29 – A Puzzling Development (Hellraiser)

The man stares at you for a long time, his eyes piercing in their intensity. Then, turning his attention once more to the prone figure before him he lowers his head. A loud, sucking, squelching noise fills your ears and you see rivulets of gore flowing up and onto the man’s body, reforming sinew and tendon, muscle and fat.

The sight is appalling, a hideous un-melting of a human body but you cannot look away, transfixed like the deer in the headlights.

A bell tolls. The reforming man looks up. An eerie blue light flickers through the trees.

No! Not yet, I cannot go back. His rasping voice cries through his still lipless mouth.

Staggering to his feet the cadaver of a man looks once more in your direction before loping off into the trees away from the pulsing blue light. The bell tolls again, this time in the direction the man left, the light too shifts in pursuit.

You don’t know how much time has passed but eventually you can no longer hear the bell, or see the light. All about you those who can are standing, helping those who cannot and weeping over those who never will. You turn to Donald and find him flat on his back, eyes closed. Fearing the worst you grasp him by the shoulder and shake him. A rattling cough emerges from his dust caked mouth and rubbing his eyes he looks up at you.

What happened?

You describe to him what you saw, the explosion, the reformed man, the blue light, none of it draws any flicker of recognition from the physician.

A puzzle indeed…

Looks like I get to review another of my all time favourites, spoiler alert. A film from acclaimed British Author and Director Clive Barker, the man whom Stephen King called the future of horror. If you are aware of Barker’s work it tends to be strong on the body horror with a generous amount of perversion. His Books of Blood series of short stories are a favourite of mine, today’s film being based on one of Barker’s slightly longer tales, the novella The Hellbound Heart.

Jesus wept. It’s Clive Barker’s 1987 directorial debut, Hellraiser.

This is one of those films that’s mentioned in the same breath as…well ok maybe a couple of breaths after…the likes of Halloween, Friday the 13^th and A Nightmare on Elm Street. It’s a household name, though probably more so if we return to the 80s and 90s, and certainly here in Britain.

The plot of Hellraiser is fairly unique. A man, Frank, acquires a mysterious puzzle box. An ornately patterned cube which gives access to a hellish realm of pleasure and pain. Sometime later Frank’s brother and his family move into Frank’s now deserted house, only it isn’t really deserted and soon Frank is vying to return from his torment at the hands of those unleashed by the box, by any means necessary.

The late 80’s was a time when many of the big horror franchises were becoming a little tired or at the very least had reached their peak. A Nightmare on Elm Street had just had it’s 3^rd entry and arguably it’s last great one, the entries would become sillier and sillier from here, at least until Mr Craven re-took the helm with The New Nightmare. Friday the 13^th had pumped out 6 films. Halloween had taken a hiatus but was about to embark on the, unofficially named, ‘Thorn’ trilogy and it would be tough to call any of those classics, well ok, 4 maybe…maybe.

Another trend at this point was for horror films to lose a bit of that grit that we saw in the late 70s to mid 80s. Studios were trying to appeal to the widest audience possible and we had to look to new projects rather than sequels to find films which put the horror back. Hellraiser is one such film.

In a world of wisecracks and one liners Hellraiser wasn’t afraid to tear our souls apart…ok fine so that IS a one liner, but it’s badass ok!

The violence and gore, though pretty over the top at times, also feels visceral and mean. Whether it’s Rats nailed to a wall, a beating with a hammer or hooks tearing into flesh. Hellraiser does not pull any punches in this regard.

On a sidenote, I do tend to feel that British horror in general tends towards a darker, grittier tone, even when it’s being a bit sillier, it always has an edge to it. I wonder though if this is just, being British myself, that I can relate more, especially when the settings and characters are also British. Anyway I’ve typed the word British too many times now and it feels like I’m going to accidentally summon Winston Churchill or something. Back to Hellraiser.

Is Hellraiser a scary film? Disturbing, grotesque, ominous, gritty but probably not scary. The circumstances behind the situation are too specific for you to feel you’d ever be in the same boat, though to be fair that’s the case in a lot of horror films. I don’t personally find that I have any issue watching this alone at night, perhaps I’m desensitised but there’s certainly films out there that do scare me, though this isn’t one of them. You may feel differently.

The real standouts in this film for me are the creature designs. The Cenobites, the aforementioned beings unleashed by the box, are iconic. Show anybody a picture of the unofficially named ‘Pinhead’ and they will likely recognise him, but his cohorts are equally fascinating and repulsive to look at. Each is unique and each is terrifying in their own way. Unsettling is the word, much of what we see in this film is unsettling. A sticky gloss of perversion coats everything we see from this other realm and seeps onto everything it touches.

The box itself, the Lament Configuration is a masterpiece of design. The intricately embellished cube moves and reconfigures itself at the user’s touch, forming itself into different shapes in a beautifully mechanical, practical way. I even have a replica proudly displayed in my living room. It’s a beautiful piece, elegant and subtle…and hopefully inert.

The only ‘pure’ aspect of this film is Frank’s niece Kirsty, the heroine of the movie who fights against both Frank and the Cenobites. Played by Ashley Laurence she does a fine job but doesn’t stand out as overall the acting in the film is…believable I would say. If anybody is going above and beyond it’s Clare Higgins as Julia, Frank’s Sister-in-Law, one time lover and now accomplice. She switches between cold and detached to passionate yet terrified, she always seems to have an undercurrent of fear about her which puts you on edge whenever she is on screen.

Also shout out to Doug Bradley as the Lead Cenobite or Pinhead as he’s often known. A true icon of the horror scene. He doesn’t really have a lot to do in this film but what he does do is delivered with gravitas. It would have been easy for the Cenobites to come across as cheesy villains but the calm, ominous tones employed imbue them with a cold intelligence which makes them truly threatening.

If I do have anything bad to say about the film it’s probably that it all gets a but rushed and weird at the very end. A lot happens and I feel that a simpler ending, specifically cutting out the very end scene, though cool, would have suited the film better. It’s only a minor gripe though.

So as usual I’ve found myself furiously debating between 2 scores. Is it a perfect film? Well no, not perfect, but there are very few films I would describe as that. A 5 for me doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to stand out, to be that film which I point to and say “Love that film!” so with that in mind I’m giving Hellraiser 5 exposed nails out of 5. Maybe ask me on a different day and I’d give it a 4…maybe. This film was a breath of fresh yet perverse air to a genre well on it’s way to a period of toned down mass produced horror fare.

**WARNING** SPOILERS BELOW **WARNING**

Welcome to the spoiler section. This is the part where I can bring up some specific parts of the film which I’d like to talk about more, whether they be good, or bad.

I have to mention, and this is often the case for me, a part of the film which most stood out to me was something relatively minor, but oh so much more relatable. You probably know what this is already from my scoring system, but there’s a scene where Frank’s brother Larry, and some tradesmen, are moving some furniture up some stairs. We see that there’s an exposed nail sticking out of the banister, we see Larry’s hand unknowingly getting closer and closer till the nail gouges a bloody furrow into the back of his hand. It makes me wince every time! I struggle far more with something like that than hooks tearing someone to pieces.

I discussed the Cenobites earlier in the review when talking about creature design but who can forget the absolute horror that chases Kirsty down the corridor which opens in her hospital room. According to sources it’s known as The Engineer but in the film we have no idea what it is, only that we need to get the fuck away from it. It’s hard to describe but it almost looks like a dangling phallus with a creepy face, arms and a stinger like tail. I just love how disturbing it looks.

Another fantastic bit of effects work is where Frank is reforming having been revived by his brother’s blood dripping on the attic floorboards. The use of reverse photography and puppetry here is The Thing levels of practical effects, it’s an absolute masterpiece. It savours the scene as well as we slowly see Frank’s brain and bones emerge from a gooey mess to form the beginnings of a man.

Anyway, look at me chattering away, goodbye for now…

28 – Resurrection (The Mummy)

As the woman begins to speak, a wind begins to whip about the crowd. There are a few murmurs and the narrator’s voice falters slightly, but she continues.

The last word of the sentence is spoken, the wind dies, the murmurs cease…

The stage explodes. Splinters of wood whip past your face and those nearest the front are thrown to the floor, the narrator lays slumped at the foot of a tree several feet from the remains of the stage.

As the dust kicked up by the detonation begins to clear, an arm reaches up out of the pile of blasted wood. The arm is ragged, all sinew and bone. Tatters of cloth are wrapped about it in places and you feel your heart begin to race.

Could it be? Is this the creature from the cinema? No…it’s different…similar yes…but different.

Slowly, ever so slowly, the figure of a man pulls himself out of the wreckage. The head is more skull than anything else, the empty eye sockets, horrid pits.

Groping about, the man…the thing…finds the still breathing body of one of the unfortunate people who had stood in the front row. The grasping fingers find what they seek, there is a terrible scream.

The thing looks up. The sockets are no longer empty.

So here we are, my third review of a mummy film, perhaps the random number generator likes the mummy sub genre…or maybe it’s just that about 20 of the 300 or so candidates are mummy films…OK it’s me, I like mummies! The question is, do I like this mummy film?

Let’s find out, this time I’m reviewing what is probably the most watched film featuring the classic monster, it’s Stephen Sommer’s 1999 epic, The Mummy.

Let’s get something out of the way. Is this actually a horror film? Well, it’s primarily an action adventure, but the fact it contains a mummy and is essentially a reboot of Universal’s mummy franchise means that I’m quite happy including it. Also, it has some pretty horrific things which happen in it, this is not quite child friendly. From a certificate point of view this was an odd one as it was cut slightly to get a 12 in the cinema then the uncut home version was a 15.

So the premise of the film concerns various adventurers, treasure hunters and archaeologists searching for a lost city in the deserts of Egypt and encountering an ancient malevolent mummy. I referred to the film as an epic, and that’s just how it feels, it’s honestly more like an Indiana Jones film than anything else, the soaring music, the action, the quippy dialogue, the genuine creepy moments, it’s all there.

Our main trio of characters are Rick O’Connell (Brendan Fraser), American, former member of the French Foreign Legion. Evelyn Carnahan, a British Egyptologist (Rachel Weisz), and her brother Jonathan Carnahan (John Hannah)…who seems to be a bit of a playboy more than anything else.

The Chemistry between Brendan Fraser and and Rachel Weisz’s characters is fantastic. I know I mentioned it already but this is like the true 4^th Indy film, more so than The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull ever was. Arnold Vosloo plays the titular creature with gravitas, as with Universal’s original 1932 film, this mummy is no simple shambling brute but a powerful, intelligent being more akin to a sorcerer. Whilst we’re talking actors I can’t forget that this film has it’s moments of hilarity, most notably when Kevin J. O’Connor or Omid Djalili are on screen. Honestly the whole cast is fantastic.

The locations are equally good. Sweeping desert vistas, dark foreboding tombs, opulent villas and all set in 1920’s colonial Egypt. This is all enhanced further by Jerry Goldsmith’s grand musical score which puts you in mind of the epics of earlier decades, totally suited to scale of this film.

Even the CGI effects manage to stand the test of time and mostly hold up, even by today’s standards, at the time they looked incredible. If I had to be nit picky I’d say the lighting looks a little off when we are seeing the animated mummy for the first time, but honestly for 1999 I should just shut the hell up, especially if we look at the Scorpion King from this film’s sequel which reeeeeallly doesn’t hold up…maybe we’ll get to that sometime.

From a horror point of view, what’s here to justify that label? Well as I mentioned this is part of Universal’s horror legacy, with The Mummy being one of the original ‘Universal Monsters’. There are plenty of creepy parts to this film, far more than in the 1932 original. We see animated corpses, flesh eating bugs, and one poor character has parts of his body removed. Under the action and romance, this film doesn’t forget its horror roots.

Having said this the film can get pretty goofy at times. This can somewhat take the sense of danger away at times, we don’t really feel that any of our main group are going to die. Plenty of characters do die in the film, but it’s certainly not going to be a surprise. If the film lacks anything it’s subtlety. It’s grand, it’s dramatic, but it’s not clever.

So is it any good? The truth is, I’ve watched this film more times than most in my collection, it’s a film that I can watch over and over without getting bored, it’s a special film to me and is a big reason why I have a love for Mummies. Universal knew what they were doing with this reboot, but I’m giving The Mummy 4 scarabs out of 5. I did debate giving this a 5, my enjoyment of the film ultimately carries the most weight here, I absolutely love it…but it really isn’t a 5. You could argue that if it had that subtlety and a greater sense of true danger then maybe it would ultimately be less enjoyable. Perhaps…perhaps it’s difficult for a film like this to attain such heights, is it trying to be too many things? This is still a very good film and one I’ll no doubt watch again and again in the future.

**WARNING** SPOILERS BELOW **WARNING**

Welcome to the spoiler section. This is the part where I can bring up some specific parts of the film which I’d like to talk about more, whether they be good, or bad.

So I mentioned that the film has its creepy moments. For me the best of these is after the group we are following has survived their initial encounter with the resurrected mummy. They have returned to Cairo and one of the American trio who had his eyes and tongue removed by the mummy, which is already pretty nasty, is sat in a room with a mysterious masked figure and Beni. Beni tells him that Prince Imhotep thanks him for his hospitality…and his eyes…and his tongue… It’s a deliciously macabre way of revealing to the poor man that the figure before him, who he cannot even see, is the same mummy who took his body parts from him…and now more is needed. It’s the scenes like this which remind you of the film’s horror roots.

I could really pick any of the moments that O’Connell and Beni (Yes I know I used a surname and a first name but that’s how they’re generally referred to) are on screen together. The one me and my friend Josh seem to quote occasionally is just after the boat they are all travelling on has sunk and they wade to opposite shores of the river. The two of them are in a race to reach Hamunaptra, the hidden city of the dead, first. Beni looks across at O’Connell and shouts “Hey O’Connell, it looks to me like I’ve got all the horses!” and O’Connell quips back, “Hey Beni, looks to me like you’re on the wrong side of the river!” hey it doesn’t sound like much but once you’ve experienced the relationship these two have this scene is absolute gold.

Time to put this review to rest.

27 – Storytime (The Evil Dead)

Standing beside Donald on the village green you cast your eye about at the fantastical costumes people are wearing. The event feels similar to Halloween back home but only if everyone put 110% into their costumes and took things very seriously.

Mentioning this to Donald he smiles and explains.

The Festival of The Dead is a local tradition going back centuries, though it shares the costumes with Halloween we’ve kept our own festivities strictly traditional. Some of those costumes you see are passed down through the generations, you won’t find any shop bought examples here.

Every year we don these ancient outfits and this year’s narrator reads from The Book of The Dead. Every year a single sentence is read, no more, no less. Then we proceed through the woods in a great procession, each villager with a lantern and we sing to the dead so they know we haven’t forgotten them.

Ah see, this year’s narrator is stepping up.

A small wooden stage has been set up and you see a young woman open an ancient looking book. She runs a finger down the page, pauses briefly and then begins to speak.

Wow, we’re 3 for 3 with big names, though today’s is not as known outside of the horror scene as Halloween is and is not as historically significant as Nosferatu it did however spawn its own franchise and helped launch the career of a director probably best known by ‘the man on the street’ for directing the Tobey Maguire Spiderman films, Sam Raimi.

You know what it is, today we review 1981’s The Evil Dead.

The Evil Dead follows five friends who are visiting a remote cabin in the woods of Tennessee. The place is fairly run down looking and full of hunting trophies and the usual old fashioned country style furniture. Later they find the cabin has a basement full of unusual items, including a disturbing book and accompanying audio notes by an archaeologist who had been studying it. Soon all Hell breaks loose and they’re fighting for their lives.

My own experience with The Evil Dead was watching it on DVD while at University. At the time I was picking up films which I’d heard (According to the blurb on the boxes at least) were controversial or extreme, at least by the standards of the day. This one I’d even heard of already so it was an easy choice.

Slight spoiler for my overall feelings but I was not disappointed. The Evil Dead really has everything you could be looking for from a film like this…well almost everything.

Firstly let’s get my negative feelings out of the way because I really do want to mostly be praising this film. The acting and characterisation is where the film suffers I feel. Perhaps it’s because of watching the later two films of the original trilogy but the mighty Bruce Campbell, who plays Ash, in particular feels very odd, like he’s just woken up and needs his morning coffee, he barely reacts to a lot of the crazy stuff that’s happening around him, at least until the finale where he does get more involved. Maybe he’s just a quiet guy and to be fair this is pretty early in his acting career.

The other acting varies from decent to over the top, I hope you like screaming because there’s lots of it. The characters are pretty forgettable, in fact it wasn’t that long ago I watched it and other than Ash the only name I remember is Linda as I seem to recall Ash always has a Linda as a girlfriend.

So on to more positive things. The general look of the film is fantastic. It is the archetypal cabin in the woods movie with a spooky dilapidated cabin, foggy woods, a dank basement and all in a remote location.

The camera work is excellent, with Raimi making certain shots his own, particularly the camera as a character, moving through the woods like the eyes of a creature we never see. This more than anything I feel makes the film stand apart from its peers, something you can point to today and say ‘That’s an Evil Dead thing’.

Is this a scary film? As with most things that’s fairly subjective, for me I wouldn’t say it’s scary, it’s a special effects film, and though it has plenty of atmosphere it soon becomes more of a fight for survival than something that has you peeking through your fingers. Something I personally feel is that this film has a good level of threat to it, you do feel that the characters are in danger and though like I say it isn’t scary, it does take itself quite seriously most of the time. The sequels are often lauded over the original but for me this is preferable. The first two sequels are straight up comedy horror, the third one in particular, but I like my horror less silly…mostly.

The effects work is fantastic (for the most part) and varied, we have some great gore effects, some brilliant make-up, and then to top it all off we have stop motion effects towards the end of the film.

Speaking of gore, this film is loaded with it, and it’s pretty graphic for 1981, in fact, it’s time for an ‘Emma talks about film certificates’ section, or in this case ratings, because for a change I’m going to talk about the US rating. Normally I don’t take much notice of this, being UK based, but this is an unusual case. Most films like this get an ‘R’ rating in the US, but The Evil Dead actually received, and still has, an NC-17 rating. This is pretty unusual as these are normally saved for films with a very adult theme, be that sexual, or drug use or very extreme violence. There is one scene I’ll mention in the spoiler section which may have contributed to this but I’m pretty sure it’s a case of an over-reaction at the time that has never been adjusted. It IS a violent film but by today’s standards, not really. The sort of sequel sort of reboot from 2013 is significantly more graphic and that has an ‘R’ rating.

So what about my personal rating? Well I really debated on this, to the point where this is me re-writing this section. I would give it a 4 ½ if I was doing halves, but honestly, I absolutely love this film. It may not be as polished as something like Alien but it’s one of the titans of the genre and another example of a low budget film defying the odds. It deserves to be up there with Halloween in that regard and for my money this is more fun, so I’m giving The Evil Dead 5 pencils out of 5.

**WARNING** SPOILERS BELOW **WARNING**

Welcome to the spoiler section. This is the part where I can bring up some specific parts of the film which I’d like to talk about more, whether they be good, or bad.

OK so the part of the film which may have garnered the NC-17 rating, at least from how I look at it would be the part where Cheryl is assaulted and raped by the tree branches. Though it’s not overly graphic, the content is perhaps the sort of thing the MPAA would come down harder on, and that combined with the general level of gore and violence is maybe what pushed it over the edge. These sort of scenes always up the discomfort level of films for me. I can watch extreme violence (To a degree, I struggle when it gets too realistic like in something like Hostel) but as soon as there’s sexual violence I find it a lot more uncomfortable to watch.

I alluded earlier that not all of the effects are great and the scene which stood out to me was when Cheryl has turned to a Deadite and Scott is hitting her in the face as she tries to escape from the basement. She goes from mostly looking like Cheryl to clearly fake model in an instant. It was abrupt enough that I found it a bit jarring and considering how good most of the rest of the effects look it was a bit strange to see.

What is great though is the whole last 10-15 minutes or so of the film where Ash actually wakes up and starts dealing with the rest of the cast. This part is loaded with fantastic effects, camera work, stop motion and physical acting. Faces melt, blood spurts, skulls shatter and another Raimi staple of gore and bodily fluids going all over somebody’s face. Ash comes into his own in this over the top bloodbath and we start to see him show glimpses of the character he will become in later incarnations.

Right, I’m going to go read a book.