The 100 Best Horror Films #4

The 90s were a cultural reaction to the 80s: Nelson Mandela strode out of prison with a clenched fist and ended apartheid. Boris Yeltsin rode a tank to the Kremlin and ended the Cold War. The Americans voted Democrat. The British ruling Conservative Party succeeded in a putsch to oust Margaret Thatcher.

Hollywood stopped making horror films.

It was due to the success of Scream 1996 that the industry decided to resurrect the genre. While Hollywood was busy greenlighting a new wave of horror movies the Japanese were watching Ringu 1998.

First word arrived from journalists at foreign film festivals; they had never seen anything like it. The solitary art house in my hometown booked it. Film 4 broadcast it. By the time Hollywood had announced its intent to remake the wonders of J-Horror were in full bloom. Ringu had earned its legend.

Horror works best when based in reality and the reality of horror is mythology. These are the stories of old – the stories told to children to keep them in check.  They are The Pied Piper of Hamelin, Hansel and Gretel, Little Red Riding Hood. Ringu is based on the eponymous novel inspired by (Japanese) folklore¹.

This is a film about an invented legend a la Candyman 1992. Where the latter uses the curtain raiser to introduce the legend Ringu uses it to both introduce legend and serve as catalyst to kick start the plot:

Teenager Masami is over at Tomoko’s house. The girls are alone – no parents. Masami tells Tomoko the story of a cursed videotape. It turns out Masami has seen said tape. As soon as Masami leaves the room the curse comes to claim Tomoko.

Every story needs a hero. In horror it is invariably the final girl². This character is germane to the successful telling of any horror film thus the casting is critical. Wes Craven said of Nancy Thompson in A Nightmare on Elm Street 1984 “I wanted to cast someone intelligent looking”³.

Quick wits, fortitude and attractiveness (as opposed to beauty) are traits fundamental in the horror hero for this is the character the male audience has to empathise with. It has to be played by an actor the audience will desire and also respect.

Actress Nanako Matsushima was in her mid 20s during filming. She towers like an elder above the schoolgirls in the cast. Her character Reiko is a working woman so the teens respect her. Her attire throughout the movie is professional and modest. No cleavage. The audience can accept her without her flicking her hair.

To raise the stakes she’s also a (single) mother. She has a straight forward relationship with her ex-husband. She’s very feminine. So much so that when an infatuated student of her ex meets her Reiko is amused at the young girl’s suspicion. For the latter half of the film Reiko is trying to save her son from the monster.

The worker seeks employment for a pay cheque and the audience seeks out horror films for their monsters. This monster is called Sadako. She is a ghost – a ghoul. She was once of the living but not quite one of us. Now she is of the dead and is full of hatred for us. She is mute in her malice. She is unforgiving. She will not be resolved. Her reveal is the most dramatic moment in horror of the decade.

The bonus of this story is the slow build and detail. Reiko and her ex investigate the folklore and the audience discover the resonance of the curse as they do. The viewer is bathed in eerie narrative flux and the dutiful payoff defies morality to the point of disbelief.

original Japanese one-sheet

Ringu went on to become Japan’s most successful horror film⁴. It inspired a multitude of copycats in Japan and Korea and is solely responsible for the J-Horror phenomenon late of last decade. Don’t blame it for the risible remakes. The Ring 2002 was incomprehensible nonsense but a box office smash⁵. There is irony in Sadako’s use of video technology: Paramount has announced The Ring 3D coming soon⁶.

Disregard the cynicism of the marketplace and the unfortunate legacy of cinematic success. Surrender to the story telling of Ringu. It does what every horror film is supposed to do – it creeps into the memory.

It never leaves.

Read more Thrill Fiction: The 100 Best Horror Films #3

1 Japanese folklore – Bancho Sarayashiki

2 Final Girl – Ax Wound

3 Wes Craven – Never Sleep Again Youtube

4 Japan’s most successful horror film – IMDb

5 The Ring 2002 – Box Office Mojo

6 The Ring 3D - SlashFilm

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The 100 Best Horror Films #3

Cinema is the art of storytelling through motion pictures. Thrill Fiction™ recognises that the movies are mass entertainment storytelling. This in and of itself is not an attempt at art. Then cinema is the art of motion picture storytelling as mass entertainment. Examples are The Watchmen 2009 The Godfather 1972 All Quiet on the Western Front 1930. To wit; movies are entertainment, film is art, cinema is art as entertainment.

Dawn of the Dead 1978 is cinema with all its faults in widescreen. Cineastes with low tolerance for low budget may be resistant to its visuals. Dawn’s stunts, special effects and jump cuts were dated on release; three years prior Jaws 1975 was convincing and one year later Aliens 1979 was mesmeric. Dawn succeeds through narrative. Its story is the star. Its location is its genius.

Due to the nature of this beautiful beast Dawn is episodic in structure yet doesn’t suffer for it. In 1978 the behemoth indoor shopping mall was an American experiment. It was so unfamiliar one of the characters had to ask what it (the Monroeville Mall¹) was. This film is divided into two parts; the shopping mall and before the shopping mall.

 Gaylen Ross²

“We’re blowing it ourselves.”

Francine

Come the apocalypse and people won’t believe it until they are dead. That mass delusion will be fed by a hysterical mass media. In (England) 1978 I had not seen an American news broadcast whereas in 2010 I can watch Fox News 24 hours a day. What was once a noble profession – the fourth estate – is now a distributor of lies to a gullible audience.

Perhaps this type of television journalism was the norm in 1978 America – if not nationally then perhaps regionally. What George A Romero does is predict the Fox News style badgering of expert witnesses and the downplaying of their salient testimony. This is where Romero recreates his zombie myth; Dr Foster states that the dead are come back to life: all dead – not just those bitten. The journalists erupt in outrage. They need to pander to the dwindling gallery. They insist on false hope. Their audience (American/human) is not mature enough for life and death truths.

This is the start of the film. This is three weeks into the apocalypse.

 David Emge³

The film’s first encounter with the zombies is during a police siege. The cops are after Martinez and his crew who have taken refuge in a tenement populated by black and Hispanic citizens. The police attack with zest and glee and impunity.

“Shit man, this is better than what I’ve got.”

Woolley

The massacre is reminiscent of the Symbionese Liberation Army siege⁴.There are echoes from the ghosts of Attica⁵. Romero knew this law-enforcement tactic would be used again. In 1993 eigthy-four men women and children were killed in Waco⁶. 22 of them were British.

Rest in peace.

The siege introduces the two (good) cops – Roger and Peter. They meet on the job. Roger offers Peter a way out; his buddy Stephen has a helicopter. Francine, the journalist, is Stephen’s girlfriend. As befits horror not one of the actors was (or became) a star. The audience doesn’t know which characters will live or die. The two cops rendezvous with the couple at the docks – bang in the middle of a hijack.

In foreshadow of the second trilogy actor Joseph Pilato plays Skipper, the leader of the hijackers – a bunch of renegade cops. Pilato went on to star in the sequel Day of the Dead 1985 as army Captain Rhodes. In the second trilogy actor Allan Van Sprang played Sarge/Captain – the leader of a band of rouge soldiers (as well as Brubaker in Land of the Dead 2005).

Animals in the wild do not fight unless necessary. Skipper calls off the hijacking. It would make no sense for both parties to shoot each other up. The two groups become friendly but in a display of sardonic humour our heroes don’t share their cigarettes. Sans cash that’s the universal currency. The cops head out in a boat for an island – “any island”. The foursome fly off for Canada.

Scott H. Reiniger⁷

On the ground below rednecks, aided by the army, go on a zombie killing spree. This is a rehash of the climax of Night of the Living Dead 1968. In real life this is the militia in Rwanda, Yugoslavia, Nazi Europe, Columbia, name a country. In the United States during Hurricane Katrina the militia⁸ were so brazen they displayed signs with racist epithets⁹.

“You are stronger than us. But soon I think we be stronger than you.”

Old Priest

Dawn of the Dead reads more like prophecy than history. This amongst other things lends it to repeated viewings and the discovery of hidden gems. Fans of The Walking Dead would do well to revisit this film and see where their beloved TV show stole its ideas from; plot points such as a lead character being pregnant and fine detail such as the division of labour between the sexes.

The Dead Trilogy is legendary. It is the best trilogy in horror. It is the best trilogy ever filmed. The series consists not of narrative sequels but of thematic ones. There is time and distance between each movie – it’s what makes the trilogy more powerful than all others. Dawn is to be purchased and kept forever in the family library like a copy of Animal Farm. It is the best zombie film ever made. 

It is American cinema.

 Ken Foree¹⁰

“When there is no more room in hell the dead shall walk the earth.”

Peter

Read more Thrill Fiction: The 100 Best Horror Films #1

1 The Monroeville Mall Wikipedia

2 Gaylen Ross GR Films

3 David Emge Wikipedia

4 Symbionese Liberation Army Wikipedia

5 Attica National Review

6 The Waco Massacre Serendipity

7 Scott H Reiniger Wikipedia

8 Katrina’s hidden race wars The Nation

9 Millitary.com forums

10 Ken Foree Wikipedia

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The 100 Best Horror Films #2

Thrill Fiction is proud to present guest blogger Ross Tipograph. His contribution is welcome because Gore Vidal won’t speak to me. The following are Ross’ views and all hate mail should be directed to him. 

Or just leave a comment.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 1984 is the definition of ghoulish.

Let’s begin by first discarding the recent remake, released April 2010, a plague to cinemas around the globe. It was poorly written, with acting performances to make even the least movie-savvy watcher cringe and a script that attempted to rewrite history – the history of a man named Fred, who knows only one true creator: Wes Craven.

In 1984, the first Elm Street came out and started a revolution. Nancy, Glen, Tina, Rod, and the poor Springwood parents: the gang was all here. These unsuspecting victims played prey to a child-killer: Freddy Krueger – more evil than Jason more mysterious than Michael and wittier than Chucky could ever dream of being. Freddy is menace and cinematic legend.

He kills you in your dreams. That was the thought I had to wrap my head around upon my first viewing. It was amazing and impossible and horrifying. By this time, I was already obsessed with Scream 1996 and I knew most of the ‘50s-‘70s classics like the back of my DVD binders. Elm Street was the cherry on top of the cake and oh what a cherry.

It opens with the black and red flickering New Line Cinema logo. It’s also eerily silent until the first moment of Charles Bernstein’s masterful score sets the chilling and original mood. It is an ambient electronic pulse like an alien invasion accompanied by a growing growl and a woman’s choral vocals. Then the image: the Man’s dusty boots, his bag of knives, the shrill piercing sounds of the score grow louder. The sharpening of a knife, the booming title card, a jump in the opening credits with a mock childhood theme that is both crude and scary. Here a movie and a legend are born in the span of one minute. That’s all we need to know what we’re in for.

It’s genius. Throw a bunch of ‘80s (cliché) high school students into the midst of what would be the most harrowing experience of any young (or grown) person’s life – a dream killer. A Nightmare. The students are plucky but deaths are more entertaining. We begin with Tina then Rod then they all start to drop like flies until it’s all up to Nancy Thompson to save the day – after her friends and boyfriend are viciously slashed.

The dream sequences most definitely hold up to today – and to think, it was all without CGI. It was Craven’s brilliant direction that keeps us teetering insanely between dreams and reality, cutting quick to the knifed glove slashing through a sheet, set to the sound of a girl’s scream, or the mechanically over-stretched arms of the villain in a dark alley, or a tongue popping out of a phone’s receiver. There are almost no explanations – except that there is nowhere to hide. It’s very surreal and very unprecedented.

It’s interesting: the sequels came in truckloads, and yet Freddy remained an icon. With the exception of Dream Warriors 1987 the sequels were abysmal. Freddy evolved into comedy and the filmmaking devolved into a poor excuse for stale popcorn. Even Craven’s return to the series, his own New Nightmare 1994 (more of a re-vamp than a sequel, really), poked fun at the Freddy phenomena. There’s no getting around the fact that this character is forever cemented in gold.

For fans of the series, seek out and find Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon, a horror-comedy mockumentary about serial killers from 2006, featuring a cameo from our own dear Robert Englund.

Nine, ten, never sleep again.

Read more Thrill Fiction: Re/Made: A Nightmare on Elm Street [part 1]

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BIO

Ross Tipograph is a film buff and Emerson College screenwriting major. When he’s not reviewing movies, he writes about Halloween costumes.

The 100 Best Horror Films #1

Reader Alert! Click the sidebar poll to let me know your thoughts on my spec screenplay A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Return.

This article was going to be a review of The Wolfman 2010 DVD. It was going to be a Re/Made compare and contrast against the original The Wolf Man 1941. However the former is so bad I refuse to waste time watching it to credits let alone writing about it. Like every independent blogger I don’t get paid for this. Read and see that there are no Google Ads on this site. Thrill Fiction is a labour of love for the genre and for writing. I would rather write about films I love though I will write about any that makes an effort.

Previously on Thrill Fiction I’ve listed the top 20 films in over a hundred years of horror. The top 30 is to come. I’ve decided to concurrently review every film on the list in descending order. If you haven’t seen a given movie on this chart I’ll tell you why you should. If you don’t like a given film on this list I’ll tell you why I do. These reviews will be intermittent as I continue to script A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Return. The reviews will be detailed. They may well influence you to take another look at a forgotten flicker in your childhood memory. They may invoke remembrance of the jolt of a first screening.

I love these films. I love horror. So do you.

United Kingdom: In 1988 Warner Home Video withdrew The Exorcist 1973 in anticipation of it being banned. The film would not receive certification for home viewing until 1999. During those banned years the film exploded in legend. It was during those years that William Peter Blatty wrote and directed The Exorcist III 1990. The first sequel directed by John Boorman in 1977 has been dismissed (by Blatty himself amongst others). This film has been declared ‘the first true sequel to The Exorcist’.

The Exorcist III is adapted from Blatty’s own novel Legion (pub.1983). The book itself became a quest for me during the 90s. It was out of print and no second-hand bookshop in Manchester or London stocked it or could order it for me. Then along came Amazon: problem solved. The film differs from the novel. The film is better.

It is 15 years after Father Damien Karras threw himself to suicide down those steps and a serial killer begins his work in Georgetown. His work is copycat of an executed serial killer ‘The Gemini’. Lt Kinderman is led to an asylum where a lunatic claims responsibility. Patient X knows details about the Gemini killings that weren’t leaked to the press. He also knows details about one Reagan McNeil and an exorcism performed by Father Karras. He promises to help Kinderman’s unbelief.

I am a Pentecostal Christian albeit lapsed. I believe.

A college campus is an oasis of calm shielded from the fury of the world. It is an educated fool’s paradise. Blatty invokes the tranquillity of Georgetown University and provokes the spirit of the original film. The famous steps are introduced pre credit as are two of the main characters – Lt Kinderman and Father Dyer. Both characters were part-players in the original. In this film both characters are played by different actors. It didn’t bother me as it might have done – in 1990 I had not seen the original. Actors George C Scott and Ed Flanders respectively immediately command both roles as their own.

This is acting that has to be witnessed. In a film full of great performances Brad Dourif delivers a searing cacophony to which Jason Miller is a symphony of malevolence. Scott and Flanders ground the picture while actors Scott Wilson and Nancy Fish imbue idiosyncratic impetus. Even the bit parts by Samuel L Jackson, Tyra Ferrell and Fabio have resonance. The dialogue is stylised almost to the point of film noir. It is at times pithy at others resplendent and at its best tsunami-like. This is the rage of a writer.

The story unfolds at slow boil. As Kinderman connects the riddle of Reagan McNeil’s exorcism the serial killing continues. Urgency outpaces the characters – and the audience. The details of the set designs and locations are always in the foreground. Not only is there the sense of Georgetown but also of the hospital, Temple’s office and the Disturbed Ward. Blatty then uses the frame to magnificent perfection not only to invoke a sense of place but also a sense of doom.

It is not often film of any genre casually addresses police racism as a matter of fact. This occurs at the first murder – that of an African-American boy. Kinderman uncovers a connection between the boy and Reagan McNeil. This film is a test of faith; why does God allow such evil upon his beloved? Lt Kinderman will face his fear. It will test his faith.

The ending of the film is disputed and is the result of reshoots. The critic Mark Kermode denounces it whereas I applaud it. Not since The Wicker Man 1973 has a dénouement enrapt and engrossed in genuine terror. I went to see this picture three times in the spanking new multiplex – one of the first in England and the first in my city. Other than horror only comedy conjoins an audience. There is nothing comedic about the terror jolt from the hospital scene. It is unfailing. The audience has succumbed.

Others have taken their appreciation further. It has now been adapted into a stage play.

The Exorcist III is the best film I’ve ever seen never mind the best horror film.

Read more Thrill Fiction: The 10 Best Horror Films

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