The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue (1974)

Tagline: “To avoid fainting keep repeating, it’s only a movie…only a movie…only a movie ”
UK Running Time: 92 minutes

Film Quality: 4/5
Gore Content: 3.5/5
Entertainment Value: 4/5
Originality: 4.5/5

Introduction

So what precisely happened in the ten years or so between George A. Romero’s zombie classics ‘Night of the Living Dead’ and ‘Dawn of the Dead’? Other than a few notable efforts by Armando De Ossario and his ‘Blind Dead’ series, not a great deal but the Spanish did contribute one other film that virtually slipped through the net despite introducing us to the social comment that Romeero ran with so impressively. Proving that the zombie is capable of being more than just a shuffling corpse, namely a metaphor for what we as a human race are doing in society, ‘The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue’ (first released on UK video as ‘Don’t Open the Window’) is a surprisingly intelligent and prophetic film that deserves more praise.

In a nutshell

A couple, thrown together after a minor car accident, are accused of murder following the violent death of a local photographer. Protesting their innocence and blaming the crime on a local who died a week earlier, their stories fall on the deaf ears of local police. Could the dead really be coming back to life and how is it all connected to the Department of Agriculture!?!

So what’s good about it?

It has a great deal to say about the way we behave, treat nature and our surroundings and particularly our complete disregard, certainly at the time, about what our chemical experiments are doing to the planet. In this case it is a radioactive pesticide that appears to have the unfortunate bi-product of reanimating the recently deceased. This is an incredible piece of forward thinking from director Jorge Grau and the writers at a time when people were largely unaware or ambivalent to the potential environmental damage caused by things such as aerosols, crop sprays or pollution. More on this later.

Beautiful scenery!

I may be a bit biased, coming from the North of England myself, but the cinematography and scenery is just stunning. Set and filmed partly in the Peak District it lends the film an oddly familiar look for me. The Castleton area is home to some of the most bleak and imposing countryside this side of the Yorkshire Moors. It’s a far cry from Romero’s Pittsburgh or the barren landscape of de Ossario’s Spain. Much like the use of the Yorkshire Moors in ‘An American Werewolf in London’, the Peak District comes across as foreign, alien and far more claustrophobic and foreboding than it should, given its expanse.

The soundtrack is stunning with strange, high pitched oscillator noises and low frequency bass to represent the Department of Agricultures new device. It creates an incredibly eerie atmosphere with ghost-like wails and distorted explosive sound effects accompanying the living dead in the church cemetery scene. The combined effect of this and the, now obligatory, hoarse breathing of the zombies is really quite frightening and that’s before we touch on the visuals.

The living dead themselves are very much like Romero’s creations. They’re the recently deceased so there’s no decomposition, the monstrous aspect of them is that they are very much like us, resembling automatons and that’s what makes them frightening. There’s no emotion or expression in their features, there’s something very uncanny about it and plays on our fears in the same wway we might be unnerved by ventriloquist dummies and mannequins. They resemble human beings but have either grotesque or emotionless features to resemble and mimic human life…to see these things moving towards you of their own accord, staring right at you is something of a primal fear and Grau captures this perfectly. Particularly terrifying is the morgue zombie (above, left) with a scar running from torso to neck, clearly the result of a recent autopsy!

And then we have the gore effects, WAY more extreme than Romero’s first outing with quite a bit of blood, guts and offal flying about, particularly in the second half. The killing of the telephonist especially brings to mind the aftermath of Mrs Menard’s slaying and the killing of Rhodes more than a decade later in Romero’s film in its savagery and the way it dwells on the intestinal offerings. There are a few homages to Romero’s movie, not least the way Guthrie suddenly spots Edna and goes for her and when they discover the mutilated body at the top of the stairs in the church cellar. Yet it also influenced a good few other movies…the climbing of the stepladders to the open grave for example is referenced by Fulci in ‘The House by the Cemetery’

And what about the bad?

Oh there’s plenty! The acting and dubbing is terrible with over-exaggerated accents in abundance, particularly the almost insulting Irish police chief (I'm only surprised they didn't get him to say "To be sure, to be sure"!) and George’s mockney accent that would make Danny Dyer blush. There are also a couple of unintentionally funny scenes, particularly the way George escapes police custody by throwing a tea towel at the copper, reminding me of a scene out of ‘The Naked Gun’.

I have to take issue with the way some of the other zombies seem to come to life. There’s a scene where Guthrie reanimates two corpses by walking up to them and gently putting blood on their eyes. These ghouls are meant to have been created by radiation whereas this suggests an element of voodoo or contamination. Either way, this shows evidence of forethought and intelligence by Guthrie which goes against the ‘pure instinct’ nature of the zombies in every other scene.

No refuge in the Church

Having said that, it is relentlessly grim. Grau manages to throw in zombie babies, insanity, drug abuse, police corruption. All areas of life that you would traditionally see as salvation such as the church, a hospital, the police and even the countryside are places of death with no signs of hope. It has a nihilistic ending very similar to Romero’s landmark debut which sees our hero forced to watch Edna die twice. I’m also not sure it really needed the ‘Tales of the Unexpected’ style ending, the undead possess a strange ‘Jason Vorhees’ style quality of being able to shuffle around faster than people can drive cars when they’re off camera, but it does leave you with at least a small sense of justice.

Any themes?

At a time when the term eco-warrior had probably never been coined, Jorge Grau has produced a cautionary tale, about how our scientific advancements could have an adverse effect on the planet and the way it behaves towards us. He doesn’t do it in a particularly subtle way, George gives the agricultural scientists a hard time at every turn and voices his disapproval of what they’re doing, viewing the use of radioactive waves as cancer causing and abusing nature.

To go alongside we have that brilliant opening montage of cars spewing fumes into the atmosphere, litter on our streets, industrial chimneys belching gases into the air, birds lying dead on the streets…it’s not a subtext, it’s right there on the screen. I do like the artistic touches though, the playful scene right in the middle of that montage where a woman throws off her clothes and runs naked across the street without anyone giving her the time of day. In the context of the film it can be viewed two ways. Is it that we’re so consumed by the technology and destruction of nature around us that we don’t notice one of the most natural things in the world – the naked human form? Or is it that we’re all so dead inside that we ignore the female form completely, capable of bringing life into the world?

Don't count on the police in this film!

There’s a strong anti-establishment feel to the film, particularly within George’s staunchly political, pro-nature character and the portrayal of the police as violent, thuggish and vindictive, failing to believe their story and believing them to be murderers. The Church is seen as a place of death and decay and when Edna is taken to a hospital for treatment she’s strapped to a bed and branded insane. It’s interesting though that through their actions, each institution brings about its own downfall…the police chief in the final few scenes, murdered as a consequence of taking a life, the church is overrun by its own buried dead and the hospital burns to the ground because it fails in its duty to treat Edna.

Release history

This was another to fall victim of the dreaded BBFC’s decision to cut pretty much anything that didn’t keep its intestines on the inside. Just under a minute and a half was removed for its original UK cinema release in 1975 before a pre-cut version known as ‘Don’t Open the Window’ was released by LVC.

The telephonist murder troubled the BBFC

The film was placed on the DPP list and prosecuted in 1983 but was taken off the list less than two years later, at which point the cut cinema release was submitted to the BBFC who insisted on further snips. Consequently Network Distribution put out a version that was missing one minute and 53 seconds of blood, guts and gougings in 1985.

Anchor Bay submitted an uncut version in 2002 and it was passed without any cuts with a few extras and an informative booklet. It has since been re-released a couple of times, including a disappointingly barebones release by Optimum, without any further cuts. It’s crying out for a decent blu ray release in the UK…yes, I’m talking to you Arrow and 88!

Cultural Impact

We’ve already talked about how some of the scenes have influenced the work of Fulci and I suppose as a precursor to ‘Dawn of the Dead’ but it’s hard to gauge its influence. I’d like to think that it helped to usher in the new wave of zombie flicks that came in the wake of ‘Dawn’ and Fulci’s movies and, alongside the Blind Dead films and a couple of half decent US films (I really must watch ‘Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things’ as I’ve heard very good things about it!), it kept the seat warm for Romero to cement his reputation as the zombie king!

Final Thoughts…

I like this film a lot and think it’s seriously underrated. It has no little style, a wonderfully eerie soundtrack, stunning settings and some pretty serious gore. It also anticipates Romero’s social commentary and gives the film a reason for being, instead of a no-brain rip off that is only here to entertain or repulse…it genuinely has something to say. If you’ve not seen it then please do give it a try, it has dated pretty horribly thanks to the haircuts, fashions and cars on display but as an ‘of the time’ slice of gory socio-political zombie mayhem you won’t be disappointed!

Memorable Quote

Police Chief: “I wish the dead could come back to life so that I could kill you again.”

You’ll like this if you enjoyed…

‘Night of the Living Dead’, ‘Tombs of the Blind Dead’, ‘Psychomania’, ‘Dawn of the Dead’

An American Werewolf in London (1981)

Tagline: “Beware the Moon”
UK Running Time: 97 minutes

Film Quality: 5/5
Gore Content: 3/5
Entertainment Value: 5/5
Originality: 4/5

Introduction

So how do you follow cult comedy musical ‘The Blues Brothers’? By making a cult comedy horror of course! John Landis has had an eclectic career to say the least, directing monster movies, comedies, musicals, muppets and even a ‘Beverly Hills Cop’ film but this story about a couple of American tourists attacked by ‘some kind of madman’, killing one of them is, for me, his best. It introduced the world to horror that was both funny and scary, brought werewolves into the modern day arena and gave us one of the most stunning and memorable special effects sequences seen on film.

In a nutshell

Two American tourists are attacked by what appears to be a madman whilst lost on the Yorkshire Moors, killing one of them and leaving the other badly wounded. Convinced that it was a large animal rather than a man that attacked him, the ‘one that lived’ begins to suffer traumatic nightmares and receive visits from his dead friend, leading him to the conclusion that he must be a werewolf.

So what’s good about it?

You wouldn’t think it by reading the above, brief synopsis but this movie is side-splittingly funny. Much of that is due to the chemistry between our two American leads, Jack and David. Much of their dialogue was ad-libbed and Griffin Dunne, who plays Jack, had never acted before but they were clearly on the same wavelength and at ease in each other’s company. The way they play off each other is great to watch and it’s the sign of a great director that Landis, who clearly has a flair for comedy, allowed them to just go with it. David Naughton, who plays David, is excellent in the lead and plays the conflicted hero role brilliantly as he flicks from tortured soul to bright and breezy tourist effortlessly.

The gimmick of having Jack come back as an increasingly rotting corpse is inspired and takes us towards a wonderful scene in a porn cinema (more on that shortly!) where he’s forced to meet all of his victims as the undead. Although the overriding nature of these scenes is comic, there is a great deal of sadness running through them as David is forced to confront the fact that his friend his dead whilst Jack knows that the only way for his best friend to be redeemed is to join him. All of this whilst both being “well aware of how warm it is in Italy right now!”

The casting is excellent with some wonderful British characters, particularly Brian Glover who is memorable in his cameo role as a brash Yorkshireman torn between giving away his village’s secret and saving the lives of two innocent men and a very early screen appearance by the late Rik Mayall. John Woodvine is just the right side of stuffy as Dr Hirsch with a genuine interest in getting to the bottom of what he sees as David’s psychosis. And of course there’s the lovely Jenny Agutter.

As a child I knew her as Bobbie in ‘The Railway Children’ but after THAT shower scene she will always be Nurse Price…I would defy anyone not to admit that they had a massive crush on this amazing actress after watching this film as a high impressionable teenager!

I’ve already mentioned the special effects and I’m sure you’ll have guessed by now that I was talking about the transformation scene. It took months to set up and film, with Naughton spending hours in make-up, contorted into different positions and under floor boards to allow for a seamless blend of human and prosthetics. The end result is startling and the first time cinema audiences ever saw a full, on screen transformation of man into wolf. It looked painful, intriguing and majestic all at the same time and they even managed to cram in some humour by inserting a shot of a shocked looking Mickey Mouse figure and playing most of it out to ‘Blue Moon’ by Sam Cooke whilst still being utterly terrifying! It goes to show that, when done properly, prosthetic effects beat CGI hands-down and Rick Baker’s work on this was well deserving of the very first Oscar for Make-Up effects.

There’s so much to enjoy about this film including the choice to have a wolf on all fours instead of a wolfman, the location shots around London, the stunning bleakness of the Yorkshire Moors (it creates the same effect as the Nevada Desert in ‘The Hills Have Eyes’, as a place of great isolation and danger whilst eerily beautiful and enchanting at the same time) and the expertly filmed scares for the nightmare scenes – apparently the ‘hospital bed in the woods’ scene was the most painful special effect that Naughton had to endure, despite only being around three seconds on screen! But my one final word has to go to the porn film! It too was shot by Landis and titled ‘See You Next Wednesday’, a phrase Landis likes to get into all of his films. It is VERY funny and provides one of the most memorable lines of dialogue in the entire film that even Jack pauses to draw comment on…”Great movie!” Now a full feature of that would make a fantastic extra on a re-released special edition!

What about the bad?

I’m going to have to nitpick here and say that I’ve never been entirely convinced about the relationship between David and Nurse Price. Yes, I’ve heard of The Nightingale Effect where nurses fall in love with their patients but she seems too, well, sensible for that. And though highly admirable, would a doctor really travel the best part of 200 miles to the arse end of beyond just to check out a story about a werewolf? Like I said, nitpicking, but I really can’t think of anything truly bad about this exceptional film.

Any themes?

It goes pver some ground that Argento covers in some of his early films, most notably ‘Suspiria’, ‘Deep Red’ and ‘The Bird With the Crystal Plumage’, and that is the foreigner in peril. In Argento’s films the protagonists find themselves in danger in a country unknown to them without too much knowledge of how to get themselves out of it. Here we find two Americans ignoring the basic safety instructions and superstitions of a very foreign land (parts of Yorkshire are foreign and alien to other Brits!) and pay the price.

Other than that it’s a lot of loosely following Werewolf lore, such as the lunar cycle, wounded victims becoming werewolves and so on but strangely no mention of silver bullets! In fact guns and bullets seem to do the trick, silver or otherwise…there’s a fantastic group discussion amongst the undead regarding how David should ‘top himself’ suggesting various methods guaranteeing death. In fact the only mention of a silver bullet in the entire film is met with a swift “Oh, be serious will you!” from Jack!

Release history

Nazi Mutants!

No censorship issues in the UK, although an anniversary edition dvd was accidentally released with a scene of dialogue missing. In the US there were slight cuts to the infamous love scene and, strangely considering the gore in other scenes, to a shot showing toast coming out of Jack’s decomposing mouth whilst he was eating toast! Perhaps the censors were having breakfast at the time!

There is talk about a scene involving the killing of the tramps being cut and more blood during one of the nightmare scenes but this has never been verified as being in any final version. My guess is that it’s a mis-remembering of the scenes in question that has somehow become myth. Neither have surfaced as ‘deleted scenes’ on DVD extras.

Cultural Impact

Released at more or less the same time as ‘The Howling’ and the far more serious ‘Wolfen, it didn’t quite do for werewolves what ‘The Lost Boys’ did for vampires but it was a step away from the old wolfman films where the ‘change’ would simply involve a hairy facemask and the actor running around slightly bent over.

It did influence the use of comedy in horror which had never really been done to great effect before. There had been pastiches and parodies but they were always of the ‘Abbot and Costello’ variety which always removed any element of fear, a tone that was retained by Landis and which carried on with films such as ‘Vamp’, ‘Evil Dead 2’, ‘Return of the Living Dead’ and Landis’ own ‘Innocent Blood’.

It also gave us the big special effects set piece which John Carpenter took forward with ‘The Thing’ and David Cronenberg in ‘The Fly’. The notion that a gory effect could be so much more than just a decapitation or a death but rather usher in a change of being and represent a rebirth of sorts or reaffirmation of life rather than obliteration. Another example of the popular ‘body horror’ sub-genre.

Final thoughts

A great start to the 80s, this fairly mainstream film by a well-known director has become something of a cult. I’m not sure how he does it but Landis has this unnerving ability to be equally at home with big budgets and Hollywood stars as he is with low budgets and fledgling actors. He’s never really been an auteur, other than the ‘See You Next Wednesday’ I’ve never really noticed anything that uniquely defines a film as being typical of Landis. What he has done here is give us a wonderful film that is endlessly entertaining with that one scene that everybody remembers (no, I don’t mean the shower scene!) and looks as good now, if not better than it did 35 years ago.

Memorable Quotes

A good old Yorkshire welcome!

Chess player: “Beware the moon, lads.”

Dart Player: “You made me miss…I’ve never missed that board before.”

David: “I will not be threatened by a walking meatloaf.”

Dead Jack: “Have you ever talked to a corpse? It’s boring.”

Naked Man (bursting in on a couple having sex): “What are you doing here, you promised never to do this kind of thing again.”
Naked Man 2: “I promised no such thing.”
Naked Man: “Not you, you twit…her.”
Naked Woman: “I’ve never seen you before in my life.”
Naked Man (shrugging his shoulders and leaving the room): “Oh.”

Little boy: “A naked man stole my balloons.”

You’ll like this if you enjoyed…

‘The Howling’, ‘Fright Night’, ‘The Lost Boys’

The DPP 39: Video Nasties Part 1 – ‘A’

In 1984, the Video Recordings Act ushered in a terrifying new era in UK home video entertainment.  The regulation and subsequent censorship of home videos by the British Board of Film Classification led to a number of films being seized by the authorities and prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act 1959. In total, 39 of these films were successfully prosecuted, over the coming months The Horror Video will look very briefly at the release history of each film and its current status. Today we start with the letter ‘A’!

Title: Absurd (1981)

Director: Joe D’Amato
Uncut running time: 96 minutes
Alternative titles: ‘Rosso Sangue’, ‘Anthropophagus 2’, ‘Monster Hunter’, ‘Horrible’, ‘The Grim Reaper 2’

Sequel to ‘Anthropophagus: The Beast’, the same ‘beast’ goes on a second brutal killing spree, eventually terrorising a family in their home. Adhering more closely to the format of a slasher film, the gore was surprisingly toned down a little for what is a fairly lacklustre follow up, although it does have a pretty good electronic score and George Eastman is terrific as the monster.

Medusa Video released both an uncut and cut version of this back in 1982 and 1983, confusingly with identical artwork and was also briefly billeded as one of the many sequels to Fulci’s ‘Zombi’! The film was cut by 2:32s for its cinema release, both versions being withdrawn and added to the list of banned movies. Censored footage included a nurse being killed by a drill, a horrifyingly tense scene involving a woman being burned in an oven and a man’s head being cut by a bandsaw.

It was released uncut in 2009 in the US and has only very recently been passed uncut in the UK by 88 Films with a 2K restoration thanks to a crowdfunding campaign. The film will be released in early 2017.

Current status: Uncut in the UK to be released in 2017, uncut in the US since 2009 on the Mya label

Title: Anthropophagus: The Beast (1980)

Director: Joe D’Amato
Uncut running time: 90 minutes
Alternative titles: ‘Anthropophagus’, ‘Gomia, Terror en el Mar Egeo’, ‘The Grim Reaper’, ‘Man Eater’, ‘Man Beast’, ‘Savage Island’

Quite a nasty little film as a group of tourists are stranded on an island and attacked by a cannibalistic monster who eats unborn babies and even his own intestines! Entertaining in a way that only a low budget 70s/80s Italian could be, this one is definitely worth checking out.

The Prequel to ‘Absurd’ it was released uncut by Video Film Promotions in 1983 and within a year was placed on the banned list. A cut version was very briefly available through Videoshack but this too was quickly withdrawn to leave the title in limbo. It was later released on DVD under the title ‘The Grim Reaper’. This version is to be avoided at all costs, heavily cut it is around ten minutes shorter, removing all of the gratuitous gore along with several dialogue scenes rendering it nonsensical in places. As this version was a ‘new’ title to the BBFC, edited in the US, it lists the film as uncut because no further edits were required.

88 Films submitted an uncut version to the BBFC in 2015 and was passed with all previous cuts waived. Thanks to the overwhelming success of 88 Films’ crowdfunding project for ‘Absurd’, raising twice the intended amount, a 2k restoration release is due for 2017. It is also finally getting an uncut release stateside thanks to Severin, presumably using 88’s new remaster.

Current status: Uncut in the UK, soon to be released uncut in the US.

Title: Axe (1974)

Director: Frederick R. Friedel
Uncut running time: 72 minutes
Alternative titles: ‘Lisa, Lisa’, ‘The Virgin Slaughter’, ‘California Axe Massacre’, ‘California Axe Murders’

You feel every minute of the thankfully short running time, what it has going for it is its low budget which adds a grittiness to the pretty dull proceedings. Awful acting and not particularly interesting special effects, it’s kind of hard to see what was so offensive that brought attention to this film over other, much more gratuitous titles.

Released in the UK as ‘California Axe Massacre’ it was cut for its X rated cinema release but later released uncut by Video Releasing Organisation in 1982.The cuts were made to a nasty rape scene where a woman is slashed with a razor, the beating of another woman and the shooting of a shop assistant. It was successfully prosecuted and banned in 1984, not receiving a further release for fifteen years. It was finally released, albeit with 19 seconds of cuts in 1999. The BBFC reported that they would have passed the film uncut, but prosecutions for the illegal distribution of the film within ten years of prosecution ensured their hands were tied and the cuts were nominal.

Current status: Available uncut in the UK since 2005 on ILC Prime and 2008 on 4Digital, uncut in the US in a double pack with ‘Kidnapped Co-ed’.

Cannibal Holocaust (1980)

Tagline: “The most controversial film ever made”
UK Running Time: 92 minutes

Film Quality: 4/5
Gore Content: 5/5
Entertainment Value: 2.5/5
Originality: 4/5

Introduction

One of the taglines to this film is ‘How far is too far?’ That’s an incredibly apt five words as it’s difficult to think of a more controversial and notorious movie as Ruggero Deodato’s ‘Cannibal Holocaust’. It was banned in more than 50 countries, the makers were arrested and brought up on obscenity charges, courts believed that actors were genuinely killed and the film includes scenes of actual, not staged animal cruelty and death. That said there is something about this film that sets it WAY above any of the other movies in the bizarre and controversial world of the mondo cannibal sub-genre. It has something to say and it shouts it loud, so loud that you may never hear anything else again!

In a nutshell

A group of four filmmakers set out into the Amazon to make a documentary about cannibal tribes and go missing…a year later their footage is found. What the TV studios discover whilst watching the found footage shocks the executives as they find out, not only what happens to the crew but also what they did to seal their own fate.

So what’s good about it?

If the first sentence of the above paragraph sounds familiar then that’s because it is, or at least wasn’t familiar at the time. What we have here is what could well be the very first found footage movie, now so commonplace it’s highly unlikely there’s any missing footage out there left to find. It pre-dates ‘The Blair Witch Project’ by nearly 20 years which is incredible, nothing like this had ever been done before and the controversy surrounding the film is a possible reason why nobody else did for such a long period of time (‘Man Bites Dog’ springs to mind).

Aside from the narrative structure it is one seriously powerful film. At time of writing it’s 36 years old and STILL has the power to shock, it’s genuinely exhausting watching this film. Whereas the ‘Texas Chain Saw Massacre’ went for the ‘’less is more’ approach of leaving everything to the imagination, this goes to the other extreme. Absolutely everything is thrown at you and it is one of the few occasions where it is far worse than anything you could conjure up in your own head. Some of the images, especially the forced tribal abortion and the horrific aftermath of a vertical impalement will not go away and that’s before we even get to the animal cruelty and graphic acts of cannibalism.

This shot had to be recreated in court to prove

it was fake!

The special effects are, in the main, really very good and the use of handheld cameras allows the filmmakers to get away with any effects that are a little ropey. It adds authenticity and realism that was missing from inferior films with a similar subject matter such as ‘Cannibal Ferox’ and ‘Deep River Savages’. It also landed it in serious trouble…this type of cinema verite film style had not been seen in horror before and mainly witnessed in news reports and documentaries, basically ‘non-fiction’ and the authorities had a tough time believing Deodato’s film to be staged. Of course we’ve seen this blurring of fact and fiction before, most notably with Orson Welles’ ‘War of the Worlds’ broadcast and BBC’s 1990s ‘Ghostwatch’ but this was the first time a director had been accused of murdering his own actors. You can argue that this is a backhanded compliment and the director had achieved his aim but I doubt even Deodato expected the kind of response and repercussions he experienced here.

More about the themes and aftermath later but a moment to talk about the music which, in complete contrast to the mayhem, carnage and viscera witnessed on screen, is quite beautiful at times. Written by Grammy award winning and Oscar nominated composer (ironically for ‘More’, the title song to ‘Mondo Cane’ – film which Deodato cites as an inspiration for ‘Cannibal Holocaust’) Riz Ortalani. The score adds beauty to an ugly film and just adds to the confusion you feel whilst you’re watching it…are you really enjoying it or are you appreciating an incredibly tough film for what itk is.

What about the bad?

In bad taste - tucking into a bit of raw turtle

It’s hard to get past the animal cruelty. Personally I don’t think there’s any place for it, even in exploitation cinema, Deodato himself re-editing the film recently to remove this aspect stating that he wished he’d never put it in. He claims that the animals killed were used as part of ritualistic meals and ceremonies by the indigenous tribes who took part in the film, one of the reasons why the footage has been largely reinstated to UK prints of the film. Still, the film is powerful enough and hard enough to watch without it.

There has been a lot of criticism about the way the cannibal tribes were represented. Deodato saw fit to use the real names of tribes and ended up portraying them incorrectly as cannibals. Ironically, the message he seemed to be getting across about ‘civilised’ filmmakers staging scenes for shock value and sensationalism can be used as criticism against Deodato himself who creates one of the most shocking and violent films ever made to send a message that shocking violence is wrong. It kind of works on some levels but you’d struggle to argue against a certain amount of hypocrisy here!

Finally, it’s such a well-made film, not usually a criticism but this film is so effective that all but the most hardcore of horror fans will have switched it off after half an hour. It’s upsetting, disturbing, thought-provoking, immoral and is one of the few films that can leave you succumbing to feelings of guilt. It’s really quite astonishing that the film was put together for $100,000…how can a film with such a low budget achieve that level of realism? You may have noticed that I have a genuine appreciation for what Deodato has achieved with this film yet gave it an ‘Entertainment Value’ of two and a half. That’s because despite being well-made and incredibly effective, you really do struggle to actually ‘enjoy’ the film which is a completely different thing to ‘appreciating’ it.

Any themes?

Provoking a response from the 'savages'

Primarily it’s a film about different cultures clashing and how a film crew ‘stage’ certain scenes to be able to get some of the barbaric footage they original intended to get. The film’s message of how ‘civilised’ and ‘uncivilised’ societies are relative terms is absolutely hammered home when you see what the film crew does to the tribes. They are the real villains of the piece despite the showcasing of particularly barbaric behaviour from the tribesmen, particularly towards women. It’s the complete lack of understanding of a different set of values, regardless of whether they fit in with our own world view, that ultimately sets up our view of other, less developed societies as somehow uncivilised. Yet we’re the ones holding codes to nuclear weapons, wiping out entire expanses of rainforest, leaking oil into the seas and generally creating an imbalance with nature within which the natives depicted in this film have developed an equilibrium.

One of Deodato’s noted inspirations for this film was news reports of a paramilitary group that carried out terrorist activities. He watched these news reports convinced that some of it was staged. It’s this idea that he took into the creation of this film, I suppose it boils down to the old saying ‘The camera never lies’. The camera will always show what’s in front of you but, especially in the wake of Vietnam and the perceived censorship of some of the things that were going on at that time, what isn’t shown can be just as, if not more important in providing that context. In other words yes, the film crew were attacked but bloody hell they did a lot of poking with that cattle prod.

Release history

A terrifying final image

This story is still being told! There are some countries where, even now, you can’t obtain a cut version of this film. When it was first released in the UK by Go Video in 1982 it was pre-cut by some seven minutes and still found itself on the banned list. Nobody attempted to show it to the censors again until 2001 when VIPCO managed to get it passed, albeit missing five minutes and 44 seconds including all of the animal cruelty and most of the rape and gratuitous flesh eating scenes.

In 2011 Shameless had the balls to submit an uncut version to the BBFC and were rewarded with more than they could possibly have hoped for. It did suffer two cuts to one scene, 15 seconds in total to the real death of a Coatimundi, substituted with some stock footage of a monkey, presumably to keep the running time intact for the commentary. It also restored some of the shootings from ‘The Last Road to Hell’ film within a film which was missing from some more complete versions so it was a decent pay off.

What also happened, which some say is to the benefit of the film is a new edit by Deodato who removed all of the animal cruelty footage. This amounted to around 25 seconds which surprised me as it seems like so much more and these scenes are still there, you know what’s happening, it’s just not on film. In my eyes this doesn’t diminish the power of the film, but it does allow you to sleep at night after watching it!

The UK story is pretty typical of the censorship history of ‘Cannibal Holocaust’, who knows how many different versions of this film must be out there.

Just as an addition, you have to admire the boulder-sized stones of the Danish film board who saw fit to pass this film uncut as a ‘15’!!!

Cultural Impact

Very cheeky!

Its makers claim otherwise, but this was a huge influence on ‘The Blair Witch Project’ and found footage sub-genre of horror films. The makers of ‘Blair Witch’ claim to be massive fans of horror but also say they weren’t aware of ‘Cannibal Holocaust’ when they made their own breakthrough, low-budget masterpiece. I find that very hard to believe! Such a notorious and controversial film is a holy grail for horror fans to seek out, especially since uncut prints were so hard to find, they surely must have known about it, even if they’d not necessarily seen it.

There was no direct sequel but a number of other films were retitled as such, most notably ‘Amazonia: The Catherine Miles Story’, re-released in the UK by VIPCO as ‘Cannibal Holocaust 2’. Eli Roth, never one to miss an opportunity to jump on a popular horror film, created ‘The Green Inferno’ which was named after the fictional film within a film in Deodato’s movie. Other than that it is a great example of how problematic the cannibal sub-genre was for censors around the world when it comes to subject matter, depiction of indigenous tribes and on screen violence.

Final thoughts

Arguably the most controversial movie ever made, still causing waves and dividing opinion 36 years after it was released, how many other films can you think of that was so realistic that it was seized by Magistrates, its makers prosecuted and forced to bring in the actors (which proved difficult as they reportedly signed contracts not to appear in other films to increase the possibility that this film might be real!) just to prove they were still alive! Certainly the greatest film in the cannibal sub-genre and an arduous watch regardless of who you are, this is a true one off and holds a genuine ability to shock.

Memorable Quotes

Monroe: “I wonder who the real cannibals are.”

Alan (Feigning shock): “It’s, it’s horrible. I can’t understand the reason for such cruelty. It must have something to do with some obscure sexual rite or with the almost profound respect these primitives have for virginity.”

Executive: “You must admit it’s exceptional footage. I didn’t expect such impact, such authenticity.”

Chaco: “Hey Professor, I recognise these teeth.”

Chaco: “You did it goddamnit…they just invited us to dinner!”

You’ll like this if you enjoyed…

‘Mondo Cane’, ‘Cannibal Holocaust’, ‘The Blair Witch Project’, ‘Man Bites Dog’

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

Tagline: ‘Whatever you do, don’t fall asleep’
UK Running Time: 91 Minutes

Film Quality: 4.5/5
Gore Content: 3/5
Entertainment Value: 5/5
Originality: 4/5

Introduction

Back in the early 20^th century, the old Universal American horror movies usually saw the ‘horror’ as being overseas, European such as ‘Dracula’ or ‘Frankenstein’ or later in the Caribbean as we saw in ‘I Walked With A Zombie’. Slowly we saw that horror move into the US backwaters with films such as ‘Night of the Living Dead’ and ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ before the slasher movie brought it into small town America and Suburbia. Cronenberg took it one step further by bringing the horror into our own bodies and it seemed there was nowhere left to go, especially with the slasher film a seemingly unstoppable juggernaut. That was until Wes Craven invented Freddy Krueger and we were no longer safe in our own beds or in our own little dream world.

In a nutshell

The teenagers of Springwood are terrified of going to sleep, sharing horrific nightmares with a common theme…a man, horribly burned, wearing a red and green jumper with knives for fingers. As they start to die one by one the parents themselves refuse to accept the fact that their past actions are to blame for this nightmare as a secret they kept from their children comes back, not only to haunt them, but to take their own children’s lives.

What’s good about it?

The beautiful poster art

Wes Craven invented a character that has become iconic, not just within the world of horror but the cinematic universe. Freddy Krueger became the bogey man for an entire generation, invading teenagers’ dreams and killing them whilst they slept, there was no defence. Craven came up with the idea when hearing of a case in Cambodia where a number of people suffered terrible nightmares and were too scared to sleep. In one particular case, a child was screaming and was found dead in his bed, a post mortem revealing no health defects, no heart attack, he seemingly just died. Now of course this could be an urban legend, sub-standard autopsy techniques or a shared hysteria but it got a young Craven thinking about what could be so terrifying that it prevented somebody from going to sleep and had the power to kill. Krueger became that ‘thing’ – slasher films love to make people as vulnerable as possible before terrorising them, when are you at your most vulnerable if not when you’re asleep?

Freddy’s character would become diluted as the series progressed, famous for a dark sense of humour and some terrible one liners but in Craven’s original he is genuinely frightening. You don’t really see him for a quite some time, a screech of metal on metal, a disembodied laugh, a shadow in the corner of the frame. Craven takes his time with the first death being shown, for the most part in the real world outside of the dream as her body is slashed by unseen blades…we see his power and what he can do before we see him, kind of like in ‘Jaws’. Unlike subsequent instalments, he stays pretty much in the shadows.

Introducing the character of Freddy gave Craven the kind of license that his earlier, more traditional slasher films didn’t allow. His imagination is allowed to really run wild and tap into a number of images and fears that we can all relate to and have all dreamt about. Not being able to run away because our feet are stuck are weighed down, the illogical jumping from place to place, the non-linear nature of dreams that we accept as normal until we wake up. We never know we’re in a dream until we wake up, this ensures that the blurring of reality and fantasy is genuine and adds to the on-screen terror. It also follows that the manner in which our ‘Final Girl’ is able to survive makes perfect sense within the Elm Street mythology

But that nightmarish imagery is superb. Everyday objects invade the screen to disorientate and confuse such as a kids tricycle, a lamb, a telephone which grows its own mouth. And the places as well…Nancy’s home suddenly becomes Freddy’s boiler room as any sense of geography and logic disappear. The violence…a very young Jonny Depp in his big screen debut experiences the ultimate wet dream, Tina is graphically assaulted, almost to the point of rape as she is flung across the room, scaling every wall and even the ceiling. The mechanism of allowing dreams to become reality is a masterstroke and Craven proved time and again that he has the vision and eye for horror to be able to pull it off. At times he out-Cronenberg’s Cronenberg in terms of surreal body horror.

Finally we come to the depiction of adults. In a similar vein to your traditional slasher they’re not there for their kids. We have an alcoholic pill popper, parents who aren’t there for their kids, parents happy to leave their kids to be babysat by MTV, all the while hiding a nasty little secret for which their children will pay the price. They aren’t able to protect their children which is a pretty nihilistic view of the world, that our parents create a world which is unsafe for the next generation…who knew that Wes Craven would turn out to be such an accurate prophet!

What about the bad?

Wes Craven went to such great lengths to come up with something completely different it seems such a shame that some of the annoying horror movie tropes remain. Tina is bumped off very shortly after having sex, Rod is a bad lad and consequently doesn’t last long, Glen gets his kicks from watching Miss Nude America and bites the shiny one. That this film takes such a giant stride away from your average slasher it still falls into some of the same traps and conventions.

Any themes?

"No running in the hall without a pass"

Oh yes! It wasn’t until I sat down and began typing this that I realise what a terrible world the parents had created for their children. It was around this time that people were beginning to wise up about greenhouse gases and the strain we could be putting on the environment. I know this isn’t necessarily a viewpoint shared by some of our American cousins but could there be some subtext about legacy and what we leave for generations to come? I mean they even burn this guy, releasing his troubled spirit and destructive power into the ‘atmosphere’ where it can linger and kill the next generation…or perhaps I’m reading too much into it. Either way, there’s definitely something there about what kind of legacy we leave behind for our children.

As an extension of that, Freddy is a metaphor for the anxieties we all have as teenagers. They spend large parts of the film trying to make themselves understood by the adult world whilst simultaneously trying to make sense of their own thoughts and feelings. The teenagers have no understanding of what their parents do, say or stand for and must figure out their own path and their own way in the world in order to get by.

Release History

‘Nightmare’ has a surprisingly complex release history for a film everybody thinks they know well. It’s also a rare example of a film that was uncut upon original release and has suffered cuts since…this is largely own to the American classification body the MPAA.

Initially there were no required cuts in the UK for its cinema or VHS release. This applied right up to 2001 and included a couple of completely uncut screenings on Channel 4 in the 1990s. In the UK it has never suffered from any cuts BUT it now only currently exists in a cut version.

The MPAA, for reasons known only to themselves, removed shots from four scenes which included two small trims totalling five seconds to Tina’s death and another three seconds from Glen’s demise to obtain an ‘R rating. We’re not talking graphic gore here, just a few blood spatters and an avalanche of fake blood jetting out of a water bed – you’d have to be a gibbering idiot to find that offensive!

The trouble arises when it transpires that this is the only version that has ever been available on Region 1, meaning that when it came time to record the commentary, it was done over a cut version. Consequently, any release with a commentary (that means all of them except, bizarrely, the Turkish DVD release!) is lumbered with a cut version. There are no plans to release an uncut version and subsequent blu-ray releases haven’t seen new submissions.

This means that unless you have an old VHS copy, or were lucky enough to record it on Channel 4, you kiss any current hopes of catching an uncut copy of this superior movie goodbye. What the hell did Freddy do to deserve that!

Cultural Impact

Freddy, along with Michael Myers, Jason Vorhees and Pinhead, became a horror icon to rival the old Universal monsters. His popularity was, and still is, immense and the number of spin offs from this films, including figures, novelisations, comic book adaptations, not to mention sequels, a TV series and a hit single by DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince show that there was no end to Freddy’s influence.

Wes Craven had little to do with the sequels other than producing and writing the, actually pretty good, third film in the franchise until he returned to reboot the series with ‘Wes Craven’s New nightmare’, serving as a post-modern take on the franchise and a precursor to his smash hit ‘Scream’, the second time he revitalised the horror genre.

It’s such a shame you can’t put the original film in the wash to remove the stain of the remake but what can you do?

Final Thoughts

One of THE iconic horror films of the 80s, it’s stood the test of time reasonably well and still stands head and shoulders above the sequels and remakes. Its mix of familiar slasher and highly original fantasy setting set it apart from anything else around at the time and despite being an incredibly dark film, re-set the horror landscape for some lighter moments with a charismatic villain instead of the faceless, largely silent masked killers from the late 70s/early 80s. Great fun and showed exactly why Wes Craven was and is so revered in horror circles.

Memorable quotes

Children: “One, two Freddy’s coming for you…”

Nancy: “Whatever you do…don’t fall asleep.”

Glen: “Miss Nude America’s on tonight”
Glen’s Mum: “How are you going to hear what she says?”
Glen: “Who cares what she says?”

Rod: “Up yours with a twirling lawnmower.”

Freddy (revealing his glove): “This……is God.”

You’ll like this if you enjoyed…

‘Dreamscape’, ‘Hellraiser’, ‘Child’s Play’

The Burning (1981)

Tagline: ‘Don’t look he’ll see you. Don’t breathe he’ll hear you. Don’t move you’re dead’
UK Running Time: 91 Minutes

Film Quality: 3/5
Gore Content: 3/5
Entertainment Value: 4/5
Originality: 3/5

Introduction

Thanks to the success of ‘Halloween’ and ‘Friday the 13^th’ cinemas were awash with slasher movies, each trying to outdo the other in terms of body count and gore. In 1981 came a film that set a new high (or low, depending on your point of view!) for future films to beat which got it into trouble with the censors and attracted word of mouth interest in equal measure. ‘The Burning’ followed the slasher conventions to a point but deviated in a number of ways which raises it above the level of most other pale imitations.

These pranks never end well

In a nutshell

After a group of summer camp teens attempt to play a prank on unpopular camp caretaker Cropsy, of course it goes horribly wrong. Burned beyond recognition, Cropsy goes insane and returns to the camp five years later to exact his revenge

What’s good about it?

They managed to attract a lot of high end talent to this nasty little film. The undoubted star of the show is special effects wizard Tom Savini who turned down ‘Friday 13^th Part 2’ to do the effects work on this. They are outstanding right from the opening burn effects to the infamous raft scene which caused so much trouble for the censors. It’s well documented that Savini was a war photographer in Vietnam and he based his burn effects on the sights he saw during that period, hence the amazing realism.

A young Holly Hunter (left)

How on earth they managed to convince Rick Wakeman to do the music is anyone’s guess but they did and he does a great job creating a menacing electronic score. There is some very deep bass that thumps along relentlessly, representing Cropsy’s absolute obsession with getting revenge for his horrific injuries. We also have screen debuts for Oscar winner Holly Hunter, Fisher Stevens (‘Short Circuit’, ‘Lost’), Jason Alexander (‘Pretty Woman’, ‘Seinfeld’) and Brian Backer (‘Fast Times at Ridgemont High’, ‘Police Academy 4’).

As for the film itself it does deviate from the norm in a number of ways. First of all it’s the first time we ever saw the kids become the victims, usually it’s the babysitters, camp counsellors, teachers or other neglectful carers who turn their toes up, typically because they’re having sex with each other and drinking…basically NOT looking after the kids! Secondly, for the most part they act responsibly and aren’t particularly annoying…we actually like these kids and, apart from a couple pratting about in the lake, they don’t do a great deal to deserve their fate.

This leads us on to the usual criticism of the depiction of women in slasher films. Apart from one slightly gratuitous, voyeuristic shower scene, the sex and nudity is kept to a minimum and the terrorisation is pretty levelled between the sexes. The shower scene in question leads to the male voyeur being taken to one side and given something of a bollocking – no, you cannot treat women like that. This relative sexual equality is extended to the ‘final girl’ which, in this movie, is a ‘final boy’. Yes, he is to a certain extent stripped of his masculinity as we see he can’t swim, he’s bullied by the bigger kids and doesn’t ‘fit in’ with the guys. In this sense he is just as ‘vulnerable’ as the traditional ‘final girl’ is initially made out to be. That said, it does make for a more interesting and alternative final ten minutes.

Fisher Stevens gets the snip on a raft

It also breaks a few rules when it comes to the stalking and slashing of the victims themselves. The body count is relatively high for a slasher film…I believe it’s ten. However, five of these come in a single, 30 second rampage, the famous raft massacre which comes as an enormous shock to the audience. We’re used to seeing people stalked first but on this occasion THEY come across HIM and the unexpected burst of extreme violence has quite the effect.

What about the bad?

Unfortunately, for me, the killer is not particularly memorable. We know too much about him. We get the obligatory camp fire ghost story (which turns into a prank – won’t these kids ever learn?) which is kind of pointless in this sense because we know the legend is true and surely, as only five years has passed and we know full well he’s been discharge from hospital, at least one of the kids or counsellors would know this as well?

If only there was a 'stabbing weapon as metaphor for

penis' example in this film!

Oddly, as the film breaks a few slasher conventions which I find interesting, it does create some moral ambiguity. One of the ‘kids’ who was involved in the opening scene prank gets away with it…as we know Cropsy is out for revenge surely in the morality filled world of a slasher movie he would be the first to perish. Add the fact that he kills innocent children we soon leap to the conclusion that there is little to no moral code going on here…yes a couple who have sex are killed straight afterwards but what did the kids on the raft do? The film deserves praise for ignoring convention but it does have an inconsistent sense of morality.

Any themes?

Nothing beyond cashing in on the slasher movie craze. Apparently a crew were filming ‘Madman’ just a few miles up the river…was America really so overwhelmed by slasher movie crews that they were bumping into each other like locals in a small town?

Release History

This is such a great shot

The BBFC don’t like unconventional weapons, particularly ones that you might find lying around the house or garden sheds (apart from knives apparently). The weapon of choice in ‘The Burning’ is a pair of garden sheers which caused our lovely censorship body a king-sized headache that only two Ibuprofen and 26 seconds of cuts could relieve. Most of the gory scenes were trimmed and, although time wise there wasn’t much missing, the impact was massive. This isn’t a film that lingered on gory shots, it’s explicit and quick so the amount missing is deceptively significant.

This meant the opening scissor murder, neck slash, finger slice, neck stab and head chop were either missing or shortened. This accounted for pretty much all of the raft massacre scene which rendered one of the most shocking and memorable scenes in slasher movie history almost nonsensical and confusing.

This was one of the first to be prosecuted as a video nasty because Thorn EMI accidentally released an uncut version in the early 80s which meant that it was could be seized and the distributors prosecuted. In the US it fared even worse with more than a minute excised for an ‘R’ rated cinema release which was also released on VHS.

An uncut UK DVD was released in 2002 by VIPCO but it wasn’t until 2016’s Arrow release that a full uncut, remastered, widescreen print was released on a stunning blu ray disc.

Cultural Impact

Well renowned as being one of the most notorious slasher movies and one of the first to be slapped with the video nasties tag, it’ll always have that element of notoriety, in the UK at least. Apart from that it launched some serious acting talent, was one of the first productions by the Weinstein Brothers and the first to be released by Miramax. It was also further proof, if proof were needed, that Tom Savini was capable of improving pretty much any horror film he decided to work on and the only special effects artist who was a marketable name on the front cover of a VHS sleeve.

Final Thoughts

Not the most original film ever made, it did at least try to do a few things differently within the limited scope of a slasher film. What we have here is a basic film delivered by some exceptional talent all working at or near to the top of their game. Take away the acting, supreme special effects and pounding score then you’re left with half a film so what should have been a terrible film became a pretty good one as a result.

You’ll like this if you enjoyed…

‘Friday the 13^th’, ‘The Mutilator’, ‘The Slayer’