October 2007

A Halloween Grab Bag from the Golden Decade of Horror Films

For true aficionados of horror films, the concept of a "golden decade" is problematic from the get-go. There are parts of the 1920s, ’30s, and ’50s that can lay reasonable claim to greatness. But something happened between 1974 and 1984 that not only changed the horror film as we knew it, but provided a springboard for some great directors. Young and inexperienced, these directors had to work on a shoestring. They were like indie films before there was such a thing.

Horror films had gone through a patchy time in the 1960s. Roger Corman then dominated the business, knocking out as many as seven films per year, most not worth the celluloid they were printed on. These were family fodder -- OK for kids, good for a few giggles and the occasional startle. About as scary as they got was Vincent Price’s evil laugh.

But a few wickeder films slipped under the radar. They were underground "B" films -- no major studio involvement, minuscule budgets, patchy distribution (mostly in drive-in theaters), and only a few prints made. These weren’t Disneyfied family frighteners; they were truly dark, vicious, and scary.

Herschell Gordon Lewis’s Blood Trilogy marks the point where horror films changed. Beginning with the cannibalistic Blood Feast (1963), Lewis created the "gore" genre, exploiting the drive-in crowds’ desire for something really gross. With his next film, he hit his stride. Two Thousand Maniacs! (1964) was a horror-ride version of Brigadoon, with a Southern town, still angry about the outcome of the Civil War, stopping cars with Yankee plates and grotesquely dispatching the passengers. Besides the spattered blood and torture, here was a great opportunity for audiences in the South (where most drive-ins were) to feel the Yankees were getting their comeuppance. The final film of Lewis’s trilogy was Color Me Blood Red (1965) -- a disappointment after Two Thousand Maniacs!, but his work was done. Horror films would never be the same.

Lewis’s films cleared the way for Night of the Living Dead (1968), the film that capped the ’60s trend toward total directorial freedom. George A. Romero’s bleak production and icky special effects made audiences shriek, but (SPOILER!) it was the existentially terrifying denouement that still has a shattering effect. Romero changed the rules: the good guy was now fair game. He or she could die. (END SPOILER)

These two directors provided the framework for the Golden Decade. In 1974, a young director from Austin, Tobe Hooper, pulled together some friends and a few cameras and made one of the classics of the horror genre, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. The film managed to be banned in a dozen countries by scaring the hell out of the government censors, and even today, you can see why. After about five bucolic minutes, the film violently zigzags through horrific mayhem and nauseating but goofy sight gags. What makes this little independent film so breathtaking is Hooper’s cinematic vision. As you know from all the stupid slasher films made since, it’s easy to make a bad horror movie. Making something this weirdly beautiful takes vision. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre ended up being honored at the Cannes Film Festival, the London Film Festival picked it as the Outstanding Film of the Year, and the Museum of Modern Art added the film to its permanent collection. Though Hooper has faltered in recent years, his run from Salem’s Lot (1979) through Poltergeist (1982) to the criminally underrated Lifeforce (1985) brought serious chills to American cinema.

Canada was the next hotbed of gory cinema. Also in 1974, a little-seen movie caught a lot of directors’ and writers’ attentions. Black Christmas was directed by Bob Clark, the man who would later give us both Porky’s and A Christmas Story. Black Christmas was the start of the killer-in-the-girls’-dorm genre. However, instead of just showing some sexy coeds getting undressed, Clark gives his characters genuine depth, and the sense of menace is chilling. The ending remains as gut-wrenching today as it was 33 years ago.

The Golden Decade’s next great horror director also came from Canada. David Cronenberg’s early masterpiece Shivers (1975; titled They Came from Within in the US) is the story of a crazed doctor who wants to free people’s libidos by unleashing a parasite that resembles a slug-like, crawling penis and scrotum, said parasite entering naked women’s orifices while their attention is elsewhere. Shivers is frightening and funny in equal measures, but Cronenberg’s horror masterpiece would come six years later. Scanners is about a mutant strain of humans who can do scary things with their brains. The film is most famous for a specific scene during a scientific conference, but for horror buffs, it’s the ending fight for supremacy that makes Scanners a classic. Cronenberg has gone on to become one of North America’s most cherished directors, with films such as Crash (1996), A History of Violence (2005), and Eastern Promises (2007) on his résumé.

In 1977, David Lynch unleashed his surrealistic id with the release of Eraserhead. Faced with the combination of its ominous industrial music, shadowy black-and-white photography, the birth of the gooey baby, and the in-joke regarding the title, many viewers just walked out. Many of those who stayed disparaged the film as weirdness for weirdness’s sake. But Eraserhead brilliantly plays out a nightmare that includes everything from monsters to little fat-cheeked singers stomping on giant raining sperm. And the diaper-changing scene still elicits a visceral response. Lynch’s work since Eraserhead has been erratic, often falling victim to the forced weirdness he so neatly sidestepped at the very beginning. On the occasions he descends to Earth, he can still make great films, such as The Elephant Man (1980), Blue Velvet (1986), and Mulholland Drive (2001).

By now, horror directors seemed to be ridding themselves of any self-censorship. John Carpenter already had a reputation for making frightening films, earned by his Assault on Precinct 13 (1976), but no one was prepared for Halloween (1978), in which a zombie-like escaped killer stalks young Jamie Lee Curtis. Halloween became one of the biggest moneymakers Hollywood had seen in a long time, and when Hollywood smells a winner, they send in the hacks to try to recreate the magic. Halloween has been copied dozens of times since, including seven sequels and a remake. Don’t let all those imitations stop you from seeing the original: It’s still a frightening ride. Carpenter made a few more great movies -- Escape from New York (1981), The Thing (1982), and Starman (1984) -- before succumbing to the studio accountants. Since then he’s made mostly disposable films calculated to play off his name rather than deliver the quality he’s capable of. We can only hope for the future.

The Driller Killer (1979) was another attempt to recreate Halloween’s box-office magic. Based on the title, you could imagine it being a lame, exploitive gore-fest -- and in lesser hands, it would have been. But director Abel Ferrara has an artist’s eye and a clear picture of what life in post-punk New York should look like. His depiction of an artist fading into insanity is as gripping as it is frightening. Ferrara has been a durably good director, making such top-notch films as The Bad Lieutenant (1992); perhaps the best vampire movie ever made, The Addiction (1995); and The Funeral (1996). He’s also one of the weirdest directors working today, and studios have become wary of his strange ways. Hopefully, he’ll find more sympathetic backers. He’s got a few more great films in him.

My favorite horror film of 1979 is Phantasm. Don Coscarelli wrote, produced, and directed this gorgeous, funny, frightening film. Just 25 when the film was finished and working with an almost nonexistent budget, Coscarelli takes us into a world of grave robbers, dimensional gates, dwarf zombies, and a flying ball that kills you by attaching to your head and drilling into your brain. When the line between dreams and reality starts to get really elastic, we’re drawn in. The movie was good enough to spawn the obligatory sequels, though none touches the original. Perhaps Phantasm V, due in 2008, will live up to the first. Coscarelli’s main claim to fame post-Phantasm is the intentionally but still genuinely terrible Bubba Ho-Tep (2002). Anyone with the cojones to create a story about Elvis Presley as a nursing-home resident who teams up with a psychotic who thinks he’s JFK to battle an ancient magical Egyptian is OK in my book.

A very small part of the world discovered Sam Raimi in 1981, with the release of The Evil Dead. Raimi’s genius was to make a film with as many laughs as scares. Part of the film is shot from the point of view of the bad entity. Here, cheapness led to creativity as Raimi figured out a way to put a portable camera on a board suspend by ropes, carried just inches off the ground as the cameramen ran through the woods. It sounds simple, but no one had ever done it before, and it adds chilling momentum to the scary parts. In 1987, a larger budget allowed Raimi to make Evil Dead II that rarest of beasts, a sequel even better than the original. Since then he’s become rather famous for the Spider-Man movies, and is slated to direct The Hobbit.

The Keep (1983) is ridiculed by most of the few who’ve seen it. It’s a mess of a film, but most of it works so well that you want to forgive the bad parts. Director Michael Mann creates an eerie atmosphere in WWII Romania, where the Nazis are stationed in an ancient castle keep. When their men start dying mysteriously, someone eventually begins to suspect supernatural causes, though when the cause of the deaths appears, it’s the film itself that dies. In any case, Mann, who has gone on to direct some great films -- Heat (1995), The Insider (1999), Ali (2001), Collateral (2004) -- has basically disowned The Keep. I disagree. There are seeds of greatness here.

The end of the Golden Decade came in 1984, with A Nightmare on Elm Street, directed by Wes Craven. The film channeled all the killer movies of the prior ten years and added malicious teasing. Once again, a director working with a nonexistent budget realized that he had to be creative. To keep the film to 90 minutes (shorter run time = more showings = more profit), Craven had to lose something, and decided to keep the grisly effects and sacrifice any character development. His choice works in the context of his breathless, nightmarish piece. Sadly, the success of Elm Street and New Line Cinema’s seemingly bottomless appetite for profit has made Freddy Kruger into a buffoon. Craven has continued to entertain with films like Music of the Heart (1999), Red Eye (2005), and all three Scream films.

Most of these films are available on feature-packed DVDs. Black Christmas, Eraserhead, The Driller Killer, and The Evil Dead fare best, with outstanding transfers (given the cheapness of the original productions) and interesting extras. Shivers is out of print and fetches ridiculous sums on the used market, though if you have a region-free player, you can get it at a bargain price in the UK. The Keep has never made it to DVD, though it pops up regularly on TV.

David Cronenberg once said that no horror movie is truly mainstream. I think that was more true from 1974 to 1984 than it is now. In fact, it’s hard to think of many horror films since 1984 that haven’t been direct rip-offs of one of the films I’ve mentioned, usually by studios hunting for profits. (Exceptions: Jacob’s Ladder, Re-Animator, and The Hitcher.) These films reflect a special time in the horror genre. Their budgets were so small that there was no pressure from the accountants to be mainstream. Boundaries were pushed to the limit, talented directors had the freedom to try new ideas, and the artistic inspiration was running high.

Have a scary Halloween.

...Wes Marshall
wesm@hometheatersound.com

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