It was likely that any sequel to The Wicker Man would be a disappointment, especially after nearly 40 years of waiting. But the news that Robin Hardy would once again write and direct, and that Christoper Lee would star, added some possibility that this had the makings of a cinematic treat.
But unfortunately I feel like I should cut to the chase and tell you the bad news, that The Wicker Tree is an awful film. The premise has some similarities to the original, with heathen goings on and ritual sacrifice in Scotland but the comparisons really end there. But what’s lacking is the excellent soundtrack of the original and much of the quirkiness of the film. The main problem with The Wicker Tree is that we don’t really care about the protagonists. The reason for this is that Hardy provides two excruciatingly gormless American born again Christians. Five minutes into the film, I was rooting for them to be bumped off.
Sadly, Christopher Lee only supplies a cameo, and it’s a vague scene tacked on to the film that makes little sense. Graham McTavish who plays the Lord Summerisle type role, Lee’s in the original, is a poor actor by contrast. Little more to add about this, other than it veers so far off track that the ending is something of a tribute to the far superior Carry on Screaming.
The themes of the original Wicker Man haven’t really left cinema, with usually the more obscure films carrying on the tradition of heathen cults. The latest, and possibly the best British film of the last few years, is Kill List. Ben Wheatley’s second feature as director has received some polarised views from its audience. It’s an unusual, high original blend of domestic drama, mob thriller and horror film that has teased some to the point of anger. The film is admittedly confusing, although watching it twice allowed me the opportunity to make more sense of it, although I advise that this is viewing for the stronger constitution.
I enjoyed Kill List. It is genuinely unsettling because of the uncertain narrative structure, and like the best cinema doesn’t guarantee that all of the answers posed in the film can be answered. Kill List and its predecessor Down Terrace place Wheatley as the most interesting director currently working on British cinema. Both are highly recommended as he has a signature to his film making style. Also both are very complementary and share many of the same actors, including the excellent Michael Smiley. I eager await Ben Wheatley’s next film Sightseers.
Although Boris Karloff enjoyed a very long career as an actor, it’s interesting that two of his best films came at the end of his life. At the age of almost eighty, he appeared in Michael Reeves’ The Sorcerers (1967) and Peter Bogdanovitch’s Targets (1968). A passable third late classic Karloff is also the quite mad but marvellous I tre volti della paura (Black Sabbath) from 1963.
Neither Targets or Black Sabbath are ever shown these days, but I’m choosing to celebrate the more widely available The Sorcerers. It’s a favourite of mine because it gives a fascinating view of “swinging” London at the time and is directed by Michael Reeves, also responsible for Witchfinder General and whose career ended suddenly with his death in 1969.
The Sorcerers is fairly low budget, many of its scenes set in the interior of an unconvincing nightclub, where our leads look very bored and drink bottle after bottle of flat looking coke. The film also harks back to an era where detectives smoked pipes indoors and drove at dangerous speeds in Black Marias. Although 1967 spells Eastman colour so this is interesting as Karloff is usually recalled from his monochrome days.
Karloff plays Professor Marcus Monserrat, a hypnotist of sorts, who lives with his excitable wife Estelle (Catherine Lacey). They are searching for a young person to experiment on with their thought experiments which are controlled via some mind bending machinery and vivid light displays that would have no doubt excited the members of the early Pink Floyd. Indeed, the film is quick to expose the callowness of youth in the person of Mike Roscoe (Ian Ogilvy). Mike hangs out with Nicole (Elizabeth Ercy) and Alan (Victor Henry), it obvious fairly early that three is a bit of a crowd. Monserrat approaches Mike in a Wimpy bar, taking him home to try a little hypnotic experiment. From here things go swiftly and steadily wrong.
At first the sorcerers indulge in quaint little attempts at mind control; Mike breaks an egg and they experience the feeling by proxy of the cold yolk in their own hands. The experiments become increasingly more risky; stealing a fur coat, a high speed motorbike ride (without helmets) and a fight. Inevitably, the Monserrats and their puppetry lead to a murder or two (with one of the victims a young Susan George).
The best thing in The Sorcerers is Catherine Lacey, who is increasingly chilling as Estelle as she pushes the experiment further than envisaged and eventually overcomes the mostly benign Monserrat. Poor old chap, it wasn’t really what he’d bargained for.
A minor gem of a movie. Michael Reeves also directed La sorella di Satana (The She Beast) in 1965 which starred Barbara Steele and again the long suffering Ian Ogilvy. Reeves was also hooked up to work with Christopher Lee and Vincent Price on The Oblong Box (1969) but sadly it wasn’t to be.
The Last Exorcism follows The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity along the path of mock documentary horror films. Hand held cameras, rapport between subject and camera operator, increasing fear in the subject as things slowly grow out of control – these things have become something of a genre cliché. Indeed, I was almost put off watching The Last Exorcism because I believed this type of film had nothing more left to offer. And producer Eli Roth appeared not to have done himself any favours either, this movie being touted as the out and out horror it certainly isn’t. So for a film that received such a mixed reaction last year, does The Last Exorcism have anything at all to offer? Yes it does…
Firstly the performances in this film are all first rate, making many of the negative reviews unjustified. Patrick Fabian is outstanding as Cotton Marcus, an evangelical minister who’s made a sideline in providing an exorcism service. He readily admits he’s a fake, using no more than clever conjuring skills and the reliance of his gullible victims to get by. However, he is ready to come clean and, prompted by stories that many exorcisms have ended in deaths, suggests a documentary crew capture his very last exorcist duty.
So far so good, with director Daniel Stamm slowly building pace as Marcus travels into Middle America to visit the Sweetzer family, where young Nell (Ashley Bell) is possessed with a supposed demon and doing terrible things in the farmyard. Bell delivers the other outstanding performance in the film, and it’s compassion for Nell that draws the viewer, and more importantly Marcus, in further. Not unpredictably, the film changes gear after his fake performance to rid the Sweetzer’s of their “demon”. As we are expecting, his troubles have only just begun…
Whilst it delivers nothing new for the horror genre, I found The Last Exorcism surprisingly effective. If you’ve read any other reviews it will be no surprise to hear that the ending has met almost universal disapproval. Rather than a shock or twist conclusion, it’s just a surprise in that the last ten minutes or so of the film appear to be from something different altogether, not at all in keeping with what’s happened in the last hour or so. The final minutes also invite too much comparison with the wrapping up of The Blair Witch Project that make full appreciation of The Last Exorcism hard to justify. And viewers will no doubt come away with other borrowings from more original films. I counted Rosemary’s Baby and Race With the Devil amongst then.
I’m still recommending this though, primarily for the superb Fabian and Bell. And, whilst it certainly isn’t a horror masterpiece, it is certainly an at times very creepy film.
Gentleman of Horror
Tuesday October 19, 2010
in horror |
During the last two weeks I’ve realised I have a lot of common ground with Mark Gatiss, notably in our shared love of the horror genre. His History of Horror series on BBC4 has been a joy to watch, especially as we appear to agree on many of the genre’s best. Gatiss revels in his role as our host, arriving to present the second episode in a horse drawn funeral coach. Fittingly, part two concentrated on Hammer films, their output sitting within my favourite period in horror cinema, the mid 50s to early 70s. Gatiss looked at the well trodden but always fascinating Hammer time line, from the Quatermass films to the hugely successful Curse of Frankenstein and Dracula starring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, to the dying days of nudity and increasingly desperate themes.
In addition to examining Hammer’s best films Gatiss also looked at Roger Corman’s Poe adaptations and Hammer’s rivals Amicus who produced the memorable portmanteau horrors. Gatiss even managed to interview Roy Ward Baker, director of Asylum and The Vault of Horror, who died a few weeks ago. Some of my other favourites from the period also received a welcome nod of appreciation, including Jacques Tourneur’s Night of the Demon and Robert Wise’s The Haunting.
What’s less satisfying is the films that accompany the series, and I assume the lack of imagination in scheduling boils down to the small selection that the BBC currently have the rights to show. James Whale’s Bride of Frankenstein is a little too weird for me and steers us too far away from the genre, and many of the films that later followed, such as Son of Frankenstein would be more welcome. Similarly, after Gatiss enthused over The Plague of the Zombies the only Hammer film screened was Brides of Dracula, a less accomplished film and a peculiar choice, especially as it’s the only one of Hammer’s Dracula series not to feature Christopher Lee. And whilst Gatiss has a soft spot for Blood on Satan’s Claw, a film he feels is overshadowed by the more celebrated Witchfinder General and The Wicker Man, I doubt if it will receive a screening any time soon.
What defines a truly scary film?
I’m not talking about great art in cinematic horror, which I think is different. Kubrick’s The Shining and Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby are both artistic achievements, but I wouldn’t say that either scared me. I’ve watched them both countless times and can pick out many memorable aspects of them; Jack Nicholson’s masterful performance, Kubrick’s slow and deliberate direction, Polanski’s sheer cleverness in making a fantastic story believable. Both directors are also groundbreaking in using the modern setting for horror. But the films don’t really scare me; I love them just for the brilliant pieces of cinema that they are.
Much hype surrounded the release of Paranormal Activity, a film made in 2007. It attracted instant comparison with The Blair Witch Project in its use of the hand held camera technique and there are other more subtle similarities. But it is unfair to say that Paranormal Activity is a Blair Witch copycat. It’s a much better film, more disturbing and one that demands more than one viewing in a way that its predecessor never did. And whilst The Blair Witch Project was a scary film, Paranormal Activity is far scarier.
Katie and Micah are a fairly ordinary suburban couple. It’s the apparent ordinariness that makes this film so effective, particularly in the nondescript house where all of the film is set. Micah is intent on filming life at home. Some of this results in Blair style shaky handheld effects, whilst the rest of his footage comes from the hours of night vision photography taken in the bedroom. The double bed, the large white open door and the stop motion film as they toss and turn throughout the night. Why is he doing this? Katie believes she is being haunted, Micah believes he can solve the problem.
Director Oren Peli impresses in how the tension of this film very gradually cranks up. There’s one scene where a psychic, who appears at the beginning, is called again when things begin to turn bad. He senses the terrible atmosphere in the house and backs away, unable to help. It’s that sense of awful oppressive danger that comes across so well. Partly it’s to do with claustrophobia, the relatively tight setting of the film, but the build up is done so effectively. At first, the night footage reveals nothing more than noises coming from downstairs, although this in itself is disturbing and did cause me an ears-awake sleepless night after viewing this film. Perhaps one of our greatest fears is as simple as the concern about the creaks and unexplained movements we perceive going on around us during the night.
Peli works wonders with only a small set of tools. Most of the results are economically chilling. The noises downstairs. The bedroom door, seen to move on its own when Micah surveys a night’s footage. Katie’s sleepwalking, where she is revealed to stand in the same position for hours at a time. The experiment with talcum powder sprinkled on the landing, exposing far from human footprints. And so on. Like the psychic, the audience begin to sense the awful oppressive air in the house. Unlike him, they probably won’t want to leave it, bearing things out to their horrible end.
I came to Paranormal Activity fresh, not having read any reviews and knowing nothing of the plot. This is the way to approach it and I won’t give anything more away. Suffice to say that I was scared. A rarity. An unusual film indeed.
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