I know Skyfall's out this weekend but horror fans should really take note of Excision, which is showing at the Prince Charles Cinema in London from Sunday 28th for about a week before arriving on DVD on the 12th of November. It's the story of a teen outcast (AnnaLynne McCord) with neon sex-and-death fantasies and a passion for surgery. The film boasts a cast of cult icons including Malcolm McDowell, Ray Wise, Traci Lords and the great John Waters and excellent character actors like Roger Bart and Marlee Matlin. It's gruesome and hilarious, touching and mad, and the lead actress is superb.
You can read my full gushing review here at Cinetalk and Londoners looking for a darkly comic treat this Halloween should definitely check it out. I know it's playing at some horror festivals over Halloween, including the FrighFest all nighter on Saturday and Celluloid Screams on Sunday, so do be sure to see it, and catch it when it comes to DVD. As an aside, I know I've gone on about American Mary a lot already but these two films really are such a welcome reminder of how important a interesting, complex female lead is. Actually, just an interesting, complex lead. To be honest, it's just great to see funny, daring horror.
Oh and my Skyfall review is up at Cinetalk, if you're interested, as are my London Film Festival reviews of the grubbily gripping Simon Killer, the lovingly trashy Kiss of the Damned, the skin-crawling true story Compliance, the the funny but slightly disappointing Seven Psychopaths, the absolutely hilarious Sightseers and actually very good Argo among others. There's a lot more but I'm running out of descriptions so I'll just let you browse Cinetalk for our team's coverage if you're so inclined.
Right, so, back to fiction. The Halloween Special story will be up in a day or two. I'm putting your title suggestions to one side for one story only. Sorry, but I want to write a sequel to last year's Halloween story: Let the Jack O'Lanterns Light Your Way Home. Because who doesn't love a sequel? What were we talking about? Ah yes, good original horror. Here's the trailer for Excision. Go and see it at the Prince Charles Cinema!
Right, a rare film-related post on the Hatfull blog, but given the time of year I thought it might be appropriate. Having been busy with London Film Festival coverage (find it all at Cinetalk!) over the
past month I haven’t had a lot of time to watch as much horror as is typical
for October, so I was very glad that, on a rainy Sunday afternoon, I was able
to duck into the Roxy Bar and Screen for The Classic Horror Campaign’s double
bill of Carnival of Souls and The Blood on Satan’s Claw hosted by
Richard Gladman (@cyberschizoid) and Dr Karen Oughton (@drkarenoughton). While
I had seen the latter film before, I was very excited to see Carnival of Souls
for the first time. It was a film that I’d heard referred to as a classic so
many times and yet I’d never got around to watching it. It was also my first
time at one of the Classic Horror Campaign’s events but I will certainly return.
“You’re gonna need me
in the evening, you just don’t know it yet.”
First up was Carnival
of Souls, directed by Herk Harvey and released in 1962. Candace Hillgoss
stars as Mary Henry, the sole survivor of a drag race gone wrong who moves to
Utah to take a job as a church organist. But she hasn’t even arrived at her
destination before she starts being haunted by a ghostly pale figure that
appears out of nowhere in impossible places. Mary does her best to settle into
her new job and her boarding house but the apparition won’t leave her be.
Whether she’s alone or in the middle of a crowd, Mary can’t shake whatever it
is that’s following her.
The film is designed to keep as unsure of what's happening as the lead character. The dialogue’s
occasionally clunky and some of the performances are both over-eager and
awkward, but somehow all this contributes to Carnival of Souls’ strange charm. Mary’s landlady (Frances Feist)
seems to be participating in her conversations with her tenant via satellite. There’s
some wonderful editing that pushes Mary from one place to another with
unnatural speed (the man at the gas station points in the direction of the
boarding house, and she’s suddenly there). Mary herself veers between composure
and hysteria as she is only able to comfortably interact with other people for
short periods of time. Her church-bound occupation doesn’t provide any
spiritual comfort as she’s not religious. She’s a woman who’s happiest by
herself for whom a job is just a job, but this self-imposed isolation makes her
an easy target for the spectre and his growing army of pale zombies who leaves
her with no place to hide. A modern girl with no attachments is an easy target for a haunting.
Mary realises that she needs to be with other people in
order to keep her tormentor at bay, and so agrees to a date with her sleazy, booze-soaked neighbour John Linden (Sidney Berger). But despite Linden's insistent lusting even he backs away when he sees that she’s terrified of something he
doesn’t understand. Interestingly, ghoul aside, Linden is the only predatory figure in Carnival of Souls. Everyone else simply
wants to help Mary but she’s incapable of reaching out until it’s too late. There
are some great scares that obviously had a big influence on John Carpenter
(in particular, In the Mouth of Madness
and Halloween) and the image of the
spirits rising from the water is one that will stick with you for some time.
While it is undeniably clunky at times I can’t help but feel that somehow adds
to the atmosphere, and for the most part it is a highly effective piece of
landmark horror. It’s a chilling, unnerving and wonderfully atmospheric
experience.
“Art thou ready to
give thy skin tonight?”
Carnival of Souls
was followed by something rather more garish: 1971’s The Blood on Satan’s Claw. Directed by Piers Haggard, it’s the
story of a small English village that falls under the influence of Satanism
after well-meaning but persistently blundering farmer Ralph Gower (Barry
Andrews) accidentally unearths a mysterious skeleton that looks human and yet
has fur.
It’s certainly of its time but there’s a lot to enjoy in The Blood on Satan’s Claw, which is
probably the best known of Tigon’s productions along with Witchfinder General. While it doesn’t boast any of the more famous
horror stars of the period there’s a full-blooded turn from Patrick Wymark (Repulsion, Witchfinder General) as the sceptical judge who must return to put
a stop to the evil, and Linda Hayden (Taste
the Blood of Dracula) has great fun as the scheming saucy sorceress Angel
Blake. After a good start in which something terrible is waiting under the floorboards
for the local squire’s fiancée, the plot can’t settle on a lead character, making
the whole film feel quite choppy. You’d expect the squire to be the central
figure, but when he disappears he’s never really replaced. Ralph does his best but is generally ineffectual and the judge is far too venal to be heroic. The townsfolk are all too eager to murder and burn to rid the town of its evil, creating a world in which we may as well root for the dark forces as they're much more fun.
But while it’s uneven there’s an enjoyable sense of malevolence
about the film as the young people of the village all either fall under Satan’s
spell or knife. Mark Gatiss applauded the film in his BBC documentary
A History of Horror for its unnerving whistled theme, the surprisingly
sexualised attack on young Cathy Vespers, and the wonderfully nasty conceit of
Satan harvesting the skin of children. When the dark lord does finally appear
he's inevitably underwhelming but this remains an entertaining if uneven bit of
period British horror.
The Classic Horror Campaign returns on Sunday 4th
of November with a double bill of the Vincent Price House on Haunted Hill and
The Legacy, starring Katharine Ross and Sam Elliott. You can find details here
and you can find them on Twitter @horrorcampaign
Normal fiction service will resume tomorrow. Oh, one last
thing, I discovered the other day that my review of the Soska sisters' superb horror American Mary for Cinetalk
was quoted on a trade ad for the film in The Hollywood Reporter at the TIFF. I
got a little bit excited as it’s my first quote, and you can see the slightly
illegible proof here:
