Scream 4 appears to be on the launchpad, according to Entertainment Weekly’s Web site. Fresh Pablum for the German masses affected by the recent horror film ban. Bravo, Hollywood.
Occasionally something happens in the world of horror that sends me scurrying back to what I’ve already written of The New Horror Handbook to make changes to ensure the finished text, when it finally goes to press, will be as up-to-date as possible. Usually this is a positive thing — the chapter on the recent French masterpiece Inside, for example. Unfortunately, it’s not always that pleasant.
Earlier this month, Eli Roth posted this entry to his MySpace blog, highlighting new regulations that went into effect in Germany on June 10th. The uncut DVD of his Hostel Part II, along with many other films, were declared illegal. The picture he paints of video stores being raided and DVDs being removed from shelves is as deeply disturbing for a genre that celebrates transgression as it is hauntingly familiar to fans with long memories.
In the 1980s it was Great Britain that turned on its own citizens, raided video shops and threw their video sellers into chokey for no better reason than that they rented or sold any of more than 70 movies to another member of the public. Here are some of those sins against cinema that could’ve driven you bankrupt if you were unlucky enough to be a video store owner at the time:
Sure, there were also some pretty disturbing films that were also targeted, but it’s all rather beside the point. (Search out a copy of See No Evil by David Kerekes & David Slater for an excellent look at this period of British history.)
Setting aside all of the usual arguments against censorship (including the observation that the intelligence of decisions is inversely proportional to the number of people involved in making them, e.g. governments), there remains one very large one. And it has nothing to do with the right to see stage blood.
Societies that restrict expression, both individual and in the arts, almost always stagnate – they stop moving forward, stop innovating. This is as true of the societies that breed terrorists who aim to create a utopian society crushed beneath a single religious ideal as it was of the Germany of the 1930s, and onwards back into history.
No, horror films do not guarantee social growth. But transgressive art and ideas keep the minds of their audience questioning, fertile. Take a look at the headlines, at the quotes from warring factions that seem to float over one another without ever maturing beyond simple schoolyard tuants, and tell me the answer to it all is to allow yet more minds to go fallow for want of challenge and use.
The Machine Girl; Tokyo Gore Police; and now Negative Happy Chain Saw Edge. We knew Japanese cinema was in the midst of nervous breakdown, but who knew it would all hit the fan at Fantasia?
Katharine Isabelle (Ginger) and Emily Perkins (Brigitte) can be seen in the forthcoming teen dance flick Another Cinderella Story, which is expected to hit DVD in September. Even in this trailer you can catch a glimpse of that old Ginger/Brigitte chemistry from back in the day. And for the inside story of the making of that classic werewolf series, be sure to read the mammoth Ginger Snaps chapter in The New Horror Handbook, featuring interviews with the Isabelle, Perkins and the film's creative team.
Caption: "Run Away! They'll cut your leg..."
From the director of Battle Royale....II! [Sigh.]
If you're one of the many who is trying very hard NOT to think about the fact that the Fantasia Film Festival is going on this month in Montreal without you, at least you can get a taste of what the fortunate ones are seeing this year. Head on over to the trailer site for some surprises and, admittedly, more of the same old nonsense.
For sheer "You're putting me on" value, hats off to Tamami: The Baby's Curse (aka Akanbo Shojo), an odd, and some would say desperate mashup of the usual dead-chick J-Horror shtick with a monster baby right out of Larry Cohen's It's Alive series.
Not a bad start: nearly 1,000 words on the director of that groundbreaking 1997 Kafkaesque tale Cube. Admittedly it’s a chapter that is a tad difficult to write when his next film, Splice, appears to be a promising work of even greater imagination, yet won’t arrive until 2009, after The New Horror Handbook is published.
Hmm. That’s pretty much it, really. Well (cough), this is rather awkward. I mean I was really proud when I finished it, but sitting here now, I really don’t have much more to add.
Ah well, back to work.
You'll excuse me if I SHOUT, as my treacherous brain seems to have soaked up the song featured in the above trailer for Darren Lynn Bousman's Repo! The Genetic Opera, and is now trying to deafen me with it.
My own fault, really. The moment I spied Sarah Brightman in the credits, I should've kept well clear. It was her vocalizations with Michael Crawford in the original cast recording of The Phantom of the Opera that sidelined me for a good three years back in my early 20s. Come to think of it, Tony Head's singing in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer musical episode "Once More With Feeling" had a similar effect, and who do we find co-starring in this extravaganza? Once shame on them...
While we horror fans do get the odd glimmer of something new and different bubbling up from the ooze of the everyday (Inside being one of the best and most recent examples of this), I can't remember the last time I saw a trailer for something that actually made me feel like I was catching a glimpse of something completely unique.
There have been a lot of shiver-inducing backstage rumblings about film distributors having no idea how to market this rock opera about a designer body part company sending its "repo man" (Head) out to snatch back these parts from those who miss their payments. On behalf of every soul out here desperately wanting to see this work, let me say to the suits: "Please don't fumble this one! We have put up with far too much crap for far too long to miss out on a truly original work."
Sigh. Now where's that Phantom album...
[Note: Repo is having its North American debut at the Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal July 18th.]
It was a productive holiday weekend, with the rough draft of The New Horror Handbook's chapter on Ginger Snaps being completed (with the exception of a capsule review for Ginger Snaps: Unleashed, which will be written after I rewatch that sequel later this week).
Part of the fun involved in writing that chapter was having the excuse to revisit the original film -- I keep forgetting how entertaining it is. Afterward, I was happy to find the above video clip of Emily Perkins and Katharine Isabelle auditioning for their roles in that movie. Enjoy.
