Last Blog On The Left

When it comes to Swedish horror movies there isn´t that much to say… Despite this, I will do my best to ramble on for a while. The genre has been pretty much dead over here. That goes for literature, too. But lo and behold, a couple of years ago a writer named John Ajvide Lindqvist published a book called “Let The Right One In”. The Swedish press made a big deal about this being a Swedish vampire-novel and it was very successful. I read it when it was published and enjoyed it very much. I remember discussing it with my friends and saying that I´d love to see it adapted to film. However, we couldn´t think of any directors who´d be able to pull it off. The book is very sombre and has a pretty serious tone and we couldn´t come up with any directors who would be up to the task, except for Ingmar Bergman who made a venture into the horror genre with “The Hour of the Wolf” back in 1968.

Fast forward a couple of years and the adaptation is here, directed by Tomas Alfredson. He is mostly known for working with a Swedish comedy troupe called “Killing-gänget”. They´ve made some films and series for televison but in 2004 they made their feature film debut with “Four Shades of Brown”. I don´t think that it´s been released anywhere outside Sweden, but it was pretty successful here. It´s a 3 hour long, pitch black comedy/drama that deals with divorces, death, incest and mental illness. In other words, what Swedish film is famous for. Tomas Alfredson has managed to create one of the first “real” Swedish horror films with “Let the right one in”. A couple of years back we had another vampire film that made the festival rounds called “Frostbite”, but that was more of a horror comedy that borrowed more than freely from the “30 Days of Night”-comic book. “Let The Right One In” is a different creature, all together.

The story centres around a 12 year old boy named Oscar. He doesn´t have any friends and is being bullied in school. Life is rough and he fantasizes about murdering his bullies. His parents are divorced and he lives together with his mother in a suburb to Stockholm. One day a girl named Eli moves into the same building. She is the same age and Oscar thinks she´s pretty but also a bit peculiar. Like for instance, why does she only come out at night? And why can´t she feel any cold? And who is the man living with her? You guessed it. Eli´s a vampire and about the same time she moves in, a string of murders starts occurring around town.

I´ve often wondered why there hasn´t been more Swedish horror films produced through the years. It seems that with the reputation Swedes have for being depressed and our suicide statistics, it would be an ideal genre. When finally “Frostbite” came along a couple of years back, the big problem I had with it was that it played the vampires for laughs. This is something that Alfredson steers clear of. What comedy there is in “Let The Right One In”, is pitch black. Being a vampire is not a laughing matter here. This is what makes this film such a rewarding viewing experience. Alfredson doesn´t play down the more painful moments of the story. He shows us how cruel children can be to each other and that is what elevates this film. There´s a lot of stuff that isn´t included from the book, but I never once thought about that while watching the film. Alfredson also handles the pre-teen blossoming romance between Oscar and Eli very well. He avoids the usual clichés and manages to make the love story pretty believable.

I saw this film at the Gothenburg Film Festival this February and it was the second time this film screened before an audience, so the theatre was packed to the rafters. Journalists and reviewers didn´t even get in. I have no idea what the reviews will be but I have a feeling that this film will be more successful abroad. It already won a prize at New York´s Tribeca Film Festival. A well deserved one, I might add. It´s bound to appeal to the festival audiences. This is a beautifully shot, art house horror film, relying more on mood than out outright scares. But to Alfredson´s credit, he doesn´t skimp on the red stuff when the scenes demand it. I´m not gonna reveal which scene it is but there is one, in particular, towards the end that will become a classic vampire scene. You will know which one when you see the film. Apparently, the rights to the movie have already been bought and an English language-remake is in the works. Do yourself a favour and see the original version, if you have the chance. It´s well worth your time…

Take scare & stay ghoul,

Thomas Lovecraft

A while back I had the pleasure of watching Brian De Palma´s latest effort, “Redacted”. .. Actually, I´m not sure that it was a pleasure. I guess that you´re all familiar with this film. It stirred quite a controversy on the festival circuit a while back. This is understandable since the movie concerns a real-life killing and rape of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and her family, by American soldiers. The movie is presented as a documentary, a montage of different forms of media covering the Iraqi war.

When I first heard of this movie, I was thrilled. Brian De Palma´s back! He is one of my absolute all-time favorite filmmakers. I can´t tell you how many times I´ve seen “Body Double” (1984), “Carrie” (1974), “Dresses To Kill” (1980) and of course, “Blow Out” (1981). “Blow Out” is one of my absolute favorite movies. John Travolta is the man in this movie and John Lithgow delivers one of the most unpleasant screen-psychos ever in this sensationally awesome thriller. I´m also the first one to admit it that I even like De Palma´s “lesser” efforts. Many of his movies are universally hated and have panned by the critics in ways that other filmmakers only gets to hear about in their anxiety-fuelled nightmares. That´s everyday-stuff for old Brian! He´s used to being hated, so to speak. That only adds to his appeal. Because of his use of women in his films and his fondness of “borrowing” shots from Hitchcock, many critics seem to genuinely despise De Palma. This automatically means that we HAVE to love him, right? The old tired cliché of “style over substance” is often used when people discuss De Palma´s films. I have nothing against style over substance. There´s nothing wrong with prioritizing style, if you do it as well as De Palma do. When it comes to him, in many cases the style BECOMES the substance. That´s why I have seen “Snake Eyes” (1998) more than a couple of times. I think it´s a great “whodunnit”-thriller. I consider “Femme Fatale” (2002) to be one of the greatest thrillers of the 20^th century and I´m pretty sure that I´m alone when it comes to this. This movie gets so much shit whenever it´s reviewed, it´s fascinating.

Anyhow, when “Redacted” was released, I had pretty high hopes. It seemed that old Brian was back in his “Casualties of war” (1989)-mode. That movie is amazing! In it, De Palma got to vent all his frustrations about the Vietnam war and they were a few. Michael J. Fox and Sean Penn delivered amazing performances in the film (something that is often sorely lacking in De Palma´s films. I think it´s safe to say that he is not an actor´s director). De Palma has always been an outspoken advocate against war in all its forms, so you can figure out what he thinks about the current Bush-administration, right? So, with all the controversy that “Redacted” had sparked, I was looking forward to De Palma at his furious best. Needless to say, I was pretty disappointed. It is obvious that De Palma is furious at the Bush administration and this is probably the most political he´s ever allowed himself to be in a movie. That´s a very commendable thing to do. Unlike many other of today´s filmmakers, he at least has the guts to speak his mind. I´m just not sure that that is what I want De Palma to do. That isn´t what he does best. The thing is, if you´re gonna make a film of this kind, it´s imperative that you are an actor´s director and like I mentioned, I don´t think that De Palma is. The characters in this movie are like cardboard cut-outs , unfortunately. Our sympathy for them is non-existant and the movie suffers from it… in a big way!I can see what De Palma is trying to achieve with this film. Basically, he wants to bring America´s attention to how the war in Iraq is being handled. The thing is, for us Europeans this isn´t exactly groundbreaking stuff. This is yesterday´s news for us. In most European countries, De Palma´s preaching to the choir. This is one of those films that you really wanna like because of its intentions. De Palma means well and if he changes one american´s attitude towards the war, I guess that it was worth it. But it´s not a good film, unfortunately. I WANT my De Palma movies to be lurid, sleazy, stylish and violent homages to Hitchcock! I can´t help it. I mean, I loved “The Black Dahlia” (2006)! That´s the kind of movie I want him to make. “Redacted” just doesn´t cut it. De Palma made his war-masterpiece with “Casualties of war” and he was pushing it when he decided to take a stab at another. It´s not like he´s a young guy any longer. He doesn´t have that many movies left in him, considering the pace he works at. That´s why, friends and foes, I applaud De Palma for speaking his mind and having the guts to criticize the Iraq incident but I mourn for the way he decided to do it…I hope that he got it out of his system so that he can get back to getting his long-rumoured psycho project “Toyer” of the ground. We need to get a main course of old fashioned De Palma with a great, big side order of sex and violence as soon as we possibly can!

Speaking of De Palma, I can really recommend Douglas Buck´s remake of his 1973 masterpiece “Sisters”. Buck has updated it in a really stylish and clever way. Buck is clearly a director with visions and integrity and brings a dream-like quality to the film that I found really fresh. It stars Chloë Sevigny, Stephen Rea and newcomer Lou Doillon, who is amazing in the film! Check it out! You know you got the time to kill, suckers…

Stay ghoul, stay sick & stay in touch,

Thomas Lovecraft

Sometimes the world can be a pretty cruel place… Like today, when news spread that John Philip Law has died. And let me tell ya, the world is a worse place because of that.

John Philip Law got to live to the honorable age of 70 before throwing in the towel. He starred in such awesome movies as “Barbarella”(yes, it is awesome and you know why it is awesome!) and Mario Bava´s fantastic “Danger: Diabolik” (1968), which may be one of the greatest comic book adaptations ever produced. If you haven´t seen this ultra-stylish film, you´re overdue! Just look at the pic here to the right and tell me if J.P. Law doesn´t kick all kinds of ass, huh?

He also managed to snag a role in one of the coolest spaghetti-westerns ever, “Death Rides A Horse” (1967), alongside the iconic Lee Van Cleef.

Later in his career, Law starred in such childhood-classics as “The Golden Voyage of Sinbad” (1974). That´s a movie I have really fond memories of. I watched that a lot when I grew up. Law also had a role in “The Cassandra Crossing” (1976), which is another one of those movies that you watch a lot while growing up and really enjoyed, but you know it´s gonna suck if you decide to re-watch it. Sometimes it´s just better to hold on to that memory…

If I have to choose a favorite performance of his, I´d definitely go with “Danger: Diabolik”. I might re-watch that one this weekend.So, do the right thing and raise your glasses and scream out three cheers for John Philip Law this weekend…

I don´t know about you, but I was pretty fond of the whole ”Masters of Horror” experience. Not every episode was good, but most of them were pretty solid and enjoyable. I´d even go as far to say that the first season were pretty damn good! If you think about it, there were some pretty cool directors doing what they do best: all-out horror! I mean, John Carpenter´s “Cigarette Burns” were his best work in years (unfortunately his only work in years), Don Coscarelli´s adaptation of Joe R. Lansdale´s “Incidents on and off a mountain road” were awesome and Stuart Gordon´s “H.P. Lovecraft´s Dreams in the Witch House” were extraordinary. Not to mention Dari Argento´s “Jenifer” which was so perverted and twisted that my cold, dead heart skipped a beat. Larry Cohen´s “Pick Me Up” was also fun and Lucky McKee´s “Sick Girl” were original, to say the least. All in all, the series had a good run despite the fact that season 2 weren´t as successful, creatively speaking. The material was weaker. Carpenter made a return with “Pro Life” which wasn´t quite as good as his earlier installment but was fun as a sort of summation of his earlier movies. Argento also returned with a pretty good, but still inferior effort. The only director that improved on his earlier work within the series was John Landis whose episode “Family” was a stand-out piece of work. Truly great and it made me long for Landis to make a feature length return to the horror genre. The series “father”, Mick Garris, directed two installments, “Chocolate” and “Valerie on the stairs”. Both were pretty good. However, Garris deserves our respect for bringing this project to fruition because the sad fact is that we live in a world where such geniuses as Carpenter, Landis, Joe Dante and Larry Cohen can´t seem to get their projects greenlighted and that´s just sad… At least, thanks to the “Masters of Horror”-series we got to see that these old guns still had it in them. Garris also had the good taste to get the show on Showtime, which meant that the show was unrated. A fact that became brutally obvious when the network opted not to show Takashi Miike´s “Imprint” because of it´s brutal content.

After two seasons, Garris decided to leave the show behind him to try his hand at an adaptation of Stephen King´s “Bag of Bones”. This means that the show will now continue on NBC as “Fear Itself”. New name, same concept. A bunch of directors makes one hour movies. I´m not that excited about it this time, though. First and foremost, it´s on NBC, right? This will probably mean that the gore will be kept to a minimum which doesn´t bode too well when you look at the line-up they have announced so far:

Stuart Gordon

Darren Lynn Bousman

Ronny Yu

Ernest Dickerson

John Landis

Mary Harron

Breck Eisner

Larry Fessenden

I really hope that they get to do their vision of the material. Garris was pretty adamant about giving the directors final cut on their material and I hope that rule still apply, even though he isn´t there to supervise the whole thing. All in all, it´s a pretty good line-up so far. Stuart Gordon is always reliable and so is Landis. It´ll be interesting to see what Darren Lynn Bousman can achieve when he´s not working within the restraints of the “Saw”-series. It´ll also be interesting to see what Mary Harron will come up with. I think that her “American Psycho” is deeply under-appreciated. The real coup here, however, is landing the awesome Larry Fessenden to direct one of the episodes. He directed one of my favorite horror films of the last 10 years, “Wendigo”. Last year he released “The Last Winter” which was one of the best ecological horror films I´ve seen. He also manages to cameo in, produce and release through his company Glasseye pix some pretty damn good films: last year´s “Sisters”, “Mullberry Street”, “Session 9” and “The Roost”. In other words: A renaissance man. I can´t wait to see what he´ll come up with within this format.

I guess that with names like that attached, I can´t rule it out just yet. Not too sure about Breck Eisner, though. “From the man behind Sahara” isn´t something you wanna hear in a trailer for a horror film, right?“Fear Itself” debuts June 5 with Stuart Gordon´s episode “Eater”. I guess we´ll see then if it NBC is up to the task…

Stay ghoul,

Thomas

While cruising the World Wide Web for the latest news in the world of horror, I came across this interview over at www.shocktillyoudrop.com. There has been talk about remaking “The Creature From The Black Lagoon” for as long as I can remember. Back in the 90´s, both John Carpenter and George A. Romero were attached to it at some point. I would have loved to see their take on the Creature. Instead it looks like we´ll get to see Breck Eisner´s vision of the how the Black Lagoon will look today. I´m always worried when a director that hasn´t proven his chops in the horror genre are about to direct a film that you´re looking forward to. If you´re unlucky, it might end up like Gus Van Sant´s remake of “Psycho”. But then again, neither Stanley Kubrick nor Jonathan Demme had directed any horror films when they made “The Shining” and “Silence of the Lambs”, respectively. It seems that Eisner´s heart is in the right place, but still… There has to be another director more suitable for this material that the guy who made “Sahara”?

Anyway, here´s what he said:  http://www.shocktillyoudrop.com/news/topnews.php?id=5919 and for those of you who are too lazy to click your way over there, here´s the whole interview (conducted by Ryan Rotten):“Breck Eisner meets ShockTillYouDrop.com in Pasadena to talk NBC’s Fear Itself, and his episode The Sacrifice (more on that later), and the only thing echoing through this writer’s skull is: Creature from the Black Lagoon, Creature from the Black Lagoon… Yes, the long-mooted remake to Universal and Jack Arnold’s 1954 film. Myriad directors have dipped their toes into the property, but were not committed enough to dive right in. That is, until Eisner had his named attached to an update nearly three years ago, working from a script by Gary Ross. The waters have been seemingly calm on the Creature front since then leading some to suspect Universal’s attempts to float another Gill Man adventure were mere pipedreams. But the truth is, Eisner is reworking Gary Ross’ screenplay right now. In fact, he took time off from that task just to meet us today.

“We scouted the movie last year but got shut down when the writers strike happened,” Eisner explains to us. “We had a crew in the Amazon where we’re going to shoot all of the exteriors. We’re shooting in Manaus, Brazil and on the Amazon in Peru. I want it to be authentic. I’m a big fan of Werner Herzog and Fitzcarraldo. Herzog got that authenticity. He shot in Manaus. So, we scouted for a month. There’s this place called the Forest of Mirrors, because there are so many lagoons on a thousand mile green carpet river, and we found the lagoon we’re going to shoot in.”

Eisner is also currently prepping a remake of George Romero’s The Crazies which he’ll shoot before Creature. “I want to get that film done, get it into post-production then head to the Amazon for ‘Creature.’ Oddly, I’m waiting on the height of the Amazon river before we start shooting – it drops 50-feet in October and November. But we’ve got the boat set and everything ready to go.”The new Creature will take place in a contemporary setting, and, will feature a mixture of CG and practical FX. “The Creature has been designed, we’ve spent six months designing him.” Eisner says Spectral Motion has built a maquette based on an appearance created by Mark “Crash” McCreery (Jurassic Park, Pirates of the Caribbean). “We went top shelf on it. It’s very faithful to the original, but updated.”

Asked if he was turning the Creature into a huge action spectacle like Universal’s Mummy films, Eisner expresses a noted reverence for the studio’s atmosphere-soaked originals like James Whale’s Frankenstein and George Waggner’s The Wolf Man. “We debated tone a thousand times. For me tone is the most interesting thing a filmmaker has and so the Creature is a creature, it’s not a monster. That’s my number one thing about the movie. We’re not going to turn him into a monster. He’s still going to be empathetic, he’s still going to be deadly, he’s still going to have a misguided means of expressing his interests in a woman, but it’s uniquely the Creature. It’s empathy for a deadly creature and tone plays a big part of that.” Still, Eisner knows full well Universal is aiming for summer movie fare so, “it will deliver of action and excitement, but I want it to be scary. The Creature was scary when it first came out in ‘54 – it’s not scary today – but that’s what updating means to me, updating the tone of the original.”

Like I said earlier, it feels good to know that Eisner isn´t interested in going the Mummy-route with the movie. Let´s just hope that the studio feels the same way…

Stay ghoul,

Thomas