A to Z - Zoolander

Tweet I was really tempted to choose Zombieland for my final entry, but I've already featured zombies and not much comedy, so I thought I'd go instead for something silly that features a cameo by David Bowie - the one and only Zoolander (2001).

Zoolander is named for Derek Zoolander (Ben Stiller), the egotistical and implausibly short male model who begins to question his career after he loses out on a modelling award to the equally egotistical Hansel (Owen Wilson). Thing is, he might be getting a bit old for modelling, but Derek is stupid enough to be a perfect candidate when an international fashion cartel need the Prime Minister of Malaysia assassinated to prevent his human rights laws affecting their sweat shop labour.

Where there's a conspiracy, there's a journalist, and Matilda Jeffries (Christine Taylor) is determined to clear Derek's name after she works out the plot to use male models as assassins. She doesn't just have to work around Derek's colossal stupidity - she also has to face Katinka (Milla Jovovich), an intimidating PA working for fashion designer, Mugatu (Will Ferrell). Can Derek resist his brainwashing and save the Malaysian Prime Minister, or will he be the killing machine he's been trained to be?

Zoolander is, in a word, silly. What other word could you use for a film that features a grizzled David Duchovny as a conspiracy theorist hand model, and a 'walk off' instead of a rumble? I think that's part of its charm - Derek and Hansel describe themselves as being "ridiculously good looking", and with all due respect to Stiller and Wilson (the latter of whom is cute in his own way but he's hardly Michael Fassbender), I think they know that they aren't. Still, in doing so, they expose the vapid and shallow side to male modelling, and make a good case for "looks aren't everything". None of the cast take it seriously, and send themselves up something chronic - yet they're not really make fun of themselves, more the stereotypes they portray. It's also perhaps one of the few films in which Will Ferrell is actually funny.

Zoolander also wins prizes with me for being eminently quotable. OK, so a lot of them don't work outside of context, but fellow fans will always get the reference. (Might explain why me saying "I think I got the black lung, pop" in a high voice after a coughing fit sometimes earns me weird looks). Orange mocha frappuccino, anyone?

I thought I'd end this post with my favourite scene, in which Hansel and Derek challenge each other to a walk off as they fight to prove who's the best male model, once and for all.

A to Z - 3:10 to Yuma

Tweet I got even more stuck coming up with something for 'Y' than I did for 'U', so I'm going to totally cheat and pick 3:10 to Yuma so I have something I actually want to talk about! I should point out that I'm referring to the 2007 version starring Russell Crowe and Christian Bale, as opposed to the 1957 original.

3:10 to Yuma is essentially the Western equivalent of a road movie. One or more characters needs to get from A to B, and what happens to them en route is more important than B itself. In this case, Bale plays struggling landowner Dan Evans, who agrees to take outlaw Ben Wade (Crowe) from Bisby to Contention to put him on the prison train to Yuma. Dan wants to improve his standing in his son's eyes, and the reward money will certainly come in handy, so along with a small posse, away they go. On the way, they have to face in-fighting, Apaches, and the threat of Ben's gang catching up with them.

The first time I saw 3:10 to Yuma, I wasn't sure what to make of it. For one thing, Ben is far more charismatic than Dan, and Crowe pretty much acts Bale off the screen. He might be an outlaw, but Ben just seems the more interesting of the two. There's depth to this particular wrongdoer, while Dan almost seems to be a caricature of a broken man. Besides, Ben steps in to defend the group when they come under attack, making him into less of an evil outlaw and more of a lovable rogue. Dan's backstory seems hastily sketched in, while Ben's is unravelled slowly, building a stronger picture of the man. Poor writing or just a difference in acting styles? I have no idea but sufficeth to say, Dan only becomes interesting in the last third or so of the film. Ben's interesting the whole way through.

That's not to say it's a bad film. It's not - I really like it on many levels. The soundtrack is perfect, and the attention to period detail makes this feel like more of a Western than earlier films. I think this is one of the reasons why I prefer the later Westerns - the earlier ones almost feel like cartoons, full of stock characters and mythologising, whereas the later ones feel like they've been researched well, and come more under the heading of historical drama. That's not to say this isn't a 'proper' Western - it's got ranchers, outlaws, angry Apaches, railroads and towns with names like Contention. Plus it's set against the epic backdrop of Arizona - what's not to like?

The soundtrack was a big influence while I was writing The Guns of Retribution, so 3:10 to Yuma will always hold a special place for me. Anyway, I'll leave you with this clip, which is Ben's robbery of the stagecoach that kicks everything off...

A to Z - X Men: First Class

Tweet X was never going to be a difficult choice, and while I have four to choose from, I've opted for the most recent X-Men film, First Class. Released in 2011, the film took us back to the early days of the mutants, when Magneto (Michael Fassbender) and Professor Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) were still on the same side. After a short prelude in the 1940s, to demonstrate the stark differences in the backgrounds of the two main mutants, we move into 1962. The Cold War is escalating, helped along by the interference of Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon), a mutant with the ability to manipulate energy. Xavier and long term friend Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) are recruited by a special government initiative, and after an encounter with Magneto, they begin recruiting more mutants to the cause to help face down a mutant that the humans just can't tackle. But will the humans appreciate the help?

I think the main draw, for me, was obviously Fassbender, and the man rocks the 1960s look like no other. If they ever decide to make another Avengers movie (as in the TV series), then Fassbender should be a shoe-in for John Steed. He'd also make a decent 1960s-era James Bond. Yes, his English accent waxes and wanes, growing ever more Irish as the film progresses, but I love him anyway. He makes Magneto plausible, and after suffering segregation and experimentation at the hands of the Nazis, you can see why he wouldn't trust humans not to do the same to mutants. McAvoy plays Xavier as slightly cheeky, almost a lovable rogue who's forced to grow up and accept the enormity of his task in educating mutants. I always enjoyed the relationship between the pair when played by Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan in the original trilogy, and it's nice to see McAvoy and Fassbender maintain that level of distrust/mutual respect.

One of the other things I liked was the inclusion of characters we rarely see. True, Wolverine pops up for a short scene (with Hugh Jackman putting in a cameo) but there's no Storm, Rogue, Cyclops or Jean Grey. Instead, director Matthew Vaughn and writer Jane Goldman pick their mutants from a different stable, so we get to meet Havok (Lucas Till), Banshee (Caleb Landry Jones), Darwin (Edi Gathegi), and Beast (Nicholas Hoult) on Xavier's side, and Azazel (Jason Flemyng), Emma Frost (January Jones), Riptide (Álex González) and Angel (Zoe Kravitz) on Shaw's team. Obviously Emma Frost and Beast have been fan favourites for a while but the inclusion of Azazel means they have some interesting story arcs to choose from for future films (especially if they pursue his relationship with Mystique).

Yes, there are plot holes, and Jennifer Lawrence annoys me no end as Mystique (unlike Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, who was brilliant in the role), but it's a fun watch, if only for Fassbender being awesome at pretty much every turn. It's also nice to see Nicholas Hoult take on another large role, and it'll be interesting to see which way Beast is developed if these films turn into a series. I'm curious to see how they're going to work in the cast of First Class with the cast of the original films for the sequel, Days of Future Past - it has the potential to be one of those films that's so full of characters there's no room to develop any of them, and ensemble films are difficult enough to manage as it is. We'll see how it works out next year, but in the mean time, he's an introduction to some of the team...

A to Z - The Woman in Black

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Originally I was going to do Watchmen for W, but I couldn't be bothered with the inevitable comparisons to the comic, so I decided to settle for The Woman in Black instead. It was one of my favourite films of 2012 (I reviewed it here on my film blog), and it was nice to see Hammer back in such period style. After all, they really made their name with lush period Gothic horrors in the late 1950s and 1960s, so it makes sense that they'd revisit what they know for this gorgeous adaptation of Susan Hill's 1983 novel of the same name.

I read the novel a while ago, and I'm due to see the stage version in May, and I was a little apprehensive about seeing the film. Adaptations can pretty much go either way, and be better than the source text, or suck beyond all logical reason. For The Woman in Black, I wouldn't say it's better than the source text, it just tells the story differently. Being a film and not a novel, it has the luxury of being able to do this - some scenes naturally work better when viewed rather than read. The trailer was a strange one though, and seemed to imply the sorts of CGI shenanigans which made the 1999 remake of The Haunting so abysmal. The Woman in Black falls under the Radcliffean mode of the Gothic, in that events are implied but not directly shown, and I was worried that Hammer had gone the other way, for the grand guignol school of the Gothic, and had turned the story into a special effects bonanza. I was also curious about the casting - could Daniel Radcliffe really carry a film?

The answer, in my humble opinion, is yes. Radcliffe plays Arthur Kipps, a London solicitor struggling to cope with the loss of his wife during childbirth. He's given one last chance to redeem himself with his employer, and he leaves his young son with his nanny while he heads to Eel Marsh House in the remote village of Cryphin Gifford to sort out the paperwork left behind by Alice Drablow. The villagers are a peculiar sort, gripped by a fear of the mysterious Woman in Black, and Arthur's presence does nothing to allay their fears. After he begins to see her, children in the village begin to die in horrible ways, egged on by the Woman. Can Arthur work out who she is and what she wants before his son arrives with his nanny?

Radcliffe is marvellous as the lead - I was worried he might be too young to convincingly portray a widower with a son, but he pulls it off. He carries most of the film, pretty much acting alongside the looming bulk of Eel Marsh House, but his scenes with Ciaran Hinds, who plays a local landowner, demonstrate how much Radcliffe has grown as an actor since his first wobbling steps in Harry Potter & The Philosopher's Stone twelve years ago. Credit must also go to Kave Quinn's production design, as well as the art direction of Paul Ghirardani and Kate Grimble, and the set dressing of Niamh Coulter - The Woman in Black is a gorgeous film, and perfectly captures both the cluttered aesthetic of Victorian décor, as well as the brooding spaces of a Gothic ghost story.

Some of the reviews describe The Woman in Black as being slow, or having a "crawling pace", and I think this in part reveals a problem with modern filmmaking. We're used to things being thrown out of the screen at us, or having either a scene of exposition every five minutes - anything that takes time to establish a mood, or mount a growing sense of trepidation, is viewed as being slow. It's a more naturalistic way of telling a story, unspooling it as the protagonist searches for answers - in the Google era, we're too used to finding information at a click of a button. Instead, I'd say that The Woman in Black reaches a certain level of creepiness, and while I didn't find it scary (unlike the people screaming in the cinema when I went to see it), I did find it unsettling. To me, that is the mark of a good ghost story...

Here's a scene from near the end of the film, as Arthur tries to lure out the Woman in Black.

A to Z - Vacancy

Tweet You might think that I'd have chosen V for Vendetta for this letter, and I wanted to, but at the same time, one of the driving forces behind my choices has been picking films that people might have heard of but not seen, or which they had never heard of at all. I'm spreading the cinema love, so to speak (except for yesterday's choice). Well I figured instead of choosing the obvious, I'd be a little different, so I've opted for Vacancy.

Released in 2007, Vacancy tells the story of a married couple, David (Luke Wilson) and Amy (Kate Beckinsale), who end up having to spend the night in a less than salubrious motel after a problem with their car. They're not getting on too well so they're less than thrilled, but they've soon got bigger things to worry about when they realise the motel is being used to stage snuff movies, as the guests are done away with and the videos sold on. It's as if Norman Bates decided to branch out in the early days of VHS.

I think some people stayed away from Vacancy, worrying that it would veer into torture porn territory. I must admit, I was expected a Saw-style plot when I first saw the trailer. It would have been easy for the makers to fall into that trap, particularly when you consider the release of The Strangers the following year, a virtual remake of Them (2006), in which a couple are terrorised at home. Perhaps people were put off by the inevitable comparisons to Psycho. Instead, the film is a taut little thriller, weighing in at just 85mins, that deals more with the conflict between the couple and their antagonists than it does the previous acts committed in the motel.

We've got a long-running tradition at Castle Sedgwick that my mother will start watching a film, and if it's tense enough, she'll exclaim part way through that she wishes she'd never started watching it - when you hear that, you know they've gotten the suspense right. Naturally, as I've brought it up, she uttered those words while watching Vacancy - and it's not surprising. Unlike some thrillers, that plod along on their way to a predictable conclusion, mistaking melodrama for suspense, Vacancy actually generates suspense - and maintains it. Its short running time makes it easy for them to sustain their pace, and makes it an enjoyable watch.

Normally I'd get annoyed at a film that tried to copy Hitchcock's style but Vacancy manages it very well, and I think it's helped in part by the fact that David and Amy begin as a troubled couple, but grow in stature into more capable adults who don't just flail around screaming. They're my type of people, in other words. I was really impressed by this film and if you like compact little thrillers, you might be too!

A to Z - Underworld

Tweet I'll be honest with you, I got really, really stuck to think of a film beginning with U. It wasn't that there aren't any - far from it - I just couldn't think of any that I actually liked, or had seen. But I didn't want to skip a day so I thought "To hell with it", and I decided to include a film I don't particularly like, but want to celebrate for a sole reason.

Michael Sheen.

If you haven't seen Underworld, you're not missing all that much. There's a war going on between vampires and werewolves (here known as Lycans), and the two are not supposed to mix. Indeed, Kate Beckinsale plays Selene, a death dealer who dispatches Lycans without a thought (or, it would appear, an actual reason). The film is pretty much an excuse to make Beckinsale wear skintight rubber and PVC, and stalk around looking moody. I mightn't mind so much if she had a shred of charisma but she comes across as having all the personality of a stale sandwich.

The vampires in Underworld live in a coven, a somewhat hedonistic existence where they all prowl about pouting and squabbling for position in the hierarchy, and the arrangement is presided over by a particularly ineffectual specimen named Kraven (Shane Brolly), who simpers and scowls but never quite attains the level of menace that you'd expect from a vampire kingpin. That's reserved for Bill Nighy, who pops up as Viktor, one of the vampire ancients, and he partially saves the film from complete tedium.

The real honour for Film Saviour goes to Michael Sheen, who plays Lucian, leader of the Lycans. He's altogether a more attractive character, partly because he's Michael Sheen and automatically ten times better than anyone else who stars alongside him, and partly because he infuses Lucian with the charisma and appeal that the other characters (except Bill Nighy) lack. Part of my problem with Twilight was I was expected to prefer the vampires, but the werewolves had better characterisation, and the same thing happens here. Why would I root for the somewhat self-centered vampires when the Lycans just seem a bit more 'with it'?

So Selene stalks around the city, being all moody and monotonous in her voiceover, and she tracks down Lycans with that sort of "I'm doing my duty but I'm not going to question it" determination that you get in these warrior types. She encounters Michael (Scott Speedman) who has the capability of being a vampire/werewolf hybrid, and it all gets a bit silly so I can't remember why that's important as I was too bored with what was going on to truly take it all in.

If it wasn't for Bill Nighy and Michael Sheen, there's no way on earth that I would have included Underworld in my A to Z, but as it stands, they're both excellent, and I couldn't think of anything better...

A to Z - Tombstone

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Given the fact my first published book was a Western, you may be wondering exactly why there haven't been any Westerns in my A to Z so far. Well, wonder no more, because I've saved the very best for T - Tombstone. Granted, the 1993 film plays fast and loose with history, and it's not exactly accurate, but it's damn fun!

Kurt Russell plays Wyatt Earp, legendary old West lawman, who heads to Tombstone, Arizona, to make his fortune with his two brothers, Virgil (Sam Elliott) and Morgan (Bill Paxton). The boomtown is plagued by a local gang known as the Cowboys, led by Johnny Ringo (Michael Biehn) and it seems that only Wyatt will stand up to them. Of course, he's not alone - he's aided and abetted by old friend, Doc Holliday (Val Kilmer). After the Earps attempt to arrest members of the gang, and the confrontation becomes the gunfight at the O. K. corral, things escalate on both sides. Can Wyatt run them out of town?

I love Tombstone. It's one of those films that teeters on the edge of being crap, but it so glorious in its hamming up of history that it becomes brilliant instead. Kilmer in particular is a revelation, and his performance as the tuberculosis ridden, drunken Holliday steals the film from the more serious Earp brothers.  He's so eminently quotable, as well - and his rolling gait and manipulative streak made this sort of character cool well before Captain Jack Sparrow. Yes, the film has inaccuracies - for one thing, the gang was led by Ike Clanton, portrayed here as the bumbling fool who follows Johnny Ringo around, and for another, the other Earp brothers are missing entirely.

Thing is, we're used to Hollywood changing the facts to suit the demands of a narrative. History is not fiction, and sometimes things need to be bent in order for them to suit the form of popular entertainment. I wouldn't call this a dramatisation, but more of a story inspired by the events in Tombstone. Indeed, Earp was subject to many rumours and tales about his life and exploits even while he was alive. As far as Tombstone goes, it's a pretty good epitaph.

I'll leave you with one of my favourite scenes, where Earp is dealing faro in the saloon and Johnny Ringo meets Doc Holliday for the first time...

A to Z - Session 9

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Can you believe we're onto S already? Madness. Anyway, I had a whole bunch of films I wanted to talk about for S, and I spent a lot of time going back and forth between Session 9 and Suspiria. Eventually I settled on Session 9, although I'm not overly sure why. I love both films, and both have an interesting use of space, but I think Session 9 is one of those films that deserves more attention than it gets - Suspiria is bombastic enough to force its way into your consciousness. Check out this clip if you wonder what I mean.

Anyway. Onto Session 9. The film is set in the old Danvers asylum in Massachusetts - sadly only the façade remains, and developers have been attempting to turn the site into luxury housing for a while now. Danvers State Hospital opened in 1878, and closed in 1992, becoming one of those alluring abandoned buildings that quietly rots without the presence of people to care for it. Session 9 was made in 2001, six years before the demolition began, and in some ways, it turns Danvers itself into a ghost, immortalising the building on screen in the way way Victorian post mortem photography captured the dead.

Peter Mullan plays Gordon, an asbestos removal expert hired to rid the building of its asbestos before it can be used for something else. He undercuts the competition by saying he can do a three week job in one, and brings in the rest of his crew, Phil (David Caruso), Mike (Stephen Gevedon), Hank (Josh Lucas) and Jeff (Brendan Sexton III), to start working on the job. Danvers soon starts to have an effect on everyone - playing on Jeff's fear of the dark, Hank's greed for money and Mike's fascination with the darker side of humanity. Gordon almost appears immune - but is he?

Danvers is probably the main character of the film, and it's a fantastic one at that, following in the lineage of the House of Usher, Hill House in The Haunting, and the Overlook in The Shining. With its labyrinth of corridors, its peeling walls and assorted asylum detritus, its strength lies in the fact that this is no set - this is real. The film intertwines the fates of the asbestos removal crew with the story of Mary, a former patient whose therapy tapes are found by Mike in an old office. He obsessively listens to them, hearing her story unfold, building up to the revelations of session nine.

Session 9 is a cross between a horror film and a psychological thriller, and it certainly had the sort of effect on me of wiggling under the skin like a splinter you can't quite remove. I've long been fascinated by abandoned spaces, and they don't come much more epic in scale than Danvers. Part of the thrill of the film is getting to explore a place you'll never get to see, and the fact it was digitally filmed lends it an air of realism that makes it all the more uncomfortable. I wouldn't say it gives it the air of a documentary, but it certainly looks more 'real' than other films. Given its investigation of some of the inhumane forms of treatment used at Danvers, it makes Session 9 a chilling watch.

I think I'll let the trailer do the talking (but ignore the dates at the beginning, they're wrong)...

A to Z - Rear Window

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No A to Z of movies would be complete without at least one entry by Sir Alfred Hitchcock, and this one actually features two. While I could have used his films for an array for entries, so far I've restricted myself to The Lodger for L, and now Rear Window for R. I must admit, Rear Window is actually my favourite of Hitchcock's American films (his 1935 version of The 39 Steps being my favourite of his British ones) and even now, I still find myself caught up in the tension, despite knowing how it all turns out.

Rear Window is one of those ideas that's been ripped off time and again - a contemporary version, Disturbia, came out in 2007 and starred Shia LaBeouf in James Stewart's role. The 1954 Hitchcock film was actually an adaptation of a 1942 short story by Cornell Woolrich, called "It had to be Murder", and necessitated the construction of the giant apartment building set. The only apartment that we actually enter is that of L. B. Jeffries (James Stewart), an award-winning photographer who's laid up with a broken leg. He has nothing else to do all day so he's taken to giving his neighbours nicknames and stories based on what he sees them do. There's Miss Lonely Hearts on the ground floor who's looking for love, and Miss Torso the dancer who practices her moves in her kitchen.

Things take a darker turn when he begins to suspect the neighbour directly opposite, Lars Thorwald (Raymond Burr), has murdered his wife and he enlists the help of his girlfriend Lisa (Grace Kelly) and his physiotherapist Stella (Thelma Ritter) to investigate further. Thorwald tells the police that his wife has gone to stay with relatives, but Jeff isn't convinced, and tension rises when Lisa actually enters Thorwald's apartment to look for clues.

One of the ways in which Rear Window works so well is because we, like Jeff, never leave the space of his apartment. We can only look out of the window. Other characters, such as Lisa and Stella, may come and go, but we may not, locking us into Jeff's point of view within the cinematic space. As a result, we are just as helpless as Jeff to intervene in events outside the window. There has been some work into the film in terms of its relationship to 'the gaze', which in this case is very much granted to Jeff, and even when Lisa is exploring Thorwald's apartment, she is doing so on behalf of Jeff, and is still not given a gaze of her own. The film is even likened to the experience of cinema itself, as we sit in darkened rooms and watch events unfold on screen, events in which we have no participation. Indeed, Jeff's interest in Lisa only begins to grow once she has crossed to the other side of the apartment complex and become part of this 'screen'.

As I said earlier, I know what happens in the film, and yet every time I watch it, I end up getting caught up in the suspense. I suppose that's how Hitchcock got his most famous nickname. It's also a masterclass in storytelling - the 'ordinary world' is established, with New York in the grip of a heatwave and Jeff stuck indoors, and this world is altered with the suspicion that a murder has taken place. Tension is ratcheted up throughout act two, in which Jeff and Lisa make their inquiries, until the climax when truths must be uncovered and danger faced. I absolutely love it.

Anyway, I'll leave you with this clip, where Jeff decides to take a closer look at the salesman across the courtyard...

A to Z - Quatermass and the Pit

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On Thursday, I visited The Plague of the Zombies for 'P', and today I'm back with Hammer for Quatermass & The Pit. Hammer are probably most associated with horror, despite their forays into other genres, and their 1950s boom of popularity actually came through science fiction, with the triple whammy of The Quatermass Xperiment (1955), X - The Unknown (1956), and Quatermass II (1957). It took ten years for the final Quatermass instalment in 1967, by which point Hammer had switched to Technicolor and become more famous for their Dracula and Frankenstein films.

The film opens with work being done at Hobb's End, a fictional station on the London Underground's Central line. When skulls are uncovered by the workers, Dr Roney (James Donald) is called in to investigate. That's not all they found - an alien spacecraft is found buried beneath the mud, bringing Colonel Breen (Julian Glover) and Professor Quatermass (Andrew Kier) into the story as rocket experts who need to decide exactly what the spacecraft is. Soon Quatermass and Roney's assistant Miss Judd (Barbara Shelley) have uncovered local tales of demons and poltergeists, and the site has a long history of disturbances. When the corpses of giant insects are found inside the craft, Quatermass begins to wonder if these aliens and the skulls found in the pit are connected.

It's an interesting plot, and the hypothesis that alien intervention may explain the sudden evolution of man from apes is more plausible than most. Quatermass goes one step further to guess that maybe the likes of poltergeists and telekinesis can be explained by their alien ancestry - maybe humans were originally part Martian. It all kicks off and soon London is tearing itself apart. One of its attractions is definitely the idea of something buried under London - I know I've always been fascinated as much by what is below London as what is on display at street level. With forgotten or abandoned stations, plague pits and buried Roman amphitheatres, it almost seems plausible that a Martian spaceship could be down there as well.

I know some people have problems with the Quatermass films, and many prefer the BBC TV serial, but I've never seen it so I can't really compare it. All I have to go on is the films, and in a way, it's amazing how much Quatermass & The Pit prefigures more modern cinematic tropes. Quatermass was looking at the links between humans and aliens well before The X Files came along, and the shots of Londoners facing off in the streets recall later zombie films; those Londoners who still possess alien ancestry hunt those who don't, seeking to destroy anything which doesn't belong to the alien colony. Sound familiar?

I can't help thinking that one of Hammer's problems was that by the late 1960s, its period horrors were beginning to look rather quaint and dated compared to the output of other filmmakers. A year after Quatermass & The Pit, both Rosemary's Baby and Night of the Living Dead introduced horror into the modern day, and brought it kicking and screaming into the home. It took Hammer until 1972 to bring Dracula into the present day, and even then, it seemed way out of date. By contrast, Quatermass & The Pit represented a possible direction that would have allowed Hammer to blend science fiction with horror within contemporary settings - and hopefully find audiences.

Anyway, here's the opening scene...

A to Z - The Plague of the Zombies

Tweet I used to be a fan of zombies until they went mainstream, but I have to admit, I will always have a fondness for the old school 'voodoo' zombies. After all, it's where the sub genre started - long before viruses and radiation from space got blamed, cinema was using voodoo to explain its fascination with the undead. First came White Zombie in 1932, then I Walked With A Zombie in 1943, and then the idea went quiet for a bit, until Hammer decided to have a crack at it in 1966 with The Plague of the Zombies. By this point, Hammer had exhausted its own versions of the 1930s Universal classics, and were trying out new ideas to see what might stick in order to create a new movie monster. They'd had a go in 1964 with The Gorgon, a rare attempt at a female monster, and had another crack at things with the zombie.

The Plague of the Zombies is set in rural Cornwall, where Sir James Forbes (André Morell) and his daughter Sylvia (Diane Clare) go to visit one of James's old schoolfriends, Peter (Brook Williams). Things are badly amiss in Peter's village - young men are dying in their prime, and the people are under the thrall of Squire Hamilton (John Carson). When Peter's wife Alice (Jacqueline Pearce) dies, James sets about uncovering what's really going on. I'm not going to spoil it by telling you that voodoo is to blame, and the young men are disappearing to provide cheap labour.

I was half expecting this to be terrible before I watched it, but I was pleasantly surprised. It's a well-paced little horror film, but I think part of its success lies in its reliance on voodoo as the cause. I don't know how plausible it is but it can't be any worse than a virus caused by monkeys being exposed to violent imagery. There has been a lot written about the mindless zombie horde as being a representation of fears surrounding the working class, but I can't help seeing that as being somewhat derogatory. True, the idea of a sole individual wielding power over a subjugated mass is essentially feudalism, but I think I prefer the concept of that sole individual since they become a very human antagonist to foil the protagonist. With a zombie horde, the protagonists are essentially just running about trying to survive. The conflict is simply "get eaten/don't get eaten". With a voodoo priest, you have someone to defeat. I'm aware that raises questions around a closed or open narrative, as well as the so-called 'secure' or 'paranoid' horror, but that's beyond the scope of this post.

What I like about it is the fact that Hammer took their tried and tested period Gothic setting and tried to inject a different form of horror. Zombies weren't fashionable, and I'm still unsure whose idea the film was, but it's almost an entirely new type of film for Hammer. It's not a remake of a Universal classic, nor is it one of the interminable Dracula or Frankenstein sequels. True, some of their 'stabs in the dark' really don't work (like The Witches) but this one really did - and it's such a shame that they turned their back on the idea, and never did zombies again. Instead, the idea was taken up two years later by an American filmmaker named George Romero...

Anyway, I'll leave you with this particular clip, in which Sir James and Peter go to check on the grave of young Alice...

A to Z - The Others

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I appear to be continuing the horror theme from yesterday's Nosferatu, moving on to a much later horror film from 2001, The Others. Directed by Alejandro Amenábar and starring Nicole Kidman, The Others is an old-fashioned ghost story set in an isolated house in Jersey in the years after the Second World War. Kidman plays Grace, a widow with two children, Anne (Alakina Mann) and Nicholas (James Bentley). The children are photosensitive and they dwell in a perpetual twilight as they contain the darkness within the house. After the previous servants leave, Grace manages to hire three more, who know a lot more than they're telling after strange disturbances begin in the house. Grace can't decide if her children are playing tricks, or if the house is haunted, or if she's going mad. Which is it to be?

I absolutely love this film. I'm refusing to say much more about the plot because I don't want to spoil it, but it's one of the few genuinely chilling films of the last fifteen years or so. Ghost films don't seem to be privvy to the same cycles of popularity that affect other horror films, and they often crop up in ones or twos before disappearing for a few more months. I think 1999 was the last 'big' year for ghosts, with The Sixth Sense, the godawful remake of The Haunting and Stir of Echoes being the biggest names on release, so The Others had a couple of years for paranormal fever to die down.

One of the real draws of the film is its setting. Jersey is trying to reestablish its routine following the Nazi occupation in much the same way that Grace is trying to adjust to life without her husband, presumed killed in action. The costumes are gorgeous, and the constant mist outside the house helps add to the air of enclosure, and entrapment, generated throughout the film. Grace's insistence that one door must always be closed before the next is opened to ensure that no light leaks into the rooms where her children are turns the house into a strange space full of shadows and secrets. Disembodied piano playing becomes threatening, and Grace pursues the intruders with a shotgun.

It's perhaps her relationship with her children that really make the film. Child actors can be a mixed bag, but Mann and Bentley are perfect as Anne and Nicholas, hitting the right balance between sibling bickering and protectiveness to make them plausible as brother and sister. Anne's somewhat strained relationship with Grace reaches breaking point when Grace thinks Anne has been possessed by an old woman, and Nicholas becomes torn between Anne's insistence that something is wrong, and Grace's assurances that everything is fine. This is a family on the brink.

It's a wonderful film, with a delightfully creepy atmosphere, and I highly recommend it if you like things that go bump in the night...

A to Z - Nosferatu

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There were plenty of films I could have chosen for N, and indeed one of the problems I've faced for this A to Z challenge is choosing particular films. Why should I choose one film over another? Well I know a few vampire fans read this blog so I thought that for N, I'd choose one of the classics - Nosferatu.

Directed by F. W. Murnau and released in 1922, Nosferatu, A Symphony of Horror (Nosferatu, Eine Symphonie Des Grauen) is a loose adaptation of Dracula - Bram Stoker's widow was notoriously protective of copyright, and as this was an unauthorised adaptation, the names were changed to protect the guilty. So Harker becomes Hutter, Mina becomes Ellen, and London is swapped for Bremen, and Murnau adds a few little touches of his own, casting Nosferatu as the cause of the 1838 outbreak of plague in Bremen.

The plot is essentially a streamlined form of Dracula - an estate agent, Hutter (Gustav von Wangenheim), is sent to see Count Orlok (Max Schreck) to help him with a purchase in Bremen. Turns out the Count is buying the dilapidated houses directly opposite where Hutter lives. The Count develops a fancy for Hutter's wife, Ellen (Greta Schröder) and heads to Bremen, bringing with him the plague. Hutter naturally wants to stop the Count, but can he? The likes of Dr Seward, Arthur Holmwood and even Van Helsing are excised from the plot to make room for the larger than life Count Orlok.

Nosferatu is usually figured with Der Golem and The Cabinet of Dr Caligari has being one of the Big Three of German Expressionism (Metropolis sometimes replaces Der Golem), a film movement that grew out of the art movement of the same name after the First World War. These films are sometimes referred to as the first horror films, and they certainly had an effect on later filmmakers, most notably for their use of light and shade, and the manipulation of shadow through careful lighting. One thing that should be noted is the fact that most of the early German Expressionist films were made in studios, so filmmakers could control the filming conditions, but Murnau took Nosferatu outside. The coach trip through the woods as Hutter travels to the castle is filmed in negative, using stop motion animation, to give a jerky, otherworldly feel to the journey. It looks unreal because Hutter is in an unreal space.

Other visual devices have cropped up throughout the years, from Count Orlok's incredibly creepy way of standing up to the distortions caused by projecting his shadow across a wall. Plus, this is not the sexy, romantic vampire of post-Anne Rice fiction - Orlok is an ugly, ratty creature who brings only death and disease. There is no promise of love and everlasting life here. Later portrayals of Dracula show him as being a charismatic figure, if not necessarily physically attractive, but here we really get the sense of the vampire as being something abject and monstrous.

The film is now in the public domain so I've embedded the link to the full film below.

A to Z - The Mummy

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Well I'm continuing the black and white classic theme from yesterday, which was L for The Lodger, and going onto possibly my favourite horror movie, The Mummy. No, I don't mean the 1999 action adventure starring Brendan Fraser, I mean the original 1932 version, starring Boris Karloff as the Mummy. Set in the 1920s, a decade which saw fevered interest in ancient Egypt following the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb, the film tells the story of Imhotep, an ancient priest who is awoken by the mysterious Scroll of Thoth that has the power to grant life. He encounters Helen (Zita Johann), the woman who was Anck-sa-namun in a previous life - basically, she's the princess he used to love. Helen ends up subject to a tug of war between Imhotep and her 1920s boyfriend, a slightly insipid Frank (David Manners).

What I love about The Mummy is that the monster, here the ambling mummy now posing as an archaeology enthusiast named Addis Bey, essentially becomes the romantic love interest for Helen, and while Frank is the pretty boy son of a sir, she's given the choice between Beauty and the Beast. Trouble is, the Beast is far more interesting. Karloff is positively magnetic in this role, and we're treated to close ups of those mesmerising eyes as he works his magic on various characters. I think I sometimes get a bit cross with the implication that the mummy is a monster when really, he just wants his old girlfriend back. Plus, when he shows Helen a dream sequence of their life together in ancient Egypt, I just wonder how on earth Frank thinks he can possibly compare - Imhotep has had a passionate life with her already, and the best Frank can do is wring his hands with worry.

Karloff and Johann (herself a rather exotic beauty) make a much better couple, and I found myself rooting for them throughout the film. OK, so Imhotep wants to kill Helen so he can resurrect her to the same state of immortality that he himself enjoys, but what's so wrong with that? People always bang on about wanting to spend eternity together - these guys actually have the chance. Frank doesn't even really get to save the day - Helen pretty much has to save herself. Yes, he's that useless.

One of the things I love about the early Universal films is their length. They're quite short (The Mummy runs at 73 minutes) but they tell their story perfectly, without recourse to lengthy padding or pointless dialogue exchanges. I'm no fan of 3D cinema, and films like these just prove that you don't need fireworks and fancy visuals to tell a good story well.

I couldn't find any decent clips, and while I would recommend watching the whole movie, I'll leave you with the trailer...

A to Z - The Lodger

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Wow, we're onto 'L' already! I couldn't not choose this 1926 silent classic by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Ivor Novello. The film is based on a 1913 novel by the same name by Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes, and concerns a hunt for a Jack the Ripper style serial killer in the London fog. This killer, known as the Avenger, favours blondes (much like Hitchcock himself) although he opts for strangulation as opposed to ripping. The idea for the novel actually concerns that of a landlady who comes to believe one of her tenants is Jack the Ripper - incidentally, the artist Walter Sickert stayed in a room which his landlady believed had been let to the Ripper previously. (There's also a conspiracy theory that he painted the Camden Town Murders paintings about the case, and people think he was the Ripper himself). In the film, Ivor Novello plays the suspected lodger.

I'm being very good to you today because I actually found the full film on YouTube (see below) and I really do recommend watching it. Silent films can be a difficult watch for modern audiences since we're so used to the majority of plot being delivered via dialogue, so strip away the speech and the handful of cue cards aren't enough to convey story. Instead, we have to read the whole film, include facial expression, set design, and even the soundtrack, to get the story. Personally, I love silent films (which is one reason why I almost did The Artist for 'A') and I think there's a lot to be said for them, but I understand why they're not everyone's cup of tea.

Thing is, you really get to see the 'birth' of Hitchcock's creativity in this film. My favourite scene occurs when the landlady and her family are crowded in a downstairs room, listening to Novello pace back and forth upstairs. But how do you convey the sound of pacing footsteps in a silent film? Easy, you employ visual trickery to show it. Hitchcock might have been a rotter towards his leading ladies but the guy was certainly inventive with cinema. It also demonstrates the start of Hitchcock's themes to which he returned throughout his career. The wrong man? Check. The icy blond? Check. Ineffectual police? Check. Violence against women? Check. It's a landmark film for so many reasons.

There have been other adaptations over the years but I highly recommend this one! Sit back, relax, and enjoy an hour and a half of good filmmaking...

A to Z - The King's Speech

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At first glance, The King's Speech might not look like my 'kind of film'. Having said that, I will give most genres a try at least once (within reason, I still loathe musicals) and the presence of Colin Firth, Helena Bonham-Carter, Guy Pearce and Geoffrey Rush swayed me into going to see this. Sufficeth to say, I absolutely loved it. It's the kind of heartwarming tale that you can't help but like, and that's in part due to the stellar performances by the extremely talented cast.

Colin "Mr Darcy" Firth plays George VI, or 'Bertie', the stammering Duke of York whose attempts at overcoming his problem just aren't working. Helena Bonham-Carter plays his wife, who went on to become the Queen Mother, who eventually enlists the help of Lionel Logue (Rush), an Australian chap whose methods have come highly recommended. His unorthodox approach breaks down the class boundary between him and Bertie, and you get a sense of a real camaraderie between the two. The entire film drives towards the big showdown, in which Bertie's final confrontation is essentially with himself as he faces giving his first wartime speech to the nation.

I had a lisp as a youngster, so I always find it easy to sympathise with characters who suffer from speech impediments (with the exception of Kripke in The Big Bang Theory - but I think he's supposed to be insufferable). But would I have sympathise with just anyone with a problem? I don't think so. Firth plays Bertie as being very human, subject to workplace anxieties and stress. Sure, not all of us have to deal with the problems associated with being a member of the Royal Family, but Bertie is in a position in which all the wealth and privilege in the world just won't help. In fact, I found I almost sympathised with him more for being a prince rather than having a speech impediment. We might look at the Royal Family and consider them everything from "idle scroungers" to whatever other epithet seems to be most offensive at the time, but imagine being born into an existence in which your life is not really your own, and you're not free to pursue the same dreams as everyone else. I'd hate it.

I've been a fan of Firth's since 1995, and that adaptation of Pride & Prejudice, and I always enjoy watching Bonham-Carter. It's particularly nice to watch her in a non-Burton role, where she actually gets to act instead of stomping around with big hair, screeching and emoting all over the place, and her likeness to the Queen Mother is unnerving. But really, the real star of the film is Rush, whose homely chatter and refusal to be cowed by Bertie's status is possibly what gets through to Bertie in the first place. Logue doesn't treat Bertie like a prince, so Bertie doesn't have to feel the weight of responsibility within Logue's office. He can just be Bertie. I was pleased to see at the end of the film that even when he became King, he remained friends with Logue. Just like he stole Pirates of the Caribbean from under the nose of Johnny Depp, so Geoffrey Rush steals The King's Speech.

Sure, it doesn't have monsters or fairytale creatures, but The King's Speech is a lovely little film, telling the story of one man's desire to overcome a simple, and very human, problem. I'll leave you with a clip of that magnificent speech.

A to Z - Jurassic Park

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I was really tempted for J to put down Jumanji, but the more I thought about it, the more I just had to put down Jurassic Park. After all, who doesn't love dinosaurs? I've loved them since I was little, and went through the phase of wanting to be a palaeontologist. Now I'm going through a phase of wishing I'd done forensic anthropology but more on that another time.

I remember going to see Jurassic Park at the cinema, and I've since read the source novel by Michael Crichton, and I think it's one of those rare occasions (along with Fight Club, previously discussed) where the film is actually more successful at telling the story than the book. The basic plot is simple - rich guy John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) has managed to clone dinosaurs from DNA found inside those mosquitoes preserved in amber, and wants to open a theme park to display them. In order to test everything before it opens, he invites along various people to give it a try, including Alan Grant (Sam Neill), Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern), Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) and his two grandchildren. Things go wrong, the dinosaurs get out, and with the group split up around the island, they have to get off before they become dinner.

Given I like Sam Neill AND Jeff Goldblum, it would be hard for me to dislike Jurassic Park. It's hard to believe it's twenty years old, but I think part of its success lies in the use of animatronics alongside CGI to render the dinosaurs. It's difficult for decent animatronics to age badly since they actually exist as part of the film's misè-en-scene, unlike CGI which can look like it was added at a later date by a toddler with access to Photoshop. Most people found the shot in which the jeeps see the herd of brachiosaurs for the first time to be the real Money Shot, but I always did like the first sight of the Tyrannosaurus Rex. They might have tiny baby arms but they still look cool.

I did, and still do, have problems with Jurassic Park. The size of a Triceratops is wrong, for one thing, along with the fact that a Velociraptor was only around a couple of feet tall, meaning the dinosaurs the film calls raptors are closer to the Deinonychus. Even as a youngster, I couldn't work out how they could possibly determine all of the types of DNA within the bodies of the mosquitoes in order to ensure they weren't creating a triceratops/T-rex hybrid, and I wasn't entirely sure that adding the DNA of an amphibian to the DNA of a reptile would make a lot of sense. Of course, the dinosaurs have been genetically bred to be female and they need the gender-switching DNA of a frog in order to be able to breed, but couldn't they have found a reptile that did that? Still, these are nitpicky details in what is otherwise an enjoyable adventure film if you switch your brain off.

I leave you with the scene in which Alan and the kids get a bit more up close and personal with the Gallimimus than they might like...

A to Z - It's A Wonderful Life

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I think most people might have expected me to choose something like Inception or I, Robot for this letter, but I couldn't really not choose It's A Wonderful Life. It's a film that I actually hated for a long time, but after watching it again during my first film degree, I actually found a depth in it that I'd previously missed. It's also a film whose central tenet I utterly refute, and I ignore its sentimental ending in favour of sympathy for our hapless hero, George Bailey.

George (James Stewart) is one of cinema's Nice Guys. He grows up in Bedford Falls, a perfect little town that only seems to exist on celluloid, but he's a young man with an itch, a desire to explore, to see the world. Sadly, this particular itch is to go unscratched. While his brother gets to go to war, George stays behind to run the family business, the Building & Loan that helps the people of the town with their housing needs. He marries his high school sweetheart, a lovely lady named Mary (Donna Reed), and has four kids. But it's not enough. He feels hemmed in, and when his useless uncle puts his business in jeopardy, George snaps. He wishes he'd never been born.

Wishing in films is a risky business, and his guardian angel, an odd little man named Clarence (Henry Travers), pops up to show him what life would have been like if he hadn't been born. George gets that rare glimpse into the effect one person can have in a community, and it turns out that pretty little Bedford Falls would have become a seedy dump named Pottersville, rife with prostitution and poverty, without him. Without George, his brother would have died in a childhood accident, Mary becomes a spinster librarian (who inexplicably needs glasses in the alternate world - apparently his presence also cures her short sightedness), and the world is out of kilter. With this new appreciation for life, he gets to return to his normal existence, cheered by the spirit of charity, and full of love.

I know I probably shouldn't, but I do love the film. I think humans are obsessed with the idea of "What if?", and it's easy to idly wonder how different the timeline would be without us in it. I suppose the film also wants us to realise that it's the little things we do that matter, and any intercession on our behalf can have a ripple effect further down the line. In a way, I guess it's saying "Be a good person and do good things" since a ripple effect from positive actions is more likely to spread positivity (after all, look at the ripple effect caused by the murder of Bruce Wayne's parents) and I'm always fascinated by 'alternate universe' stories. The idea of guardian angels is even more fascinating, particularly when we assume they're always going to be these elegant beings, and Clarence turns out to be a socially awkward little man with a fondness for mulled wine.

But George still never gets to leave Bedford Falls. That's the crux of my problem with the film. Sure, he gets to realise just how important he is to the world which gives him a new appreciation for what he has as opposed to what he doesn't have (which ends up being a little egocentric for my liking, but never mind), but he still never gets to leave - the poor guy doesn't even get to have a holiday, unless that happens after the credits stop rolling. Just as Shark Tale did its damnedest to convince its viewers never to strive to rise about their station in life, so It's A Wonderful Life takes up the refrain of The Wizard of Oz - there's no place like home...

Anyway, I give you George, proving just why he's the guy to run the Building & Loan...

A to Z - The Haunting

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My movie-themed A-Z continues apace with Robert Wise's 1963 ghostly classic, The Haunting. Based on the 1959 novel by Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House, the film tells the story of a group of paranormal investigators who find more than they bargained for when they go hunting for ghosts. Dr Markway (Richard Johnson) wants to investigate the notorious Hill House, a house described as having been "born bad", and to do so, he enlists the help of a group of people who his research indicates have been involved with the paranormal in some way. In the end, only two end up arriving, Theo (Claire Bloom) and Nell (Julie Harris), and accompanied by the guy who'll eventually inherit the house, Luke (Russ Tamblyn), they start their investigation.

Trouble is, Nell has issues with her "nerves" and soon Hill House is bringing out the worst in her - or is she bringing out the worst in Hill House? In Dale Bailey's book-length study, American Nightmares: The Haunted House Formula in American Popular Fiction, he posits the idea that Shirley Jackson was the first author to remove the ghosts from the haunted house, and to make the house itself an evil entity - Hill House, in his words, was the first house to be "born bad". This is something the film plays with, and as Nell regresses into her bad memories surrounding the death of her mother and her subsequent guilt about the part she played in it, so the disturbances in the house increase.

I firmly believe The Haunting is a masterclass in representing a haunting, since the film relies on shadow, suggestion and sound to make its point. Whereas the utter balls-up of a remake in 1999 relied on poorly rendered CGI and an idiotic plot to tells its story, thereby removing all semblance of fear or suspense, the original builds up the suspense through a careful use of structure, and implication to make you imagine what could possibly be going on. It's not surprising - director Robert Wise cut his teeth working with producer Val Lewton at RKO in the 1940s, working on a series of films notorious for their use of shadow and suggestion over prosthetics and gore. Val Lewton even described their process, saying that if you made a screen dark enough, people will read things into that darkness, and Robert Wise does the same - and more.

You have to remember that horror in the 1960s was different from the derivative torture-porn crap that it is today. Psycho had just revolutionised the genre by proving that not even your top billed star was safe from the chop, and both Hammer and Roger Corman were revelling in the possibilities afforded by Technicolor for lush period pieces starring Christopher Lee or Vincent Price. The Haunting isn't an anomaly by any stretch, but it does make an effort to engage with character on a deeper level than most. It also starts to fully explore the possibilities of setting, turning Hill House itself into the fifth character in the film.

I don't want to say too much because I really want you to go and watch this, if you haven't already, but two of the scariest scenes in the film rely on sound. You see nothing - but by gumdrops, you hear plenty. What do you hear? No one actually knows - it's as much up to you to interpret the sound as it is the characters within the film. Whatever I might imagine will be totally different to whatever you imagine - and that's the key. Monsters just are not scary - look at the monsters from the 1930s, they've become pop culture icons. But something you can't see, and can only imagine? Brrrr....

I'll leave you with this clip, from near the end of the film. Dr Markway, Luke, Nell and Theo have taken refuge downstairs, only something wants to join them...

A - Z - Ghostbusters

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Hands up if you thought I could possibly feature any film BUT Ghostbusters for G? Sure, there are lots of other great movies beginning with G, but none of them are Ghostbusters. I remember how you could always expect to hear the theme tune at school discos (even though the film had been out about eight years by the time I ever went to one), and the cartoon series would be on after school. Ah, those were the days.

For those of you who have never seen Ghostbusters, and I sincerely hope there are none in this category, the film revolves around three parapsychology professors (plus Winston Zedmore (Ernie Hudson), a dude who just wants the paycheck) who form a company to rid New York of its resident spectres. For a fee, of course. The brainchild of Peter Venkman (Bill Murray), the Ghostbusters enterprise takes up residence in an old fire station, and what looks suspiciously like a hearse is pressed into service as Ecto 1, their means of transport. Sigourney Weaver's Dana brings in a new case, in which she thinks she's seen an old Babylonian god in her fridge, and the boys set to work trying to figure it out. Turns out her apartment building was built by an occult-obsessed architect, and it was designed as a portal to another realm. You don't see that type of dwelling on these property makeover shows, do you? Anyway, the Ghostbusters have to try and avert an apocalypse, part of which involves destroying a giant marshmallow man. As you do.

Ghostbusters came out in 1984, and it's true that the visual effects look their age. Thing is, it doesn't matter. I don't need my ghosts to look real - I just want them to look cool, even if they are dated. Whether the Ghostbusters are chasing Slimer around an upscale New York hotel (named the Sedgewick, pity the name's got an extra letter), or using their proton packs, the ropey CGI just adds to the film's charm. And what charm it has! It's highly quotable (indeed, Ray Stanz's line, "Listen, can you smell something?" became a regular fixture when I used to do paranormal investigations), it's funny, and it's got Rick Moranis in it. Triple win.

I've tried really hard to provide intelligent commentary or some sort of discussion about the films I've chosen thus far, but Ghostbusters is the kind of film that just provokes childish fangirl glee in me. So sorry about that.