Evening movie review

The horror genre is well known for spawning endless sequels, any time a horror movie is successful it seems inevitable that the studio will try to create a franchise. The problem is most horror films end with the defeat and often death of the killer so they run into the same problem with each sequel, how do they resurrect the bad guy?

The big slasher series have developed this into a fine art of comedy with villain resurrections becoming increasingly far-fetched and ridiculous as the sequels pile up. Here we have a look at some of the most memorable horror movie killer resurrections.

My favourite has to be Jason Voorhees in Friday the 13th VI. With Jason dead and buried they had to come up with a new way for him to rise from the grave. Tommy Jarvis killed Jason in Friday the 13th IV when he was just a kid and now he has grown up he still can´t shake the memory of the machete wielding madman. He has nightmares that Jason is still lurking around and so in order to put his mind at rest he goes to the cemetery with a mate and digs up the grave. He wants to see the corpse with his own eyes but when he does it brings forth the memory of what Jason did to him and he becomes enraged. He grabs a metal fence post which he rams into the rotten corpse. Satisfied the killer really is dead he turns to leave but before he can lightning strikes the fence post sending electricity coursing through the corpse and sparking Jason back into life for yet another killing spree.

Freddy Krueger is another guilty party in the resurrection game and A Nightmare on Elm Street IV is definitely his most groan inducing return to life. Kincaid dreams he is back in the scrap yard where they buried Freddy at the end of A Nightmare on Elm Street III. Kincaid´s dog bizarrely pees fire on the grave and it washes away the holy water keeping Freddy trapped allowing him to return to life and resume his revenge trip.

Sadly even a quality series like Alien is not exempt from the ridiculous return from death. With Ripley´s descent into the fire as the alien bursts from her chest at the end of Alien III the next in the series Alien: Resurrection had to find a way to bring her back. It is actually set 200 years after Alien III and the producers obviously felt that there was no way they could have another film in the series without their iconic leading lady. Their solution was to bring her back as a clone, spliced with alien DNA.

In Hellraiser III they had to find a way to resurrect Pinhead and so the film begins with him nonsensically trapped in a stone pillar. A sleazy rock club owner buys him and is shocked one night when after banging one of his patrons she gets gobbled up by the statue. Now I´m not sure how you would react to that but I don´t think you´d agree to keep feeding the creepy statue. Of course that´s exactly what he does and naturally he ends up getting eaten himself and Pinhead is made flesh again.

Halloween V offers yet another daft example. Michael Myers was shot at least hundred times at the end of Halloween IV before being blown down a mineshaft. At the beginning of Halloween V we find out he escaped into a river and was found by a hermit who for reasons known only to himself decided to drag the masked killer back to his shack and attentively care for him. Naturally when Myers wakes up he kicks off his killing spree by offing the hermit, that´s gratitude for you!

The horror genre is littered with resurrections. Another typical scenario is the bad guy who wants to resurrect a demon or open a gate to hell, you have to wonder if these guys have ever seen a horror film before, I mean what exactly is their expectation when they summon a hideous killing machine? Inevitably the bad guy who resurrected them is usually the first to die.

A few modern horrors have taken a different approach to bringing dead characters back. In Scream III the horror movie geek Randy pops up for an appearance via a video he recorded before his death. This technique has also been used to bring back Jigsaw in the Saw series of films.

Resurrecting dead characters has become another cliché in a genre which seems to thrive on them. It seems very unlikely that we´ve seen the last of this practice.

Independent short films may be categorized in categories such as video art, film poem, narrative and music. Here are some examples;

1. Insect Clutched Stick by Garth Simmons (video art)
2. Transit by Little Song Films (film poem)
3. The End by Remy Marlot (narrative)
4. For Love by Olivia Louvel (music)

Some independent short films express the poetics of the moving image. In fact, here is a quote for independent short films; ‘the mechanism that produces cinematic images is, among all forms of human expression, that which most closely resembles the mechanism of the human mind in the way it works, or better yet, that which best imitates the workings of the mind during sleep. A film is like an involuntary imitation of a dream.

Animated short films are very interesting to watch, and pixar short films are some of the best. Here is how pixar short films make these animated short films.

1. Pitching of a story idea
2. Writing of the text treatment
3. Drawing of story boards
4. Recording of voice talents
5. Reel making by the editors
6. Creating of look and feel by the art department
7. Sculpting and articulation of models
8. Dressing of sets
9. Laying out of shots
10. Animation of the shot
11. Shading of sets and characters
12. Lighting for the sets and characters
13. Rendering of computer data
14. Addition of final touches

In fact, pixar short films undergo four stages; development, pre-production, production and post production. The story line is created during development. Technical challenges are addressed during pre-production. The actual animated short films are made during production and post production is where the final polishes are put on.

Some feature films from Pixar are Cars, Ratatouille, Wall and Up. Some short films are Lifted, One Man Band, Geri’s Game, Presto and Boundin’.

With countless slasher remakes and Japanese horror scene rip-offs filling our screens of late there has been a dearth of great horror on contemporary cinema screens. Perhaps if today’s film-makers are to create truly great horror films again they need to look to the past for some lessons in creating suspense or sustaining mood. Let’s take a look at some truly impressive elements of a few classic horror films that today’s creators would do well to take note of.

Sound Design - The Haunting
In this classic 60s horror, nothing is actually seen of the malicious presence which torments the team of volunteers investigating the old house, but everything is heard of them. A cacophonous mix of banged doors, rattling windows, footsteps and whispered voices all contribute to the sense of menace which pervades every second of this movie. You can cover your eyes or cower behind the sofa, but you can’t escape the horror.

Cinematography - Cat People
This low budget horror classic marked producer Val Lewton’s first film as head of his own horror B-unit at RKO pictures, and it was an effective demonstration of his theory that things were scarier when left to the audience’s imagination. The film’s killer, a black panther, is only seen once in the film, and the danger is far more effectively conveyed through the flickering shadows and dark shapes that dance around the edge of the frame as the protagonists try to escape a terror they can barely see. Sound design also plays a significant part, and the film’s strongest set-piece takes place in a swimming pool as a girl desperately treads water as the refracted light from the water gives glimpses of the silhouette whose growls echo around the pool.

Make-Up - Phantom of the Opera
In this CGI age horror effects are probably less scary than they have ever been, though even the copious amounts of blood and guts in the glorious gore-fests of the video nasty era were a little lacking in the quiet creepiness of earlier horror. Undisputed master of the modestly macabre is silent horror star Lon Chaney, who probably found his finest moment in an early adaptation of The Phantom of the Opera - the reveal of the Phantom’s hideous features halfway through the film becoming one of the most iconic moments in horror history, an image burned on the retina of anyone who has ever seen it.

Showmanship - The Tingler
Horror movies are often most effective when they mess with our sense of reality - blurring the boundies between watching and participating in the film, albeit through campy or gimmicky methods. Master of the theatrical gimmick William Castle is perhaps most notorious for the release of this film about a creature which would tingle the bottom of a victim’s spine until they died, their only escape being to scream. On the film’s roadshow release, Castle would rig up selected chairs in the audience to tingle at the point in the film when the Tingler is set free in a cinema. It’s arguable that Castle’s techniques have their modern equivalent in the viral marketing of films such as The Blair Witch Project, but none of these provide such a memorable shared horror experience as Castle’s screenings used to.

Ideas - The Undead
No one can claim that Roger Corman wasn’t ambitious, and this film is perhaps one of his most surprisingly aspirational films. Intended to exploit the public’s fascination with past lives in the late 50s, the film starts out as a conventional supernatural thriller with cardboard sets and unconvincing plasticine make-up, but is so earnest in its ideas that the audience is compelled to buy into what eventually ends up feeling like a powerful existential drama. The brutal intercutting between antagonists and protagonist as she realises the sacrifice she is being asked to make lingers in the mind longer than any musical stinger or gore-shot ever could.

You see, it isn’t always what is shown onscreen that has the most power. With the right use of atmosphere, camera work, soundtrack, editing and lighting, it is possible to create chilling pieces of cinema without resorting to shallow CG fests. Much is made of onscreen torture and over the top gore these days, and some nods to a more calculated era of filmmaking would do the horror industry a great deal of good.