MY FAVOURITE HALLOWEEN HORROR

THE FOG (1980: Dir. John Carpenter)

I have a confession to make. I love the films of John Carpenter. For me, all of his work has merit, and I can honestly say that even his weakest films are entirely watchable. There is one however that always thrills me as if for the first time and it is The Fog. Coming after the perfection of his 1978 classic Halloween, it was inevitable that his next project would suffer from unreasonably high expectations but I think the film's imperfections contribute to its charm. Inspired by the depraved tales of vengeance depicted in the EC Comics of Carpenter's youth, the film begins in front of a campfire as the hypnotic tones of John Houseman recount to a rapt group of children, the story of greed and murder that begat the founding of Antonio Bay, a small coastal town in California. Within these few short opening minutes Carpenter himself demonstrates a similar control over the attention of his viewers, using sound, music, and lighting to introduce a palpable, otherworldly sense of dread, a mood that permeates all of his excursions in horror genre. Why do I love it so? The deep soothing voice of Adrienne Barbeau as the isolated disc jockey; the wind-swept lighthouse setting of her radio station; the spacious, anything-can-happen Panavision cinematography of Dean Cundey; the glowing red eyes of 20 year-old make-up prodigy Rob Bottin as the mute undead ship's captain, and the enveloping organic fog that precedes his crew of marauding zombies. These are just a sampling of the pleasures that I return to year after year, never tiring of Carpenter's droningly atmospheric synthesized score, or his unapologetic use of cheap "jump" scares. Far from being the assured filmmaker of his later years, Carpenter was forced to fix the film in post-production by adding many new suspenseful and savage scenes during tense re-shoots after a disastrously mild preview screening. The resulting patchwork is just another example of Carpenter's seamless craftsmanship, reaffirming my belief in him as an auteurist filmmaker with the true heart of an unabashed huckster. BLU-RAY

A NAZI STATE OF MIND Part Three

CROSS OF IRON (1977: Dir. Sam Peckinpah)

In any film when a German soldier is threatened with being ordered to the "Russian Front" a terrified expression always crosses his face. For decades this frigid hell-hole of war was a place that could only be imagined by audiences, until in 1977, when filmmaker Sam Peckinpah brought this dark chapter of Germany's history to the big screen. Funded by a West German soft-porn producer with artistic ambitions, directed by an alcoholic American auteur and filmed on a limited budget in remote Yugoslavia with an international cast and crew, this could have been one of the great follies in the history of War cinema. Instead these seemingly volatile elements combined to produce a flawed masterpiece. Based on the novel by Willi Heinrich, and told from the Nazi point of view, the idea that this gritty story of burnt-out soldiering could be a potential popular entertainment is nearly as suicidaly insane as Hitler's actual invasion. While there is little doubt that the hardships experienced by cast and crew contributed to the desperate atmosphere of the film, it also didn't help that the film featured a typically disillusioned Peckinpah protagonist/avatar played by James Coburn (Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid). The fates however, were pulling for Peckinpah, who, despite continuing health and addiction problems demonstrated that his filmmaker's eye for heart-pounding violence remained undiminished. Perhaps sensing that his career was winding down, Peckinpah made the film a sub rosa valentine to Coburn, who delivers a masterclass in cinematic magnetism as the stalwart Sgt. Steiner, battling his vainglorious commanding officers, while trying to protect his under-equipped platoon from the bone-chillingly merciless Russian landscape. Beset by constant on-set turmoil due to its precarious financing, the production eventually just ran out of money, resulting in the grim spectacle of its valiant director and his actors, improvising the ending as the cameras rolled. Despite such shortcomings, Orson Welles called it the finest anti-war film since All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), a view shared by much of Europe where its surprising success vindicated the bold ambition of all concerned. Blu-ray

A NAZI STATE OF MIND Part Two

HITLER: THE LAST TEN DAYS (1973: Dir. Ennio de Concini)

After Dracula, Adolph Hitler is probably the most imitated villain in cinema history. Despite his ubiquitous association with goose-stepping silliness, Mel Brooks wasn't the first to reveal the risible qualities of the Nazis and their gesticulating founder. The Three Stooges were in fact the first satirists to take on Hitler in their 1940 two-reeler You Nazty Spy!. Later that same year Charlie Chaplin released his attack on Der Fuhrer in his masterpiece The Great Dictator. America had still not entered World War II, yet Hollywood was now less timid in criticizing the German Chancellor and his policies. During and shortly after the War, the role of Hitler was virtually owned by two actors, the first was Norwegian-born Carl Ekberg who played him five times, beginning with Citizen Kane in 1941. After the U.S. joined the Allies in 1942, American actor Bobby Watson became famous for his eerie facsimile in ten films including Hitler-- Dead Or Alive (1942),  and The Hitler Gang (1944). The first major biographical film on the subject wasn't produced until 1962's Hitler starring Richard Basehart in a studied interpretation that did little to capture the dictator's volatile persona. Another decade would pass before the most authentic and historically accurate English language impersonations of Hitler would reach audiences, those of Frank Finlay in the television production of The Death of Adolph Hitler (1973), and the major motion picture Hitler: The Last Ten Days, starring Alec Guinness. Finlay's may have given the more flamboyant madman performance, but Guinness plays the part with a greater range of emotion, from paternalistic arrogance to paranoid rage, sprinkled with brief moments of pathos and avuncular humour. His Adolph is not some unknowable monster, but an all too human bully boy with delusions of intellectual and artistic grandeur. It is a compellingly authoritative performance often cited by Guinness as one of his proudest achievements, and together with the film's utilitarian production design, combines to make this British-Italian co-production, a plausible adaptation of the eyewitness memoir by Gerhardt Boldt, an actual survivor of the Fuhrerbunker. At the time of the film's release it appeared that the public was expecting an account full of more juicy gossip and seamy dramatics, than the almost prosaic presentation that they got instead. It was however a turning point for Nazi cinema, and cleared the path for other lauded interpretations of Hitler, most notably those of Anthony Hopkins in the made-for-tv film The Bunker (1984) and the haunting portrayal of Hitler's final days by Swiss actor Bruno Ganz in Oliver Hirshbiegel's Downfall (2004). For those who believe in the value of history, all of these films present facets of iconic evil as a warning for generations to come. BLU-RAY

A NAZI STATE OF MIND Part One

THE NIGHT OF THE GENERALS  (1967: Dir. Anatole Litvak)

As a child I was fascinated by the Nazis. With their Germanic obsessiveness for colour coordinated uniforms festooned with Swatsikas and other sigils, the Nazis were the most enviously accessorized villains in television and cinema. They were, for generations of viewers, the perfect visual personification of evil elegance. During World War II and for many years afterward, there was a reluctance by filmmakers to tell stories from the German point-of-view. Their crimes were deemed so monstrous, that for simple entertainment purposes it was easier to portray them as cold adversaries rather than complex emotional human beings. This trepidation gave way in the Fifties with a few early films such as The One That Got Away (1957), an atypical British film detailing the astonishing true tale of a German pilot who escaped from numerous Allied prison camps. Pioneering productions such as this, told the stories of German war heroes who did not share the Nazi philosophy and were therefore sympathetic as protagonists. Exploring the pathology of Nazism from the inside, didn't really become acceptable until after the last great war crime trial of Adolph Eichmann, whose subsequent hanging in 1962 was a cathartic event for a world still scarred by Hitler's diabolical scourge. Published the same year, the novel The Night of the Generals by Hans Helmut Kirst dared to expose the grisly sex murder of a prostitute by a member of the German High Command, and the subsequent internal investigation that exposes all manner of collusion and deviance among the Nazi hierarchy. Sensing an unprecedented opportunity to challenge conventions of habit and taste, producer Sam Spiegel (Lawrence of Arabia), purchased the rights to the book and proceeded to turn this WWII murder-mystery into one of his typical large cast super-productions. Attempting to paint a lurid portrait of Nazi moral corruption, Spiegel unfortunately hired Anatole Litvak, a Russian-born journeyman director who had previously directed the sensitive and atmospheric WWII drama Decision Before Dawn (1951), but now was mostly associated with anodyne Hollywood melodramas like Anastasia (1956). The results, despite being photographed on authentic Polish locations, had Litvak choosing camp villainy over true psychological horror. One's enjoyment of the film therefore depends upon an almost fetishistic love of eye-popping military regalia as brandished by the starry cast, including all-purpose foreigner Omar Sharif as a sober military investigator, and bottle blonde Peter O'Toole as a eye-rollingly unhinged SS General. It all amounts to epic cinema with enough Nazi-filled chicanery to please the twelve year-old in all of us. BLU-RAY

APOCALYPTIC VISIONS Part Three

THE LAST WAVE (1977: Dir: Peter Weir)

   

Mysticism is often scoffed at by a generally literal-minded public. Australian director Peter Weir was one of the first major Anglophone filmmakers to embrace it as a means to comment upon contemporary Western society. Beginning with Picnic at Hanging Rock, and followed by The Last Wave, Weir explored his sober belief in unexplained phenomena, resulting in a pair of financially successful and genuinely unsettling cinematic exercises that helped give international credibility and recognition to the nascent Australian film industry. The story tells of lawyer Richard Chamberlain, who, while defending an Aboriginal tribesman in a murder case, experiences mysterious and disorienting visions that lead him to a lost underground city hidden beneath contemporary Sydney. Much to his credit, Weir portrays native magic with admirable gravitas, utilizing authentic cultural instruments like the didgeridoo for its disquieting sound effects that are enhanced by the disturbing sense of dread created by cinematographer Russell Boyd's masterfully moody lighting. Ultimately the film is a testament to Weir's unerring craftsmanship, confidently communicating to a naive audience the Aboriginal concept of "dreamtime", part of an animist mythology which includes the ability of the unconscious mind to relay Jungian archetypes across ancient and modern cultures. Prepare yourself for an enlightening excursion beyond the veil of perception. Blu-ray

APOCALYPTIC VISIONS: Part Two

THE FINAL PROGRAMME (1973: Dir. Robert Fuest)

There was no better match of talents than director Robert Fuest and novelist Michael Moorcock. Based on the first book in Moorcock's surrealistic Jerry Cornelius series, The Final Programme is the quintessential film by Fuest, a mercurial talent who began as a set designer and later found fame directing episodes of the pop-art British TV series The Avengers. Having had a recent success with The Abominable Dr. Phibes, followed by the relative disappointment of its sequel Dr. Phibes Rises Again, Fuest thwarted career complacency by writing, directing, and designing this oddball sci-fi satire, featuring another fashionably-clad insouciant hero. Star Jon Finch (Polanski's Macbeth) is the very personification of chocolate biscuit-eating anarchist Jerry Cornelius, exuding a Byronesque style with his frilly collars, black nail polish and polymorphous sexuality. Miss Brunner, played with tongue-in-cheek venom by the rangy Jenny Runacre (The Passenger), is his perfect hedonistic nemesis, and its their epic conflict that results in one of cinema's most genetically bizarre and ribald apocalypses. Sadly the film garnered only cult status, and the world was deprived of the further adventures of its singular and charismatic protagonist. Blu-ray

APOCALYPTIC VISIONS Part One

COLOSSUS: THE FORBIN PROJECT (1970: Dir. Joseph Sargent)

Apocalypse movies are the most fashionable film genre of our post millennial age. Every week it seems there is a new release dedicated to visualizing the end of the world as we know it. The turmoil of the first decade of the second millenium, shared much in common with the transitional decade of the Sixties. Both decades contained great economic, social, political, and scientific upheaval. As 1969 drew to close, there was understandable trepidation in the air with the Vietnam war raging, the rise of the PLO, Woodstock, and man landing on the moon. It was also the year that ARPANET, the precursor the internet, was created. Funded by the U.S. Department of Defense, it was developed to link computers worldwide, revolutionizing communication and security. Based on the 1966 novel Colossus by British author Dennis Feltham Jones, Colossus: The Forbin Project, was an attempt to examine the issues raised by the burgeoning influence of computers, as it tells the the story of a sentient American super-computer that exceeds its programming by assuming control of all nuclear weapons, thereby blackmailing humanity into "peace". Not surprisingly the film was a failure at the box office, most likely due to its sterile paranoid atmosphere and humourlessly downbeat tone. Courageously, former television director Joseph Sargent eschewed  the casting of stars in the lead roles. The results bore unexpected fruit, with German actor Eric Braeden as the misguided scientist Forbin, along with Canadians Susan Clark (as his girlfriend/colleague) and Gordon Pinsent (as the US President!) all distinguishing themselves in memorable performances. Since 1970, the size of computers may have changed but the danger of sentience is still with us. BLU-RAY