ebook img

Fear Without Frontiers: Horror Cinema Across the Globe PDF

321 Pages·2003·1.51 MB·English
Save to my drive
Quick download
Download
Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.

Preview Fear Without Frontiers: Horror Cinema Across the Globe

FEAR WITHOUT FRONTIERS: HORROR CINEMA ACROSS THE GLOBE First edition published July 2003 by FAB Press FAB Press Grange Suite Surrey Place Godalming GU71EY England, U.K. www.fabpress.com Text copyright © 2003 Steven Jay Schneider and individual contributors. Design and layout by Harvey Fenton. Front cover design by Deborah Bacci, Chris Charlston and Harvey Fenton. This Volume copyright © FAB Press 2003 World Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the Publisher. Copyright of illustrations is the property of the production or distribution companies concerned. These illustrations are reproduced here in the spirit of publicity, and whilst every effort has been made to trace the copyright owners, the editor and publishers apologise for any omissions and will undertake to make any appropriate changes in future editions of this book if necessary. Front cover illustration: Maa ki Shakti (aka Ammoni) (India). Back cover illustrations: top right: Khooni Panja (India), middle left: Exorcismo Negro (Brazil), bottom right: Seytan (Turkey) Frontispiece illustration: Dany Carrel discovers the secret of the stone women in the shadows of the Mill tower, MM of the Stone Women (Italy). Contents page illustration: Promotional montage for Sohail Shaikh's Ab Kya Hoga (India). A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 1 903254 15 9 Fear Without Frontiers Horror Cinema Across the Globe edited by Steven Jay Schneider Contents Preface 7 - Kim Newman Introduction 11 - Steven Jay Schneider PART I: ARTISTS, ACTORS, AUTEURS Madmen, visionaries and freaks: the films of Alejandro Jodorowsky 15 - Pam Keesey Coffin Joe and José Mojica Marins: strange men for strange times 27 - André Barcinski Return of the phantom: Maxu Weibang's Midnight Song 39 - David Robinson Enfant terrible: the terrorful, wonderful world of Anthony Wong 45 - Lisa Odham Stokes & Michael Hoover The rain beneath the earth: an interview with Nonzee Nimibutr 61 - Mitch Davis Cinema of the doomed: the tragic horror of Paul Naschy 69 - Todd Tjersland Sex and death, Cuban style: the dark vision of Jorge Molina 81 - Ruth Goldberg; followed by an interview with the director, "Testing Molina," by Steven Jay Schneider PART II: FILMS, SERIES, CYCLES Fantasmas del cine Mexicano: the 1930s horror film cycle of Mexico 93 - Gary D. Rhodes The cosmic mill of Wolfgang Preiss: Giorgio Ferroni's Mill of the Stone Women 105 - David Del Valle The "lost" horror film series: the Edgar Wallace krimis 111 - Ken Hanke The exotic pontianaks 125 - Jan Uhde & Yvonne Uhde Playing with genre: defining the Italian giallo 135 - Gary Needham The Italian zombie film: from derivation to invention 161 - Donato Totaro Austrian psycho killers & home invaders: the horror-thrillers Angst & Funny Games 175 - Jiirgen Felix & Marcus Stiglegger PART III: GENRE HISTORIES AND STUDIES Coming of age: the South Korean horror film 185 - Art Black Between appropriation and innovation: Turkish horror cinema 205 - Kaya Ozkaracalar Witches, spells and politics: the horror films of Indonesia 219 - Stephen Gladwin The unreliable narrator: subversive storytelling in Polish horror cinema 231 - Nathaniel Thompson The Beast from Bollywood: a history of the Indian horror film 243 - Pete Tombs In a climate of terror: the Filipino monster movie 255 - Mauro Feria Tumbocon, Jr. French revolution: the secret history of Gallic horror movies 265 - David Kalat PART IV: CASE STUDY - JAPANESE HORROR CINEMA Pain threshhold: the cinema of Takashi Miike 285 - Rob Daniel & Dave Wood; followed by an interview with the director, "When cynicism becomes art," by Julien Fonfrede The Japanese horror film series: Ring and Eko Eko Azarak 295 - Ramie Tateishi The urban techno-alienation of Sion Sono's Suicide Club 305 - Travis Crawford Notes on contributors 312 Index 314 Preface Kim Newman Of all screen genres, only the western and Edgar Allan Poe - who half-aspired to a the musical were Invented and developed European sensibility even as he primarily or even exclusively in the USA.1 incarnated the first great stereotype of And yet, in almost all cases, the dominant American letters, the alcoholic newspa strains of any given genre, identifying perman - most of the subjects of early cycles and stand-alone individual master- American horror films were European. works, are American: the gangster film, the Chaney's greatest grotesque characters melodrama, the war movie, the romantic were French, in The Hunchback of Notre comedy, science fiction. Only the martial Dame (1923) and The Phantom of the arts movie grew up away from Hollywood, a Opera (1925), while 1930s monsters non-American alternative to the western. hailed from that imaginary Mittel Europa The mainstream of the horror film is which is always "Transylvania" whether or American, though the defining cycle of the not it is actually supposed to be 1930s, commenced at Universal Studios Czechoslovakia (Mark of the Vampire, by Tod Browning's Dracula and James 1935) or the made-up "Kleinschloss" (The Whale's Frankenstein (both 1931), is a Vampire Bat, 1933), Haiti (White Zombie, synthesis of Hollywood industrial 1932), the South Seas (King Kong, 1933), production methods with a primarily Ancient Egypt (The Mummy, 1932), (though not exclusively) British literary fogbound London (Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde, tradition (Bram Stoker, Mary Shelley, R.L. 1932, The Lodger, 1944), Paris (Mad Love, Stevenson) and the expressionist visual 1935) or the Far East (The Mask of Fu 1 Nevertheless, the techniques coined by the run of silent Manchu, 1932). Some films even doubled western owes a great deal to the horror films from Germany. Many of the the alienation effect by bringing monsters pre-clnematic key personnel in the first American horror from remote locales to a contemporary traditions of bandit boom, often employed by Universal London that still seemed mid-Victorian by tales found in every culture in the world Pictures and then taken up by competitor Yankee standards, as witness the and the musical to studios eager to get in on the act, came Transylvanian visitors of Dracula and many European varieties of theatre- from the United Kingdom (James Whale, Dracula's Daughter (1936), and the with-music. Boris Karloff, Claude Rains, Charles Tibetan curse of The WereWolf of London Laughtoh, Colin Clive, Lionel Atwill) or had (1935). Even the odd American-set horror, 2 Chaney was experience in the German film industry like Warner Brothers' Dr. X (1932) and never quite the horror star Forrest (Bela Lugosi, Karl Freund, Edgar G. Ulmer, Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933), took J. Ackerman would Paul Leni, Curt Siodmak, Peter Lorre, pains to establish a "European" feel, like him to have Michael Curtiz). The death of home-grown casting Englishman Lionel Atwill as been. His career range, taking in macabre icon Lon Chaney2 after the foreign-sounding madmen (Dr. Xavier, pirates In Treasure completion of his only talkie (The Unholy Ivan Igor) who menace all-American Fay Island (1920) to the drill instructor of Go Three, 1930) meant that for Americans Wray and handing directing chores over to Tell the Marines horror would speak with a European the versatile Hungarian Michael Curtiz, (1927), marks him accent, whether the sly Anglo-Indian lisp who deftly laid Technicolor expressionist out to be as much a precursor of of Karloff or the drawled Hungarian touches over the typical Warners US big chameleon cadences of Lugosi. city feel. The Curtiz films make something character actor of the disjunction between mad science stars like Alec Aside from the persistent run of films Guinness and Peter Murders in the Rue Morgue, 1932; The experiments or bodies encased in wax and Sellers as it does a fast-talking, cynical reporters who joke monster man like Black Cat, 1934) drawn from the works of Karloff or Lugosi. horror cinema across the globe 7 preface about Prohibition and snarl their copy down the telephone like refugees from The FrontPage (1931). The 'Universal' style of horror stayed in vogue for fifteen years, modified a little by the arrival of a new American horror star in the doggily unlikely Lon Chaney, Jr. - his most successful vehicle, The Wolf Man (1941), casts him as a Yankee who goes back to his roots in a backlot Wales and mingles with all manner of Brits and gypsies, accepting the script's curse via a bite from Bela Lugosi that also suggests a curse of typecasting being passed on. In the 1940s, the most invigorating new cycle came from the Russian-born Val Lewton, whose first features were directed by the Frenchman Jacques Tourneur (Cat People, 1942; I Walked With a Zombie, 1943; The Leopard Man, 1943) and set in the Americas3 but who called in American directors Mark Robson and Robert Wise even as his films cast Karloff and looked to Greece (Isle of the Dead, 1945), Scotland (The Body Snatcher, 1945) or London (Bedlam, 1946). In the 1950s, a fresh approach to horror was established by The Thing From Another World (1951), which at once looked further afield than Romania for its monster but emphasised the very Americanness of its human characters and combined gothic shadows with the fast pace and tough dialogue associated with its supposed producer, Howard Hawks. The gothic came back via England's Hammer Films (their breakthrough feature was The Curse of Frankenstein, 1957) and the most (1968) and The Exorcist (1973), which came completely American cycle of horror to dominate the genre in ways still being emerged in Roger Corman's series of Poe- felt. Almost all the auteurs cited above have derived films starring the effete but non- made films based on the works of Stephen European Vincent Price (commencing with King,4 who became the default American 3 Though all are The Fall of the House of Usher, 1960). foreign-tinged: Cat horror writer after Poe (H.P. Lovecraft never People is about a Independent American filmmakers like quite took pole position) and represents the Serbian curse, I Walked with a George A. Romero (Night of the Living Dead, most monolithically American face the Zombie concerns 1968), Wes Craven (The Last House on the genre has ever had. They have also all Caribbean voodoo Left, 1972), Larry Cohen (It's Alive!, 1975), worked through their combination of debt and The Leopard Man transfers a the Canadian David Cronenberg (Shivers, to tradition and desire to escape from it by novel set in South 1976), John Carpenter (Halloween, 1978) making revisionary vampire movies: America to New and Tobe Hooper (The Texas Chain Saw Cronenberg's Rabid (1978), Romero's Martin Mexico. Massacre, 1974) might have rebelled (1978), Hooper's Safem's Lot (1979), 4 Hooper's Salem's against the conventions of the Universal- Cohen's A Return to Salem's Lot (1986), Lot (1979), Hammer-Hollywood style when they set out Craven's A Vampire in Brooklyn (1995), Cronenberg's The to make committed, extreme, gruesome, Carpenter's Vampires (1999). Dead Zone (1983), Carpenter's genuinely scary, politically provocative The figure of the vampire has come to CCohhriesnti'nse A ( 1R9e8tu3r)n, to horror films, but they nevertheless consti stand for the horror film as the figure of the Salem's Lot (1986), tuted a mutation of the mainstream. From cowboy does for the western, and a handy Romero's The Dark the low-budget zombie, slasher and way of encapsulating the horror film in any HCraalfv (e1n9's9 3A) . venereal mutant movies that invigorated culture is to examine its vampire movies. Nightmare on Elm American horror in the 1970s rose entire Vampire movies have been made in Turkey S!reer(1984) is cycles, including the larger-budgeted Devil (Drakula Istanbul'da. 1953), India (Bandh heavily King- influenced. movies that followed Rosemary's Baby Darwaza, 1990), Hong Kong (the Mr. 8 fear without frontiers preface Vampire series), Italy (L'ultima preda del The first important studies of the vampiro/Playgirls and the Vampire, 1960), history of the horror film, by Carlos Clarens Spain (El gran amor del Conde (An Illustrated History of the Horror Film, Dracula/Dracula's Great Love, 1972), 1967) and Ivan Butler (The Horror Film, France (Le frisson des vampires/Sex and 1967), made the development of genre a the Vampire, 1970), Germany (Derfluch der story, conceding its roots with Méliès in grunen augen/Cave of the Living Dead, France and the Expressionists in Germany 1963), Korea (Wolnyoui Han, 1980), the but then following an Anglo-American Philippines (The Vampire People, 1966), narrative with very occasional diversions South Africa (Pure Blood, 2001), Greece like the Italianate horrors of Mario Bava. (Dracula Tan Exarchia, 1983), Taiwan Since the 1960s, this has been the accepted (Elusive Song of the Vampire, 1987), and natural way of looking at genre - until Denmark (Dracula's Ring, 1978), Malaysia recently for the very practical reason that (Pontianak, 1956), Belgium (Le rouge aux most commentators writing in English had levres / Daughters of Darkness, 1971), probably seen every American or British Argentina (Sangre de Vírgenes, 1968), horror film ever made but only a scattering Brazil (As sete vampiras /7 Vampires, of genre movies from other territories. It 1985), Cuba (¡Vampiros en la was a simple matter to dismiss, say, the Habana!/Vampires in Havana, 1985), Mexican gothic cycle of the late 1950s and Mexico (El vampiro/The Vampire, 1958), early 1960s by ridiculing the likes of El Japan (Chi o Suu Me/Lake of Dracula, Santo contra las mujeres vampiro (Samson 1971), the Netherlands (Bloedverwanten / vs. the Vampire Women, 1961), or to Blood Relations, 1977), Australia (Thirst, shudder at the "ineptitude" of Jesus Franco 1979) and the former Soviet Union on the strength of an hour-long cut-down of (Pyuschye Krovy/Blood-Suckers, 1991) - La comtesse noire (Female Vampire, 1973). and though it took a surprisingly long time Of course, the French magazine Midi-Minuit (discounting US-backed efforts like the Fantastique was more open to films from Subspecies films), even Romania has gotten non-Anglophone cultures, and Gallic in on the act, with the 2002 release of Vlad enthusiasm for Bava was caught by British nemuritorul/Dracula the Impaler. critics frustrated at the censor-imposed withholding of La maschera del demonio In each case, the elements come from (The Mask of Satan, 1960) from the United English-language horror literature and film, Kingdom even as AIP was hammering out with the archetypal figure of the cloaked Americanised versions of his films for Dracula reincarnated in a local context and kiddie matinees. set among conventions drawn from specific lore. Obviously, in vampire movies made in It is possible that English-language non-Christian countries, the monster is not releases did no favours. To this day, there repelled by the cross - but might shrink is an oppressive tendency on the part of from a statue of the Buddha or the aum American writers when discussing 'foreign' symbol. Frequently, the fanged blood- horror films to use slapdash American drinker of Hollywood and Hammer is release titles - listing La maschera as Black commingled with whatever variant features Sunday, or even to colonise Brazil's major in national myth, like the hopping, mummy- horror icon by tagging Jose Mojica Marins's look jiangshi of Chinese films. Occasionally, alter ego "Coffin Joe" rather than Zé do there seems even to be a deliberate setting Caixâo, as if a character as strange and ^ As is made of different horror traditions against each specifically resonant could be processed at especially obvious other, for satirical purpose in ¡Vampiros en Ellis Island and repackaged as a samba by those scrambled versions made by la Habana!, in which languidly decadent Freddy Krueger. To a certain breed of Jerry Warren, who European vampires and aggressively camp-follower, the poor dubbing is would transform La capitalist American gangster vampires are essential to appreciation of films that can Momia Azteca (1957) and La Casa both put in their places by a revolutionary therefore be sneered at for their technical del Terror (1960) Cuban half-breed; or just to lever in a ineptitude and recycled for contemptible into Attack of the contrast, as in As sete vampiras, whose horror host shows, cut into with pathetic Mayan Mummy (1964) and Face of cloaked Count-type turns out to be innocent jokes and contextualised as trash. It's an the Screaming of vampire murders actually committed by a especial irony that this unearned superi Werewolf (1965) by blood-sucking plant, or the several recent ority is achieved in the process of intefrrocumtt itnhge fooroigtaingael Hong Kong films that take a cue from Americanisation in that the bad dubbing with new material Hammer's The Legend of the Seven Golden was usually done Stateside - the average shot with flat lighting, locked- Vampires (1973) by mixing Transylvanian- Mexican horror movie is lit, art-directed, down camera, non style vampires with their hopping Chinese photographed and edited to a high existent art direction cousins. standard,5 and the adoption of different and endless pointless dialogue. horror cinema across the globe 9

Description:
Included in The Guardian's list of the top ten film books of 2003! (Guardian Guide, December 20-26, 2003) Horror movies have always found receptive audiences in their home countries. Finally, the genre's most colourful and least familiar directors and stars are given their due in editor Steven Schne
See more

The list of books you might like

Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.