This is great wee documentary on one of cinema’s finest directors, John Carpenter: Fear Is Just the Beginning…The Man and His Movies, which examines the great man’s work over 4 decades.
Carpenter is an auteur in the style of Hitchcock, Hawks, Walsh and Fuller, who has managed to maintain his independence and singularity of vision against the fickleness of box office audiences and public taste. He also has a tremendous grasp of film history, which he references in his work: from Donald Pleasance’s doctor in Halloween taking the name of Samuel Loomis from Hitchcock’s Psycho, to re-interpreting Howard Hawks’ Rio Bravo via George A Romero’s Night of the Living Dead in the classic Assault on Precinct 13.
John Carpenter: Fear Is Just the Beginning…The Man and His Movies interviews the maverick director and has contributions from Jamie Lee Curtis, Kurt Russell, Adrienne Barbeau, Debra Hill, and includes a look at the making of such favorites as Escape From New York, The Thing and The Fog.
The family home featured in H. P. Lovecraft’s story “The Shunned House” is up for sale. Situated at 135 Benefit Street in Providence, Rhode Island, this south-facing house was built circa 1764, and offers:
Original wideboard floors, period details, 1/3 acre landscaped garden, 4 terraced areas, pergola, koi pond, 2 car garage with potting shed
All of which can be yours for $925,000, details here.
Lovecraft’s story describes the mansion house on Benefit Street, as the building where Edgar Allan Poe:
...the world’s greatest master of the terrible and the bizarre was obliged to pass a particular house on the eastern side of the street; a dingy, antiquated structure perched on the abruptly rising side hill, with a great unkempt yard dating from a time when the region was partly open country. It does not appear that he ever wrote or spoke of it, nor is there any evidence that he even noticed it. And yet that house, to the two persons in possession of certain information, equals or outranks in horror the wildest fantasy of the genius who so often passed it unknowingly, and stands starkly leering as a symbol of all that is unutterably hideous.
Interestingly, it was a house in New Jersey that inspired Lovercraft’s tale, though 135 Benefit Street does have its own strange history:
Because of its policy of religious tolerance, early Providence had no common burying ground, no single place where everyone agreed to bury their dead. So, in accordance with the practice of the day, each family had a plot on their own land which served as a family graveyard. To us, this might seem a bit ghoulish, but it was just business as usual in colonial America.
Around the time of the Revolution, Back Street was widened and straightened and renamed Benefit Street, to relieve the heavy traffic along the Towne Street (now South Main) and to be “a Benefit for All.” The remains in all those little family plots were removed to North Burial Ground, then just recently opened. Allegedly, though, some of the bodies were left behind, and still remain buried here to this day. And, according to local legend, a Huguenot couple lived, died, and was buried on the site of #135, and were among the bodies that were missed.
When Stephen Harris built this house, his family fell on hard times. Harris was a well-to-do merchant in Providence, and owned several merchant vessels; it is said that a few of those vessels were lost at sea shortly after the completion of the house. This led to other financial problems. Mrs. Harris also had a hard time—several of her children died, and others were stillborn. (I was told by the current resident, who has done her own research into the house’s history, that there was never a live birth in the house.) Probably the most (melo)dramatic part of the legend, however, is Mrs. Harris’s descent into madness, and her confinement to an upstairs room. She was occasionally heard to shriek out the window of this room, but in French—a language she didn’t know. Where could she have picked it up? Dead Huguenots, anyone?
Though Michael Gough, who died today, will be best remembered for his performance as “Alfred” in the Batman series, I’ll always remember the great actor more for his roles in a series of low budget British B-movie horror films - in particular the classic, Horrors of the Black Museum, Konga, The Black Zoo, Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors and Horror Hospital; his work with Ken Russell (Women in Love, Savage Messiah) and Derek Jarman (Caravaggio, The Garden, Wittgenstein); and his roles in TV series like The Champions, The Avengers and Smiley’s People. Gough was always more than watchable as an actor,, who made even the most trashy films (Trog) enjoyable.
Here’s a small selection of highlights from Gough’s career, which gives only a hint of the quality of his talent and the diversity of his roles.
Michael Gough is resposible for a “huge, monster gorilla that is constantly growing to outlandish proportions let loose in the streets” of swinging London in ‘Konga’ (1961)
This is what happened to Herk Harvey, who happened on the Saltair Pavilion on the south shore of Salt Lake, when driving back from California, in the early 1960s. Herk worked as a director for Centron Films, America's leading producers of industrial and educational movies, and he was inspired by Saltair's eerie, haunted appearance. Harvey devised a scenario, and with help from colleagues at Centron, money form his girlfriend, a budget of $33,000, an unknown cast, and three weeks to film, he made The Carnival of Souls. It was a kismet moment, as Harvey returned to his work at Centron, the cast continued with their own lives, and the film’s star, Candace Hilligoss, only made one other film.
Saltair was the Coney island of the West, opened in 1893, a large structure with Moorish domes, leading on to a pier:
The girth of the resort rested on over 2,000 pylons, driven into the bed along the lakeshore. Many of the original posts can still be seen today, over a hundred years after the resort’s initial construction.
With many resorts of unseemly repute dotting the Salt Lake shoreline, the predominant Mormon population of the Salt Lake Valley called for a retreat that matched their conservative standards; the Great Saltair answered their call. Mormon couples could visit Saltair by taking a short train ride and dance the night away without becoming victims of indecorous rumors. This was due to the open and frequent supervision of activities at Saltair by prominent members of the Mormon Church. The Mormon Church, however, suffered some criticism for the sale of coffee and tea—both substances prohibited by church doctrine—and for opening the resort on Sundays.
Owners of Saltair enjoyed the popularity of the Western resort. From the beginning, the lake retreat was intended to be a counterpart to Coney Island. Its pylon bridge led thousands of patrons through its gigantic doors to countless days of lounging and swimming and countless nights of dancing and romance. Being one of the first amusement parks in America, it became the most popular family destination west of New York.
Fire damaged the resort twice in 1925 and again in 1931, this time causing $100,000 worth of damage. Like everywhere else in the 1930s, the Depression took its toll, as did the war, which led the venue to close in the 1950s, leaving its massive decaying structure, disused rail tracks, and rollercaoster. No wonder Herk Harvey was inspired:
This was the Saltair I knew firsthand… the Saltair of the schlock horror movie classic Carnival of Souls..rotting wood, broken glass, collapsed staircases… and always, the smell of the lake, the stganation of the swimming pool dredged years earlier, littered with half-submerged dodge-‘em cars.
Saltair lay deserted for years, but reopened as a music venue in 2005.
As for Herk Harvey’s The Carnival of Souls? Well, what was intended as a low-budget B-movie is now rightly considered a classic of gothic-horror cinema. So, next time you pass a location that gives you goose-bumped inspiration, just remember Harvey and imagine what you can do.
Jesus being the first Vampire and George W. Bush looking to find the Holy Grail and drink his blood to become immortal (under orders from Hitler) - yeah, that has potential to be pretty wild, especially when you throw in Vlad The Impaler / Dracula, Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and the Pope.
‘Wow. So what happens?’
A lot of “shocking things”.
‘Like?’
Well…
....there’s Christ having sex with himself, the Pope anally raped, female dolls mutilated and tortured, alongside plenty of racism and desperately offensive dialogue. But Zebub blows any sense of taboo-busting with a very long and apologetic introduction in which he explains that none of this should be taken seriously and that no offence is meant, not even to the President (Bush at the time). C’mon Bill, have the courage of your convictions!
‘Jeez…no wonder they used dolls.’
Yep.
‘And he got paid for this?’
Yep.
‘I’m in the wrong job.’
Maybe.
‘Is it any good?’
Not really. Here’s David Flint’s review:
Unfortunately, any potential is lost in a mix of really, really shoddy production values and the sort of clumsy shock-value humour you might expect to come out of a fourteen year old metalhead trying to upset his parents.The only good thing here is the cover art (and possibly some of the soundtrack).
‘Okay. Maybe I’ll give it a miss, but I wouldn’t mind seeing the trailer just to be sure.’
It starts innocently enough. A young woman receives a surprise package in the mail. No doubt a gift from an admirer, or a belated birthday present. She opens it, inside is a pair black binoculars. An odd gift, for sure, but well-intentioned, no doubt. She examines them, then goes to a window, where she puts the binoculars to her eyes. Two spring-loaded spikes are instantly fired into her eyes, blinding and killing her.
So begins Horrors of the Black Museum, the most gory, gruesome and shocking film made in the 1950s. Co-written and produced by Herman Cohen, the American producer best known for I Was a Teenage Werewolf, Horrors of the Black Museum announced a new and distinct genre in movie-making - Exploitation, with its focus on sadistic cruelty and violence. Released in 1959, it is incredible now how this film was ever made, let alone given a certificate.
Filmed in “the most fantastic advance in motion pictures,” Hypno-Vista, “a psychological technique” where the audience in the cinema auditorium “actually become part of the action…on the screen,” Horrors of the Black Museum didn’t need gimmicks to snare its audience. It may be Cohen’s masterpiece, but it is the central performance from Michael Gough that makes the film so bloody marvelous.
Born in Kuala-Lumpur in 1916, Gough started his film career in 1947, and has appeared in over one hundred films since. Now best known for his appearance as Alfred Pennyworth in the first four Batman movies, Gough is the uncrowned King of Horror, starring in some of the most interesting (The Skull, The Curse of the Crimson Altar), shocking (Black Zoo, The Corpse, Horror Hospital) and influential (Dracula, Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors), horror films of the of the 1950s-80s.
Gough may devour the scenery in Horrors of the Black Museum, but it is just what is needed to carry off such a bizarre and absurd story-line, as he stars as deranged writer, Edmond Bancroft, playing a murderous game of cat-and-mouse with the Scotland Yard Police. Cohen and Gough made five films together, but nothing matched the shock and awe of this beauty. In an interview with Cinefantastique Gough gave a tantalizing snippet of what making the film was like:
“I made five films for Herman Cohen as he seemed to like the way I played his characters or perhaps I should say character because the first three were cut from the same cloth. Cohen was a showman first, last, and always; his manner was always overbearing and his opinions sacrosanct. During the filming of Horrors of the Black Museum, he would show up unannounced onset and tell our director Arthur Crabtree how to direct a scene and the actors as well. I mean this just was not on, and as a result Arthur began to loath Cohen on sight. He demanded all the walls of the set be painted a violent shade of blue or green; Herman Cohen was the boss on all that he produced – and not in a positive way either.”
Grim and gory, Horrors of the Black Museum is definitely one to rent for this Halloween.
Hausu (House), directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi, is the kind of movie that sends a writer scrambling for adjectives in an attempt to christen a new film genre. You pound your frontal lobes in the hope that you’ll dislodge some electrifying catchphrase that will be absorbed into film geekdom’s lexicon. I’ve been trying to come up with something hooky to describe the virtually indescribable mindbender that is Hausu. It’s not a J-horror film, it’s not a head film, it’s not some avant-garde psychological torture test, it’s not a cult film with an ironic smirk, it’s not…Well, I’m telling you what it is not. Let me try to wrap my brain around this and tell you what I think it is: Hausu is to cinema what a dream is to reality. It’s not just a simple record of events, it is the event itself. Hausu refers to nothing outside itself.
Though a mashup of pop memes, Hausu exists in a world of its own, devouring “reality” and puking it back up in glorious Technicolor. It’s a mixtape compiled by a demented Carl Jung - immersive, repellent, hysterical and visionary - forging a new consciousness composed of scraps of dead worlds.
Hard as it is to believe, Hausu was made in 1977. It feels as fresh and looks as startling experimental as anything being made by David Lynch or Guy Madden…except wilder.
Oh, the plot is about a demon possessed house, but that’s not important.
As for my new catchphrase, it’s a play on hypnagogic, that state between being awake and falling asleep. Hausu is hipnagogic.
Hausu will be released by Criterion in August on DVD.
Supernatural investigators are a time-honored tradition in genre fiction. Sherlock Holmes, Randolph Carter, Carnacki the Ghost-Finder, Kolchak the Night-Stalker, Harry D’Amour, Harry Dresden, John Constantine, Fox Mulder. It’s as important of an archetype as, say, the cowboy.
Which explains why, as with cowboys, Italy has appropriated the tradition and made it vaguely more gay and better-dressed, specifically with Dylan Dog. I saw these comics for the first time in Rome in 2004, in Archie’s Digest-format, where they stack them at newsstands along with, well, the cowboy comics. The eponymous character is a macho detective in a black blazer and open-collared red shirt, with a sidekick who is, um, Groucho Marx. Literally. Why, I have no clue. (Also, his boss is named “Inspector Bloch” in an homage to Robert Bloch, Lovecraft protegee and author of Psycho.) All of the stories are pastiches of American movies or fiction, usually with more violence and boobs.
It all works well enough that apparently Hollywood is counter-appropriating it and making a film version, called “Dead of Night,” with Brandon Routh, directed by, um… the guy who did Snakes on a Plane. Actually, that might fit perfectly, now that I think about it…. Fun!
