Shocktober Revisited: More Brains and Swallowed Souls

editor's note: this was originally posted in November of 2011.
 
 I finally caught up on some horror documentaries, specifically More Brains: A Return to the Living Dead and Swallowed Souls: The Making of Evil Dead 2. The former you might have heard of; the latter is more incentive to pick up Lionsgate's 25th Anniversary Edition of Sam Raimi's splatter classic.

 Dan O'Bannon fans will be elated and disappointed while watching More Brains - the film reunites most of the surviving cast and crew members (including the special effects artist fired halfway through the film), but until the very end, O'Bannon - who passed in 2009 - is absent from the oral history of Return of the Living Dead. There's a lot of talking about O'Bannon, often in conflicting narratives (he was too demanding, too aloof; he was easy to work with and open to suggestions), but only in the closing moments does the writer / director have a chance to speak to the film's cult status. In what was his final interview, O'Bannon is candid about the audience embrace of the film and its legacy, and makes a knowing comment about "if I die tomorrow" before the film goes to credits.

 The story of the making of Return of the Living Dead from John Russo (producer / writer of Night of the Living Dead)'s original pitch to the decision of Hemdale Films to hire Dan O'Bannon to write and direct the film as a horror comedy, from casting to premieres, is an affair filled with gossip, contradictory stories, and debates about whether Clu Gulager really threw a can at the director in a fit of rage. I'm tempted to share anecdotes from the cast, or to mention the ongoing bad blood between the production designer (William Stout) and first make-up effects (William Munns) over the inadequate zombie masks and "headless zombie" appliance. The memories are sometimes contentious, sometimes defensive, but always entertaining. More Brains: A Return to the Living Dead is well worth the time of fans of Return of the Living Dead.

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 Meanwhile, I'd like to thank a video store in the mall that will go unnamed until later this week for erroneously placing two copies of the 25th Anniversary Blu-Ray of Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn the weekend before the disc is actually released (it comes out tomorrow). I've bemoaned the endless re-releasing of Sam Raimi's Evil Dead films on DVD before, and we're seeing the first instance of "double-dipping" in high definition for the trilogy. As Anchor Bay closes (or whatever is going on with Anchor Bay) and their catalog is divvied up by Image Entertainment and Lionsgate, we're likely to see another release of The Evil Dead before long, and I find it hard to believe that Universal's underwhelming "Screwhead Edition" of Army of Darkness is the be-all-end-all of HD releases.

 But for now, let's look at the Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn 25th Anniversary double-dip. As a sucker for supplements, I must admit the list of extras seemed very promising - collections of featurette's about the casing, effects, conception, direction, and filming. When I put the disc in, I didn't realize that all of these individually listed extras were part of one 98 minute documentary, Swallowed Souls. It's reminiscent of segments of Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy, and is broken into chapters complete with claymation vignettes to bridge them.

 Like More Brains, the primary element lacking in Swallowed Souls is the presence of Sam Raimi. It's not as though his presence isn't felt, because the "making of" footage shot by Greg Nicotero features young Sam Raimi in abundance, but he's noticeably absent from the proceedings. On the other hand, the doc features an abundance of newly shot interviews with Bruce Campbell, who speaks candidly about Evil Dead 2 and shares stories I don't think I've heard anywhere, including in If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor. Swallowed Souls also prominently features the rest of the leads of Evil Dead 2: Sarah Berry (Annie), Dan Hicks (Jake), Kassie Wesley (Bobbi Joe), Richard Dormeier (Ed) and Ted Raimi (Possessed Henrietta). Hearing their perspective on making the film is in and of itself a treat - many of them had no idea what they were in for.

 The entire makeup effects team, including Mark Shostrom (From Beyond, A Nightmare one Elm Street Part 2) and the first time in years that I've seen all three members of KNB (Robert Kurtzman, Greg Nicotero, and Howard Berger) on camera talking about a project they worked on together*. Their camcorder footage, which documents the conception of Evil Dead 2's effects all the way through the film's production, are a treasure trove of unseen footage from Wadesboro, North Carolina in 1986. They gleefully exploit their creations and play around with camera tricks, mimicking Raimi's "evil force" camera shots.

 So here's where it gets tough - do you want to drop another $14 for Evil Dead 2 to see an admittedly great "making of" documentary? If you still have the Anchor Bay disc, you'll notice that The Gore the Merrier is still included, the commentary is still included, and I'm not sure that the picture is that much different. The price is fair so if you don't already have Evil Dead 2 on Blu-Ray this is a no-brainer, but wary double dippers are going to have to ask themselves if the making of justifies buying the film again. I will say that if it were released on its own, Swallowed Souls would be worth picking up in the same way as Halloween: 25 Years of Terror or His Name was Jason are. Evil Dead fans, prepare yourselves for the impending moral quandary. I don't regret it, but I also have the added bonus of picking the disc up early...


 * Since Kurtzman moved on to create his own production company, it's common just to see Nicotero and Berger appearing in "making of" documentaries that KNB did makeup effects for.

Blogorium Review: Jodorowsky's Dune

 If you haven't heard of Alejandro Jodorowsky, it's not going to surprise me one bit, and that's okay. Jodorowsky is best known for making El Topo and The Holy Mountain, two exercises in cinematic surrealism that aren't necessarily known for their accessibility. El Topo is considered by many to be the original "Midnight Movie," and includes extreme violence, bizarre imagery, Jodorowsky's son, Bristol, naked for much of the movie, and sporadic cruelty toward animals. It's a western. The Holy Mountain is... stranger than that, but arguably easier to stomach. I'm not saying that they aren't worth seeing, but it takes a particular type of adventurousness to want to watch them. If I had my druthers, I'd give The Holy Mountain the edge, but you might want to read a little bit about Jodorowsky before you dive in blindly.

 So this might explain why some of your friends went nuts with excitement when they heard Frank Pavich (N.Y.H.C.) was making a documentary called Jodorowsky's Dune. At least you maybe recognized the second word, even if the significance of the first didn't resonate. For fans of science fiction on the big screen, Alejandro Jodorowsky's adaptation of Dune is the great "what if?" of the genre. It's mentioned in The Greatest Sci-Fi Movies Never Made (although it didn't make it into my review of the book, for some reason) and exists in a certain realm of "Hollywood Urban Legend": the great unmade epic that influenced every science fiction film made for the next four decades. And finally, we have it on film. The story is every bit as mad as Jodorowsky himself, and every bit as compelling as it sounded when you first heard about it. I have no idea if his conception of Dune could even be made, but I'd love to see it.

 Jodorowsky states that he wanted his Dune to feel like "being on LSD without actually taking LSD," and thanks to the exhaustive book he and producer Michel Seydoux prepared for every studio in Hollywood, it's clear from the concept art and storyboards that he meant it.  In 1974, after El Topo and The Holy Mountain, Seydoux offered Jodorowsky the opportunity to make "whatever he wanted," and the director decided he wanted to adapt Frank Herbert's Dune. He'd never read Dune, but friends of his had, and the idea excited him. Jodorowsky set about concocting a grand plan for the film, to push the boundaries of what was possible in cinema, and assembled his team of "warriors": artists, actors, and musicians he could find to make his dream a reality.

 Many, including the Cap'n, have wondered why it took so long for someone to make this film, but I suppose it's not worth complaining about too much. Even at 84, Jodorowsky remains energetic and sprightly, but many of the most tantalizing pieces of his puzzle have long since passed. Three major contributors to Jodorowsky's vision died not long before the documentary and the other very recently (thankfully, he's in the film and one of the others is featured in archival audio).  Jodorowsky sought out a team of artists to help him conceptualize the worlds of the book: Dan O'Bannon (Dark Star, Lifeforce), Jean "Moebius" Giraud (Tron, The Fifth Element), and science fiction cover designer Chris Foss traveled to Paris to create Arrakis, Giedi Prime, and the various spacecraft used in the film. Moebius also drew the storyboards that make up much of Jodorowsky's massive concept book in order to give a clear idea of how the director planned to make the impossible imagery a reality.

 With his ideas in place, Jodorowsky excitedly moves on to how he planned fill in the other pieces of the film in order to sell it to studios. For Duke Leto Atreides, he brought on board David Carradine, and for the Duke's son, Paul Atreides, Jodorowsky again turned to his son Bristol. For the corpulent Baron Harkonnen, Jodorowsky tracked down Orson Welles and convinced him to agree to the picture by promising to hire his favorite chef to serve him food (this is not a joke or some crack at Welles' weight - Jodorowsky tells the story himself). For Feyd-Rautha, he sought out and found Mick Jagger (in one of the story's many coincidental meetings, the only parts of the tale I found hard to believe) - in the actual Dune that David Lynch completed (more on that later), Sting plays the role, for those curious.

 Jodorowsky's great coup was convincing Salvador Dali to play the "Emperor of the Galaxy", a feat that required many "tests" by the great artists and a series of demands that seem like they would (and should) have crippled the film. Dali demanded his own helicopter, for a giraffe to appear onscreen with him, an elephant, and most troubling to Seydoux, to be "the greatest paid actor in Hollwood." Dali told Jodorowsky he wanted "$100,000 per minute," which the director assured Seydoux would be feasible if they only paid him for the amount of time on screen - about three minutes. To further assure Dali's cooperation, Jodorowsky cast the artist's muse, Amanda Lear, in the film, despite her warnings that Dali would "destroy the project."

 Whether he would have wrecked Dune or not, Dali did bring one major piece to the design of the film by introducing Jodorowsky to the art of H.R. Giger. Giger joined the film to design the world of the Harkonnens, and some of the concept work might look quite familiar to viewers of the film Prometheus (in particular, the pyramid). Among many of the shifts in adaptation, Jodorowsky mentions his ending for the film departs radically from the ending of the book (to give you some idea, the title of one of Herbert's sequels, Dune Messiah, is treated almost literally).

 With much of his dream cast in place, Jodorowsky and composer Christian Vander set about wooing bands to craft music for each of the planets featured in Dune. The only two mentioned in the documentary are Pink Floyd and Magma, and only the members of Magma appear on camera, but it seems like both were excited to make albums exclusively devoted to Arrakis and Giedi Prime (respectively). With a budget of 15 million and his pieces in place, Jodorowsky and Seydoux set off from Paris to Los Angeles to pitch the film. The end result, as many of you have guessed, is not a happy one for Alejandro Jodorowsky.

 The interesting thing that I found from Jodorowsky's Dune is that the studios were receptive to the books presented to them. They liked the concept, the execution, and found that the seemingly impossible requirements of visual effects had logical workarounds. The only sticking point was that they didn't want the man who put it all together: Alejandro Jodorowsky. There are a number of suggestions bandied about as to why they simply refused to make the picture with him as a director, but the end result is that his vision of Dune was never made because the studio system didn't trust the man who put all of this together to be able to make it a reality. The sense of heartbreak in Jodorowsky's voice, late in the film (he speaks in a combination of broken English and Spanish) is the hardest part. His frustration that they wouldn't even let him try to make Dune, and would instead let the rights lapse is palpable.

 Jodorowsky's Dune does touch on the aftermath, when the De Laurentiis Company bought the rights and David Lynch took over as the vision behind the film. Jodorowsky admits that he had no desire to see the film, and worse still, because he "admired David Lynch," he feared it might be even better than his vision. His sons convinced him to see Dune, ten years after he began work on his aborted project, and to his great relief, "it was awful!" Jodorowsky admits that this is "a human response, one that I am not proud of, but it was my response." He doesn't blame Lynch for the failure of the film, but rather the producers.

 The books remained with the studios, and the influence of his unrealized vision filtered into almost every science fiction film made after 1974. Many of the participants in the film not involved Dune's production - among them Nicolas Winding Refn (Pusher, Drive), Richard Stanley (Hardware), producer Gary Kurtz (Star Wars), and online writers Drew McWeeny and Devin Faraci - point out direct influences on Star Wars, Flash Gordon, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Masters of the Universe, and Contact. These are accompanied by storyboards and art which are hard to argue didn't come directly from the book, particularly Contact, in which Robert Zemeckis executes a reverse of Jodorowsky's planned opening: an unbroken, continuous shot through space which ends on Arrakis.

  More noticeable, particularly if you move past Star Wars, is the indispensable role Jodorowsky played (in absentia) in the creation of Alien. Following the collapse of Dune, O'Bannon returned to Los Angeles, dejected, and eventually wrote the screenplay for what became Alien with Ronald Shusett. When he met with Ridley Scott about the film, who did O'Bannon recommend to design the film? Chris Foss, Jean "Moebius" Giraud, and H.R. Giger, his fellow artists from Dune. It's also interesting, in a roundabout way, that Ridley Scott considered taking over the DeLaurentiis Dune after finishing Alien, but decided instead to adapt Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, leaving David Lynch - who had turned down Return of the Jedi - to step in. Jodorowsky's often unspoken influence on a generation of science fiction films finally gets its due, up on screens and not just in blogs and books.

 While it's clear that he can't bear the thought of trying again, Jodorowsky does express relief that most of the conceptual art found its way into the world through his collaboration with Moebius in graphic novels. Moreover, he hopes that after his death someone will take the book and create an animated film of his Dune. If the semi-animated versions of Foss' paintings (kind of like The Kid Stays in the Picture) are any indication, it would be a welcome substitute to look forward to.

 It is still hard to imagine that Alejandro Jodorowsky's mad plan could have translated to film, although I'd love to have seen his try. He only made three films after Dune's collapse - Tusk, Santa Sangre, and The Rainbow Thief (I've only seen Santa Sangre) - but being involved in Pavich's documentary led Jodorowsky and Seydoux to reconnect, and together they made The Dance of Reality last year. I hadn't heard of it until Jodorowsky's Dune, but it's described as a "metaphorical, poetical" autobiography, so I plan to seek it out in the near future. In the meantime, I highly recommend Jodorowsky's Dune, both to people who have been aware of the story and to people wondering what we were all so excited about. This review only really scratches the surface of what's covered in the film - I left out almost all of Jodorowsky's best stories - so don't worry that you'll already know everything going in. Just sit back and enjoy what might have been.

Shocktober Book Review Revisited: Shock Value

Since we're officially into Shocktober now, the grand month of Horror Fest(s), I thought I'd kick things off with one of Cap'n Howdy's rare book reviews. Today I'm looking at Shock Value: How a Few Eccentric Outsiders Gave Us Nightmares, Conquered Hollywood, and and Invented Modern Horror by Jason Zinoman. It explores the period between Rosemary's Baby and Halloween, when outsiders made a huge impact on the way audiences experienced horror films, revitalizing the genre and ushering in a new era we're still feeling the effects of today.

 When Shock Value appeared on my radar, the only concern I had was that this might be old hat for the Cap'n. I'm a big fan of that particular era of horror, and have been soaking up books, interviews, and DVD extras about The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Last House on the Left, Halloween, Alien, and Night of the Living Dead for years. I'm always interested in more analysis, but I had trepidations that Shock Value might bear no new fruit for a horror fanatic. Fortunately, I was well off base.

 Almost immediately Zinoman surprised me with a story in the Rosemary's Baby chapter, about a Vincent Price appearance on the Mike Douglas show where the horror icon was unable to defend the genre that made him famous (or, perhaps, was not interested in defending horror) from attacks by Dr. Fredric Wertham, the same man who killed EC Comics in the 1950s. I must admit that I had never heard of the debate, or of its impact in the transition from Old Horror to New Horror. Zinoman's coverage of the development of Rosemary's Baby also provides a nice counterpoint to the what Robert Evans presents in The Kid Stays in the Picture, his memoirs of developing pictures for Paramount.

 Shock Value is filled with surprising moments, including the aborted collaboration between John Carpenter and Tobe Hooper that eventually morphed into Halloween. I was particularly fond of the reactions the major figures in New Horror had to each others' work: for years, I suppose I considered Brian De Palma and Alfred Hitchcock to be mutually exclusive - that one simply mimicked the other, so it was (rightly or wrongly on my part) revelatory to hear that the Master had seen De Palma films before he passed (and didn't like them, to wit). Dan O'Bannon's fall out with John Carpenter after Dark Star produces a great deal of animosity on the former's part, especially to the success of Halloween. Sean Cunningham's reaction to Carpenter's slasher film is classic, and the way that Rosemary's Baby formed what The Exorcist became to William Peter Blatty and William Friedkin (along with the extended explanation of how the "Version You've Never Seen" came to be) were all stories I thought I knew well, but Zinoman finds a way to bring a fresh perspective.

 Speaking of Halloween, I'm a little curious about the construction of Zinoman's analysis of the film. Generally speaking, what successfully separated New Horror from Old Horror is the ambiguity of motive from the villains, a reflection of the uncertainty of America during and immediately after the Vietnam War. It's not that element that bothers me, but the way Zinoman frames Halloween - a success in spite of its "sloppy" mistakes. One or two of his assertions sent me back to the film, particularly the breakdown of Carpenter's opening sequence. For some reason, Zinoman chooses to fixate on the perspective shot of Michael Meyer's knife when he's stabbing his sister (a choice that identifies the audience and director's interest rather than the character). However, Zinoman treats this paragraph as though it's the first time we've seen the knife in the film. That wasn't how I remembered it, so I checked, and sure enough...

 The audience is already aware that the (to that point unseen killer) is carrying a knife, and we know what to expect when Michael arrives and his sister recognizes him. The shock of the murder is on her part, not the audiences. Zinoman's point is well made, but it's a sloppy mistake in a critique of "sloppy" moments in Halloween.

 My only other issue with Shock Value is that Zinoman echoes the central thesis of Peter Biskind's Easy Riders, Raging Bulls at the end of the book. He arrives at the conclusion that the seminal voices of New Horror peaked in their early years, and have struggled to match, let alone surpass, their original masterpieces. Like Biskind, Zinoman highlights the struggles of many of the creative forces to move forward with any success (highlighting the failure of Romero's projects between Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead, or O'Bannon's reputation as an intrusive curmudgeon kept him unable to parlay his involvement with Alien to anything until Return of the Living Dead. The controversy surrounding Tobe Hooper and Poltergeist isn't glossed over, either). Wes Craven is given the Scorsese-like pass of the "exception to the rule" because of the Scream series re-invigoration of horror in the late nineties (although A Nightmare on Elm Street is given a lukewarm reaction for its innovative first film and watered down sequels)..

 I take umbrage with this in part because I disagree with the premise of Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, and Zinoman mostly chooses to ignore the fact that John Carpenter had varying degrees of success in and out of horror through Vampires, not limited to The Fog, Christine, or In the Mouth of Madness. He scarcely "topped out" after Halloween and The Thing with an immediate (or even steady) decline attributed to Hooper and Cunningham and Romero. It makes me wonder whether the curious exclusion of Sam Raimi (save for a brief mention of The Evil Dead director during the "end of Horror's New Wave" portion of the epilogue), and the cursory inclusion of David Lynch and David Cronenberg during O'Bannon's "body horror" chapter.

 Overall, Shock Value has more than enough going for it that I'm willing to overlook minor quibbles like the Halloween analysis or the ambivalent closing. I was initially concerned that the book might be a retread of stories I'd heard in other documentaries (or from the directors / writers / producers themselves in other books), but you'll be pleasantly surprised by the more obscure anecdotes and the depth of insight into some of the heavily covered entries. Horror aficionados shouldn't hesitate to pick up Shock Value, even if you're positive you know what you'll find inside.

Summer Fest 5 (Day One): Lifeforce

 There's no excuse for Lifeforce to be as tedious as it is; there's simply too much talent involved behind the camera to explain how something with such a "can't miss" premise could be this, pun intended, lifeless. If, in 1985, I told you that the director of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was teaming up with the writer of Alien to make a movie about Space Vampires who create a zombie-like plague in London while Haley's Comet passes over, and oh by the way the lead vampire is played by Mathilda May, who spends 90% of her time on-screen in the nude, you'd already be buying tickets.

 And that's before the icing on the cake that John Dykstra (Star Wars) would be handling visual effects and Henry Mancini (The Pink Panther) would write the score. This is an assemblage of talent rarely seen for a movie about naked space vampires, dammit! Add to the equation a small role by Patrick Stewart, two years out from Star Trek: The Next Generation but already having appeared in Dune and Excalibur. I guess some people might have known Steve Railsback from Helter Skelter or The Stunt Man (he'll always be Duane Barry, the man who kidnapped Dana Scully on The X-Files).

 Yet, Lifeforce is a mostly inert handling of pulp sci-fi / horror that spends entirely too much time as a procedural instead of delivering on its schlock-y premise. After a promising opening in space - where an British-American shuttle Churchill discovers a derelict spacecraft hidden in the tail of Haley's Comet - and an ambiguous flash-forward to the now abandoned ship returning to Earth, we're expecting some fun. The astronauts find a ship filled with giant bat-like creatures, and then what appear to be three coffins: two with what appear to be perfectly preserved men and another with a woman (May), all nude and on display for the mostly male crew to ogle.

 When the coffins are discovered to be intact in the otherwise burnt-out Churchill, they are returned to the European Space Research Centre and an effort is made to conduct an autopsy on the female. She awakens, and with vampiric powers, draws the "life force" out of a guard (visualized as electricity rather than blood), leaving him a quasi-mummified zombie (if it helps, think of the zombies in Night of the Creeps). She then walks out of the facility, despite the better (?) efforts of security, and is free to venture into the English countryside, cavorting nakedly.

 (That last part I simply have to assume since we don't see her again for quite a while).

 I suspect that it's this first part which is remembered by every guy who was once thirteen years old and saw Lifeforce on Cinemax or something to that effect. Not to be crude, but I can't blame them for being "finished" after May wanders off into the night, so they didn't stick around for the long, often tedious parts in between when she returns in dream sequences or at the very end.

 For most of the movie, we're unraveling the mystery of "where she went" and "what does she want" with Col. Colin Caine (Peter Firth) and the only survivor of the Churchill, Colonel tom Carsen (Railsback), who knows what really happened to the crew and why the ship immolated. That information is doled out at a glacial pace, including a flashback that is then altered with the "real" flashback of what happened, at which point we really don't care anymore.

 The only important part of Carlsen tagging along is that he shares a psychic link with the vampire and can "sense" her when she takes over the bodies of other people. This leads to interrogations of possible "victims" where Carlsen shakes them and demands that she gets "out of my head!," and, in what may be the highlight of the film's drawn out mid-section, when he nearly locks lips with Patrick Stewart's Dr. Armstrong. (Stewart indicated, by the way, that his was his first on-screen kiss)

 Unfortunately, by the time we get to London overrun by zombie-vampire things and more all-nude encounters with May (one time comprised of blood and the other in a church basement), the damage has been done. People have fallen asleep on the couch and the Cap'n is just barely staying awake, mostly out of a "dammit, if nobody else will, I'll finish this damned thing!"

 I suppose you could say that Hooper was past his prime (there are the continued arguments about whether he really directed Poltergeist or not) but I would point out that Dan O'Bannon, who in addition to writing the screenplay for Alien also wrote and directed Return of the Living Dead the very same year Lifeforce came out. Return of the Living Dead is exactly the kind of movie that Lifeforce should have been, in terms of embracing its B-movie roots, if not necessarily tonally. Lifeforce doesn't need to be parodic, per se, but it damn well would have benefited from embracing a pulpier tone. I haven't read Colin Wilson's The Space Vampires, but it appears that O'Bannon and co-writer Don Jakoby (Arachnophobia, Blue Thunder) augmented some of the more outlandish elements in adapting the novel.

 The end result seems to be a film that wants to be serious but also feels the need to have a 20-year-old ballerina wandering around without clothes for as long as possible. And sometimes shoot electricity out of her crotch. Somehow the two sides of Lifeforce's ambitions never join to make a cohesive whole. Instead, we're left with a movie designed to appeal to young men that runs out of steam, stumbles along for another hour, and then reaches a hastily cobbled together apocalyptic climax, with some unintentional hilarity in the meantime.

 Luckily, things could only go up from Lifeforce... right? Stay tuned for Saturday's coverage, beginning with Prisoners of the Lost Universe. Surely that's an improvement...

Blogorium Quick Hits: More Brains and Swallowed Souls

 Over the weekend I finally caught up on some horror documentaries, specifically More Brains: A Return to the Living Dead and Swallowed Souls: The Making of Evil Dead 2. The former you might have heard of; the latter is more incentive to pick up Lionsgate's 25th Anniversary Edition of Sam Raimi's splatter classic.

 Dan O'Bannon fans will be elated and disappointed while watching More Brains - the film reunites most of the surviving cast and crew members (including the special effects artist fired halfway through the film), but until the very end, O'Bannon - who passed in 2009 - is absent from the oral history of Return of the Living Dead. There's a lot of talking about O'Bannon, often in conflicting narratives (he was too demanding, too aloof; he was easy to work with and open to suggestions), but only in the closing moments does the writer / director have a chance to speak to the film's cult status. In what was his final interview, O'Bannon is candid about the audience embrace of the film and its legacy, and makes a knowing comment about "if I die tomorrow" before the film goes to credits.

 The story of the making of Return of the Living Dead from John Russo (producer / writer of Night of the Living Dead)'s original pitch to the decision of Hemdale Films to hire Dan O'Bannon to write and direct the film as a horror comedy, from casting to premieres, is an affair filled with gossip, contradictory stories, and debates about whether Clu Gulager really threw a can at the director in a fit of rage. I'm tempted to share anecdotes from the cast, or to mention the ongoing bad blood between the production designer (William Stout) and first make-up effects (William Munns) over the inadequate zombie masks and "headless zombie" appliance. The memories are sometimes contentious, sometimes defensive, but always entertaining. More Brains: A Return to the Living Dead is well worth the time of fans of Return of the Living Dead.

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 Meanwhile, I'd like to thank a video store in the mall that will go unnamed until later this week for erroneously placing two copies of the 25th Anniversary Blu-Ray of Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn the weekend before the disc is actually released (it comes out tomorrow). I've bemoaned the endless re-releasing of Sam Raimi's Evil Dead films on DVD before, and we're seeing the first instance of "double-dipping" in high definition for the trilogy. As Anchor Bay closes (or whatever is going on with Anchor Bay) and their catalog is divvied up by Image Entertainment and Lionsgate, we're likely to see another release of The Evil Dead before long, and I find it hard to believe that Universal's underwhelming "Screwhead Edition" of Army of Darkness is the be-all-end-all of HD releases.

 But for now, let's look at the Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn 25th Anniversary double-dip. As a sucker for supplements, I must admit the list of extras seemed very promising - collections of featurette's about the casing, effects, conception, direction, and filming. When I put the disc in, I didn't realize that all of these individually listed extras were part of one 98 minute documentary, Swallowed Souls. It's reminiscent of segments of Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy, and is broken into chapters complete with claymation vignettes to bridge them.

 Like More Brains, the primary element lacking in Swallowed Souls is the presence of Sam Raimi. It's not as though his presence isn't felt, because the "making of" footage shot by Greg Nicotero features young Sam Raimi in abundance, but he's noticeably absent from the proceedings. On the other hand, the doc features an abundance of newly shot interviews with Bruce Campbell, who speaks candidly about Evil Dead 2 and shares stories I don't think I've heard anywhere, including in If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor. Swallowed Souls also prominently features the rest of the leads of Evil Dead 2: Sarah Berry (Annie), Dan Hicks (Jake), Kassie Wesley (Bobbi Joe), Richard Dormeier (Ed) and Ted Raimi (Possessed Henrietta). Hearing their perspective on making the film is in and of itself a treat - many of them had no idea what they were in for.

 The entire makeup effects team, including Mark Shostrom (From Beyond, A Nightmare one Elm Street Part 2) and the first time in years that I've seen all three members of KNB (Robert Kurtzman, Greg Nicotero, and Howard Berger) on camera talking about a project they worked on together*. Their camcorder footage, which documents the conception of Evil Dead 2's effects all the way through the film's production, are a treasure trove of unseen footage from Wadesboro, North Carolina in 1986. They gleefully exploit their creations and play around with camera tricks, mimicking Raimi's "evil force" camera shots.

 So here's where it gets tough - do you want to drop another $14 for Evil Dead 2 to see an admittedly great "making of" documentary? If you still have the Anchor Bay disc, you'll notice that The Gore the Merrier is still included, the commentary is still included, and I'm not sure that the picture is that much different. The price is fair so if you don't already have Evil Dead 2 on Blu-Ray this is a no-brainer, but wary double dippers are going to have to ask themselves if the making of justifies buying the film again. I will say that if it were released on its own, Swallowed Souls would be worth picking up in the same way as Halloween: 25 Years of Terror or His Name was Jason are. Evil Dead fans, prepare yourselves for the impending moral quandary. I don't regret it, but I also have the added bonus of picking the disc up early...


 * Since Kurtzman moved on to create his own production company, it's common just to see Nicotero and Berger appearing in "making of" documentaries that KNB did makeup effects for.

In Progress (a euphemism for Slacking)

 Hey gang! How about I tell you about things I'm currently in progress as a way to divert attention from the fact that I don't have anything done yet*? Sound good**?

 The Cap'n has begun reading Nerd Do Well by Simon Pegg, which is to this point very entertaining. When I finish the sort-of memoirs interspersed with passages from a fictionalized (?) version of Pegg's life away from the silver screen, I'll give you cats and kittens a review. Since I only have time to read it at night (before bed), this might take a little while, but it worked for Shock Value, so I think it'll be sooner rather than later.

 Last night I was doing some laundry and was finally able to put on More Brains: A Return to the Living Dead, which is a "warts and all" documentary about the making of Dan O'Bannon's Return of the Living Dead. I only watched forty or so minutes, but the film doesn't sugarcoat anything so far. It's both informative and funny, which doesn't always work but in this instance is exactly the tone to strike when covering Return of the Living Dead. I'm hoping to finish that up sometime this weekend for a proper review, but so far it's pretty engrossing. Stupid needing to sleep.

 Let's see, what other plates am I trying to keep spinning? Well, spine numbers are 50% off again at Barnes and Noble, so I'm really going to have to mull over those copies of The Battle of Algiers, The Complete Jean Vigo, 3 Women, Orpheus, Cul-De-Sac, High and Low, If..., Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and, um, Salo. Because I'm in such a hurry to watch Salo on Blu Ray. And you're so ready for that review, I know.

 Professor Murder will also be in town this weekend. That's almost always a call for some strange movie in theatres, so against the prevailing wisdom of reviews, I might end up seeing The Thing. Or something much worse. He did miss out on Horror Fest, and we have to rectify this, you see.

 As a small addendum to that, would people please stop referring to John Carpenter's The Thing as "the original"? You do know that John Carpenter's The Thing is a remake of The Thing from Another World, right? Oh no? You do now.



* In my defense, my work schedule makes it very difficult to do much of anything when it comes to watching movies, and it's only been getting busier because of two words: Annual Enrollment. Last weekend was by far the most movie watching I've done since the beginning of September.
** There are actually no other options, so I hope so.

Blogorium Book Review: Shock Value

  Since we're officially into Shocktober now, the grand month of Horror Fest(s), I thought I'd kick things off with one of Cap'n Howdy's rare book reviews. Today I'm looking at Shock Value: How a Few Eccentric Outsiders Gave Us Nightmares, Conquered Hollywood, and and Invented Modern Horror by Jason Zinoman. It explores the period between Rosemary's Baby and Halloween, when outsiders made a huge impact on the way audiences experienced horror films, revitalizing the genre and ushering in a new era we're still feeling the effects of today.

 When Shock Value appeared on my radar, the only concern I had was that this might be old hat for the Cap'n. I'm a big fan of that particular era of horror, and have been soaking up books, interviews, and DVD extras about The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Last House on the Left, Halloween, Alien, and Night of the Living Dead for years. I'm always interested in more analysis, but I had trepidations that Shock Value might bear no new fruit for a horror fanatic. Fortunately, I was well off base.

 Almost immediately Zinoman surprised me with a story in the Rosemary's Baby chapter, about a Vincent Price appearance on the Mike Douglas show where the horror icon was unable to defend the genre that made him famous (or, perhaps, was not interested in defending horror) from attacks by Dr. Fredric Wertham, the same man who killed EC Comics in the 1950s. I must admit that I had never heard of the debate, or of its impact in the transition from Old Horror to New Horror. Zinoman's coverage of the development of Rosemary's Baby also provides a nice counterpoint to the what Robert Evans presents in The Kid Stays in the Picture, his memoirs of developing pictures for Paramount.

 Shock Value is filled with surprising moments, including the aborted collaboration between John Carpenter and Tobe Hooper that eventually morphed into Halloween. I was particularly fond of the reactions the major figures in New Horror had to each others' work: for years, I suppose I considered Brian De Palma and Alfred Hitchcock to be mutually exclusive - that one simply mimicked the other, so it was (rightly or wrongly on my part) revelatory to hear that the Master had seen De Palma films before he passed (and didn't like them, to wit). Dan O'Bannon's fall out with John Carpenter after Dark Star produces a great deal of animosity on the former's part, especially to the success of Halloween. Sean Cunningham's reaction to Carpenter's slasher film is classic, and the way that Rosemary's Baby formed what The Exorcist became to William Peter Blatty and William Friedkin (along with the extended explanation of how the "Version You've Never Seen" came to be) were all stories I thought I knew well, but Zinoman finds a way to bring a fresh perspective.

 Speaking of Halloween, I'm a little curious about the construction of Zinoman's analysis of the film. Generally speaking, what successfully separated New Horror from Old Horror is the ambiguity of motive from the villains, a reflection of the uncertainty of America during and immediately after the Vietnam War. It's not that element that bothers me, but the way Zinoman frames Halloween - a success in spite of its "sloppy" mistakes. One or two of his assertions sent me back to the film, particularly the breakdown of Carpenter's opening sequence. For some reason, Zinoman chooses to fixate on the perspective shot of Michael Meyer's knife when he's stabbing his sister (a choice that identifies the audience and director's interest rather than the character). However, Zinoman treats this paragraph as though it's the first time we've seen the knife in the film. That wasn't how I remembered it, so I checked, and sure enough...

 The audience is already aware that the (to that point unseen killer) is carrying a knife, and we know what to expect when Michael arrives and his sister recognizes him. The shock of the murder is on her part, not the audiences. Zinoman's point is well made, but it's a sloppy mistake in a critique of "sloppy" moments in Halloween.

 My only other issue with Shock Value is that Zinoman echoes the central thesis of Peter Biskind's Easy Riders, Raging Bulls at the end of the book. He arrives at the conclusion that the seminal voices of New Horror peaked in their early years, and have struggled to match, let alone surpass, their original masterpieces. Like Biskind, Zinoman highlights the struggles of many of the creative forces to move forward with any success (highlighting the failure of Romero's projects between Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead, or O'Bannon's reputation as an intrusive curmudgeon kept him unable to parlay his involvement with Alien to anything until Return of the Living Dead. The controversy surrounding Tobe Hooper and Poltergeist isn't glossed over, either). Wes Craven is given the Scorsese-like pass of the "exception to the rule" because of the Scream series re-invigoration of horror in the late nineties (although A Nightmare on Elm Street is given a lukewarm reaction for its innovative first film and watered down sequels)..

 I take umbrage with this in part because I disagree with the premise of Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, and Zinoman mostly chooses to ignore the fact that John Carpenter had varying degrees of success in and out of horror through Vampires, not limited to The Fog, Christine, or In the Mouth of Madness. He scarcely "topped out" after Halloween and The Thing with an immediate (or even steady) decline attributed to Hooper and Cunningham and Romero. It makes me wonder whether the curious exclusion of Sam Raimi (save for a brief mention of The Evil Dead director during the "end of Horror's New Wave" portion of the epilogue), and the cursory inclusion of David Lynch and David Cronenberg during O'Bannon's "body horror" chapter.

 Overall, Shock Value has more than enough going for it that I'm willing to overlook minor quibbles like the Halloween analysis or the ambivalent closing. I was initially concerned that the book might be a retread of stories I'd heard in other documentaries (or from the directors / writers / producers themselves in other books), but you'll be pleasantly surprised by the more obscure anecdotes and the depth of insight into some of the heavily covered entries. Horror aficionados shouldn't hesitate to pick up Shock Value, even if you're positive you know what you'll find inside.

Summer Fest Supplemental: Fangoria's Weekend of Horrors

 I thought I'd start our virtual version of Summer Fest with a love letter of sorts to horror film. Many of you may not know this, but 2011 marks the 25th anniversary of the VHS release of Fangoria's Weekend of Horrors, a sixty minute documentary about the first ever Fangoria convention. Held in 1985, the first Weekend of Horrors was a gathering point in Los Angeles for horror enthusiasts, short film makers, and aspiring make up effects artists. Unlike UnConventional, a film I reviewed last year, the Weekend of Horrors doesn't feel sleazy or exploitative, despite promoting Fangoria throughout (it's co-director, Kerry O'Quinn, is actually the creator of Fangoria, along with Starlog).

 Compared to 2004's Unconventional, Weekend of Horrors feels relatively quaint: the enthusiasm of the fans is infectious, with many effusively gushing about their favorite monsters and why they're attracted to horror films. While there are merchandise tables - the site of a surprise appearance by Star Trek's Walter Koenig, wandering around the convention with his son - most of the tables that appear in the film are designed to showcase amateur makeup, monster, and effects work by fans of the genre.


 Like UnConventional, there is also an auction and a costume contest, but the costumes are all homemade and shall we say, less slutty. Instead of auctioning off Tiffany Shepis' underwear, the Fangoria fans bid on a shooting script for John Carpenter's Halloween, and judging by how little other items were going for, I'd be willing to bet someone went home with it on less than twenty dollars.

The main attraction of Fangoria's Weekend of Horrors is the guests of the convention, who range from Wes Craven and Robert Englund (there to support A Nightmare on Elm Street and the Craven-less Part 2: Freddy's Revenge) to a beardless Rick Baker, who brought along some ape effects from Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan. Tom Savini appears briefly during a montage; Elvira answers questions from the audience (Attack of the Killer Tomatoes was apparently the worst Movie Macabre film she ever aired); John Carl Buechler does a Q&A for Troll; Steve Miner and William Katt talk about House; Dan O'Bannon talks about Return of the Living Dead; Tobe Hooper appears to talk a bit about his films but also to preside over the Cinemagic Short Film Search Festival, where fans are awarded for their 8 and 16mm films.

With a magazine like Fangoria behind the event, it's no surprise that the emphasis is on special effects makeup, and many of the montages are devoted to masks from films like Friday the 13th and Creepshow (as well as a certain monster Tales from the Darkside fans will recognize immediately). Makeup effects artist Craig Reardon (Altered States, Poltergeist) gives People Magazine reporter Tony Lawrence a quick monster makeover in time for the costume contest. Special attention should also be given to Nora Salisbury, a fan who made her own Freddy Kreuger costume (with full head piece and glove) that's pretty impressive.

 For a sixty minute film, Weekend of Horrors does at time lean too heavily on scenes from films mentioned by guests (I still don't understand why the entire trailer for The Toxic Avenger needs to be there) and it takes a curious detour into promotional territory when Tobe Hooper finishes with the short film competition and begins talking about his remake of Invaders from Mars. There's a lengthy section devoted to behind the scenes footage, which does admittedly find a way to include Stan Winston in the film, but it's a jarring shift in the movie that sticks out when O'Quinn and Mike Hadley cut back to Dick Miller. Why this breaks up the previous montage, which includes interviews with Clu Gulager (Return of the Living Dead, Feast), producer Alex Gordon (Voodoo Woman, The Atomic Submarine), and composer Albert Glasser (The Cyclops, The Amazing Colossal Man), who talk, in part, about Roger Corman, is unclear.

 There's a bit of a "home movie" feel to Fangoria's Weekend of Horrors, but in a good way; it feels like a tape made to share the good time had by people there instead of a document of the lurid side of horror conventions (okay, I'll stop beating up on UnConventional), and I have to say it sure seemed like a great place to be in the summer(?) of 1985. People came from all around the country to share their enthusiasm for horror films, to show off what they could do, and to meet their heroes. I give O'Quinn and Hadley a lot of credit for conveying that sense of joy in such a concise package, and this is a great kick-off to Summer Fest!

 I'll be back a little bit later with a review of Quarantine 2: Terminal. Until then, stay scared!