The Horror, The Horror
29/10/07 22:06 Filed in: Cable
Guys
I've spent the last two weeks embracing what's current in horror films and what I've found in the land of cinematic blood geysers and death by flayed flesh has been surprising.
The most fun was to be had at the Grindhouse, cinematic "double" of the sort that once made an 8:30 showing at the long defunct National Cinema I (or II for that matter) such a fantastic way to hang with your buddies until well into the next morning.
The two films that make up the double feature are out on DVD now, in packaging that doesn't do the original concept justice. As I understand it, Grindhouse played in US cinemas as two films running one after the other, with preview trailers for some equally over the top concepts, such as Danny Trejo in Machete and Sybil Danning in Werewolf women of the SS.
To finesse the feel of movies that had been playing just a little too long on the moviehouse circuit, the finished films were subjected to digital destruction, with scratches, variable colour from "reel" to "reel," bubbling film and even a "missing reel" thrown in for good measure.
The two films are a hoot. Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof is a spooky flirtation followed by a long chase scene with throaty American hot rods barrelling down empty highways and hot women in shorts everywhere. It's pretty good, but it doesn't hold a candle to Roberto Rodriguez' Planet Terror, which seizes B feature zombie movies by the throat and gives them a squeeze that makes them cough up blood. You can't stop looking at Rose McGowan, even after she has what appears to be an M-16 jammed into her amputated stump in a scene of penis envy that will make most men's equipment shrivel.
But for all the shambling zombies craving brains and bubbling flesh that surges into hilariously grotesque balloons of pus-filled zombie crud, these really aren't horror movies. You aren't so much scared as astonished by the bravura on display.
A better contender is Captivity, an intriguing effort at examining mind control via implied torture that puts a wide-eyed and blond Elisha Cuthbert in the traditional role of screaming babe. After the usual torture porn overtures, like showers full of acid and blended body parts and blood force-fed down our heroine's throat, the film takes a turn for the thriller, skipping out on all the promise of dismemberment and horrific bloody death to treat us to a morality tale of a woman empowered. It's Hostel with a conscience and a vengeful heart.
In the hope of finding something that might make me twitch even once, I persuaded my nephew and niece to skip out on yet another instalment of the now annoyingly predictable Saw franchise, a see Saw that I abandoned a long time ago, to catch a late-night showing of David Slade's 30 days of night.
I'll say this. They went into the cinema grumpily and a little fretful and left utterly silent and more than a little respectful. Slade's effort went some way toward establishing my horror cred with yutes (or is that yoots?) in my family one-third my age.
Vampires are just too cool to leave alone for long. From Christopher Lee's theatrical posturings in a cape to the leather-clad, too white for the sun, post-Matrix Underworld, the sexuality of plunging sharp fangs into a helpless, pulsating neck has remained intact.
That's part of what make's Slade's adaptation of Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith's cruelly graphic novel so utterly chilling. The vampires in 30 days aren't cool, they tear at their prey like wolves in a bloodlust, speak a thick Slavic language (when they speak at all) and treat the town like a 30 day free pass in a blood-filled grocery with no cashiers.
After an elaborately measured introduction to the situation and his characters, Slade can't control his impatience and lurches into a blood frenzy that seems sudden and out of sorts with the moody buildup he begins the film with. All too soon, the vampires become bogeymen preying with predictable savagery on available veins.
But that just makes them good, indomitable nemeses for the good guys. What's really scary about 30 Days and really takes it over the top is the fragile humanity of the victims as they dwindle in number. Watching them scurry around from building to building is like watching chickens flee a butcher's clutches. In that weakness, they must make some truly difficult and morally troubling decisions and Slade doesn't make any of these choices either easy, obvious, or palatable.
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