How one DVD label and a crop of finger-licking bonus features led to a second chance for Dario.

Man , gotta love Arrow Video.  Just watched their fully uncut, 30^th Anniversary release of Dario Argento’s Inferno,  his fantastically odd sequel to Suspiria, and one-time casualty of the video nasties fiasco.  What’s that I hear you cry?  “Wow Kevan, that’s brilliant, but what bonus features can I expect to find on the disc?  By the way, love the blog.”  Well firstly thanks for the kind words, but to answer your question, the 2-disc beauty contains, among other things, interviews with director and cast (ace!), a substantial collector’s booklet (rad!), and a fine documentary narrated by none other than Mark Kermode (mega!)! 

Oh and no, I don’t work for Arrow Video.  But damn, I wish I did.

See while (as I touched upon in my last post) DVD has meant that grindhouse addicts such as myself can now buy all kinds of forgotten trash guilt-free from respectable outlets, one thing we rarely get is decent extras.  Of course this is due to the fact that such releases are generally from small labels such as Vipco, Hardgore or tireless flag flyers Shameless Screen Entertainment, and putting nice packages together costs money.  Also, when you’re dealing with obscure, 30 or 40 year old cult films, extra materials are not easy to come by.  Yet Arrow Video keep doing it, be it for their release of Dawn of The Dead, or the grimy urban filth of Street Trash, an unbelievably out there film whose tagline screamed “The ultimate melt movie!”.  What was that, treasured readers?  Is that you I hear piping up again?  “What the hell is a ‘melt movie’ Kevan?  Maybe you could enlighten us, perhaps in a future post of your entertaining yet informative blog”.

Well, thanks again, there’s really no need.  But seeing as you requested it, I will, in an upcoming post, educate one and all with a history of the sparse sub-sub-genre known as the melt movie.  You’ll have to remind me though.

But anyway, enough of the shameless gushing over Arrow Video (God, I love them), and back to Argento, whom I first came became aware of  when, as a horror-hungry teen I stumbled across a video of the Argento documentary Master of Horror.  The early years of my obsession with horror and trash cinema involved watching anything and everything that looked like it might be even vaguely fucked up, and reading up as much as possible.  As you can well imagine, I quickly became aware of Argento’s reputation as Italy’s ‘Master of Horror’.  Yet when I first saw Suspiria, much as I wanted to love it, I just wasn’t that blown away.  As a gore addicted young ‘un I was more partial, in terms of Italian horror, to Lucio Fulci’s over-the-top gore ‘epics’, and the supremely nasty cannibal gut-crunchers, which I still think rank among cinema’s most extreme offerings.

 I wanted to love Argento, but why force it?  I resigned myself to feeling that while his films are far from terrible, the man is really overrated.  It filled me with warmth then, as my feelings were validated years later by Jason Bateman’s character in Juno, who expressed his preference of Herschell Gordon Lewis over Argento: “Argento’s alright”.  I didn’t have to feel alone any more.

But time goes on y’know?  And things change.  Once you’ve exhausted Fulci’s best films, like City of the Living Dead, The Beyond, Zombie Flesh Eaters and yes, The New York Ripper, there’s really little to discover.  Sorry, what was that?  “The New York Ripper Kevan, really?  But I’ve heard it’s a startlingly adolescent and misogynistic piece of utter filth.  Also, your words are pure linguistic beauty, your blog life-changing”.

Please, you really must stop, but yes, The New York Ripper has been berated by critics for its thoroughly unpleasant lady-slicing, and it takes some defending, but sometimes you just gotta take the ride.  If you’re gonna watch an abhorrent piece of shit, why not yourself become an abhorrent piece of shit, if only for ninety minutes.

Anyway the point is, I’m older and a little wiser, and I think the time has come to revaluate Argento.  Watching Inferno for the first time, I enjoyed it immensely, and I do think I’d get a lot more out of his films nowadays.  Therefore, I have promised myself I will begin by revisiting Suspiria and Deep Red, and getting a copy of Terror at The Opera (the spangly 2-disc Arrow release, natch).    

The shadow of James Ferman.

“Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it.”

                                                                                                Mark Twain

The year was 1999.  After 24 dictatorial years as director of the British Board of Film Classification, James Ferman finally stepped down, and within just a few months we were flooded with spanky new releases of long banned classics such as The Exorcist and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.  Over the next few years, and with the advent of DVD, British audiences could, for the first time since the Video Recordings Act was passed in 1984, finally enjoy the uncut, censor baiting brilliance of countless films like Blood Feast, The Driller Killer and Don’t Look in The Basement.  For fans of obscure horror and extreme cinema, it seemed like a new golden age as grainy, third generation VHS pirates were left on the shelf to collect dust.

But whereas the dust continues to gather on my dodgy old tapes, the BBFC seems to have dusted off Ol’ Man Ferman’s scissors and are, of late, getting worryingly snip-happy.  While it is commonplace for the BBFC to ‘suggest’ cuts to reduce a films certificate for a wider audience (see: Die Hard 4.0, The Expendables), there remains a culture of spinelessness and anxiety regarding the passing of graphic (and particularly sexual) violence.  After the outright rejection of Japanese torture, torture and more torture horror flick Grotesque a couple of years back, heavy cuts have been imposed on the harsh horrors of recent releases A Serbian Film and I Spit on Your Grave.  In the case of the former, 49 cuts were put in place, totaling well over four minutes. 

After watching the freely available uncut version of A Serbian Film (suck on that, ya freedom hating killjoy bastards), I began thinking about how, while the internet means film piracy has changed immeasurably since those VHS trading days, one thing that remains the same is how cutting and banning films does nothing but increase and promote a) interest and knowledge of films that may otherwise slip under most people’s radars and b) film piracy itself.  After rather enjoying the film (is ‘enjoying’ the word?), I felt a need to know what exactly the BBFC had cut from the UK release, so I sought out the full list of cuts.  Reading the list I found it to be, rather paradoxically, both hilariously funny and more distressing than the film itself.  I’ll give you a couple of highlights.

After shot of Marko being fellated by woman and the dialogue, Come, blow harder. Blow harder, remove entire shot of Petar and his mother blowing candles on birthday cake.

In rapid montage, remove shot of Jeca sucking ice lolly intercut with the shots of Milos' face (as he penetrates man's eye socket) and close shots of female genitals.

I would urge you to seek it out, it’s a good read.

I would also urge you to give the film (uncut, of course) a go.  While it may be difficult to morally defend everything depicted in A Serbian Film, it is an intelligent, interesting and utterly fearless piece of work which acts as a nihilistic, eviscerating attack on the increasingly depraved methods of contemporary pornographers.  And at NO point is the violence anything other than devastatingly horrible, and we are certainly not encouraged to applaud it or be excited by it (unlike with say, the Hostel or Saw films, which the BBFC has no issues with).

I also watched the remake of I Spit on Your Grave recently, again uncut, and was rather surprised that the BBFC felt it necessary to cut 43 seconds due to “shots of nudity that tend to eroticise sexual violence and shots of humiliation that tend to endorse sexual violence by encouraging viewer complicity in sexual humiliation and rape”.

This is the same tired old crap that James Ferman used to spew out to defend his decisions back in the day.  Now call me crazy, but what film maker wants to “endorse” sexual violence and encourage the viewer’s “complicity” in rape?  Is there any film out there that could cause a reasonable human being to think ‘hey maybe, just maybe I had it all wrong about this sexual humiliation and rape stuff.  Mayhap it’s not the demon it’s made out to be’?

The BBFC are idiots.  They do not trust you, they belittle you.  They are not protecting you from harmful material, they are stamping on your personal freedom.

Incidentally, the cuts to the I Spit on Your Grave remake pale in comparison to those still imposed on Meir Zarchi’s 1978 original, which total close to three minutes!  See, there’s still some unease left over from the days of the video nasties scandal, meaning stuff that would probably get through the BBFC if shot today is still forbidden when it forms part of  a grainy, washed out looking old exploitation flick.  Cannibal Holocaust, The New York Ripper and Faces of Death have no hope of uncut releases anytime soon, Ruggero Deodato’s The House on the Edge of The Park remains the most censored 18 rated UK release with over 11 minutes of cuts, and Fight For Your Life, once a staple of the video nasties list (not to mention one of my very favourite exploitation films and a perfect definition of the term Grindhouse) remains banned.

Next post:  Business as usual - light-hearted comments about cinema food and fatsuits.

Tales from the projection booth: Silence is Golden

Well I know you were all bitterly disappointed that I brushed over Big Momma’s House 3 in my last post so gather round friends, for I have a tale to tell.  A tale of something that happened at work today which gave more insight and a better review of the film than any critic could possibly provide.

I work as a projectionist and after starting the film (screen 1, 3.35pm if you’re interested, haha!  You’re not.  And you know what if you are, stop reading now, I don’t want you here.  There’s plenty more internet to explore.  Go look at Two Girls One Cup and then excitedly tell your dumb little friends how ‘hilarious’ it is.), I left the projection booth, sneering at the people who paid to watch such cinematic swill.  Later, while doing my routine screen checks, I waltzed in during the film and as one might expect, the auditorium was filled with young children and teenagers.  And guess what?  Apart from a single outburst from what can only have been a lone howler monkey enjoying the riotous larks...Dead.  Fucking.  Silence.

And while that seemed to sum up Big Momma’s House rather neatly, what I couldn’t help wondering is WHY CAN’T KIDS BEHAVE LIKE THAT WHEN I’M TRYING TO WATCH A FILM?  It just doesn’t seem fair.  Unfortunately folks, the situation seems to be this: If you want kids to sit in stony silence, allowing you a peaceful viewing experience, you may have to limit your cinema viewings to films  starring Martin Lawrence.  It gets me wondering if this wouldn’t be a better way to market his – ugh – ‘comedies’. 

‘Want to sit in a quiet cinema with nary a chuckle nor murmur to be heard?  Come see Big Momma’s House 3!  Yes it’s shit, but at least the kids keep their Cheesestring holes shut!’

I might watch it if I saw that on the poster.

No, I wouldn’t.

This week's releases. Ha! If only life were that simple.

In a year that, not yet into its third month, has already given us such cinematic gold as Black Swan, True Grit and The Fighter, I’m sure you’ll agree it seems a sad week for cinema when Friday’s two biggest releases were Big Momma’s House 3 and a documentary about Justin Bieber.  Yes, some genius decided that the lovable scamp with such delicate, feminine features yet the eyebrows of Dennis Norden has had, in his sixteen years in this world, a life interesting and inspiring enough to warrant a feature length documentary.  But you know what, no matter how tempting it may be to write the boy off as an irritating, weasely, repugnant, sickly monkey-boy slice of thoroughbred Americana who epitomises everything wrong with contemporary popular culture, I feel I have to constantly remind myself that he is not the enemy, and I implore you to do the same.  Put aside that hatred people, he’s just a boy.  And there’s something pretty messed up about grown adults hating a child.  The real villain of this piece is a man who for some reason goes by the name of Usher, and who I'm told ‘discovered’ young Bieber.  Now I don’t claim to know a lot about this character but I have no reservations whatsoever about focusing a direct beam of concentrated hate at a man who is knowingly using this boy to arouse naive pre-pubescent girls for his own financial gain.  Know your enemy friends, and target your anger accordingly.  

But shit, sorry, this is supposed to be a film blog sooooooooo...Big Momma’s House.  Oh, Lord.  I don’t know where to start.  So I won’t, you know the deal anyway. 

What a week.

Is it just me or does all the overblown hyperbole we are force fed about film piracy damaging the film industry and endangering future film production suddenly seem a strangely attractive notion?  If only any of it were true.

BAFTA night? Oh go on then.

Sunday night was BAFTA night and I thought I’d better write about it here, so here’s my rundown of the evening, as best I can remember it.

A misjudged opening to the event perplexes the audience by having some people dancing for a bit, and then some awards are presented by stammering fools who appear never to have spoken in front of other humans before.  People like Nicholas Hoult, who is presumably just completing his Key Stage 2 reading exercises.  Helena Bonham Carter talked for a long while, Colin Firth, who bears an odd resemblance to the BAFTA statue itself,  gave a curiously well planned and rehearsed acceptance speech for winning Best Actor (anyone would think he expected to get it), Samuel L. Jackson is the only non-white attendee on stage all night (no point to make here, just sayin’) and David Fincher couldn’t be there ‘cause he’s busy making a completely unnecessary remake that no right-minded person wants.  Or “his next gift to us”, as the thoroughly unlikeable Andrew Garfield puts it.  The most exciting part of the night came when Dominic Cooper and Rosamund Pike stepped up to present an award, coming across like a pair of giggling, babbling morons, and Pike opened the envelope and almost revealed the winner before the nominations had been read out, prompting host Jonathan Ross to jump in and stop her.  In fact the whole bumbling affair seemed to be brimming with such amateurish idiocy, Ross’ professionalism just about holding things together. 

There were however, a few moments which proved a delight to behold.  The viewing public did the right thing by voting for Tom Hardy in the Rising Star category, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo finally got academy recognition, winning in the unnecessarily wordy Best Film not in the English Language category and, much to my surprise and delight, Noomi Rapace was nominated in the best actress category.  I mean she was never gonna win, but still.  I was very pleased to see Chris Morris win Outstanding Debut by a British Director for Four Lions, which was far and away the best comedy of last year.  He wasn’t there to accept but come on, can you really see the misanthropic genius at an event like this?  I’d have been disappointed if he was.  And then there was the beautiful ending to a predictably underwhelming night when the Legend nay, the God, Sir Christopher Lee took to the stage to accept his Fellowship award.  Eloquent, humble, he spoke with a grace and humility that truly exposed the falseness and self importance of many of the younger, higher-paid ‘stars’ who graced the stage that night (Garfield, I'm looking at you).  One little complaint though: Why oh why oh why oh why did whoever put together the montage of Lee’s clips feel the need to throw in THREE clips of Count fucking Dooku?  Piss on the man’s big moment why don’t you.

On the first day he created 3D. And on the second, he had a tantrum because people weren't using it properly.

So this week saw the release of not very anticipated 3D caving thriller Sanctum or, to give it its full US title, James Cameron’s Sanctum.  Haven’t seen it, can’t imagine I will, and so I’ll reserve judgement.  To some degree.  I haven’t heard anything positive though.

It’s supposedly based on the true story of a group of cavers (one of them co-writer Andrew Wight.  Kerching!) who were stuck for two days when a cave collapsed around them.  It was shot with the same 3D techniques used for Avatar and is the second feature directed by Alister Grierson, but who cares about all that shit, I see James Cameron’s name on the poster!  Yes, the man who gave the world hope, the man who invented dreams, and children.  The man whose nickname I’m told is ‘Iron Jim’ (though I’m dubious anyone but himself has ever referred to him as such.  From here on in however, I’m absolutely going to).  He’s also the man who had a big old paddy over Alexandre Aja’s slap in the face of pretentiousness, Piranha 3D, last year declaring the film “exactly an example of what we should not be doing in 3D”, then babbling on about how a film of this type “cheapens the medium”.  Who the Sam Worthington is he to be instructing film makers on how they should be using their technology?  Well I suppose he did invent 3D.  And motion pictures.  What an utter prick.

See the thing is, 3D absolutely is a gimmick, and is best served with cheesy shocks and cheap thrills; that’s what it’s for.  Actually that’s not what it’s for, it’s to make film piracy more difficult and bring punters back to the cinema, where they will be charged a weighty mark-up on their already outlandish ticket price, before having it sheepishly explained to them that the glasses will cost them further.  Nevertheless, in my mind at least, 3D is best enjoyed with comedic shocks and over-the-top scares.  Indeed, the best use of 3D I’ve seen thus far would be in Joe Dante’s ludicrously enjoyable The Hole. 

I’m obviously mistaken however, as a far higher authority tells us that 3D is about immersion, drawing the viewer further into a film’s world than has ever been possible.  Again, I am forced into disagreeing with Iron Jim, as I find full immersion difficult with an ill-fitting pair of plastic specs sitting on my snout and ghostly double-images floating about in the space between me and the screen.  As I said, I do think 3D has its place, but to me it has the exact opposite effect to what Iron Jim is so keen on telling us.  3D has the somewhat Brechtian effect of distancing the viewer from the art, giving us something to enjoy and consider outside of the story we see unfolding and making us conscious of the mechanics behind the art.  What a complete and utter prick.

As I have said, I can’t really give an opinion of Sanctum, but I won’t pretend it didn’t raise a smile to see it underperforming at the box office.  After all, it’s made far less in its opening weekend than Piranha did.  And if you’re gonna take a true story of an ordeal suffered by several people (not just your co-writer), turn it into a 3D thriller and promote it as a horror flick , maybe you should also give some serious thought as to who’s really “cheapening the medium”.  You prick.

Baffling bursts of laughter and the coming together of popcorn and piss.

Yesterday I finally got round to seeing Darren Aronofsky's award-baiting Black Swan and I must say it's the classiest and most stylish piece of trash I've seen in a long time.  Overflowing with essentially pretty cheap scares and sudden outbursts of violence and horror, it really is a masterpiece of lurid sleaze.  Loved it loved it loved it.  Also it acts as a perfect companion piece to The Wrestler, both centring around performance art (but at very different ends of the spectrum), both surprisingly lurid and grimy films about the suffering body and/or mind can endure in pursuit of said art.

While sat there, utterly entranced by Black Swan, with people screaming - screaming, no less - around me, I started to become a touch unnerved by another crowd reaction.  Deep enough into the film for it to have firmly established itself as something somewhat sinister, shock scenes which had me wide-eyed and worried for my sanity as much as Natalie Portman's seemed to serve merely as light amusement for others.  At more than a couple of moments in the film, the odd few people would burst into laughter, and I'm not talking nervous giggles here, nor was it laughing at the film and any ineptitudes they may have felt were there, but utterly hysterical, pant-pissing, that's-the-best-joke-I've-ever-seen-in-a-film belly laughs. 

People are weird.

Anyway this got me a'thinking, this was not the only time of late when I've observed odd behaviour from fellow cinema goers.  One that springs to mind occurred while watching Danny Boyle's thoroughly compelling 127 Hours.  Now, I'm not one to graze on popcorn throughout a film, never have been, but I understand why to some it's an important part of the cinema-going experience.  And sure, if you're watching Transformers or Tron, staring at the screen with your soulless, dead eyes lurking lifelessly behind a pair of 3D glasses then please, feel free to chow on your flavourless cat litter all you want. 

But 127 Hours?  Odd choice, but there she was, sat just a few seats from me.  A pearl-haired old dear crunching happily away while James Franco suffered the ordeal of a lifetime. 

It just doesn't seem right. 

The kicker came when our hero starts urinating in a flask in case he might need to, y'know, for survival and that. 

"Urgh!", the lady exclaimed with palatable disgust.  Which she followed up with another bite.

And you bet your nuts she was still going at it when the arm came off.