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Interview With the Vampire – Claudia’s Story

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Interview With the Vampire – Claudia’s Story

Based on the novel by Anne Rice, adapted by Ashley Marie Witter

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I’ll start by confessing straight up that Anne Rice’s Interview With the Vampire is one of my favourite novels. Originally published in the mid 70s it has sold in the millions and spawned a connected series, the Vampire Chronicles as well as a beautifully shot film by the very fine Neil Jordan. It is also one of the most influential novels in the vampire literary cannon, arguably as important to the genre in the 20th century as Stoker’s Dracula was to the 19th; both books are landmarks in the genre. I’ve re-read it several times over the years and in fact re-read it again just a few weeks before this adaptation arrived on my desk. It isn’t the first time the Vampire Chronicles have been adapted to the comics medium – I still have some of the Innovation comics adaptations in my collection (see here). However this is not a straightforward comics interpretation – instead Ashley Marie Witter has taken the original tale, which saw the 200 year old vampire Louis de Pointe du Lac narrating his life story to a young reporter, from his mortal life in the late 1700s plantation near New Orleans to the present day, and retold it, but this time from the perspective of one of the most singular characters in the novel – and indeed in all of vampire literature – the child vampire Claudia.

Ashley begins the story with a seriously ill Claudia – a beautiful young girl with a doll-like face and golden curls – being brought across by Lestat, the older, dominant vampire who made Louis into his immortal companion. As a shocked Louis watches, Lestat gashes his own wrist and offers it to Claudia, telling her she has to drink to get better from her illness. The human child drinks from Lestat and is transformed into an immortal vampire, endless, unchanging, in an incorruptible body that survives on a diet of human blood each and every night. Lestat has his own motivations for his actions – knowing that Louis is increasingly unhappy living with him he creates Claudia to be their ‘daughter’, her diminutive size and appearance making her as dependent on their support for her survival as any mortal child would be to its parents, locking Louis to him and their lifestyle, effectively forming an immortal, blood-drinking family unit. Realising what he has done calls Lestat a bastard and a fiend, while Lestat merely smiles in satisfaction, “such language in front of your daughter,” he mocks. I’m not your daughter, the little voice pipes up, I’m my mama’s daughter. Not anymore, Lestat informs her, now you are mine and Louis’ daughter…

As obvious and transparent as this gambit is, it works – Louis, the sensitive soul who finds immortal life difficult, wrestling with the morality of his existence, of the need to feed on human beings to sustain immortal life, cannot bring himself to leave with Claudia there, for her to be left only with Lestat to look after her. And so the trio settle into an uneasy family life – as with any family the child learns from both her carers. From Louis she learns an appreciation for the arts and the finer things of human existence, while from Lestat she learns the art of hunting and killing her human prey, something she takes to with great enthusiasm. Louis, the more nurturing of the two, is the one she loves, Lestat less so, but she still pays attention to the lessons he can teach her, until as the years pass she realises that he isn’t prepared to answer some of the deeper questions she starts to formulate, particularly regarding their own existence – why are there vampires, how did they come into existence, which vampire made Lestat and why does he never mention him? He becomes regularly enraged at her questions and when he refuses to explain she decides he simply doesn’t have the knowledge she desires but is reluctant to let her or Louis know, preferring to pretend to have access to secrets about their vampire nature that they may need for their survival.

At this point it becomes clear that she enjoys provoking him over such points and at first it might be easy to see this as the actions of a child. But Claudia, despite her deceptive appearance, is no child – decades have passed since she received the Dark Gift, and while like all vampires her body is forever fixed as it was at the moment of her mortal death, her mind has grown. She is now a mature, experienced woman, realising that while she may be a swift, immortal predator, she is trapped inside this child’s body – forever. She cannot physically grow up and this, along with her growing desire to know why ‘her kind’ exist and the fact that, denied a real childhood, she has grown up with a lack of empathy and human morality (unlike her ‘parents’ she did not have the luxury of experiencing human life for long to ground her for later life), will trigger an explosive, bloody rupture in their artificial family…

There’s much more, but I don’t want to spoil it for you if you haven’t read the original novel (and indeed if you have read it, you may know the major events, but I don’t want to spoil how they come across when viewed from Claudia’s point of view). Ashley handles portraying both Claudia’s childhood innocence and her later knowing, determined adult personality with a deft touch – since her physical body cannot change much of this has to be conveyed through gesture, expression and body language, a task the artist achieves magnificently, moving from beautiful child to cold-hearted, century old immortal killer with the small change of facial expression. In one scene the panels move closer and closer to Claudia’s doll-like face (and indeed despite the decades passing both her fathers still treat her like a beautiful doll), until the perspective zooms into a close up of her eyes, which are the eyes of a predator, of a cat, glowing, shining, luminous – beautiful yet dangerous because you don’t know if the mind behind them is regarding you with amused condescendion or if they are sizing you up as dinner.

Reframing the original events from Claudia’s perspective raises this beyond simple  adaptation (not that there is anything wrong with a straight adaptation) and to someone like me who has read the original series it seems kind of fair – the novel of Interview is from the point of view of Louis, the second novel, The Vampire Lestat, allows Lestat to comment on those events from his perspective, but Claudia, until now, didn’t receive such treatment. Ashley’s artwork is absolutely delicious – you may remember quite some time ago I posted a piece of art from the book when it was first announced she was working on it, and it was a gorgeous looking piece of work. Well the finished book is even more beautiful, the artwork mostly sepia-tinted (except for expressive scarlet splashes of blood dripping from fangs, or in blood tears from the eyes, which stand out with the vibrant hue of the blood in the early Hammer films when they were introduced to audiences more used to black and white), and wonderfully delicate and as lush, sensual and decadent as the original novel itself; this is one of those comics works I will find myself going back through again to pore over some of the delicious artwork. The erotic subtext of the original is preserved and, as with the novel, delicately layered through and hinted at rather than too obvious. The book itself is a very handsome small hardback, good stock glossy paper that shows off Ashley’s beautiful artwork to great effect – not just a good read but an attractive addition to your shelves; much recommended.

This review was originally penned for the Forbidden Planet blog

Frankenstein, signed by Mary Shelley

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An incredibly rare first edition of Frankenstein, signed by the author Mary Shelley to Lord Byron. That stormy night in the villa Diodati (a summer made wet and stormy by atmospheric disruption caused by a volcanic eruption on the other side of the world) saw two great literary births as Byron, the Shelleys and Polidori encouraged each other to come up with chilling tales to pass the wet evenings. The literary model for the vampire for the best part of the next two centuries would be created (based partly on a fragment written by Byron, then expanded hugely by Polidori who used Byron, who he had fallen out with, as his model of the cold-hearted, aristocratic vampire, a standard model for so long afterwards in the genre), and of course Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus. An outstanding tale, part horror, part early science fiction, part cautionary tale on knowledge trying to push into areas perhaps we simply were not meant to know about, part analogy to her own awful losses (children lost to mortality, who haunted her thoughts), a tale that has a seemingly endless fascination for each new generation from 1818 right through to our own modern, highly technologically advanced society, where even today we take morals and themes from it and apply them to new developments that worry us, always the mark of good writing when themes remain immortal and forever adaptable and relatable to passing decades and centuries (link via K A Laity):

Lord Byron’s first edition presentation copy of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein from Peter Harrington on Vimeo.

Eddie – the Sleepwalking Cannibal

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Edinburgh Film Fest: Eddie – the Sleepwalking Cannibal

Dir: Boris Rodriguez

 

Another late night horror gem unearthed during my week at one of the world’s oldest movie fests, the Edinburgh International Film Festival. Right now I will raise my hand and happily admit that I circled this film in the programme as one I wanted to see the instant I saw the title; seriously, folks, how could I pass by a film with a title like that? It called to the horror and humour geek parts of my cine-soul and, as I was to find out, my instinct to jump straight into booking that film was a good call.

Eddie: the Sleepwalking Cannibal (not to be confused with Eddie the Sleepwalking Campbell, comics peeps) is a Danish-Canadian co-production (now there’s something you don’t often say in a film review). Lars Olafssen (Thure Lindhart) is a Danish artist who achieved some level of celebrity in the arts world a few years before, but now seems to be a bit burnt out, unable to inspire himself to paint anything new in years, with his agent having arranged a change of scene for him, teaching in a remote, rural art school at Koda Lake in wintry Canada. The move doesn’t start well for Lars when, too busy checking his map while driving, he hits a deer on a country road. Worse the creature isn’t dead but is dying in agony; he hesitates for a moment then realises he has to put it out of its misery. He’s repeatedly striking the unfortunate animal on the head with a rock when a police cruiser pulls up behind him…

Not his best introduction to his new community, and at the art school he quickly gets the impression that some want him there thinking he will produce new work and so put their art school on the map while others are simply jealous that he has had success as an artist while they never have (including his colleague and neighbour, a philandering artist with a constantly barking dog he leaves out all night keeping Lars awake). In his class we meet Eddie (Dylan Smith), a largely mute, developmentally challenged man. His elderly relative has looked after him since his parents were killed in nasty circumstances in front of him as a child, something he has never recovered from. The same old lady generously endows the school so as a thank you they let Eddie paint away in the back of the classes, producing work like a small child, but happy. When his relative dies Lars is persuaded to look after Eddie – if he goes to a care home the school loses the endowment and no-one else seems to want him. But on the first night with his silent man-child charge Lars is rather startled to find Eddie has left the house in the middle of the night. He’s even more alarmed when following him reveals a recently killed and partly devoured animals in the woods nearby and Eddie, almost naked, blood caked around his mouth, and quite asleep…

And so begins a series of blackly comical horror scenes. He finds out that Eddie has done this sort of thing before, but as a child years ago after the death of his parents – perhaps he is just emotionally upset again and it has come back, he will settle down soon once he feels secure with Lars. Deciding on preventative medicine Lars is going to nail Eddie’s bedroom window closed so he can’t open it in his sleep and go outside. Until the constantly barking dog of his unfriendly neighbour catches his attention and slowly Lars puts down the nails. I wish I could get some sleep, if only we could do something about that dog, he remarks, seemingly casually, before wishing Eddie goodnight. And a little while later, just as he hoped, sleepwalking Eddie drifts out into the night and the dog barks no more. But when he follows to make sure Eddie is okay he finds out somnambulistic Eddie has sunk his fangs and terrifying physical strength into more than the dog…

Lars is horrified but at the same time exhilarated – returning to his studio with images of blood and dismemberment flashing in his brain he stares at that damned blank canvas on his easel that has been teasing him with it’s untouched whiteness. And suddenly he is painting, with manic energy, creating his best work in years. When his agent comments that his last big creative burst came after he was in a bad accident, perhaps he needs pain and blood and suffering to gain inspiration, Lars laughs at him, but we can see his discomfort. Perhaps his agent is correct – is the violence stimulating his desire to create art? And if so dare he indulge in more?

Eddie the Sleepwalking Cannibal at the Edinburgh Film Festival 03
(director Boris Rodriguez (on right) in a Q&A after the Edinburgh Film Festival screening of Eddie the Sleepwalking Cannibal, pic from my Flickr, click for larger image)

Boris Rodriguez delivers a pretty much pitch-perfect dark comedy-horror – yes, the humour is as dark as tar in a barrel, but it’s the sort of bloody (literally sometimes) humour many horror fans will love, and the relationship between Lars and Eddie is well handled. Dylan Smith is a stand-out as the simple, backwards innocent (except in his sleepwalking excursions) Eddie, a really superb piece of acting, and the dynamic between the lead pair is rewarding: yes, it seems like Lars may manipulate and use poor Eddie for his own ends, but at the same time he clearly comes to care for the big lug and looks after him. There are evil acts of violence on here, slowly escalating, but there is no true villain, just a simple man-child who really doesn’t know what he’s been doing and an artist who is increasingly prepared to take suffering for artistic creation to an entirely new level… It’s funny, bloody and frequently touching, the scenes between Lars and Eddie giving it a nice emotional context that keeps it from becoming a slice of mere exploitation movie, the bitching and jealousy between the artistic community is amusing and the entire film has something of the Coen Brothers to it (which is a huge compliment, Ethan and Joel are cinematic gods as far as I am concerned) with a mixture of comedy, horror, drama and absurd farce. It’s still on the festival circuit and I don’t know when it will get a UK general release, but trust me, this is one to keep an eye out for, it is destined to become a cult classic.

This was originally penned for the Forbidden Planet blog

Guinea Pigs

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Edinburgh Film Fest: Guinea Pigs,
UK, 2012, running time 85 mins
Dir: Ian Clark

Director Ian Clark returns to the Edinburgh International Film Festival, following up his previous short film he showed last time with Guinea Pigs, his debut feature length film, a very fine, tense medical-science fiction-horror hybrid that creates some genuine tension on a very low budget.

A group of strangers head for a very modern, hi-tech yet remote medical testing facility hidden away in the British countryside. All have volunteered to take part in the regular human trials that are part of testing new drugs and treatments to finally have them licensed for human use by the medical professions. Some are studenty types doing it to make money, some are ‘profession’ lab rats who go from test to test, one is a journalist planning an expose on how these massive pharmaceutical companies exploit people in need of money to give up their body as a test bed (and let’s not forget what a massive business such pharmacological research is in the UK and the fact it can’t really function without such tests).

The test runs for two weeks, during which the mixed group of older and younger, male and female test subject will live in the remote facility where they will constantly be scrutinised and monitored as they are administered a new experimental drug called Pro-9. No nearby village or town to wander to, no internet access, no mobile phone access (the undercover journalist is less than happy – I need the phone for work, she says, this is your paid work for the next two weeks, the Doctor reminds her). Through the first day each of the group is taken in turn and after a blood test administered their dose of Pro-9 then told to relax, enjoy the facilities, eat, sleep. By the end of the day as they all take their turn in the lab our small group are starting to tentatively bond a little in the rec room, sensing out each other. They think they are in for a long, slow, boring two weeks of daily routine. They’re not – many won’t get through the first night. There’s more than a little ‘adverse reaction’ to Pro-9…

Because each member of the group was taken in at various times through the day for their first injection the resulting effects start to appear in sequence with each, and this is part of the strength and dawning horror of Guinea Pigs – when the first to be injected starts to react badly to the drug during the night the other think it is because he broke the rules and did some strenuous exercise and it has accelerated the drug through his system. He is taken away for treatment by the staff and everyone ascribes it to a one-off complication, until the next person to be injected starts to show similar symptoms and they others realise not only is something badly wrong, but that they are really looking at what may happen to them. It’s a very clever touch by Clark and his team – imagine knowing too late that this drug is driving people into an uncontrolled frenzy and that you have taken it, that it is simply a matter of how soon, not if, you develop the same symptoms.

The situation soon deteriorates beyond the ability of the small night staff to contend with and we move to a fairly familiar small group under siege by crazies scenario – pretty common in a lot of horror, but I have to say well-handled here. Instead of the sudden emergence of a strong heroic type we have ordinary folks faced with an unthinkable situation and trying desperately to think on how to survive not only the other infected now prowling the grounds but how to deal with their own likely transformation that looms over them. And then there’s the fact that each of them is now looking at their rapidly diminishing group and thinking the people they have befriend could soon turn on them. Natural empathy for someone becoming ill wars with the self-preservation instincts: how can those not yet showing symptoms turn their back on friends who are? But if they follow that human compassion they could pay with their lives…

Although in some ways it strays close to the zombie/28 Days later model (which, whatever Danny Boyle says let’s be honest is another form of the zombie movie) Clark keeps his debut tight and focussed. He doesn’t go for cheap splatter (there is blood, but in context, not just added in to try and add an unnecessary thrill), likewise he avoids using the easy ‘jump’ scare approach too many lazier horror directors opt for, with a sudden jolt cut, loud effect or music piece to make the audience jump. I don’t mind a decent jump shock if used well (say the head out of the boat in Jaws) and I have no problem with gore in horror either, but I do have an increasing problem with untalented creators who use both far too frequently not for good effect but in lieu of being able to generate genuine atmosphere and scares by storytelling and good camera work. So thank you, Ian, for not doing that, for instead being confident enough to believe in the strength of your concept and characters to carry enough horror and chills. I think, debut or not, that is the mark of a talented storyteller and it means I will watch for the next film Clark makes. Highly effective, tense British SF-Horror and a perfect late night movie – it is currently on the festival circuit trying to build some awareness, so if you see it coming to a screening near you give them some support, they deserve it.

Guinea Pigs movie director and crew at edinburgh film fest
(writer/director Ian Clark, second from right, with some of his crew at the late night Edinburgh Film Festival, pic from my Flickr)

Red Kingdom Rising

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Red Kingdom Rising is a very intriguing new British Indy horror from Navin Dev, and one which, I am delighted to say, avoids the far too easy route some less skilled new film-makers take in creating a horror flick and thinking sudden jumps or needless splatter or sadistic torture equals genuine horror (not that I mind a bit of splatter but too many use it or torture in horror in place of creating story or atmosphere rather than to serve it). No, what Dev has done is crafted a delightfully dark dream world of a film, inspired by Lewis Carroll (which appeals to me as Carroll is one of my favourite writers of all time).

Mary Ann (played by Emily Stride) is a troubled young woman, haunted by dreams that seem to leak out into her waking life, creating real problems for her everyday life and work, dreams that seem to be wrapped around tales of Alice in Wonderland and more specifically the figure of the Red King that her father used to read to her against her mother’s wishes. But what parts are dreams of the book, which are perhaps dreams of her father who has just passed away, and do they mean something? We begin with a quite dark, disturbing nightmare – is it childhood memories mixed up with guilt over her father’s recent death surfacing in her mind, or do these dark, blood-red dreams signify something else, some aspect of her family life of childhood that she has repressed or ignored.

Reluctantly Mary Ann decides to return to her family home and her distant mother; it’s clear she didn’t grow up in the most conventional, loving family environment. As she settles back into her old room the dream become more vivid – the sleeping (now awakening) Red King, a small girl in period costume called Alice, who, disturbingly has no real face, just a face shaped blank visage which reminded me of some of the wonderfully creepy moments from the old Sapphire and Steel show (which is a compliment). The waking world and the dark fantasy of the dream state become increasingly tangled like the roots of an old, gnarled tree, and it becomes increasingly difficult to tell one from the other – a moment with her rather odd mother in the kitchen seems like it may be the real world, albeit it very strange but then the mother’s behaviour is strange, but then it suddenly feels more like the dreams/nightmares are crowding into the scene – portents and symbols litter the film, both in the waking scenes and the dreamstate, and really you cannot separate either strand of the film, both are a part of Mary Ann’s damaged psyche, held together (barely) for years into early adulthood but now bleeding out into the open and forcing her to find the source and confront it.

I won’t spoil it for you by delving any further into the plot, but I will say Dev creates a very assured slice of fantasy-horror on a small budget, deftly weaving symbols and literary references into the story and treating his audience as intelligent enough to understand the symbology and the dream-state scenes without spoon-feeding them. The waking world and the dark dreamstate become increasingly hard to tell apart and in truth you shouldn’t even try, they are all part of Mary Ann’s attempt to understand the roots of the nightmare figure of the Red King that has haunted her since childhood – who is he, what does he represent? Who is the small, faceless child Alice? A guide, an ally or a mischievous spirit?  Red Kingdom Rising is a beautifully-made horror-fantasy moving through dark, dream waters that run deep, crafting genuine, disturbing horror not from shocks or OTT effects but by constantly layering up an in increasing sensation of claustophobia and building sensation of dread, of there maybe being now way out – is there a genuine source to these troubling nightmares or is Mary Ann simply mentally ill? Is there any rational way to approach dream logic to unravel the meaning? Dev has produced a confident, elegant dark fantasy of a film that engages you into a brooding atmosphere that will appeal to anyone who enjoys intelligent, elegant horror such as the early works of Del Toro.

Sadly at the moment, as is often the case for independent film-makers, getting the resources together to make a film is a real battle, but having managed to achieve that and make the film there is a whole second battle to be fought to try and get the attention of distributors to get the film widely shown. I know I often see very fine Indy films of all genres at the Edinburgh Film Festival and it can be months, sometimes years or even never before I see them get a distibution deal to be shown to the general public in cinemas. At the moment Dev is doing special screenings and the film festival circuit to try and build word of mouth and create awareness of Red Kingdom Rising, so sadly you won’t be able to see it easily right now in your local cinema, but do check the official site for news of special screenings (I’m told the excellent Kim Newman was at one recently and liked what he saw, which is a good indicator to those of us who enjoy good horror) and festival showings, because when someone makes an intelligent, atmospheric Brit horror movie like this they deserve some support. And distributors, you should be looking at this film and getting it out to audiences.

 

This review was originally penned for the Forbidden Planet Blog

Science Fiction and Horror highlights from the Edinburgh Film Festival

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Just over a couple of weeks ago I was enjoying my annual week off at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, taking in all sorts of cinema, from hard-hitting documentaries from modern combat reporters to stylish French crime thrillers. And of course I took in several science fiction and horror themed flicks along the way, so here’s a quick round-up of some of the ones that I enjoyed the most:

The Divide

I was told by a friend who had already seen a press screening of Xavier Gens’ The Divide that it was ‘very disturbing’. She meant this as a warning, but to me it was an endorsement! The Divide opens with a moment of sheer, modern, urban terror as a young woman gazes terrified out of her skyscraper window across New York – as a nuclear device is detonated. Screaming, panicking residents flee down the stairwells as the shock front approaches their building, a few manage to rush down to the basement and force their way past a reinforced door as their building superintendent tries to close it. The shockwave reaches them, and in the dark basement of their huge block the ground shakes, pieces fall from the roof and the sound is awful, reminiscent of the fall of the Twin Towers.

Xavier Gens at Edinburgh International Film Festival 02
(Director Xavier Gens talks about The Divide at the Edinburgh Film Fest, pic from my Flickr)

A handful of terrified, disparate survivors pick themselves up to realise they are trapped in a subterranean sarcophagus – will rescue teams come looking for them? Are they safe until they do? When will they come? Why is the super (genre stalwart Michael Biehn) acting so oddly? What secrets does he have in his underground domain that he is now forced to share with the motley survivors that have been forced on him? The tension and claustrophobia builds and when a much hoped for rescue turns out to be something quite different it becomes clear our dwindling band of survivors are on their own, sealed in, and slowly they lose cohesion, breaking into groups, suspicious, violent… The nuclear attack and the bizarre ‘rescue’ are never really explained and they don’t need to be, the film is really an exercise in claustrophobic horror and the resulting breakdown of the people trapped in this situation, until we have a post 9-11 war on terror meets Lord of the Flies scenario. Compelling.

By Day and By Night

Alejandor Molina’s slice of Mexican science fiction has a real 60s/70s SF feel to it, with a future dystopian society controlled by a mostly unseen group of scientific despots (unseen except for a few delightfully odd looking scenes between one leader and a dissident scientist which recall the 60s Prisoner series with their bizarre styles and angles) and science has been used to divide the population medically into day and night shifts, one half going to sleep as the other wakes to work. Families are banned, children are looked after in a formal manner by guardians rather than loving parents and following the rules is all in this society, questioning is not permitted, the past is largely a blank, sanitised book and the outside of the sealed city is off limits (see what I mean about that 70s SF vibe?).

Of course no amount of scientific tinkering with the human body and mind can eliminate human nature completely and we see one woman from the day shift distraught at the disappearance of her young girl ward, displaying a motherly concern that is not desired in this society, while a night shift doctor takes charge of a mysterious, unidentified body of a young girl, but a body that turns out to be comatose, not dead as his colleagues think, and he secretly takes her in, his formal life rapidly changing as the girl bonds with him and brings out his paternal, caring instincts. As the man, woman and girl converge the question is can their medically programmed nature of night and day rhythms be crossed and can they find somewhere where they can actually learn to express a parental love for the child? The pace of By day and By Night is very, very slow, quite gentle actually, but stick with that slow pace to find a quite charming and, for modern cinema, unusual slice of thoughtful, old-fashioned (in the good way, reminiscent of short tales by Silverberg or Bradbury) piece of science fiction.

Phase 7

Director Nicolas Goldbart’s slice of post-Apocalypse medical horror from Argentina proved to be a hugely enjoyable work. Guillermo Del Toro regular Federico Luppi lends his dignified presence as a quiet, elderly resident in an apartment block, downstairs neighbour to Coco (Daniel Hendler) and his pregnant wife Pipi (Jazmin Stuart). A dull routine of shopping, domestic chores and residents meetings are suddenly derailed when it is suspected someone in their block has a new and highly contagious disease and the authorities seal them in while tests are carried out. What starts as an all in this together for a few days bit of almost-fun soon turns nasty, however: cut off from the outside world they watch TV news reports of more cases of the disease breaking out around the world. As what starts as a swine flu like media panic becomes a pandemic reality. Soon the authorities stop their visits, alarms and gunshots are heard outside their sealed block in the streets of the city and as it becomes clear how large a scale the problem is the neighbours begin to plot in small groups against one another…

Luppi’s distinguished elderly resident seems like a likely first victim as one group of neighbours plot to break into his apartment, supposedly over concerns he is infected, to help him, but really because they think he has a large stash of food. Little do they know he is a former big game hunter… Coco proves pretty hapless throughout but luckily for him his next door neighbour turns out to be a survival nut who has been preparing for something like this (he is sure it is a conspiracy by world governments to reduce the population strain on the planet). In fact his neighbour turns out to be Phase 7′s answer to Tremors’ Burt Gummer (which is a compliment) and he has a soft spot for Coco and his pregnant wife. As events escalate the pair of them are drawn into confrontations with the surviving residents and Luppi’s formerly Nice Old man turned shotgun toting hunter. It isn’t all The End of Society, disease and neighbourly violence though, Phase 7 is well laced with humour throughout giving it a perfect balance of characters, story, action, violence and some decent laughs too. A real find.

Stormhouse

Welcome to Stormhouse, a secret, underground black-ops base for the British Army. It is just a few months before the invasion of Iraq and a covert unit has a very special prisoner deep within this subterranean complex. No, not some black-hooded terror suspect (although there is that too) but something else, something not human – the Entity. The British Army has managed not only to find a ghost but to imprison it. Now they want to find a way to use this supernatural entity as a secret weapon, but other than putting the heebie-jeebies up all the squaddies on the base they’ve had little success in communicating with it, much less getting it to perform to their orders. So the Minister for Defence sends in Hayley Sands, a ‘ghost whisperer’ psychic to help them make contact. She’s talked to the dead before but is amazed to find out that the Army has managed to hold a ghost (through an electro magnetic barrier) and wonders how they brought it over from the other side in the first place. Of course, she is told that is on a need-to-know basis and the commanding officer, clearly unhappy with her presence, is acting very oddly, as are many of his soldiers after prolonged exposure to the entity.

Stormhouse is one of those horror films where you have a fair idea of where it is going to go, but that isn’t really a handicap as it gets around its small budget by concentrating mostly on atmosphere and in this it is highly effective. The underground bunker setting generates a seriously tense sense of claustrophobia, the soldiers inside effectively as trapped as the mysterious ghostly entity is and despite the electromagnetic field containing it, it becomes clear some of its influence is seeping out into that dark, dank, underground lair to effect them all and the arrival of a single, young, attractive female presence into this all-male environment doesn’t help either. Stormhouse plays its small budget cleverly – the ghostly effects are few but effective; in fact the director in a post screening Q&A said they could have stretched to some more ghost effects but decided to tone it way down so we get tiny but terrifying sudden glimpses on a monitor. And as things unravel, as you know they will, Hayley may find out just how the army got themselves a ghost – and wish she hadn’t… An interesting, atmospheric piece of low-budget Brit horror, playing cleverly on both the fear of the supernatural and creeping, unseen but always present feeling of unease in society post 9-11 and 7/7.

Stormhouse at Edinburgh International Film Festival 04
(director/writer Dan Turner and some of the cast of Stormhouse on stage at the Filmhouse after their Edinburgh Film Festival debut, pic from my Flickr)

Troll Hunter

This Indy slice of fantasy from Norway from director/writer André Øvredal was, without a doubt, my highlight from this year’s Edinburgh Film Fest (with the exception of the new Studio Ghibli film, which I reviewed here). A group of media students are making a video news article for their college, following a group of bear hunters in the Norwegian countryside when their attention is drawn to an odd man who follows the hunters but stays apart from them, coming and going late at night on his own. Is he a poacher? Following him into the deep, dark woods they soon find out he is after a very different game when roars echo frighteningly through the dark trees and the man runs out of the forest yelling “Ttttroooooolllllllllll!!!!!!”

And this is the set up, our mystery man is an operative for a secret branch of the Norwegian government which looks after any rogue trolls which threaten human areas of habitation. Sick of years of working unappreciated in a covert role (and with no hazard pay!) he agrees to let the students follow him as he deals with all sorts of trolls, forest trolls, cave trolls, even gigantic trolls which stride across the frozen northern landscape. The format is ‘found footage’, as with Cloverfield or the Blair Witch, but much more knowing and more tongue in cheek about it than either of those films and the effects are excellent, the film looking far more than the 3 million Euro budget it was made on. It has a terrifically enjoyable mix of action, scares, cool effects, characters and humour (a moment on a bridge with three billy goats gruff had everyone in the audience laughing) in just the right proportions, pretty much a perfect Saturday night movie. Chris Columbus has already bought the rights to an English language remake, so Hollywood has already taken as much note as festival audiences have of this cracker of a fantasy flick. You could almost imagine some of Troll Hunter as a story from a Hellboy comic, and I mean that as a huge compliment. Troll Hunter is getting a general UK release in September – trust me, you want to go and see it!

André Øvredal at Edinburgh Film Festival 01
(director/writer André Øvredal in a post screening Q&A in the Cameo Cinema at the Edinburgh Film Fest, pic from my Flickr)

Happy 100th, Vincent Price!

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Today marks the 100th birthday of one of my all-time favourite actors, the distinctively silky voiced Vincent Price. I’ve loved Vincent’s movies since I was a teen; even if the film he found himself in was cheesy he, like Peter Cushing, always treated it seriously and gave the fans respect and that always shone through. Dr Phibes, the Tingler, Witchfinder General, the fabulously colourful collaborations on Edgar Allan Poe with the equally legendary Roger Corman, right up to his final role, a small cameo in Edward Scissorhands, as the gentelman inventor, there because Burton adored him too and had made his first short animated film called Vincent and asked him to play this little cameo as a homage and tribute. Away from his horror roles he was, again like Cushing, a very gentle, gentleman, refined, thoughtful and also a world class expert on arts and antiques, so much so that Jackie Kennedy sought him out as a consultant in the 60s. Still adore Vincent and oh, that voice… Here he is in his collaboration with another of my faves from horror, the great Alice Cooper, lending that distinctive Price voice to The Black Widow…

Chatter

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Leo Resnes Chatter is a short but highly effective wee thriller/horror. While it isn’t the first time I’ve seen live streaming websites used as a device in a horror/crime tale (seem to recall Millennium made good use of website muders/abductions a number of years ago), Chatter scores highly for taking a now everyday medium – online, real-time chat – that so many have in their homes and using it as a portal to some unspecified threat, all in a few, brief minutes, bringing terror right into the home.

Chatter from Espen Gjelsten on Vimeo.

Reviews from the past: Jekyll & Hyde

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This review originally dates from 2003 and is another of the many I wrote for The Alien Online. Robert Louis Stevenson, a fellow dweller of Edinburgh, has long been one of my very favourite writers and it delights me no end that I can walk around some of his old haunts here. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is also a landmark tale, dating from the late 19th century it is a horror tale which is a splendid example of early internalised horror (the body itself becomes the source of the horror) and of the use of the then fairly new science/art of psychology. Its a tale which, like its near contemporary Dracula, has infected the cultural bloodstream of humanity ever since, to the extent that even people who have never read the tale will use the phrase Jekyll and Hyde personality to describe someone who switches from one extreme to the other.

And if you haven’t read the original I highly recommend it as one of the finest tales every spun and a story which has far more layers and meaning than the simplistic versions seen in movies and TV which usually opt for simple good versus evil motif, which is exactly what the book is not about. Most adaptations in other media I have found miss the point of Stevenson’s tale, but Kramsky and Mattotti clearly understood the way vice and virtue, shame and desire were intertwined in Jekyll and Hyde, not separated. And this was also my first real exposure to Lorenzo Mattotti, a remarkable European comics artist who has since become one of my favourites:

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
By Jerry Kramsky and Lorenzo Mattotti,
Published by NBM

A gorgeously painted incarnation of Stevenson’s tale

Lorenzo Mattotti and Jerry Kramsky have collaborated to create a beautifully painted take on Stevenson’s tale of fractured humanity. Obviously somewhat shorter than the original novel, this is really more of an adaptation than an abridgement. As with Stevenson’s original classic, Doctor Henry Jekyll is not a complete saint, depraved and corrupted by Edward Hyde’s malevolent spirit. Rather Jekyll is the embodiment of his own theories on the duality of human nature. By all public appearances he is the distinguished and respected scientist, well known in society. However, Jekyll feels the tug of his darker desires. He sees the depravity around him in drinking dens, dark dancing halls and shady alleyways where ladies of the night ply their trade. And he wants it so much… Ah, but the shame of it all! Despairing of having his darker nature revealed and yet increasingly desirous of releasing his animal wants and needs to be satisfied Jekyll uses his scientific genius to free himself.

At first the transformation is reasonably controlled. Hyde is a distillation of all of Jekyll’s dark impulses, unfettered by conscience – but it is Jekyll’s fantasies that he is living out. Like a masque in long-ago Venice he has found a way to move through the shadows of night and desire without ruining his public persona. The trouble comes as Hyde’s violent nature asserts itself and Jekyll is left with the remorse, shaking and shuddering like a junkie on withdrawal and guilt. The transformation back to Jekyll is increasingly difficult as Hyde beings to assert his own existence, preying on the darkest fringes of human iniquity and sexual deviance… Playing on Jekyll’s darkest dreams, his most sordid fantasies made flesh with no restraint.

Mattotti and Kramsky have created a most unusual graphic version of this tale. The painted artwork is alive with unusual angles, distorted images of people and buildings, echoing the out-of-control spiral of Jekyll and his alter ego Hyde. The colours and shapes eschew realism and embrace a style that draws heavily on the Surrealist painters of the 1920s, 30s and 40s. The colours remind me of a Kandinsky painting while the grotesque images of people owe much to Picasso and even Edvard Munch. The warped angles of the city’s architecture echo the Expressionist films of the same period, such as the Cabinet of Doctor Caligari. Appropriately, the tale has been moved from the Victorian era to sometime in the 20s or 30s. All flappers and Weimar-era decadence – hidden by day, seeping out at night to parade its sinful flesh, just as Hyde does. The old social order crumbling at the seams while the new one emerges from it’s straight-laced and barely restrained desires, an illegitimate offspring born in darkness.

The tale is wonderfully told, ignoring the simplicity of most film adaptations, where Jekyll is a saintly character and Hyde a devil. Instead, as Stevenson intended, it dwells more on humanity’s inherent duplicity of desires, between our goodness and our darkness, something we all have deep within. What happens when a man tries to act out those desires by freeing himself of the consequences by becoming someone else? This is no accident – Jekyll wants, at least in the beginning, to free himself to enjoy these depravities this decadent new age offer. This is an unusual and often disturbing take on Stevenson – who wanted it do disturb after all – but wonderfully crafted and painted in the most gorgeous manner. It is almost worth buying simply for the fantastic artwork alone and NBM (who brought us Far, Far West and Boneyard amongst others – see earlier reviews) have employed their normal larger scale book, allowing the artwork more room to breathe. Deep, dark, disturbing – nightmare images to haunt you in the night, lying alone with your desires.

The last man on Earth

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Grabbed some time to go and sit and watch I Am Legend before I go back to work. Now I had already surmised from trailers and articles in Empire that yet again Hollywood had not done the book. Third time a film has been made of Richard Matheson’s classic 50s novel of Cold War paranoia and humanity’s seemingly endless ability for self-destruction and third time they haven’t done the bloody book! Come one, please….

That said the film, although different from the book – relocated to New York, which actually works well during the scene of Will Smith hunting wild game in an overgrown Times Square, main character Robert Neville is now an army doctor working on a cure, the scientifically created vampires are now fast, aggressive zombies (although still photophobic) – it actually works very well in creating a sense of isolation and terror as the last man in the world tries to hold it together in a Manhattan populated only by him, his dog and a legion of the infected.

Instead of an unspecified biological agent from a war (as in the book) the cause here is genetic engineering in an attempt to beat cancer, although even if you knew nothing about the story going in you could guess nothing good would come of a medical breakthrough by a character with a name like Doctor Crippen (a cameo by Emma Thompson). Scenes where Neville heads to the DVD store during daylight to withdraw films and return old ones illustrate how he is trying to use routine to keep himself together, rather than simply grabbing whatever he wants from the store. Populating the shop with store window dummies so it looks occupied and he has someone to ‘talk’ to adds to that feeling, being both slightly amusing and disturbing at the same time, stirring sympathy for Neville.

(SPOILER WARNING: don’t read on if you are going to see it, I won’t describe the whole finale, but it might spoil it for you if you are planning to see it)

Which makes it all the more annoying when the final section totally destroys what had been so carefully built up earlier, opting for the big fights with masses of CGI infected, big bangs and adding a redemption arc which clashes with the themes established earlier in the same way the original ‘happy ending’ forced on Blade Runner on its original release, really annoying the hell out of me, Hollywood managing an interesting, bleak, disturbing film then getting cold feet and going for SF CGI action fest at the end. And the CGI is annoying because the infected are hyped up creatures (why? they are diseased, why do they have amazing superhuman abilities now???), leaping up high buildings and their leader’s jaws opening preternaturally wide as he yells – yes, they come right out of the Mummy (except some infected dogs which was copied shamelessly from Resident Evil), which was fine for the Mummy which was daft but fun and knew it, this was serious and bleak and psychological then went all cartoony and bollocksed it up.

And if they had stuck to the bloody book in the first place they might have avoided it. The book is far more effective – each night Neville has to be home and barricaded in his home before sunset. Outside his home many of the infected who have become vampire-like creatures due to the virus are people he knows, friends, neighbours (his next door neighbour bellowing ‘Neville!’ each night seems worse than simple roaring fiends in the movie, more personal) and in a harrowing flashback we see Neville in the book burying his wife then finding her resurrected by the virus and coming back to try and kill him and feed on him. In the book there are live and dead vampires as the virus mutates living victims but also resurrects the dead, who act differently. None of this comes in the film. In the book Neville hunts them by day as they lie in their comas, staking them and wondering why it is that this method of killing from myths works, all the time becoming more paranoid, more bloody and violent himself, staring into the Neitzchen abyss and having it stare back into him, becoming a monster as he fights monsters.

I won’t spoil the ending of the book here, but suffice to say Matheson maintains the bleak atmosphere he established effectively with such commendable economy (the book is very short), a skill he used also as a screenwriter (he would work on many of the Vincent Price-Roger Corman Edgar Allan Poe movies), in contrast to the movie which ruins itself at that point. And the title I Am Legend has a very different, darker explanation at the end of Matheson’s powerful novel than the film. Film – watchable but be prepared to be suddenly let down at the clunking gear change towards the end (and what a shame, the earlier bits as I said are effective and Smith is allowed to act for once). Book – bloody brilliant, one of my personal top books of the last century, a real insight into the paranoia and fear of the Cold War era which still works perfectly in today’s troubled world. You should read it.

Shadow of the Vampire

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Great, I have a few days off to enjoy and what happens? I develop a smegging cold! Nuts. British Summer Time rolls around, the clocks go forward and cue everyone suddenly getting colds and flu. Still, it beats being at work and worrying what Alex is going to do with his omnipresent digital camera (yes, the one that provided Matthew’s Blog with my less than flattering pic).

So last night as I was in no fit state to go out I decided to have a mini vampathon. I watched Shadow of the Vampire and Bram Stoker’s Dracula on DVD. Love the conceit of Shadow, with Murnau directing a real vampire, posing as a method actor called Shrek who is playing a vampire… Very well made, good use of light and shadow – most appropriate considering Nosferatu is one of the high point of the Expressionist movement. The Coppola, despite it’s noble proclamation to be a definitive version based properly the book really isn’t anything of the kind. Instead of a horror tale we have a Gothic romance, but it’s still a very enjoyable movie for us old vamp fiends and Winona looks delectable in that red dress – dontcha love the zoom facility on DVD? What a biteable neck she has – mind you, you’d have to watch your possessions around her.

Finished off with a couple of episodes on old-fashioned VHS of my beloved Forever Knight - anyone else remember that? Actually I’m just listening to the second volume of the soundtrack from the series right now, all composed by Fred Mollin with nice little cameos by the lead actors. Nigel Bennett’s LeCroix is especially fine – the only good human is a bled human. So wonderfully unrepentant was LeCroix – a vampire who really enjoyed being an immortal bloodsucker, not a whiner like some of these modern vamps. He’d have got on well with Cassidy from Preacher.