CULT TV FLASHBACK #89: She-Wolf of London: "The Juggler" (1990-1991)

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the horror genre experienced a dramatic resurgence on television thanks to syndication (and the successful path blazed by the high-rated Star Trek: The Next Generation).

This TV era gave viewers Friday the 13th: The Series (1987-1991), Freddy's Nightmares (1988-1990), Monsters (1988-1991), Dracula: The Series (1991), and also this relatively obscure one season effort, She-Wolf of London, created by genre icons Tom McLoughlin and Mick Garris.

Forecasting the birth of UPN and the WB in the mid-1990s, She-Wolf of London was designed to be the flagship program of the Hollywood Premiere Network (by Universal Studios), but things didn't work out so well. The hour-long horror series ran on WWOR Channel 9 in New York and KCOP in Los Angeles, but the series' first true national exposure occurred with a prime-time rerun on the Sci-Fi Channel in 1992. By then, of course, She-Wolf was long canceled...

She-Wolf of London invoked the title of the 1946 (Universal) horror film starring June Lockhart, but adopted a totally new premise. The 1990s series involved a beautiful American graduate student in England, Randi Wallace (Kate Hodge), who was bitten by a werewolf and therefore became one herself. The "cursed" Randi sought help with her "condition" from a local professor of mythology, the erudite and initially skeptical Ian Matheson (Neil Dickson). Soon, however, Ian saw Randi's transformation with his own eyes and realized he had to help.

Accordingly, Randi moved into the Matheson family's London bed and breakfast with Ian's "Mum" (Jean Challis), his nosy Aunt Edna (Dorothea Phillips), and a young American cousin, Julian (Scott Fults). Very soon, a (subdued) romance developed between Matheson and Randi. Aunt Edna always wondered what all that howling emanating from the basement was all about...

Each week on She-Wolf of London, Randi and Ian would investigate some mythological "creature of the week" in England. They looked into a bog man ("The Bogman of Leitchmour Heath,"), zombies ("Can't Keep a Dead Man Down,") a succubus ("She Devil"), a diabolical circus ("Big Top She Wolf"), even an insane asylum ("Moonlight Becomes You.")

Created in the style of Kolchak: The Night Stalker (1975), She-Wolf of London was an old-fashioned-style series built on the sturdy pillars of character repartee, atmospheric locations...and a cool monster of the week. A few years later, The X-Files would hone, evolve, and literally perfect this style of horror TV storytelling, but She-Wolf remains an interesting missing link in genre history, landing between Kolchak and X-Files.

At the time of broadcast, the series drew mostly positive reviews. Variety noted that "Hodge makes an intelligent character out of the cursed young student, and Dickson gives the professor humor, a shade of early James Mason, and an absurd air...Writers-creators Tom McLoughlin and Mick Garris have the good sense to play Randi's predicament with a semi-straight face." (October 15, 1990, page 79).

One particularly atmospheric She-Wolf of London story was entitled "The Juggler," (by Jim Henshaw; directed by Gerry Mill) and first aired on October 30, 1990....right before Halloween. Here, an ancient Satanic cult sought revenge against a British reverend, Parfrey (John Carlin) after being evicted from the Church of All Saints on All Hallow's eve. The wrathful cult leader thus summoned the (French) mythical creature called the "Bell Ringer" (or Juggler), a demon known to prey on the children of enemies. This Devil Clown thus went after Parfrey's daughter, Liza (Claudia Bryan), in part because she had been given a gold ring which focused the Devil Clown's evil attention upon her.

In the course of the episode, Ian and Randi investigated the Juggler, and young Julian -- who had fallen for Liza -- ended up in mortal danger, wearing the Juggler's ring himself. At the same time, Randi continued to learn about her "wolf" powers, here developing a keen sense of smell, that -- according to Ian -- would "tell her everything" she needed to "know to hunt" down enemies. Naturally, before "The Juggler" is done, that new ability comes in handy in stopping the villain of the week.

Heavy on slow-motion photography, classic architecture (the crypts underneath the church...), Dickensian-style apparitions, and misty, gloom-laden night shooting, the story of "The Juggler," -- the so-called "Devil Clown," -- shows off the solid production values of She-Wolf of London, which were far superior to contemporary American-lensed efforts like Freddy's Nightmares or Monsters. The pace of "The Juggler" is a bit slow and plodding by today's standards, but like most She-Wolf episodes, it nonetheless boasts a palpable love for the classic movies of the genre, and develops in a manner that respectfully pays tribute to them.

After approximately a dozen episodes as She-Wolf of London, the entire series relocated to Los Angeles and became known for the last half-dozen shows as Love & Curses. This continuation featured an increased concentration on romance and humor over the serious horror. Today, both iterations of this syndicated one-season wonder remain unavailable on DVD, but some die-hard fans still remember She-Wolf of London with real devotion.

The Vault of Horror Presents: The Horror Canon

The amazing B-Sol at The Vault of Horror recently tasked the Horror Cyber-Elite -- a veritable "Justice League" of horror bloggers -- to assemble selections for a Horror Canon.

As B-Sol describes the mission:

"My plan was to create a list of absolutely indispensable horror films that every fan needs to have seen in order to consider themselves a proper horror geek. This is not to be confused with "The Greatest of All Time." For example, Plan 9 from Outer Space would not be on my list of the greatest of all time, but I might very well consider it "must-see" viewing for any wannabe horror fanatic!"

"Think of it this way: If someone came to you and said, "I want to get into this whole horror thing, what movies do I need to see?" Which movies would you give them to watch?"

Check out the post in its entirety to see the Cyber-Horror Elite's tally of 35 films for inclusion in the Horror Canon!

To my delight, eight of my ten recommendations/suggestions made the final catalogue. As always, you may quibble with a specific title, or wonder about a particular omission, but I love these lists because they get the debate started, evoke passion, and foster further blogging. For instance, given the success of recent first-person/P.O.V. horrors like REC (2007) and Cloverfield (2008), I would have liked to see The Blair Witch Project (1999) make the Horror Canon, perhaps in lieu of some 2008 - 2009 films that may -- or may not -- stand the test of time.

Regardless of the titles ultimately chosen, it was an honor to be included in the selection process for The Horror Canon, and one of these days, I plan to post in detail about the films in the canon and why, indeed, they remain so important to a deeper understanding of the genre...

CULT MOVIE REVIEW: The Prey (1984)

As I wrote in my compendium, Horror Films of the 1980s (McFarland; 2007) I've always enjoyed the "mountain man" variation on the 1980s Slasher Paradigm as seen in such films as Just Before Dawn (1983), The Final Terror (1985) and even Wrong Turn (2003).

You know the type of genre movie I'm talking about: all the same Friday the 13th stock characters (bitch, jock, stoner, Final Girl, drunken Cassandra warning against trespass...) and all the same stock situations (the car won't start, vice-precedes-slice-and-dice, the false scare, the cat jump, etc.).

One significant difference, however is that the villain is a hulking sometimes-disfigured "mountain man" rather than a masked, faceless killer.

These "mountain man" slasher variations are often set in extremely isolated, picturesque settings -- meaning no rescue is possible -- and tread heavily into the transgressive realm of the savage cinema (which includes the territory of rape and revenge, among other things...).

A modest but noteworthy entry in this mountain man/slasher sweepstakes is Edwin Scott Brown's The Prey, a super-low budget film of the Reagan Era (though reportedly it was shot near the end of the 1970s..). It is not an elegant film and it is not a spectacular one...and yet -- in many important ways -- it accomplishes the primary mission of any good slasher: it terrifies. That terror is augmented by some good location shooting; shooting which tends to augment the leitmotif that the offending lead teens are not welcome in the domain of the wild forest. There, they must reckon with all sorts of predators...including the the wild mountain man. The mountain man is part of nature himself; nature's avenger even.

In The Prey, six young and irresponsible adults from the city, Nancy (Debbie Thureson), Joel (Steve Bond), Bobbie (Lori Lethin), Skip (Robert Wald), Gail (Gayle Gannes) and Greg (Philip Wenckus) hike into the thick woods at North Point, oblivious to the fact that a nice married couple was recently axe-murdered there while camping. Before long, the young adults are the prey of a monstrous assailant, a deformed gypsy (Carel Struycken). A heroic forest ranger (Jackson Bostwick) attempts to rescue the hikers, but the giant wild man is a savage foe...and looking for...a mate.

After an axe-decapitation (our first act coup-de-grace...) at the outset, The Prey next settles down into...stock nature footage. The audience gets long views of centipedes, frogs, spiders and more. There are long shots of impressive mountain ranges, babbling brooks, a spider's web and a majestic hawk overhead, searching for prey.

Then -- in direct opposition to the images of nature featured in this montage -- the camera catches sight of an unwanted invader: a modern van pulling into woods. All too soon, the van ejects bellowing, loud-mouthed, obnoxious teenagers, kids who clearly don't give a damn about the "natural" world around them. In fact, the film's protagonists treat the land as if they own it, committing transgression after transgression. One teenager turns up the volume on her radio in the woods -- literally replacing the call of the wild with rock-and-roll, and, well, you just know Mother Nature is pissed.

Many reviewers have concluded that the stock nature footage included The Prey is mainly just padding, a way to lengthen a film too short for feature release. Indeed this may be so, but in this particular instance, the nature footage also serves a point (even if unintended): it serves as an explicit reminder that the teens have tread into a domain where they are no longer in control, and furthermore that nature is a force to be reckoned with. The teens experience "push back" not just from the scarred mountain man, but from the combined forces of the nature itself, which seem to judge them as invaders.

This approach fits into one of my primary theories about slasher films in general: we enjoy them because -- for the most part -- we all live in safe, artificial communities protected by layers of law enforcement and bureaucracy. We have no real predators, and we are perched at the top of the food chain. I believe some part of us --perhaps a prehistoric part of us -- desires a challenge; a test of our survival skill set. We suspect, perhaps subconsciously, that such a challenge might even emerge from the wild (that's where they came from in the past, after all...). That's why Jason lives in the woods and his approach is almost universally heralded by a crackling thunderstorm. He is, simply put, a Force of Nature.

In other words, we had to invent Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger as horror movie predators because our contemporary lives are so safe and, well, predictable. The slasher films -- as ritualistic and repetitive as a (bloody) sporting event -- provide us the opportunity to imagine ourselves matched up against these predators. I think it's a healthy response, frankly (and I love the slasher format.)

Anyway, getting back to The Prey, there's a point in the film in which Mark (the forest ranger) discovers a corpse. This gruesome find is inter-cut with -- again -- stock footage of vultures high up on a tree limb. The connection between the two shots is explicit: the dead body is no longer a "person" but has joined the food chain of the pitiless forest and shall be treated as such. Again, the "padding" serves a kind of unique purpose. It actually adds to the artistic value of the film.

The Prey's focus on natural images reminds the viewer at all times that the mountain man -- a nemesis who is comfortable in these surroundings -- has the home team advantage in any face-to-face battle. Nature is his ally, because he lives in apparent harmony with it. For instance, at the teens' campsite earlier in the film, nature seems to come to life and encroach on the young interlopers. Snakes slither towards camp, owls land nearby, and nature focuses on the unaware, the oblivious, just as the mountain man also approaches. Ultimately, it is an attack from several fronts, but all fronts have one commander: Mother Nature.

Perhaps the film could have down with fewer shots of "nature" and still made this point, but in this case, the inclusion of stock footage actually grants The Prey a kind of artistic perimeter to work within. The focus on the living forest also serves, after a fashion, as counterpoint to the Friday the 13th films, which, as they progressed, became increasingly lazy and couldn't be bothered to provide such crucial horror elements as atmosphere or mood, let alone character. By contrasts, it's clear in The Prey that this is not Jason's "silent," unoccupied Hollywood forest, but rather a living, breathing ecosystem teeming with life and vying agendas. That's an important distinction in a movie that is very much a man vs. nature story.

The character named Nancy serves as the film's Final Girl, the plucky lass who seems more insightful and aware than her offending friends. But what ultimately makes The Prey a rather daring variation on the slasher formula is the film's sting in the tail/tale following the final chase. Nancy suffers a terrible fate; one that is explained only with sound effects. I won't say any more about this coda, only that I had never seen (or heard...) this ending in a slasher film before, and that is told efficiently: a baby's cries linger over further images of the immortal forest. Yes, it's sort of sick, but also rather ingenious.

At times, The Prey reminded me strongly of Wes Craven's The Hills Have Eyes (though it is nowhere near that good). It's one of those modest, mostly forgotten low-budget 1980s horror films (like 1980's The Children) that is probably better than the film's reputation suggests. Yes, there's too much "wild kingdom" footage in The Prey, but somehow that seems entirely appropriate, given how the film uses it.

Sci-Fi Wisdom of the Week

Freddy: "Are you saying we're dead?"

Paramedic: "Well, let's not jump to conclusions..."

CULT MOVIE REVIEW: Who Can Kill A Child? (1976)

There's an old saying in Hollywood warning actors not to work with animals or children.

If you happen to find yourself in a vintage 1970s-era horror film, however, you should amend that proverb a bit. May I suggest: don't piss off animals or children?

Because they will have vengeance, and there will be blood....

Case in point, the rather remarkable Who Can Kill A Child? (1976), a tense, Spanish-made genre gem. Like all great films (and great horror films) Who Can Kill A Child? reveals something important about the times in which it was crafted, a context which also gave rise to other child-centric horrors such as It's Alive (1973), The Exorcist (1973), and The Omen (1976).

As David Frum, the notable conservative scholar wrote in How We Got Here, The 70s: The Decade That Brought You Modern Life (For Better of Worse): " It's hard to remember an era when American popular culture was as nervous of children as in the 1970s." (page 106).

Frum further points out that the number of births dropped to its lowest level since the Great Depression in the year 1974. This was despite the fact that the baby boomer generation -- a huge generation -- was now of child-bearing age.

So what the hell was occurring in America during the 1970s to turn innocent children into icons of fear, anxiety and terror? Well, a recession and gas/energy shortage made children an expensive proposition, to start with. Plus, there was the contentious war for sexual equality (characterized by the controversy around the Equal Rights Amendment...). One front in that war concerned reproductive rights. The latest salvo was the Roe v Wade decision by the Supreme Court

Also -- especially where horror movies are concerned -- it is virtually impossible to separate the idea of "children" from the idea of "tomorrow." Kids are an explicit and recognizable representation of the future...our shared legacy. If something terrible happens to the children, the future becomes grim. If the children turn evil, again our outlook is desperate. If the children happen to turn against adults for a valid reason, then we have failed totally, and our civilization is doomed.

These notions are at play in the unsettling Who Can Kill A Child?, which depicts a British married couple, biologist Tom (Lewis Fiander) and pregnant Evelyn (Prunella Ransome), as they countenance true horror. The couple decides to take a vacation on the remote island of Almanzora, a place where "very few tourists ever go." It's a four hour boat ride from the mainland to Almanzora, and though the island "certainly looks peaceful," nothing could be further from the truth.

At first the island appears deserted, but before long, Tom and Evelyn learn from a shattered, lone survivor that all the adults are dead. Worse, the islanders were killed by their maniacal children; tykes who suddenly and inexplicably turned homicidal a night earlier. Before long, Tom and Evelyn are fighting for their lives as roving bands of murderous children block their escape route at every turn.

"Its as though they thought we - the adults - were their enemies," Tom realizes (a bit too late...).

On Almanzora, Tom witnesses a multitude of horrors, all while protecting his expectant wife. He sees a violent pinata game involving an elderly man strung up by his feet, a circle of giggling children, and a sharp sickle. He also sees the grisly aftermath of several massacres, including a beating death, and a vaguely sexual attack inside the island church. Finally, Tom and Evelyn -- now going into labor -- take their final refuge in a police station. The children arm themselves, and Tom finds a machine gun....

He's left with an unenviable choice. For...who can kill a child? Another important question: if our children rebel against us, could we, would we and should we fight back? As the film's climax reminds the viewer, making the terror identifiable, "There are lots of children in the world..."

Who Can Kill A Child? is the sort of horror film that gets under your skin through stealthy but effective means. It opens like a routine travelogue, as we follow Tom and Evelyn through the apparently mundane experience of their foreign vacation. The hotel at Benavis is booked, so they're sent to a house in the "old part of the city." They settle in, get directions to the beach, and then purchase rolls of film. That night, Tom and Evelyn enjoy fireworks and share an intimate (and well-written) discussion about Fellini, death, and the future in their rented bedroom. Nothing earth shattering at all...just ominously normal and "human." These moments establish the characters as real, but not in heavy-handed or soap opera fashion. It simply feels like we've gone abroad with them for a few days. Tom and Evelyn are likable and easy to relate to, a fact which serves the movie well.

Once we reach the island with Tom and Evelyn, the horror mounts. In little, clever bursts at first. For instance, there's a portentous moment early on (before the nature of the children is revealed...) in which Tom sees a little boy fishing on a pier. Tom tries to peek under the lid of the boy's fishing basket to see what he's caught, but the boy won't permit it. He shoots Tom a murderous, aggressive look. We never actually find out what's under that lid, but the moment is disturbing, and your imagination takes flight.

Other moments are crafted with more than a modicum of skill. There's an absolutely brilliant shot featured deep in the third act, an awe-inspiring reveal over one character's shoulder and head...to a background mountaintop populated by "watching," unnoticed children. The move in question is a simple camera pivot, but one perfectly executed.

Or notice the manner in which the camera doesn't move at all during a critical juncture, as a central character slips slowly and inexorably out of lower right-hand corner frame for the last time, making the death all the more significant and powerful. And the director appropriately moves to hand-held, immediate camera-work during the siege in the police station, which ramps up the anxiety.

When Who Can Kill a Child's narrative calls for bluntness, we get that too, with shocking and egregious results. Late in the film, Tom is confronted with a barricade of children, three or four rows deep. They won't budge and just stand there, smiling at him. After a moment's hesitation, Tom opens fire with a machine gun, bloodying and murdering his youthful opponents. The gun fire is like a slap in the face...we're not used to such screen violence leveraged against children.

Even that spiky moment is superseded by a final, high-speed, nail-biting confrontation on a pier, with an attempted escape in a row boat. Children launch an ambush from the pier, jumping off and attacking Tom in the boat with ferocity and velocity. He frigging beats them back with a wood board, a knife, and any other weapon he can find, and the movie doesn't shy away from revealing the bloody results of the massacre.

Of course, I don't encourage violence or even the depiction of violence against children, but horror should be about the shattering of societal taboos and movie decorum. And horror is also - indeed - about nightmare scenarios rendered real, and asking the viewer to identify with "what it would be like" to face them. Who Can Kill a Child is both taboo-shattering, and identification-provoking, and by my reckoning that makes it a great bit of genre cinema. You'll be shocked at what you witness, yet at the same time, you may want to slap Evelyn silly when she refuses to reckon with the "reality" of the situation that the children on the island are homicidal.

The film's ending is comparable to Night of the Living Dead, with a slow-to-adjust society failing to understand the nature of the enemy and making a bad mistake. In a strange way, the movie is also a kind of "revenge of nature flick," like Day of the Animals or Hitchcock's The Birds...only with kids instead of animals. And of course, it's harder to shoot down a giggling child than a grizzly bear or pecking bird, right?

Who Can Kill a Child? is not perfect. The film mis-steps badly by opening with a nine minute, documentary "atrocity reel" about real crimes committed against children across the globe. We see starving children in Africa, murdered children in Pakistan, and young victims of the Korean and Vietnamese conflicts. These scenes are true and appalling and powerful, but I question their necessity in a horror film. They start the movie off with a gruesome, unnecessary heaviness, which, in some senses, undercut the very ordinariness of the travelogue and the slow-escalation of horror that follows. Essentially, they make the movie less effective because they telegraph the point of the narrative before the very narrative has begun.

The images in the mini-doc are powerful, but unnecessary. The director makes his point (about the world's cruelty to children...) without them all-together. In the body of the film proper, Evelyn sees footage on a camera shop TV of children dying in the Philippines. A shop owner says "the world is crazy. In the end, the ones who always suffer are the children." Message transmitted and received. The graphic imagery at the beginning is therefore just heavy-handed overkill.

Also, non-horror fans might rightly complain that Tom and Evelyn have apparently been born without the gene that allows them to sense the warning signs of incipient danger. This is something horror aficionados (like myself), willingly accept...because what fun would it be if Tom and Evelyn did recognize the danger and abandoned the island in their boat before the horror escalated? Horror fans will willingly (and happily) suspend disbelief, but non-genre fans may be screaming at the film's characters to get off the island NOW!!!.

Who Can Kill A Child? also shares much in common with the Children of the Corn franchises of the 1980s and 1990s, yet I should be absolutely clear: it's also a better-made scary movie than any one of them (even the '84 original). After watching this film, you may even want to amend a second proverb.

Forget "never trust anyone over 30." How about, "never trust anyone under 12?"

Vault of Horror Strikes Back: Presenting the Top 25 Horror Films of the Modern Era!

One of my favorite blogs, Vault of Horror, is back with a second must-see list of horror film tops.

This time, the Vault opens the "Cyber-Horror Elite's" Top 25 films of the Modern Era (1990 - 2008). It's another tally that is certain to provoke debate (always a noble cause...), and the final selections are indeed fascinating ones.

Only a handful of my personal top ten made the list: The Blair Witch Project (1999), The Ring (2002) and a real dark horse; a favorite that I'm glad to see recognized as "horror" of the deepest, most disturbing type: Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut (1999).

In general, I seemed more in tune with other critics on the previous list (the top 50 of all time), which I think may indicate how little real agreement there is on "contemporary" horror. It's still, in some important ways, too soon to be definitive. But this list is not only a great viewing primer, it's a terrific source for discussion.

I won't spoil the list, but let me just state that I am surprised by the film that represents director Eli Roth's output. I prefer Hostel (2005). Also, I'm sorry to see that such noble efforts as Jacob's Ladder (1990), Pitch Black (2000) and Silent Hill (2006) apparently had no traction with the other horror lovers. On the other hand, it's hard to deny the quality of most of the films that made the top 25. It's good to see American Psycho (2000) getting some belated love.

Check out Vault of Horror's entire list here. B-Sol has not only done a great job compiling and organizing this catalogue, he has analyzed it too, and provided some intriguing statistics on the selections.

Nightmares in Red, White and Blue... NOW!

It's here! It's Alive!

Writer/producer Joseph Maddrey (Survive This! A Haunting, The House Between) teases his upcoming 2009 documentary on a century of American horror films over at the movie's new web site.

Nightmares in Red, White and Blue: The Evolution of the American Horror Film is Joe's labor of love, a feature-length work adapted from his 2004 reference book of the same name (which I reviewed here before I knew Joe very well, or had worked with him.)

Over the months, I've kept up with Joe's progress as he conducted a variety of interviews with horror movie legends including John Carpenter, George Romero, Joe Dante, Larry Cohen, Roger Corman, Mick Garris, Tom McLoughlin and more.

The documentary is narrated by Millennium's Lance Henriksen, who does a terrific job. I was fortunate enough to receive a screening copy of the film a few weeks ago, and actually -- in my humble opinion -- this is one of the best documentary on horror films yet made.

I'm not just saying that because I happen to know and like Joe, or because I was able to give him a hand on the project here and there (most notably with my extensive archive of film photographs...and a few on-screen quotes...), but because it happens to be the truth.

Here's why: most genre docs tend to just hit the "hot" spots -- the famous movies we already know about-- and that's not the case at all here. On the contrary, Joe's documentary is incredibly detailed, and the interviews with the horror luminaries are more than just informative; they go into genuine depth. Joe made a very smart decision early on: he prepared good questions for his interviewees and then let the horror "stars" answer them at length, without interruption. The results speak for themselves.

The decade-by-decade outline of the documentary (carried over from Joe's book), serves the production well. It not only provides context, but gives the interviewees the opportunity to discuss genre films that they love, not just the films they made. There's a funny little section involving George A. Romero discussing the Howard Hawks' version of The Thing, for instance.

In other words, just imagine John Carpenter, Romero, Cohen or Dante giving a lecture about horror movie history...

Anyway, enough of my blabbing. Head on over to the site, and watch the preview, read about the project, check out the links, and so on.

I'm eagerly awaiting the official release on this one...

The Horror! The Horror!

Not long ago, one of my favorite blogs, Vault of Horror, produced an excellent (and apparently highly controversial...) list of the Cyber-Horror Elite's' "top" horror films of all time.

Now adding to the fun and list-making is the site, No Ripcord, which has anted-up its own tabulation of nineteen "favorite" genre movies.

This list, compiled by editor and film scholar George Booker, includes such favorites as John Carpenter's The Thing (1981), the Cronenberg remake of The Fly (1986) and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974).

This tally also offers some highly-defensible modern selections. I was gratified, for instance to see that Hostel (2005) made the list. You can read my review of Hostel here. David Lynch and Ingmar Bergman also make the fascinating roll.

You can read the entire article here.

More on The Horror Top 50

Yesterday, I linked to Vault of Horror's new list of The Cyber-Elite's 50 Greatest Horror Films of All Time. I believe the list is pretty darn great, but I did notice some comments under the post suggesting that, perhaps, the participants had shorted "new" horror films (say from the year 2000 - present). Gazing at the titles that made the list, it's difficult to deny that's the case. Yet there are good reasons. And I'm not talking about the relative quality (or lack thereof) of 21st century age horror, either.

In weighing and determining the best horror films of all time, there are many important factors to consider. Among those:

1. Was the film scary at the time of the original release, and does it continue to be scary today (in other words, does it stand the test of time?) Gazing at the list quickly, I would judge that Halloween, Blair Witch Project, The Haunting and many others meet that benchmark with flying colors in 2008, even years and in some cases, many decades after the initial theatrical release. I know that I steadfastly refuse to watch either Halloween or The Exorcist when I'm alone in the house.

2. Can the film in question be interpreted in more than one way, meaning that -- again -- it survives beyond the original context or time period? If you study a few examples, say Halloween, The Blair Witch Project, Rosemary's Baby or The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (original), you can see that they all spur various interpretations. Is Chain Saw merely surreal savage cinema, or a statement on vegetarianism? In Halloween, is Michael Myers the Bogeyman, or physical externalization of Laurie Strode's repressed id? Is there any witch present at all in The Blair Witch Project? Alternate readings of these films mean that they are more than merely scary...they are timeless. They float above the original context and become...universal.

3. A great horror film not only reveals something important (social or economic) about the context in which it was created, it can actually come to embody that time period...and become a touchstone. Consider Night of the Living Dead (1968), which perfectly captures the Vietnam War Age, or Cronenberg's The Fly, which was released just as America's awareness of AIDS was growing and taking shape. You can't talk about horrors of the 1960s or 1980s without mentioning these films.

My point, I suppose, is simply that the horror films of relatively recent vintage may or may not stand the test of time. We just don't know yet. Therefore, to praise them on points 1, 2, 3 and is, perhaps, premature. I have very, very high regard for recent examples of the genre including The Ring, Hostel, Silent Hill, The Descent, The Strangers, Cloverfield, Vacancy...even, to some degree, The Ruins.

But since we are still locked in the 2000s; since we are still entrenched in the Bush Era Mindset (at least for a few months...), it's near-impossible to stand back and objectively look at these films as touchstones or time-capsules of the era. Because we don't really know, ultimately, what we will carry out of this turbulent era. Maybe it'll be Snakes on a Plane. We need distance to rightly assess these recent works beyond the value of these questions: "does it scare me now?"; and does it relate to how I see the "today" right now?

The fact of the matter is that time can also wash away the tidal wave of bad reviews for fascinating, individual, quirky, yet much-maligned films like Ghosts of Mars, The Happening or X-Files: I Want to Believe. It is entirely possible that is one of those films -- the ones which most critics hated or missed the boat on (historically, think The Exorcist...) -- that will emerge as the "new classic" of the age. Perhaps the real value of these films will be excavated. Who knows, perhaps the new classic horror film is the very one I missed the boat on, such as Diary of the Dead, or High Tension.

Only time will tell...and that's the reason those films didn't make the list, in my opinion. It's just too soon.

The 50 Greatest Horror Films of All Time?

Vault of Horror has organized a list of the 50 greatest horror movies of all time, tallying the input of the Internet's most well-known horror critics (myself included, along with the likes of Final Girl's Stacie Ponder, Horror Film's Magazine's Wes Fierce, and John W. Morehead of Theofantastique, just for starters.)

I don't want to spoil the list here -- which is damned good by my estimation -- so go take a long peek at it. I'll just "tease" the results here with some of the "stats" on the list that Vault of Horror has assembled.

No movie in the top 12 was made in the last 25 years.
No movie in the top 14 was made in the last 10 years.
Only one movie in the top 26 was made in the last 20 years.
Four of the top 10, and 3 of the top 5, were made in the 1970s.
Directors listed most times: John Carpenter & Tobe Hooper (3).
Three silent films.
One TV movie.
Two non-feature length films.

Two great films that didn't make this top fifty list but which I esteem rather highly are Don't Look Now (1973) and Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975). But I just don't see much to quibble with here. (Except number 38 on the list, which I must disavow: I didn't vote for it...)

Regardless, it was a great honor to be involved in the polling on this list, and I applaud all the effort, time and energy that Vault of Horror put into wrangling it!

CULT MOVIE REVIEW: The Strangers (2008)

If you watch only one contemporary horror film this Halloween season, do yourself a favor and make it The Strangers (2008).

Lean and (very...) mean at eighty-six minutes, this recent film of the “savage cinema” variety (think Last House on the Left, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre or The Hills Have Eyes) literally takes no prisoners. It's a horror show without frills, without b.s., and without extraneous nonsense of any sort. The entire movie is devoted to one simple thing: scaring you silly.

Accordingly, The Strangers begins with a funereal mood of gloom and inter-personal alienation and then escalates to pure, heart-pounding terror – a mode the movie relentlessly sustains until the final jolt preceding the end credits.

Among other fine technical qualities, the sound-editing in this film is superb, and many of the scares depend not on what the audience sees, but what the audience doesn't see...and what it hears. This is a low budget effort, to be certain (again, think Chainsaw or Last House...) but it appears that all of the movie's considerable energy has gone towards making a horror film of eerie precision; one of finely crafted "jolt" moments that work exactly as a longtime genre fan would hope.

Perhaps it’s necessary to state a little bit about my bias or slant here, as I continue to discuss the film. Of course, I deeply appreciate all modes of the horror film (from every decade in cinema history), but the ones that really get to me on a personal level – the ones that truly scare me – are those, like The Strangers, of the savage cinema mode.

Films of this sub-genre don’t ask me to believe in ancient Egyptian curses, mad scientists, shape-shifting aliens or creatures that mysteriously thrive on the cycle of the moon. No, instead they urge me only to believe in a human heart of darkness...which I do, readily. Furthermore, these movies ask me to believe that one wrong turn, one twist of fate, can lead to a dark destiny.

Again…I’m there.

A good movie of this variety needs no stars, no expensive locations, no elaborate special effects: everything comes down to the realistic, savage central scenario and the likability of the characters countenancing it.

In other words, the idea of running out of gas in rural, out-of-the-way Texas at nightfall is pretty damn frightening to me. But encountering Dracula or The Wolf Man? Not so much… I just don't expect that to happen.

The Strangers commences ominously, with a baritone-voiced off-screen narrator informing us that the events of the film are inspired by "a true story." The opening card then reveals further specifics of the crime we are about to witness (including the time frame of the events: the night of February 4, 2005).

If you are a student of horror, you’ll instantly recognize this opening gambit as one familiar from Texas Chain Saw Massacre. It’s a simple technique that works on your subconscious like a bad itch; one that keeps gnawing at you because it connects the on-screen horror explicitly (and uncomfortably...) to our "safe" reality. (Even if the actual claim of truth is likely hooey…).

From there, The Strangers transitions to a brief series of slow-motion, fade-in/fade-out views of American houses of all shapes and sizes, ostensibly photographed from the interior of a passing car. We move slowly in these lingering “flashes” from lower-middle class suburbia to upper-class suburbia, to remote, rural territory. Finally, we arrive at our location: a secluded vacation house. Only much later in the film do we realize whose perspective these views actually represent; that we (and the camera with us) are hunting with a family of masked predators. We are sizing up the houses...seeking victims.

Before long, The Strangers introduces us to our two doomed protagonists, twenty-somethings James (Scott Speedman) and Kristen (Liv Tyler), as they arrive late one night at James’ family vacation home in the woods. Having just attended a wedding, you might think the couple would be happy, buoyant or even drunk. But no – an air of somber anticipation and lugubrious gloom hangs over them. And this is before the horror starts.

It turns out that Kristen has rejected James’ romantic marriage proposal that very night because she “needs time.” James is understandably dejected over this; Kristen feels conflicted, perhaps even guilty and ashamed at her choice. They feel estranged and separated from one another (despite the fact that James has decorated the master bedroom and even bath tub with scattered rose petals for the would-be momentous occasion).

Impressively, the cinematography and set design reflect this personal estrangement with various autumnal hues that signal the coming winter of the relationship.

This is a movie universe where even the bath water runs brown.

The house itself - richly visualized in amber, chestnut and terra-cotta - seems almost like something of a time-capsule tomb: oddly-out-of-step with the new 21st century; a testament to a happier, more prosperous past...replete with decorations like an old record player, a heavy piano, and the sort of elaborate woodwork rarely seen in new construction. James and Kristen may be staying there for the night, but this is a home they will never share. The characters seem not to belong there; like their days (or hours) are numbered. The scattered rose petals portend not a happy honeymoon, but rather a future in which blood spatter on the walls serves as complementary decoration.

As James and Kristen -- barely speaking to one another -- mechanically initiate sex in this environment, there is a loud and sudden knocking at the house’s heavy front doors. Not only is this intrusion the most grievous scene of coitus interruptus possible, it is the vanguard of a horrific home invasion, one that pits Kristen and James against three masked murderers.

Throughout the remainder of the film, these killers mercilessly lay siege to the isolated vacation house with hatchets, butcher knives, and with their Ford pick-up truck (Buy American!). Kristen and James struggle to survive the onslaught, but the killers gain entrance to the house regularly, seem to control the house’s power and phone lines, and have even made off with the couple’s cell phones. Every attempt at escape is foiled; every attempt at defense proves futile, or worse, counterproductive.

It's tempting to read all terror this as some sort of post-911 comment on the fact that neither oceans, law enforcement nor locked front doors can save us from an implacable enemy, but in truth The Strangers resurrects a sturdy horror trope that long pre-dates the September 11th terror attacks: the household siege (think Night of the Living Dead, or another classic savage cinema offering, Straw Dogs).

The motive for the terrible attack in The Strangers? “You were home,” one of the killers enigmatically informs Kristen, as if that declaration explains anything.

And that’s about as much information as the movie provides the audience about motivations.

Frankly, I appreciate the restraint, especially given the all-too-common cinematic alternative of facile psychology (Rob Zombie's Halloween...j'accuse). Never once in The Strangers are we spoon fed some pat reason behind this inexplicable madness; for this bloody horror. I believe -- again -- that this is approach is highly realistic (and believable) because people in James and Kristen’s situation are in a life-and-death struggle, and rarely have the time to discuss rational things like motivation with their would-be-murderers. That’s’ the press’s job…in the aftermath...to attempt to place some cultural and historical context on a crime. The Strangers, in fact, remains so cryptic that it never even reveals the faces of the killers under those creepy masks.

The only (small) insight we get into this killing trio comes near the conclusion of the film, post-killing spree, when the Ford pick-up carrying the murderers stops two pre-adolescent boys on bicycles; boys who are handing out Christian literature.

One of the boys asks the older female killer (back to us; to the camera) if she is a “sinner.” Her answer is as inscrutable as her identity. And so the movie provides us almost nothing comfortable or easy to hold onto.

I suggest this is exactly the right strategy for a naturalistic, scary movie of the savage cinema variety. Who cares why Michael Myers (or The Strangers for that matter…) kill? What matters to James and Kristen (and to us in the audience), is that they are at the door. Knocking. What are you going to do about it? Ask them for a personal history? Ask if they were abused as children? I think not. That's just...movie bullshit.

The director and screenwriter of the film, Bryan Bertino, seems to have learned a crucial lesson or two from John Carpenter's Halloween (1978). One: less is more...show us less and tell us less; and our imaginations will fill in (the horrific) gaps.

And two: don't spend the whole damn movie rattling our frayed senses with savage, fierce attacks. If a movie is entirely pitched at a hyper-kinetic pace, then there's no "rest" time for the horror to settle down in our psyches; for our imaginations to go to work.

In terms of The Strangers, this means that Bertino spends a considerable portion of the film with the attackers looming in the background of frames...just watching and waiting (in long shot). Suspense is generated because we don't know when they will attack; when they are present (and hiding...) or what, on Earth, they want. I remember being terribly disappointed with Halloween VI: The Curse of Michael Myers (1996) for a lot of reasons, but primarily because Michael Myers just popped up and immediately stabbed and killed people. There was no suspense; there was no watching and waiting; no stalking. It was all slam-bam, thank you ma'am...and that approach is simply ineffective for creating real terror. The Strangers avoids that pitfall and the result is an exercise in suspense.

There's a portion of this film that involves Liv Tyler alone in the house, listening to old music on the record player, smoking a cigarette...just waiting for James to return from an errand. Not much happens, but this segment of the film is riveting, as we begin to process the fact that a killer is inside the house with her. Watching. This is an old aesthetic for those with real attention spans; but it still works. These scenes also set up the geography of the terror to come; the terrain or battlefield.

A close examination of The Strangers reveals that it's primary concern is indeed building suspense, and in some manner approximating for the audience how it would feel to be trapped in a situation like this; with precious few alternatives and precious few escape routes.

Many movie critics suggested that The Strangers is a “vile” film. That it boasts no socially redeeming qualities. They must think this is so because the movie offers up no pat resolution, no happy ending and not the slightest whiff of explanation. But critics should ask themselves this question: did Marion Crane have a happy ending, or understand what was happening to her in that shower at the Bates Motel in Psycho? I would argue that she didn’t; and I would furthermore argue that The Strangers similarly concerns just one piece in what is obviously a much larger killing spree, and that our unlucky protagonists – Kristen and James – are victims in that spree. As such, they are not afforded the decorum of "understanding," of a perspective of the larger historical view. There's no time for that with Mansonite crazoids at the door, at the window, and in the house...

In some clever sense, The Strangers treats us (the audience) like victims too. Our hopes rise and fall with each gambit. We seek answers, beg for mercy, and ultimately, find no solace. We try to deny what is to come, even as all hope is lost. But in the end, there is no denying the inevitability of death.

If you like the savage cinema, if you appreciate dark turns of fate and obsess on the random nature of human life, The Strangers is scary stuff. Watch it tonight, and then -- when the doorbell rings (hopefully just trick-or-treaters, right?) -- consider that maybe the Strangers have singled out your house.

Just because you're home...