From Hammer to Horror

Halls of Horror began life as House of Hammer, one of Britain's premier horror magazines. The initial focus was on Hammer and comic adaptations of the studio's work. Eventually, the scope of the title was broadened to include horror from other studios and independents.

I always enjoyed the input of Tony Crawley, a correspondent who reported on horror and fantasy from the genre's far-flung corners of the globe. In a sense, reading Crawley was like getting updates of Phil Hardy's 'Aurum Film Encyclopedia' (the Horror volume).  

 

The above ad mat is an example of rare poster art the magazine often published. Much of this art did not appear on video sleeves, but was used by producers to sell the film to distributors at festivals such as AFM, Cannes, and MIFED.

 

This piece of Unhinged art is really atmospheric and beautiful. Shame the film possessed none of its mystery.

 

This Vampire Lovers ad mat is included in this issue to support a career article on actress Ingrid Pitt.

The name on the fan letter above will be familiar to fans of the book 'Killing For Culture', one of my favorite genre film books of all time on the subject of Mondo/'Death Film'.

Written in '93 just prior to the explosion of internet access to atrocities beyond imagining a decade earlier, the Kerekes/David Slater book is ripe for a follow-up, and I sincerely hope the authors take up the task.

 Another book begging for a serious update is David Hebditch and the late Nick Anning's monumental tome on the global porn industry, Porn Gold. Published in '88, a few years prior to the arrival of on-line pornography, the landscape so vividly drawn in the book has changed dramatically in the twenty-five years since; an update would not lack for material.

Kerekes mentions Ramsey Campell in his letter, and I agree with his sentiments. Campbell has always provided an astute veteran's view of the genre. In this issue's 'Campbell's Column', the horror writer revisits James Herbert's The Fog, a book he initially publicly criticized for its violence, fearing it was inappropriate for Herbert's large schoolboy readership.

I was a schoolboy when I devoured the scene Campbell refers to (penises are lopped off in a school gymnasium with garden shears), but I don't remember feeling anything but excitement and glee at the images his writing evoked.

Campbell concludes:

"I believe there is no worthwhile reason to write fiction other than to try to tell the truth. Herbert does, and never seeks to hide the contradictions of his personality. More power to him."

Well said, Ramsey.   

The Cinefantastique

Frederick S. Clarke's Cinefantastique magazine, launched in the early 70's, one of the greatest ever, was inspired by Eric Losfeld's midi/minuit Fantastique, which debuted in the 60's.

Losfeld's magazine (entirely in French) was the first in publishing history to cover the genre seriously. Clarke picked up the baton in the U.S. and produced dozens of stunning issues (with spectacular cover art) devoted to little known luminaries such as Hans J. Salter, unseen cult films (at the time) such as The Wicker Man, and directors such as David Cronenberg and George Pal.

 

 

For mine, the magazine became less interesting when the genre itself became more mainstream (ironically). Clarke's double issue devoted to Star Wars, then subsequent issues devoted to fare such as Close Encounters of the Third Kind, while extraordinary for their penetrative examination of these cultural phenomena, were indicative of a new, more commercial direction for the magazine, a direction that saw more marginalized genre films receiving less attention. 

 

After years of struggling to pay the bills, it's understandable that Clarke embraced what sold. Only an independently wealthy man could have chosen to ignore the call of commerce.

Although the magazine did eventually die, leaving an almost unrecognizable corpse, Clarke's spirit of affording the genre some serious consideration endured with magazines such as Tim Lucas's Video Watchdog, Richard Klemensen's Little Shoppe of Horrors, Gary J. Svehla's Midnight Marquee, and the French L'Ecran Fantastique.

Even though there is a deluge of information on the genre these days, there is still something very special about something you can hold in your hand that is dedicated to in-depth analysis of it. Print possesses a permanence, an authority, a sincerity that data on a computer screen does not.

I treasure my collections of these wonderful magazines, and still feel the texture of the connection they make to my childhood. On Saturday mornings, I'd catch the 'Red Rattler' train into Melbourne's CBD, bound up the station steps, flee into the busy street, and sprint four blocks to Space Age Books, a titan of destinations that was more like a church than a bookshop. It offered me the safety of a church, and there was reverence for that which I held dear.

Entering Space Age Books and its kaleidoscope of wonders was akin to arriving on another planet, a planet where my kind were welcome, where flights of imagination were encouraged, and where our hearts were consoled with our minds.

These magazines still smell of that long deceased bookstore, a brick and glass monument to dreaming.

Current Hollywood Offerings

 

The Artist was an underwhelming experience for me. Old hat plotting with a cinematic gimmick. Now and then, director Michel Hazanavicius does some novel things with spare sound effects, and the recreations of late 20's/early 30's Hollywood are close to exceptional, but the film followed an utterly predictable narrative line.

I'm sure there's a reason why the film is so simplistic -- it needed to be in order to raise funds. Can you imagine trying to finance a silent film with no big stars and a complex, unpredictable plot? I can't. Clearly, the makers of this couldn't, either, so they've gone with a story that would have been boo'ed out of the theater if it had been stapled to a sound film in color.

Yes, the dog is good, the actors are great (Berenice Bejo, in particular, was truly sublime as 'Pepper Miller', and is one of the most beautiful women I've seen on screen for a long time), and the cinematography is just fine, but I got listless watching it all unfold. There are no surprises.

This beat out Hugo for the Best Picture Oscar?  Give me a fucking break.

On the subject of boring, I didn't much like Hammer's remake of The Woman in Black. It's becoming more and more apparent to me that remakes are for the very young, and the not-so-young who don't go to movies much and have no sense whatsoever of movie history. If you're a dedicated cinephile like me, watching remakes defeats one of the primary purposes of moviegoing -- being surprised. Remakes, like today's trailers, are predicated on the moronic belief that nobody will see anything they don't already know about. Even better, they can watch the trailer and get to know every plot point and every important "surprise" in the movie before seeing it. Makes sense to a fuckwit, doesn't it?!  Are human beings really that unadventurous? Yeah, they are.

What wrong with The Woman in Black is its dull conventionality. It serves up every ghost story cliche you've seen and heard a million times... unless you were born after 2005. Daniel Radcliffe, attempting to distance himself from Harry Potter, is miscast as -- wait for it! -- a widower with a four-year-old son. Yes, Harry, we're expected to believe, has lived long enough to meet a girl, court her, marry her, have a son, bury his bride, and resume life. Oh, yeah, he made time for a law degree, too.

 Father, Husband, Widower, Lawyer:
Who are they kidding?

Considering the fact that Radcliffe only got out of bloody Hogworts a year ago, he comes across here as a teenager  playing dress-ups for a bunch of easily impressed toddlers.  Actually, I'm not even sure toddlers would buy this ruse. Radcliffe is a very good actor, and he's done some excellent non-Harry work such as December Boys, but this is just commercially-driven casting that hurts the film.

Will we next see Emma Watson playing Linda Lovelace in the porno star's upcoming biopic?

It is great to see Hammer producing movies again and I love the new Hammer screen logo with images from its glorious past, but I hope the studio embraces some original ideas sooner rather than later.

Last and least: Denzel Washington's Safe House. I urge you to watch the trailer and be satisfied that you've seen the movie. This is Tony Scott's latest film, isn't it? No, the director is Daniel Espinosa, but he's clearly determined to make a new Tony Scott film. But, since Tony is still alive and kicking, it's a pointless exercise to impersonate him. This is more crap about yet another "rogue agent" who's being hunted by the CIA because -- please stand by for an original idea! --  he's carrying information that will embarrass them. Hopefully, you're still standing by. I am.

What pickled retard is greenlighting this shit? It's hard to imagine anybody getting excited by this script, let alone throwing a hundred million dollars at it.

The action, as per usual, is frantic, disorganized, and headache-inducing; Washington plays a dramatic mosaic of his last dozen roles; and, as expected, the final revelation served up is about as shocking as discovering your vomit stinks.

This stinks about as much as that. Maybe a little more.

Nuns That Bite

Just released on Toei Video this past week,Yuji Makiguchi's Nuns That Bite (Onna gokumon-cho: Hikisakareta niso; '77) has been doing the theatrical rounds in Japan for some time, but has been MIA on DVD.

On the avmaniacs forum, one writer mentioned hearing that the film is the "Japanese equivalent of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" (in fact and spirit). Having just watched the pristine DVD, I can hit that rumor on the head. It's a stretch to say the film has any resemblance to Tobe Hooper's rugged masterpiece. In short, it's a Japanese nunsploitation film that, content-wise, feels like Teruo Ishii-lite. Ishii, for the uninitiated, directed such works as Horrors of Malformed Men, Orgies of Edo, and Love and Crime. He also helmed a number of torture-themed flicks for the same studio, but it is with Love and Crime (also reviewed on this blog), with its glorious catalog of freaks and visual atrocities, that this film shares common virtues.

 The set-up is basic and a little protracted. A woman on the run is raped, rescued, then raped again. Escaping, she heads for the hills and finds safe haven at a convent. After becoming a  postulant (trainee nun), she catches her fellow sisters engaging in lesbianism, fighting over nothing, hurling snakes at each other, and engaging in mild flesh eating. For a film with this title, the amount of cannibalism on show is disappointing.

Compared to the rich convent life presented in Norifumi Suzuki's School of the Holy Beast, the convent in Nuns That Bite is a more modest affair. It's a series of rooms in which nuns sleep, make out, and act crazy. The Mother Superior is MILF material (I guess MSILF is more accurate) who oversees various punishments and enjoys the services of a strange boy-in-waiting (her son perhaps?) who appears to exert quite a bit of power over the sisters. This fellow proves himself quite the first-rate tattletale when he reports on our heroine's investigation into the convent's non-religious activities. Not surprisingly, she pays a painful price for the little shit's loose lips.

The films sounds marginally better in synopsis than it actually is. At times, it's a little slow and pedestrian, and lacks the cinematic energy someone like Suzuki or Ishii would have brought to it. Various bloody atrocities are served up with glee such as a headless body, a severed head, bones stripped of flesh, human meat BBQ, and various stabbings and piercings. The lesbian lovemaking is erotic enough without becoming repetitious, and there are some deformed, freakish characters who should have been given more screen time and some story relevance. One sequence involving a crazy woman  performing a religious ritual and acting like she's on LSD has the Ishii feel, and could have passed as a deleted scene from Horrors of Malformed Men. There is also a psychedelic dance number.

 For director Makiguchi, this is fairly restrained material. Previously, he directed the brutal, visceral Shogun's Sadism (aka Joys of Torture 2: Oxen Split Torturing) and the nasty Bizarre Crimes of Post-War Japan. Nuns That Bite was his last theatrical feature. 

At sixty-nine minutes, the film is very short, but it feels longer because there's not much plot to speak of.
Still, great to see this little-seen cult treat in the daylight at last, and recommended for adventurous film fans, of course.

Important note:  

As the film is not subtitled in English, my review is 

substantially biased by my inability to fully comprehend 

and experience the film as it is meant to be experienced.

The Wonderful Mervyn Peake

 

Writer and illustrator Mervyn Peake, born in 1911, was best known for his stellar evocations of Treasure Island, Alice in Wonderland, and The Hunting of the Snark, and the wonderful Titus Groan ('41).  Personally, I'm also a big fan of his script for the superb radio play The Eye of the Beholder.

 

His 'Study of a girl from Edgware Road' ('38) is mesmerizing, typical of his striking style. 

 

The above illustration, from the book 'Witchcraft in England' ('45), has a wonderful gritty quality that, for some reason, makes me think of the beast men of Island of Lost Souls. 

Many of the subjects of Peake's work seem to be in possession of damaged souls, and it is this status that makes them so compelling for me. We connect with these outcasts and loners because they appear ready to challenge their condition.

This knowing child, 'Clare' ('49), is really special.

I urge you to hunt down Mervyn Peake - Writings and Drawings ('74; St. Martin's Press).

Sadly, Peake died at just 57.

Alarma Mother Lode

  

Prior to a journey recently taken, I hit the Alarma (magazine) mother lode, and couldn't be happier about it -- despite the fact that nobody depicted in the magazine itself is particularly happy.

Every now and then, we need to reset the counter, energize, regroup. Call it what you want, but us humans we need a break from the grind, the hussle, the tide of hypocrisy, and that day finally arrived for me. I'd been as busy as a one-armed juggler editing a doco I'm very fond of, writing a screenplay, and finishing a novel. So, with some business pending in LA, I planned my culture hunt (that would make it c-unt for short), and left the house with an important address given to me by a friend. He knew of my penchant for all things Mexican and bizarre, and felt inclined to steer me in a fresh direction.

My idea of recreation (solo recreation, anyway) is usually movies and bookshops, so I'm constantly tracking the global release patterns and whereabouts of various movies. I never stop looking for the wild and wonderful books and magazines that aren't so easy to find, and my natural curiosity is rarely dampened. Gems like Alarma can't be found on-line or at a traditional newsstand. Unless you're living in Mexico, you've got to click into predator mode to track down these totally unique and audacious weekly magazines, you've got to be hungry, you've got to kick down doors, spill some blood, and venture into neighborhoods where nobody knows your name (not in English, anyway!)

After a visit to the wonderful Luis De Jesus bookshop on Hollywood Boulevard where I picked up a book on creepy dolls and a Bukowski bio, I headed for East LA with the fresh address. There, in LA's answer to darkest Tijuana, I stumbled upon the Alarma mother lode.

At first, I thought the Alarmas in the foggy plastic bag, placed high on a shelf to avoid the eyes of kiddies,  were copies of the same issue. Fortunately, I was dead wrong. When I presented the protective bag to the cashier, she tore it open and asked me if I wanted everything in the bag or just one issue?  I replied "Just one issue," but when six more fanned out across the counter like a lucky hand in a game of cards, my pulse quickened and I blurted: "I'll take 'em all. Gracias!"  I then added a cheerful  "Buenos noces!" as I departed with my brown paper bag of crime scene goodness. I had such a spring in my step, I could have leapt tall buildings with Superman.

I drove home in a state of excitement while listening to the Drive soundtrack and a podcast on, you guessed it!, obscure soundtracks (Mr. One-Track-Mind Rides Again!) Now and then, I'd pull an Alarma out of the bag and leaf through it impatiently under the dim interior light.

I'm sure my idea of a great day is several miles south of yours, but I'm certainly happiest when I'm following my own sun.

Enjoy these treats.

Hong Kong Movie Mags

Just a selection of mags I've recently re-visited and re-packed. 

Hong Kong Film Magazine (USA)

Publisher: Grant Foerster

Editor-in-Chief: Rolanda Chu

Contributors: Rolanda Chu, David Hernandez, Grant Foerster, Beth Accomando, Vera Chan, Jade Li, Terry Chao

 

The 80's and 90's truly were a glorious time for Hong Kong cinema and Hong Kong-themed magazines produced by both rabid fans and professionals. 

China Blitz (Australia)

Publisher/Editor: Kris Kotsiakos

Contributors: Kris Kotsiakos, Frank Bren, Van Lee, Mark Savage

 

I was always on the hunt for new or old  issues of CINEMart. Although I read no Chinese, the mag had an impressive color section and usually included a poster.

Cinemart (Hong Kong)

Publisher/Chief Editor: Hin Kwong Lau

Although not strictly focused on Hong Kong content only, this ratty little gem was right there when Hong Kong films were turning unsuspecting Westerners into salivating fanboys and lifelong aficionados.   

Crimson Celluloid (Australia)

Editors: Brett Garten, David Nolte, Ant Timpson

Contributors: Michael Helms, Tony Egan, Shane Harrison, Dr. Vern Pullen, David Szurek, Joey Inferno, Richard Kuipers, Stewart Robinson, Don R. Kebab, Brett Garten, Ant Timpson, David Nolte

 

City Entertainment focused on anything exciting playing in Hong Kong, be it Hong Kong-produced or American. Full color throughout, it featured stunning poster reproductions, box office reports, laser disc news, and actor/director/producer profiles.

I picked up my first copy on a Cathay Pacific flight to Hong Kong.

City Entertainment (Hong Kong)

I had a subscription to this for several years. Never less than interesting.

MAMA (Martial Arts Movie Associates) (USA)

Publisher/Editor: Ric Meyers

Contributors: Ric Meyers, Bill and Karen Palmer, William Connolly   

 

Another idiosyncratic winner with a mountain of great content.

Hong Kong Film Connection (USA)

Publisher/Editor: Clyde Gentry III

Contributors: Sam Ho, Joey O'Bryan, Barrie Pattison, Curtis Tsui, Clyde Gentry III