Horror Film Director Feature #2: Mick Garris

Known for his Stephen King adaptations, and for creating the impressive Showtime Masters of Horror (2005-2007) series, Mick Garris has been working in television and film for about thirty years, as a writer, producer, and director.

His first horror feature was Critters 2 (1988), and Garris has been working steadily in the genre ever since. I'm not sure how many people would care enough to argue, but I'm going to go ahead and say that Critters 2 is the best of that series. Expanding upon the first in nearly every way, the outerspace-bred Krites move past the farmhouse they first terrorized, and this time take on the entire town, during Easter. The action culminates with an enormous "Critter Ball," made up of hundreds of the little bastards, rolling over townsfolk, immediately shredding their skin, turning them into skeletons (there's a good deal more blood in this movie than you can get away with in a modern PG-13-rated film).

For my money, Critters 2 is as good as it gets, far as horror-comedy B movies go.
Garris followed that one up two years later, with the TV movie Psycho IV: The Beginning. Not exactly a career highlight, but not a bad film. Another two years, and Garris came out with Sleepwalkers, his first Stephen King adaptation (based on a King-written screenplay). A crazy story about incestuous mother and son shapeshifters.

He got a good deal of shit from horror (and Kubrick) fans for his update of The Shining (1997). I'd argue, though, that the faults with the second movie version of King's novel, lie mostly in the screenplay, written by the author, which sticks very close to his book but never quite builds tension the way Kubrick's film did.

There's more agreement on his 1994 TV movie The Stand. I never could get into this one, both before and after reading the novel. It's hard to say exactly what it is about it that I don't like, except to say that in every scene, it feels like I'm watching television. There are moments in Tommy Lee Wallace's TV adaptation of It that make you forget you're watching network television. I'd say the same for Garris's Quicksilver Highway and Desperation (2006), but The Stand always looks and feels like it needs a bigger budget, and some of the acting and dialogue is pretty limp.

But the movie does have its admirers, a pretty big fanbase actually, and is by no means a bad film. I just wouldn't suggest it as a good example of Garris's best work.

One of his more curious adaptations is the under-appreciated TV movie Quicksilver Highway (1997), which features two forty-minute stories, one an adaptation of Clive Barker's short story, "The Body Politic," the other based on King's short story, "Chattery Teeth." Both stories are representative of each writer's best short form material, and Garris's film is worthy of the source material. The first half deals with a man whose hand has suddenly become possessed, and the second with novelty store chattery teeth attacking a menacing hitchhiker.

Masters of Horror was a good series, and in addition to holding a "created by" credit, Garris has directed a couple episodes himself. Check out Valerie On the Stairs. It's available on Netflix Instant View. Garris followed this up with the network television series Fear Itself. From the little I saw of that show, it didn't seem to capture the energy of Masters of Horror (2008-2009), but when you start trying to combine horror and the three-letter companies, ABC, NBC, CBS . . . it probably isn't destined to work out.

I'd like to see him get back to something with a bit of humor in it. Critters 2 and Quicksilver Highway stand as two of his best works, and while Garris's later work has its share of great moments, some dark comedy might be in order.

Maybe something to top that giant Critter Ball?

Garris is currently in production on an adaptation Stephen King's Bag of Bones as a television series. Look for that later this year.

Miscellany: An Epic Memoir of Hooah

I lost count pretty quickly of how many times David Bellavia used the word "hooah" in his memoir of the 2004 Battle of Fallujah in Iraq titled House to House (2007).  While I'm usually averse to the gung-ho patriotism and relish of ultra-violence Bellavia brought to his account of this and other battles in the early years of the Iraq War, his streamlined narrative approach to infantry combat is more palpable than any piece of political war writing has ever been.  Maybe it's because, when you get down to it, Bellavia is not interested in the politics of the war.  He's interested in the hell it causes on the ground, and the moments of insanity it evokes in its participants.  At one point Bellavia realizes, in order to defeat the fanatics in his crosshairs, he must become a fanatic himself, whether it’s for a Christian god or for his brothers-in-arms.  Sounds like a Children’s Crusade to me, especially since many of the men under Bellavia command aren’t old enough to drink legally back home in the States.  Gives you something to think about.

But perhaps the biggest revelation, for me, in House to House, is Michael Ware, an Australian journalist who embedded with Bellavia’s unit during their operation in Fallujah.  I thought Ware’s breed of dead-set adventure journalists had died out in Vietnam.  Ware’s journalism isn’t as morally ambiguous and hardnosed as I’d like, (I think you might still have to go back to Vietnam correspondents for that) but he evokes the action on the ground better than anyone else I’ve read.

From Into the Hot Zone, Time Magazine, Monday, November 22, 2004

“Within the Bradley's cramped and musty hold, the shock of the minesweeper's explosion was felt by the infantrymen huddled inside. Among them is Fitts, a lithe, expressive Mississippian and father of three who joined the military eight years ago. He warns his team to "get ready to get out of this big metal bitch." With the bulk of the Marine-led assault force poised on the northern side of the railway, 3rd Platoon plowed forward, bringing its Bradleys to a halt beneath Fallujah's first houses. The platoon radio net crackled, "Drop ramp. All 3rd Platoon elements drop ramp, drop ramp." And with that, the ground battle began.”

Related Links:

1. An Archive of Michael Ware's Reportage

2. Hot Air Interview with Bellavia

3. NPR Piece on Military Memoirs

Saga of the Swamp Thing, Book One – (1983-1984)

Writer:  Alan Moore

Artists: Stephen Bissette and John Totleben

My only exposure to Swamp Thing, before reading this first collection of Alan Moore’s famed run on the DC comic starting in 1983, was the 1982 Wes Craven film.  Images of Dick Duron tramping around the Virginia jungle in a rigid plastic monster suit saving a sweaty Adrienne Barbeau from falling out of her torn white top reinforced my prejudice of a trashy comic book conceit only a step or two above the ludicrous Toxic Avenger.  Little did I know that Moore was able to take an aging character (Swamp Thing was created in 1970 by Len Wein and Berni Wrightson) as far away from Troma stupidity as the comic book medium would allow.  While Saga of the Swamp Thing is a piece of horror fiction and therefore subject to the strange flights of fantasy only edible with a healthy dose of suspended disbelief, Moore’s integration of the plot into the fibers of his characters makes reading Saga a powerful delight nearly thirty years after it was created.  Ramsey Campbell, in his introduction to the 2000 edition of the collection, writes, “Here as elsewhere, Moore’s language and imagery is simultaneously comic and horrifying, as is the way with horror fiction.  Horror fiction at its best is in the business of pushing back the barriers, of risking the absurd in order to reach the sublime, just as Jason Woodrue does by eating a tuber of Swamp Thing’s.  By this stage no reader can doubt that here is a story prepared to go to the end of itself, whatever it may find there or on the way.”

Closer in content and aim to Watchmen than Moore’s later work in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Moore’s run on Saga (which began with issue # 20) starts with a gritty paranoid vision of the military exploiting the Swamp Thing and the monster realizing his place in the world is shrinking.  Through the research of Dr. Jason Woodrue, the Floronic Man, we see the true nature of the Swamp Thing in the brilliant issue # 21, The Anatomy Lesson.  The Swamp Thing is not, as was believed before Moore’s tenure on the book, a reincarnated and plant-reinforced Dr. Alec Holland, but a completely vegetable entity that thinks it’s Alec Holland.  What’s so thrilling is Moore’s ability to make such a strange and unbelievable conceit so emotionally and ecologically devastating.  It’s nice to see Moore use his considerable storytelling talents to tell such a gritty, anti-capitalist tale of environmental rage.  The Floronic Man’s hatred for mankind manifests as a raging terrorism, a hypocritical stance that could only be taken by someone who was originally human.  Here, only the Swamp Thing truly speaks and acts for the benefit of the planet.  Even a later enemy, Satan himself, manifests to the Swamp Thing and his world as an ecological condition – autumn.  The creature’s ability to reason in a moral fashion wins out over his pure physical prowess, which is almost never employed.  He’s a Frankenstein’s monster who knows restraint, who shows readers the kindness and compassion manifest in the grotesque.

Bissette and Totleben created a dark, restrained look for the book.  Their influence is seen in later 80s books such as Sandman and then pops up again in some of the quirkier titles in the 90s.  I can’t imagine Sam Kieth’s dreamlike The Maxx without the precedent of Bissette and Totleben’s Saga books.  Their panels flow organically through the story, and they never worry about wasting space for the emotional tableaux so necessary to create a superhero comic which can be enjoyed on levels other than muscle and breast worship.  In a particularly memorable series of pages, the Swamp Thing chases a billionaire industrialist through a vast office complex, while Dr. Jason Woodrue narrates the set piece he has orchestrated.  “And will there be blood?  I don’t know.  I don’t know if there will be blood.  It isn’t important.  It won’t spoil things if there is no blood.  The blood doesn’t matter.  Just the dying.  The dying’s all that matters.”  You’ve got to see these pages to believe the power of Moore paired with Bissette and Totleben.  They created a pop-art language that is much underused, even in today’s glutted comic book market.

While the environmental message of Saga of the Swamp Thing can easily be overstated, it should not be neglected.  Like other late-70s and early-80s American art, Saga tackles the excesses of an empire reaching its manifest destiny – to exploit not only the natural resources of its land, but the very fabric of nature, the forces of the universe.

Related Links:

1. Grovel Review

2. Pads and Panels Review

3. Wired Review

4. IGN Review

5. Blather Alan Moore Interview

Nice Jacket: Dispatches

*The Picador Paperback edition of Michael Herr’s 1977 book Dispatches.

This cover reminds me of M*A*S*H.  In both, a weird brand of 70s minimalism flavors the apocalypse with humor and whimsy.  The saturated green helmet with its slogan ‘HELL SUCKS’ and a teardrop peace sign in vivid yellow, nestles in a hyperbolic (but mostly true) blurb from John Le Carré.  It’s certainly the best book I’ve ever read on men and war in any time, but then again I haven’t read many true war narratives. 

When I hold this book in my hand, I can see the yellow of the passing years on the white cover, the thumbprints of everyone who has picked it up over the years shining in the light.  It feels like a cheaply-made, but beautiful communiqué, delivered personally by a friend.

When you get down to it though, Dispatches, isn’t much of a narrative.  It’s more a patchwork of impressions.  Herr uses an erratic, stream-of-consciousness style.  He’s a straight, war-hardened Hunter S. Thompson with big balls and a bigger heart.  His reports stick close to the dirt as he follows the lowest ranks of the most active units in the marines.  He’d rather tell us what the stoned grunts are talking about than the generals or the intelligence agencies.  Herr’s Vietnam War is in no way romanticized.  He refrains from the easy exoticism of Hollywood’s Vietnam films like Platoon and Apocalypse Now.  There are no easy political answers like you might find in Peter Davis’s powerful documentary Hearts and Minds.

Herr’s gift is the ability to show the horror and madness of war without any bloviating rhetoric, just the facts and the action of it all.  He shows most of the men in a human light, which is what they deserve, no matter the atrocities some of them participated in.  Herr’s strongest moment is his long description of the press in Vietnam.  The journalist’s odd hypocritical stance and parasitic nature is set into stunning relief against a war most of them objected to.

Dexter Filkins accomplished something similar for the Iraq War in his brilliant 2008 book The Forever War, but some of the resistant glamour of the journalist has been lost in the intervening 40 years.  The alienation is stronger in Iraq, it seems, and perhaps the disinterest of civilians back home has helped make the Armed Forces more callous.  Let the draft be reinstituted and see how oblivious we remain.

Related Links:

1. The American Scholar Essay on Dispatches

2. The Massachusetts Review Essay on Dispatches

3. New York Times Review of Herr's book on Kubrick

My Brain is Hanging Upside Down by David Heatley (2008)

The first of David Heatley’s stories I read was part of an anthology published about four or five years ago.  I can’t remember if it was one of those Best American Comics books or the hardbound issue of McSweeney’s filled with indie comics.  One thing I do remember is what the story was about.  In a few sloppy panels, Heatley told about living with his father after college, sitting on the toilet and wondering what it looks like when he wipes his ass after pooping.  Not all of us wonder what this looks like, but I’m sure more of us wonder than would admit it, and Heatley’s honesty immediately struck me as both hilarious and heartbreaking.

In his 2008 full-length graphic memoir My Brain is Hanging Upside Down, Heatley brings this intimate and odd tone to broader subjects.  Whether he’s showing us a record of every woman and man he’s had even the most fleeting of sexual encounters with, or if he’s reviewing every one of his favorite hip-hop records, Heatley’s innocence and appreciation for life is always evident.  He is our generation’s Harvey Pekar, somewhat more socially well-adjusted, but a singularity just the same.  His stories are all realistic and never flinch from sharing the emotional content of everyday life, with all its painfully happy and awkward moments.

Portrait of My Dad

My Brain is Hanging Upside Down is divided into five sections, each very focused on its topic, and all with some overlapping threads of family, sex and music.  The first section, Sex History, depicts all of Heatley’s sexual experiences with blinding honesty.  His simple, almost childish art makes the graphic sexuality innocent and endearing.  Heatley’s panels are like manic sketches of the most intense moments of his life.

Each of the five sections begins with a number of dream stories relating to each topic.  The second and fifth sections, Black History and Family History respectively, stick to the format of Sex History, with literal laundry lists of experiences and personalities.  Only in sections three and four, Portrait of My Mom and Portrait of My Dad does Heatley allow himself to become expansive and relate separate stories to one another in a less linear manner.

In most of the other sections, Heatley comes off like a typical 80s kid.  He’s enamored of hip-hop culture, yet never fully comfortable with it.  His sexual freedoms and experimentation seem quaint and almost old-fashioned.  Was he ever worried about getting AIDs when he was screwing all these girls and guys at college?  He doesn’t tell us.  But in the two Portraits we see Heatley’s strange and contradictory parents in a way that helps us understand his paranoia and obsessions in a whole new way.  His mother is the reformed hippie who doesn’t know when to stop trying to relate to her kids on their level and just try to be their mother.  His father is a bitter hermit who builds train sets in his basement and smiles bitterly at a world that left him behind.

Heatley's New Yorker Cover

So, I’m a fan of all types of comics.  I dig Alan Moore and Frank Miller as much as Harvey Pekar and R. Crumb.  However, if indie comics aren’t your thing, Heatley is going to seem juvenile and artless.  His drawings are all flat, with very little detail.  They look like they were scrawled off on notebook paper by a stoned high school kid during study hall.  If you’re not into Chris Ware or Kim Deitch, if you prefer Will Eisner’s superhero stuff to his brilliant The Contract with God trilogy, you’re probably not going to be into Heatley.  He’s not interested in the fantasy and exploitation of most mainstream comics and though his memoir is certainly for Adults Only, it will not satisfy your little boy prurient interests.  Still, it’s fun and funny enough in its weird, jaded way.

The other half of The Bent Spine, Mark Rooster, has been writing surreal autobiographical comics as long as I can remember.  His style and sense of humor reminds me of Heatley.  If you like My Brain is Hanging Upside Down, be sure to check out Mark’s site, www.markrooster.com. 

 

Related Links:

1. High-Low Review of My Brain is Hanging Upside Down

2. The Daily Cross Hatch Review of  My Brain is Hanging Upside Down

3. GraphicNovelReporter Interview with David Heatley

4. David Heatley's Site

Horror Film Star Feature #2: Jeffrey Combs

Since the eighties, Jeffrey Combs has been all over TV, in a variety of roles, including different characters on different incarnations of the Star Trek franchise, but horror fans know him more for his work in various genre films of the last thirty years. His best known role, Dr. Herbert West, has stayed with him for three Re-Animator films, the first coming out in 1985, from Charles Band's Empire Pictures, directed by Stuart Gordon.

Herbert West, originally an H. P. Lovecraft creation, is a phenomenal role, played so strangely and perfectly by Combs, a scientist hellbent on resurrecting the dead, acting out quite bizarrely on a regular basis, uncaring how any of his co-workers or associates digest his various eccentricities. Combs does amazing things with these sort of bizarro roles, and played another offbeat character in another Stuart Gordon film, From Beyond, the year after Re-Animator. From Beyond, also based on a Lovecraft story, has Combs playing another scientist, this time attempting to breach another world through a machine called the Resonator. It's just as gruesome as Gordon and Combs' last collaboration, though without nearly as much dark humor.

That humor, and Combs' expert way of using it throughout gory scenes of shock and horror, is part of what keeps Re-Animator fresh in the minds of horror fans years later, and is considered by many to be one of the best examples of the genre.

After Empire folded, Charles Band started up direct-to-video outfit Full Moon, which got a fast start thanks to the popularity of Puppet Master (1989) and its sequels. Combs, who apparently had a good working relationship with Band at Empire, joined for Full Moon for a string of films, including The Pit and the Pendulum (1990), Trancers II (1991), Doctor Mordrid (1992), and the extremely dark (particularly for a Full Moon movie) Castle Freak (1995).

Combs doesn't always play a psycho, but his more demented roles are the fan favorites. He played Herbert West again in Bride of Re-Animator (1989) and Beyond Re-Animator (2003), both of those films directed by Re-Animator producer Brian Yuzna. Combs has played characters based on Lovecraft creations a total of eight times, often with either Stuart Gordon or Brian Yuzna, or both.

Perhaps the most distinct aspect of a Combs performance is his odd speaking style, which is entirely an affectation, and not the manner in which the man speaks when not in front of a camera.

Combs has had roles, large to small, in various genre films since the eighties, and has appeared in studio films such as I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (1998) , The Frighteners (1996), and House On Haunted Hill (1999), as well as a number of low budget features. Check out the complete list on wikipedia or imdb.com.

Duma Key by Stephen King (2008)

 

Mark and I discussed Duma Key over at Goodreads.  Here's the transcript of our monumental conversation.

M. Buozis:  So, let me get this big criticism out of the way. I really enjoyed about 75% of this novel. King has a way of creating believable, likable middle class characters, seamlessly incorporating their thoughts and actions and all sorts of pop culture references. For the most part he leaves the supernatural elements in the background. For 75% of most of his novels these elements seems more psychological than other-worldy. And then King explains everything for you, leading up to the climax, and the supernatural elements are so much harder to swallow because he's done such a great job of creating believable characters in a rich setting.

So, here, he ruins the novel with pirate ghosts. Edgar's wonderfully strange powers are shucked off as the corruption of an ancient sea witch. His love for his daughter and his fear for her going out in the world, which are the emotional touchstones of the novel, are given short shrift to a fleet of zombies.

I don't like it. He's done this in most of his other novels, and usually fails for me, with a few important exceptions like The Shining.

But I guess he's got to give the people what they're after so...

Mark Rooster:  I'm going to agree with you here, although I think I probably liked the book a little more than you did.

This one is written in a slightly different style than I've come to expect from King--would you agree on that? It has almost more of a . . . I don't know, old-fashioned sort of style to it? I don't think that's quite the word I'm looking for. But it's definitely got less of his creative grammar and style, with half-sentences in parentheses and italics all throughout. It seems like he was going for something a little different with this one.

I enjoyed that, and the story hit me pretty well, until the last two hundred pages or so. But all the explanation about the ghost ship and the old lady's family got tiring after a while, and I found that I just didn't care too much what was really going on.

I'd have been fine with the story sticking to those elements you mentioned, even if no explanation was ever given regarding Edgar's new artistic ability.

M.B.:  I guess the important distinction I'd make between King's novels and stories that I like a lot and the ones that are ruined by the endings, is that the supernatural elements in the good ones always seem completely vital and character-driven. In The Shining for instance, the supernatural elements are so linked with Jack Torrance's alcoholism that the problems become almost indistinguishable. The same could be said about Carrie. We know from the beginning this girl has some strange powers and it is vital to the story that she use them to get back at all the kids who are screwing with her. Here in Duma Key, and in a few other King novels I've read, most notably 'Salem's Lot, the supernatural element doesn't even seem necessary. It almost seems like an afterthought he contractually has to include so his publishers can rest assured that they've got another best seller on their hands.

As far as the style is concerned, I didn't notice much of a deviation from what I've come to expect from King. I think he did a bit of the cutting off sentences and using weird indefinite perspectives, especially in the sections that were all italics. I love how he references pop culture all the time. Most writers can not pull this off, but he seamlessly interjects rock lyrics into conversation through the chummy rapport of Edgar and Wireman.

He's a master of making likable characters. I thought Wireman and Edgar's shrink Kamen were particularly likable. This seems like almost an archetype for King characters. Most of his books include a person who is benevolent to the main character, almost a father figure that guides both the main character and the reader through some crazy stuff.

M.R.:  Your last sentence immediately reminded me of the old guy in Pet Sematary (I can't remember his name at the moment). I think you're right about that, he does use that kind of character a lot in his books. Kamen was a great sidekick for Edgar in this one.

I tend to like King's books more often than not. There are a few of his I haven't thought were all that great, but of his more recent ones that I've read (and though I'm catching up, I'm still not that up on his stuff from the last fifteen years), this was one of the best. But I agree that the supernatural stuff was handled less artfully than in some of his other novels.

M.B.:  One thing I really did enjoy was King's handling of Edgar's new found talent for painting. The way he describes the paintings, the odd juxtapositions and surreal descriptions, is convincing and believable. While non-supernatural art does not have the power that Edgar's paintings seem to have, the idea that a painting can affect people in some way is intriguing. Some questions every artist asks himself are, 'how does my art actually affect people?' or 'does my art make a difference?' Here Edgar gets an answer to these questions, but not in a favorable one at all. He would've been better off painting pictures that were less powerful both as valuable art and conduits for negative energy.

The whole art scene in this small Florida city is also rendered really well. The small time curators and art critics who take themselves very seriously and who know how to turn a profit come off as genuine.

Kamen and Wireman both reminded me a bit of the cook from The Shining. They all seem to have some connection to some other realm (which is all probably explained in some other King book) and use that connection to protect the lead characters.

Then perhaps the most important thing is the relationship between Edgar and his daughter Ilse.

M.R.:  I liked the stuff with Ilse quite a bit. Was sad to see her get killed. Although not as sad as if she'd been in the book a bit more. Though I don't have any suggestions as to how there could have been more material with her.

M.B.:  I think this father-daughter relationship is at the heart of the book. In a way, Edgar comes off as a bit of a materialistic jerk at the beginning of the novel. Through Ilse, we see that he is a caring father, if not a completely fair father (especially in his preference for Ilse over his other daughter). If Ilse wasn't so central to Edgar's recovery and his art, there'd almost be nothing the ghost could do to him that would hurt him. He'd lost everything else, his ex-wife, his physical capability.

The question is, what does Ilse really have to do with this ghost? Is she just the conduit through which the ghost attacks Edgar and then uses him to wreak havoc. And what gain does the ghost have in killing everyone it does? Is it protecting Duma Key? Is it collecting souls for a ghost ship armada? King doesn't make it clear.

M.R.:  I guess it could just be a pissed off ghost who enjoys causing trouble and havoc in Edgar's life?

M.B.:  But then it has no emotional resonance. It's just bad luck.

M.R.:  Yeah, I see what you're saying. I really think the last two hundred or so pages of this book are somewhat of a letdown. Not a letdown on the level of the mechanical spider at the end of the movie version of "IT," but still a letdown.

What did you think of the epilogue? I found it pretty satisfying. The way Wireman ended up dying kind of randomly, and Edgar was basically left by himself. Very much of a downer, but it worked great. I wonder if he recovered the other paintings.

M.B.:  Yeah, I liked the epilogue. The ending definitely needed to remain melancholy, but at least King didn't have everyone die. That might have been too much of a bummer, in a book that was pretty melancholy throughout.

M.R.:  It's definitely one of his saddest novels. I liked reading that in close time with Sarah Langan's "The Keeper." Two very sad ghost stories.

In the clip below, King discusses Duma Key.

Horror Directors Feature #1: Clive Barker

Clive Barker's accomplishments include more than just film directing--his primary passions are writing and painting, and he hasn't directed a movie in more than fifteen years. But this entry is going to focus on his three considerably worthwhile directing outings: Hellraiser (1987), Nightbreed (1990), and Lord of Illusions (1995).

Hellraiser, based on Barker's novella The Hellbound Heart, broke new ground in the late eighties, introducing the S&M-styled demons, the Cenobites, in particular Pinhead, played by Doug Bradley. Bradley would go on to reprise this role in about a thousand Hellraiser sequels (none past the fourth film in the series are actually worth seeing), and, to horror fans, will always be best known as Pinhead. The first Hellraiser movie is startlingly graphic, but only in spurts. A creepy, "haunted house" kind of atmosphere pervades most of its scenes, set in the new residence of sixteen-year-old Kirsty Cotton (Ashley Laurence, who would reprise this role in three more Hellraiser movies). Kirsty's uncle Frank (Sean Chapman, early scenes; Oliver Smith, later, "skinless" scenes) previously took up residence in the house, and while there incurred the wrath of the demonic Cenobites. He returns from the dead with the help of Kirsty's evil stepmother, Julia (Clare Higgins). Julia kills for Frank; each time she offs someone, he's able to add another layer of skin, muscle, and/or bone to his depleted frame.

As is the case with Barker's novella, the Cenobites take a backseat for much of the action, giving way to a story of familial horror, with Kirsty slowly becoming aware that her stepmother is cheating on her father with his recently deceased brother. An influential film, Hellraiser has been a favorite of horror fans since it first arrived nearly twenty-five years ago.

(Dimension Films currently has a ninth sequel--for the first time sans Doug Bradley--and a 3-D remake in the works. Jesus wept.)

Barker's second film, Nightbreed, is sometimes referred to as the Magnificent Ambersons of horror. It shares with Orson Welles' second film the unfortunate circumstance of being chopped up by its studio, with the excised footage subsequently lost (or destroyed). For years, horror fans have signed petitions and hoped for a "director's cut" release of Nightbreed. Things began to look up last year, when a full cut was found on video. Since then, however, the studio has announced no future plans for a full restoration. Too bad, because it's an underrated and exciting film.

One of the elements Morgan Creek/20th Century Fox and the MPAA ratings board took issue with was the fact that the "good guys" in the film are the monsters, a bit of a reversal on tradition. The monsters in the film being the residents of the town-within-a-cemetary, Midian, confined to live in secret, unable to come out during the day. Aaron Boone (Craig Sheffer) plays a man framed for murder by his doctor, the homicidal Decker (played by director David Cronenberg). He is killed, only to be brought back to life due to the powers of Midian. From here, Decker leads an attack on Midian, and true to the MPAA's complaints, the "good guys" of the cemetary city are the clear protagonists of the film.


Nightbreed was marketed in an odd manner (the cover art pictured to the left hardly invokes the mood of the film), and the studio's trailers attempted to sell it as a slasher film, which it isn't. What did we lose thanks to the meddling movie gods? At least a half hour's worth of footage. Nightbreed is an excllent horror-drama, and hopefully someday we'll get to see Barker's original vision.

The last time Barker sat in the director's chair was for Lord of Illusions, a unique mix of horror and film noir, based on a short story found in his Cabal (1988) collection (title story Cabal being the novella on which Nightbreed was based). This story introduces the character Harry D'Amour, who would go on to appear in the novels The Great and Secret Show (1989) and Everville (1994), and the upcoming Scarlet Gospels. Played by Scott Bakula, D'Amour, a private investigator specializing in supernatural mysteries, travels from New York to the Mojave Desert, to discover the truth about magician Phillip Swann (Kevin J. O'Connor), who has apparently been killed in the middle of a show, in full view of a packed theater house. D'Amour ties Swann to the mystical cult leader, Nix (Daniel von Bargen), murdered a dozen years ago in the desert.

MGM was somewhat put off by Barker's blend of horror and film noir, and thus asked him to cut out many of the noir elements for the theatrical version. However, the movie that was subsequently, and fortunately, made available on video, and later DVD, was Barker's original director's cut (many video stores carried this cut, and not the theaterical cut).

In the time that's passed since Lord of Illusions' release, Barker has been attached to various projects, and rumored to have another film in the works. He has, however, kept his Hollywood involvement limited to the role of producer (Gods and Monsters [1998] and Midnight Meat Train [2008], among many others) and writer (films based on his stories, including Bernard Rose's excellent 1992 film Candyman, based on the short story, The Forbidden).

He's recently been tapped to direct Tortured Souls: Animae Damnatae, based on Todd McFarlane's gruesome line of Barker-inspired action figures. With two books on the way in 2011 (the next Abarat novel and the previously mentioned Scarlet Gospels), I'm not holding out much hope. But it would certainly be a treat for horror fans if he did return to film directing again, at least one more time.

Miscellany: A Hidden Herzog Gem

On Christmas Eve 1971, 17-year old Juliane Koepcke, survived a plane crash in the Peruvian rain forest.  All 92 of the other passengers, including Koepcke’s mother, were killed.  She remained in the jungle for eleven days, struggling to find food and potable water and keep her head on straight after such an emotionally devastating accident.  In the end, she was reunited with her father, the famous zoologist Hans-Wilhelm Koepcke.

If you think Juliane’s story sounds like the perfect premise for a Werner Herzog documentary, you’re onto something.  Unfortunately, what seems like the most coherent story Herzog has chosen for a film in the last ten years (other than Grizzly Man, perhaps) was produced as a made-for-TV movie for German television and thus Wings of Hope, Herzog’s account of Koepcke’s ordeal, which premiered in 1998, has not received a wide release to date.  It’s only available in fragments on YouTube.  I’m a little bitter at Herzog, just having watched The Wild Blue Yonder, a cheap mash-up of stock NASA footage and corny alien conspiracy monologues, but I’d give him the benefit of the doubt and rent Wings of Hope in a heartbeat.

Here’s an excerpt from Vice’s September interview with Koepcke.

Vice:  OK, and then you woke up the next day on the jungle floor?

Koepkce:  The next morning, actually. The crash was around 1:30 PM, and the next morning around nine I looked at my wristwatch. It was still intact and only stopped working later on. Then I realized I was on the ground and I knew right away what had happened. I had a serious concussion, so I couldn’t sit up. My eye was swollen. My glasses—which I’d had since I was 14 because I’m nearsighted—were gone. I was lying underneath my seat and I wasn’t strapped in anymore. I could see a bit of the forest but also a bit of the sky. I knew that I had survived a plane crash. The concussion and the shock only let me realize basic facts. I didn’t really think about myself. I was more concerned about where my mother was. That’s the first thing I remember. I had probably woken up and lost consciousness again a couple of times before that, due to the heavy concussion. I must have released myself from the seat because I was definitely strapped in when I fell. That’s what Werner Herzog reconstructed later on, too. We know I was attached to the seat, which must have turned and buffered the crash. Otherwise I wouldn’t have survived. I also know that I had crawled under the seat because it was raining. I used to dream about this. I dreamed that I was dirty and soaked and would only have to get up to take a shower. Then I have a tiny fragment of a memory, of pulling myself under that seat to protect myself from the rain. Then I thought, “I just have to get up,” and when I made up my mind to do that, I woke up.

Related Links:

1. The Vice Interview

2. A CNN Article on Koepcke

3. The Free Fall Research Page