore, of all people, gets called in to fill Foster's boots, and this movie is the reason I still have trouble liking Moore to this day. It's certainly true that Starling is not the same woman she was ten years before, and Moore is only doing what the writers and producers tell her to do, but her performance is so stilted and cold that I cannot even like Clarice Starling, or hope for her to succeed! Gary Oldman, who is hidden under layers of prosthetics and even had his name scratched from the credits and marketing, is somehow infinitely more engaging than Moore, and he is playing a fucking child molester! Why do I find myself more drawn to his silly games, than I do to Starling's very grave situation? 

Even the brilliant Hopkins, whose serious and studious approach to his work is well-known, has his cinematic prowess neutered by the ways the director and cinematographer decide to show him to us. No longer is he the predator, watching unblinking, as he eyes up his imminent prey; no longer is he such a powerful creature that he occupies every inch of the space he stands in. Now he is an average man, in civilian clothing, striding down the endless streets of Florence, standing lonely in the vast halls of old churches and apartment buildings. The way he disappeared into the crowd at the end of Silence, he continues almost the entirety of this film. Suddenly, he is a little blip on the landscape, despite being the namesake of the entire story. 

One movie that really does need a porn parody

Thomas Harris has always built this world with a good number of substantial characters. Silence gave us the likes of Crawford, Chilton, Ardelia, Catherine and Senator Martin, and they were all pertinent and realistic figures within the narrative. The book Hannibal brings back Crawford and Nurse Barney, and introduces Verger's sister Margot, whose ultimate murder of her twisted brother is entirely justified in the story as we read it. Her elimination from the movie causes a terrible domino effect: Barney is introduced, then has no further purpose to serve, so disappears; the bit part of Cordell is the one to finally kill Mason Verger, but he has so little personal or emotional stake in the situation, that it seems unreasonable, and unprecedented. Compare it, if you will, to Arya being the one to kill the Night King. We all thought the same thing: why her? Of all the conflicts she has endured, the Night King was the last person on her mind; meanwhile, a good half-dozen other characters' arcs seem to have led to this very moment, in which they will defeat the ultimate evil in a profound and meaningful way. So after being subject to nothing more sinister than Verger's minging face and snippy attitude, Cordell suddenly decides that he hates his boss so much that he will murder him. However, Margot has suffered years of sexual and emotional abuse at the hands of her brother, to the point that she is a bodybuilder in an effort to feel powerful, and has engaged with Starling and Barney extensively. She is square in the middle of this whole mess, and she has many good reasons to make her brother suffer. Why they decided to cut her character, I will never understand.

As a result of Harris' work, not Scott's, there are two lawmen who become supposedly central figures to this story. The first is the detestable Paul Krendler, who got a brief mention and sweeping mid-close-up in Silence, this time played by Ray Liotta. Now he is high-ranking, hates Starling for some reason, and has the mentality of a frat boy half-a-keg deep. He peeks at a pen-and-ink sketch of a nude woman like a naughty schoolboy, and concludes his officious diatribe at Starling with, "this town is full of cornpone country pussy." It's as if Scott woke up one morning and thought, "I forgot about the feminism!" and put this stupid line in off the cuff to emphasis what an asshole this character is, but once again, this is the regrettable work of Harris. Silence, both in film and literary forms, gave a subtle undertone of the sexism Starling faced in her job, but it never preached or made a point of it, like modern takes on the same story would. Basically, Krendler is a douchey man-child who wants to destroy Starling's career.

Then there is Detective Pazzi who - so underwritten that you need to have read the book to know - is a somewhat disgraced Florentine police officer, and he is looking to improve his financial and professional standing by capturing Lecter, who he has spotted working in a local museum, and is on the FBI's Most Wanted List alongside Osama Bin Laden (lol). Poor old Pazzi, however, is way out of his league, as most lawmen tend to be in these stories, and not only does he end up dead, but Lecter even serenades him with the embarrassing histories of his traitorous ancestors before disembowelling him. So... Senora Pazzi is one husband lighter, the unfortunate tourists in the square that night get a holiday to remember, and Lecter... escapes and somehow gets back to the US, completely undetected. Pazzi's sacrificial lamb-ing serves as the climax of the second act, but then once the third act gets going, you realise that he died for nothing. Hell, he lived for nothing. His influence on the story is negligible. Despite his calls to an official FBI phone line, and Starling's explicit warning to him not to pursue Lecter, nobody goes looking for him, or wonders what the hell happened to that overconfident married Italian dude that just disappeared. Our time is all but wasted on this whole saga, and when we get back to the US, there is no trace of Pazzi at all. Just forgeddabowdim. 

One of the defining characteristics of Silence of the Lambs is how neatly, how perfectly, everything came together. No loose end left, no stone unturned. Hannibal is such a jumbled mess that asks questions and doesn't answer them. And as much as I dislike the visual style, general direction and overall tone of this movie, much blame is to be attributed to Harris, or moreover, the writers who decided that his way was the best. It is a piss-poor follow-up to its impeccable predecessor, and such bad form on behalf of everyone involved. It's like when the problem kids at the grammar school get lectured by their form tutor about how they are letting themselves down: it's embarrassing, but entirely true.

You're not going out like that, Paul

Hannibal seems to have fallen by the wayside, mostly forgotten by your average moviegoer. If anybody you ask does, in fact, recall having seen it at some point, I am fairly certain that the only thing they can tell you about is brains, in some form or other. It's either the stupid scene in which Lecter slices off Krendler's crown to serve his brain matter alongside a fine wine sauce and side salad, or it is the even stupider final scene, in which a young child with an unnatural desire to try weird food badgers Lecter into feeding him tupperwared leftovers of Krendler's brain. Mmmm, tastes of Pabst Blue Ribbon and misogyny! I never took the Lecter chronicles for stories that had to be explicitly gory. We aren't supposed to fear that this immensely intelligent psychological professional will empty our skulls out like jack'o'lanterns. We are supposed to fear that he is the everyman, someone who we might start chatting to in a cafe, only for a short conversation to have given him everything he needs to mentally torment us for the rest of our lives. Murder is almost incidental when it comes to Hannibal Lecter. If it weren't, he would be your average Michael or Jason or Freddy. It is that razor-sharp brain that is so terrifying. This is why Hannibal eventually spills out into a silly freak show, culminating in Lecter feeding Krendler his own Michelin-star-worthy cerebral matter, before he chops off his own hand to save Starling the same fate. 

I have always believed that Lecter was in love with Starling, in some weird way or other. This movie tippy-toes around such an implication, and pushes it too far as to imply that Lecter would disable himself in such a fashion to avoid capture by the authorities. I mean, he has evaded them before, and has always been about self-preservation. How can he play piano or write or draw with one hand? OK, he is Hannibal Lecter, I'm sure he'd soon train himself to do so, but the point is that I don't believe that Lecter would do this out of desperation, or affection for Starling. I am far more inclined to believe that Starling would flee her tattered FBI career and scant social life, to take refuge with Lecter, with his money, intellectualism, and uncanny ability to evade capture. 

George R R Martin has said that if a writer changes the direction of his work halfway through the narrative (in his case, because fans have guessed what will happen), they inevitably throw the whole product out of joint. The first half, or whatever, has been carefully crafted to result in the logical second half, and moving the goalpost mid-game just ruins everything. Consider this when watching Hannibal which, for the most part, follows Harris' material. The main difference is the ending, and where Starling and Lecter end up. Harris was writing towards them living an exuberant life together under the radar, but Scott detours the third act toward a final confrontation, before Lecter escapes again, with all emotional ends untied. This bitter encounter, paired with Krendler's head-shrinking, gives us a really flaccid and unsatisfactory ending to the second chapter between one of the most memorable couples in film history. 

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.

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.  

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.

The Green Inferno (2013)

So guys, hands up who's freaking psyched for Eli Roth's The Green Inferno finally getting a release after a couple of years on the shelf due to funding issues? Two huge thumbs up on this end! In another Sleepaway Camp-type coincidence, I heard of the release a few days back and rushed out to get it, then rushed back home to watch it. I got straight on to my sister Relly, who as I have previously chronicled is a horror freak of intensity equal to mine, who, as it happened, was in the middle of downloading it to her hard drive. But she sternly warned me not to ruin anything for her, as she had to wait til the evening to watch it. So I bit my tongue, and kept it to myself for a little while.

Photos of Roth directing on location are very cute!

Is there any horror fan who doesn't like Roth's work? I mean, if you want to be a boring bugger, he can be childish or sensationalist, but that's where the fun is! Filmmakers have been experimenting with comic relief in horror, and of course with pushing the bounds of decency, for decades. Roth is merely one of the ringleaders of his generations of filmmakers. He cares about his movies being enjoyable, and compelling, and unexpected, and he pretty much always pulls it off.

I first read about The Green Inferno a couple of years back, when doing some more research about Cannibal Holocaust, and got worryingly excited at the prospect of Roth pulling an Amazon Cannibal trick, then seriously pissed at the prospect of it never being released. As time went on, it was dragged, kicking and screaming, further toward the back of my mind, until last week, I saw a promo Facebook page for it, and headed for the nearest HMV like Sally Hardesty through the woods.

Justine (Lorenza Izzo) is an uptight college student who's desperate to be cool and dedicated enough to join the bare-footed, beardy protest clique on campus. In her class, her tutor informs the students in rather general terms about the practice of female genital mutilation (FGM), much to the surprise and horror of the kids, who act as if they've never even heard of it before. If this is really the case, I ask A) Where the hell have you been?! and B) If you are so behind with world news and issues, should you be taking this kind of course? But anyhow, Justine half-heartedly attaches herself to this cause, until she is invited along to a protest meeting with the cool kids, where her blunt and careless attitude pisses off the lead protester Alejandro (Ariel Levy).

He is planning an expedition to the Peruvian jungle where they will save the indigenous tribes from loggers who threaten to wipe out their environment, with the help of every douchebag's best friend: social media. In a sort of last-ditch attempt to prove her humanitarian nature, Justine signs up, and heads off on the at least partially-dubious trip with a whole bunch of other young 'uns, who, naturally, are various shades of douchebag. One is a spindly stoner played by Daryl Sabara, A.K.A. Juni from Spy Kids, one is an alternative chick who chats bullshit about her 'next tattoo', one is a soft, lovable chubster, you get the picture. And for a good long while we wonder just how suspicious we are to be of Alejandro, and the expedition as a whole.

A very basic summary of this movie is Cannibal Holocaust x Cannibal Ferox + Eli Roth = The Green Inferno. Although the progress of the action takes nicely unexpected steps and turns, the group still, of course, end up at the hands of some local tribe who paint themselves red and shove bones through their noses and run around in just loinclothes and necklaces. You know the drill. And although Roth took the same questionable option as Deodato by employing real natives for his tribespeople, this movie is far slicker and more professional than the other two cannibal pics, and doesn't give in to the temptation to make it Found Footage (thank God).

The acting is nothing sterling, and there is some silly, amusing dialogue dotted about. There is also a shot of Eli Roth's cock next to a tarantula. Yeah. I noticed in the end credits that Roth is listed as Sabara's 'Hand Double', and when I thought about it, when else in the movie did we see nothing but that character's hand? Oh yeah, when his dick was in it. So there's a cute titbit of trivia for you... Roth figured his whole self wasn't needed for his traditional cameo, for his fabulous cock could do the trick just fine. There are some brilliantly unexpected thrills, and in short, I was not disappointed. I was taken aback somewhat by the Ferox ending, and the motivations behind it. But this is nothing short of Classic Roth, and I struggle to imagine what sort of typical horror watcher wouldn't enjoy it. Tuck in!

ON THE LIST: Cannibal Ferox (1981)

Ruggero Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust set a whole flesh-eating trend in motion back in the early '80s, being one of six titles on the Video Nasty list to feature the word 'cannibal'. Many quite correct allusions have been drawn between Holocaust and Ferox, with a particularly blinding one that is handled totally incorrectly in the latter. But there are also some quite major differences between the two that make Ferox a viewing experience dissimilar to Holocaust.

Ferox starts off, as Holocaust does, in New York City, on a bright sunny day, following a funky lookin' cat with a funky disco soundtrack. He goes to an apartment looking for his smack dealer Mike, only to be confronted by two other, dodgier lookin' fellas, also looking for Mike as he owes them $100,000. They shoot the guy dead in the apartment. Then we cut to Paraguay, where siblings Rudy (Danilo Mattei) and Gloria (Lorraine de Selle) begin to believe they have made a mistake by bringing their 'insecure' friend Pat (Zora Kerova) on their vacation with them. Well, hardly a vacation. Gloria is writing her PhD anthropology dissertation, and intends to prove that 'cannibalism as an organised practise of human society does not and never has existed.' This should already strike the average viewer as a bit of a long shot, so why an anthropologist would believe this enough to trek out into the wilderness is perhaps a little beyond us. But we'll go with the flow.

After Pat has taken part in a very metaphorical 'shower' with the local authority, the trio pack their things onto a rickety ferry (including an abysmally parked Jeep) and are off into the jungle. Genius Rudy manages to sink the Jeep in muddy bogs twice in no more than two minutes, the second time rendering the vehicle useless. So they abandon the expensive mobile quite happily and continue on foot. In the jungle they very soon come across their first live native, nonchalantly noshing on bugs, and then their first dead native, with one impaled and a second wedged between a tree and a giant spiked ball. In a crucially different way to the young film crew in Holocaust, the friends show disgust and horror at their findings, and immediately try to help the two victims, despite the futility. These three are seemingly decent human beings, with all their moral and sympathetic tendencies in order.

Then, somewhat unexpectedly, they run into two American guys, Joe (Walter Lucchini) and Mike (Giovanni Lombardo Radice). Joe is injured and traumatised, and Mike is a tough-talking cokehead, with a pouch of his poison hanging around his neck. This little trinket immediately draws Pat's interest. Well, it's a safe bet that this cokehead Mike is the same dealer Mike those guys in NY were after. Mike tells a tale of horror: he, Joe and their Portugese guide were captured and tortured by a local tribe, who apparently took enough of a disliking to the guide to castrate him and eat his genitals. They supposedly got away with the help of two locals - the very ones the trio found dead earlier. But immediately we know something's not right. Joe is visibly distressed, and keeps interrupting Mike's storytelling, insisting that 'that's enough' and 'they don't wanna hear that.'

At first everybody gets along just fine, but the next morning Gloria is missing, and is eventually found in one of those hole-in-the-ground traps. In there with her is a pig. Mike remorselessly butchers the poor creature with a knife, much to Gloria's horror. He is increasingly aggressive, and quite obviously a raging coke fiend. Meanwhile, Rudy and Joe have ventured to the tribe's village looking for Gloria, and come across the charred remains of what is believed to be the Portugese guide. But again, Joe acts shifty, and begs that they go back. Something's definitely not right. Especially seeing as the elderly and youths of the tribe who remain after the supposed ordeal with Mike and Joe, do not seem threatening in the slightest, but actually very afraid of the now five-strong group.


Joe's injury becomes infected and he quickly turns sickly and delirious. In his fever, he confesses to Rudy and Gloria what really happened to them, or rather what they caused. Turns out the fellas came to the jungle to prospect emeralds, and take advantage of local coke supplies, but when a week of work turned out not a single gem, Mike got sniffed out of his head and castrated, tortured and killed the guide. I guess here would be a good point to talk about Lombardo Radice. Due to his use of pseudonym John Morghen, I didn't realise while watching the movie that it was none other than simple-minded Ricky from Deodato's House on the Edge of the Park, making this a reunion between Lombardo Radice and De Selle. Ricky was a rather pitiful character, whose childish trust found him almost coerced into cruelty. Mike needs to such motivation. He seems to think solely in terms of violence, which he proves once the tables have turned, and he is still yelling death threats at the natives.

Poor Joe dies, and Gloria and Rudy decide that the tribe will seek retribution from all of them, not just their aggressors (which seems stupid and illogical, but apparently true), and when they find Pat and Mike have run away with all their equipment and supplies, decide now's the time to make a run for it. But they are caught, reunited with the also captive Pat and Mike, and given front row seats to the matinee performance of Mike's Comeuppance. Unfortunately they don't seem to have anticipated this performance as highly as we have and it is met with mixed to negative reviews. I, however, enjoyed it immensely. It's fair to say that after Mike's shenanigans, a good old revenge castration was in order. But rather than let him bleed out, they take the time to cauterise the wound.How thoughtful. Until my partner pointed out: his urethra is now sealed off too. His bladder's gonna blow up like a blueberry! Ouch.


The group are then taken to another village for the suffering to continue. The girls are shoved down a hole, Rudy is shot and killed with a poisoned dart, and Mike has more to come...obviously! Whilst down the hole, Pat is well and truly freaking out, while Gloria is perhaps not freaking out enough. She suggests they sing to demonstrate their unity and courage, but also theorises with words what Cannibal Holocaust did with images: the tribes only became cannibalistic when threatened by outside forces, so who were the real barbarians? This was a very well illustrated idea in Holocaust, but it feels both too soon and too simple for such a message just a year after Deodato's movie.

I have just realised that my Video Nasty reviews are rather in-depth, and analyse most movies from beginning to end. Perhaps this is a good format, but perhaps a little long winded - I want you to be left with some things unexpected. So I'll now move on to the film's ending. We have one survivor, Gloria, who is seen being presented with her PhD, looking rather forlorn. It is revealed that her dissertation ended up covering the entire truth of cannibalism, presumably on the basis of what she said earlier to Pat. This revelation is somewhat destructive: Gloria's own brother was killed during the expedition, yet she feels it's better to lie to her parents (supposedly) about her brother's fate in order to save the tribe an undeserved reputation. For the greater good, maybe that's a good thing. But from a grieving parent's perspective, that's pretty shitty.

Cannibal Ferox must be compared with Cannibal Holocaust. One striking thing about Ferox is that the actual on-screen violence is far more scarce. The aftermath, like severed penises and skewered breasts, is shown, but the piercings and severings not so much. In fact, there is more infamous animal violence visible than simulated human violence. Ferox for some reason carries on Holocaust's detested tradition of live animal killings on-screen, but the majority of it is actually inflicted on animals by other animals. It's obviously set-up nature is no less disturbing, and we even get a brand new Turtle Death, which plays out in a very similar way to Holocaust. But I've already been there, done it and regretted it, so I actually averted my gaze when it came.

It is filmed and narrated in a typical movie style, with an invisible camera crew following a bunch of characters from all angles who can't see them. It's far more of an action picture than Holocaust as it lacks the documentary-style realism. That may be one reason why it's not so effective. It may also be that we've seen a very similar scenario before, and done better. It's an entertaining enough watch for something of its genre, but far more put-together than Holocaust. The dialogue is rather scripted, the incidents similarly. The one thing that struck me as unexpected was actually the appearance of Mike and Joe early on. It feels lacking in a sense of dread and cruelty which was so prevalent in Holocaust. It is cleaner and far more produced, and feels rather like it was riding on the back of Holocaust's infamy. But it is good, and must be credited for its horror star cast.

ON THE LIST: Cannibal Holocaust (1980)

Quite possibly the most infamous title on the list, Ruggero Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust took filmmaking, exploitation and suspension of disbelief to a whole other level. I sought out a DVD copy at the age of fifteen (what a rebel!) having heard of it on a Top Scary Movies list, and apparently being on some hardcore teenage horror-high at the time, was glad I'd watched the movie, but didn't see it as anything insanely upsetting. In the seven years that have since passed, I have continued to study film, and gone on to write about it a whole bunch. And the launch of my Video Nasty page was the perfect excuse to revisit Cannibal Holocaust. This time around, it affected me in an entirely different way.

Not only was I veritably disturbed by its content, I also found myself pondering its ideas and motives and themes. There's no doubt that Deodato has always been something of a sensationalist in his work, and so I'm sure at least a fraction of his reason for making Cannibal Holocaust was essentially to be gross. But, it addresses other matters, and at least he does gross with utter conviction, and never stops short. He also managed to find himself a cast who evidently had few inhibitions and were suitable for manifesting the material. As a now serious observer of film, I saw this movie in a new light - one which I'm sure echoes, in part, what audiences in 1980 saw too.

Cannibal Holocaust is staged in two acts: Act 1 introduces us to Dr Harold Monroe, a New York anthropologist who leads a rescue mission into the Amazonian rainforest in hopes of finding a young film crew, missing in action. The crew went to film a documentary about an indigenous tribe of cannibals, and never returned. Although their expedition involves gruelling on-screen animal killing for food, Monroe's motives are ultimately peaceful, and when they reach the tribe's camp, he makes peace with the people. He then finds an altar made of human corpses and decorated with film reels. Bingo.

The reels are brought back to NY, where a guy from a broadcasting company wants to make the footage into a documentary. However, Monroe has already examined the films himself, and knows what horrors they contain. He insists on showing the reels, to prove just how unwatchable they are. The footage of the young film crew is Act 2, and is disgusting, reviling and quite brilliant. An absolute shining example of cinematic realism. The oldies are usually the goodies, but I don't think even Blair Witch captured such mind-bending horror from a handheld camera perspective. The continuous use of only two separate perspectives at any given time is a tough trick to keep up realistically, and Deodato pulls it off with utter fluency, to the point where it surely cannot be just a film.

Upon this second viewing, it became utterly apparent to me just why Deodato was formally charged with the murder of his cast members. Act 2 is a parallel universe to Act 1 in terms of behaviour. In his trip, Monroe makes a sign of peace by stripping naked and bathing in the river, which attracts the friendly attention of a group of naked native ladies. He integrates himself into their society, even reluctantly accepting their offering of human meat. He quickly succeeds in his mission by doing so and gets home to New York alive. The filmmaking gang are director Alan Yates, his girlfriend Faye and cameramen Jack and Mark. They all quickly succeed in proving themselves utterly depraved assholes with out of control sadistic tendencies. They start off by herding a tribe into a straw hut and setting it on fire, they then take turns in raping a local woman while Faye stands by and yells about wasting film.

The crew's treatment of the tribes is senseless and utterly cruel, and so one really wonders what they imagined would occur as a result of their behaviour. This is perhaps where the theme of media cruelty hits home the hardest: the crew film all of their shenanigans, with the aim of editing it all to look like warfare between two opposing tribes. One need only glance at any Daily Mail Online article to see not only atrociously below-standard spelling and grammar, but also ridiculous sensationalism created out of deliberate distortion of source material. An actress exits a restaurant with a suitably full belly, and suddenly she's 'fuelling pregnancy rumours'. A musician is  photoed looking 'worryingly thin' despite the warped coffee table and wine glass courtesy of Photoshop. The media is increasingly deceptive in its depictions of everything, and often unethical in its methods. This is clearly a theme constant throughout Cannibal Holocaust.

Act 2, or rather, the film crew it follows, goes wild in its depravity. Firstly, their guide Felipe is bitten by a snake, and in an almost seamless sequence, his leg is hurriedly amputated and cauterised against his will by the crew, and the snake hacked up. The intense mixture of fiction and reality worked into the production of each scene is what makes the lines eerily blur. The amputation, even by today's standards, is entirely convincing effects-wise, and so quickly followed by the obviously real footage of a snake being cut up, there's little in our subconscious to convince us that any of it is faked. The documentary-style shooting only heightens this.

The crew continue to slaughter animals (again, for real) and people for seemingly no other reason than to have fun and assert their dominance. They come strutting into the village with guns over their shoulders like rockstars walking onstage, so full of their own perfection. When a neighbouring tribe launch attack on the crew, they are soon made to look very foolish. It is admittedly good to see comeuppance for these degenerates. Cameraman Jack is impaled with a spear, and ringleader Alan barely hesitates to shoot him dead, so that they can film the tribe ripping him apart. There's team spirit for ya! This is one of those really exceptional sequences that I cannot figure out no matter how much I think. The tribe grab Jack's body, face still partially visible, and cut off his penis. I think I remember reading somewhere a theory that the body of a recently-killed cyclist was used. It doesn't really seem beyond any of them, all things considered. But looking closely at the still (the shot is continuous), that does not look like a prosthetic, especially by 1980 standards:

The now hysterical Faye is captured, gang raped and decapitated, while her loving caring boyfriend Alan looks on, filming the whole thing from behind the trees. The entire cast must have had it rough out in the jungle, but all the dragging around and struggling entirely naked through mud and forest must have been an absolute nightmare on many levels. I bet a long hot bath was in order when they each got back home. Having had their way with Faye, the cannibals see the fellas, advance, and we are given our first ever, in the history of cinema, 'camera lands in front of fallen cameraman' shot...

Back in the reality of NY, the thoroughly disturbed broadcaster people concede and Monroe orders the footage burned. End of movie.

This is definitely, alongside Last House On The Left, the most provocative and well made picture to grace the Video Nasty list. It is probably the nastiest too. In many of the other titles, my pre-imagined versions of infamous scenarios I'd heard of turned out to be far scarier than anything I eventually saw in the actual movies. Cannibal Holocaust is just as grizzly as it promises to be. It is totally there, in your face, inescapably real and brutal. The movie also caused a probably record-breaking plethora of controversy, firstly over the frequent animal cruelty, and secondly over the apparent torture and murder of an entire cast. People were convinced it was a snuff film, and Deodato was facing life imprisonment for the actors' deaths, and was forced to produce them all, alive and well, in court, as well as to reproduce several special effects, such as the infamous Impalement, to prove it had been faked.

The movie remains banned or heavily censored in some countries, and the wide outrage and trauma the movie caused is definitely testament to its effectiveness. And thankfully, the population of intellectuals out there recognised the film's social commentary. Monroe concludes, 'Who are the real cannibals?' All of the cruelty the crew filmed in order to edit into alternative narratives, incriminate them all as sadistic numbskulls with absolute lack of human emotion or empathy. Ironically, they went to the Amazon to document a supposedly cruel tribe of cannibals, who were backwards enough to kill and eat their own kind. But what does it say about three grown men from a civilised country, who laugh and holler while taking turns raping a girl, all whilst rolling around in the mud like animals? The very act plays out animalistically.

Monroe's initial visit to the forest demonstrated that peace is rewarded with peace. The crew's nihilistic cruelty was met with nihilistic cruelty. Cannibal Holocaust really examines the cycle of cruelty as human nature dictates it. Are the tribespeople the real enemies, or the real barbarians? It could be argued that the scariest thing about the movie is what the Everyman is capable of inflicting upon the innocent, and it is a bold move to cast the typical native antagonist in an anti-hero light.

Can I condone the animal cruelty? No, I just cannot. I spent all my teenage years as a strict vegetarian who once threw up after accidentally ingesting a gelatine-containing product, and I abhor animal cruelty in any form. That said, I do not spend my days and nights planning the hijacking of animal testing labs either. I have to say that every scene of animal killing in Cannibal Holocaust turned my stomach and unsettled me greatly. What especially struck me was how long the animals took to die. I don't know if this was recognised and used as some kind of metaphor, but it upset me greatly. Far more so than any scenario played out on humans. Probably because of the element of innocence in an animal, and perhaps that is another point to linger on. What we are to recognise is the senseless suffering of an innocent at the hands of a barbarian, and how (whether with animals or humans) once violence is initiated, it becomes a brutal cycle.

Cannibal Holocaust is a brilliant, pioneering and overwhelmingly effective film. Deodato cemented himself as a horror maker with real balls, and launched a horror subgenre that is now a well and truly flogged dead horse. His will always be the reigning supreme.