Posts Tagged: horror

Crits — No Comments
27
Dec 09

Last House On The Left

We saw the original Last House On The Left last night, a Lovefilm delivery which we’ve been putting off for a while, what with all the warnings of it being horrible.

And it was. For those unaware, it’s a horror film, the directorial debut of Nightmare On Elm Street/Scream creator Wes Craven, about the abduction, rape and murder of two girls by a cadre of sadistic criminals and the subsequent revenge taken out on them by the parents of one of the girls. It was famously banned from general cinema release in the UK and Australia in 1974, and when it was mooted for DVD release in 2002, UK censors wanted to make 16 seconds of cuts. The distributor appealed the decision, calling film critic Mark Kermode forth to present an argument for the film being left unsullied, but the case failed – in fact, the appeal committee doubled the cuts to 31 seconds. Oops.

Frankly, it’s a total mess – the acting is mostly abysmal, the script is wobbly and the editing is all over the place. The narrative jumps ahead several times with no attempt to explain what happened in between, and some juxtapositions of scenes are eye-watering, swerving directly from rape to excruciating attempts at comedy with a bungling pair of cops. It was, after all, the first film most of the production team and actors had made.

And yet it’s also brutally effective. Over all these failings, and after all this time, Last House On The Left remains nail-biting, its depictions of violence and cruelty unblinking. Craven’s intention was to show violence and its repercussions without shying away – a reaction to the bloodless violence of such films as A Fistful Of Dollars, in which audiences would witness the deaths of many characters but not see the true horror of each act – torn flesh and bloody retribution.

His attempt to explore the horror of savagery, from its immediate effects to how it inspires equally barbaric revenge by the the ‘civilised’ middle class parents, isn’t quite so effective, though, struggling to make itself distinct from the mess. Let’s just say that Ingmar Bergman’s The Virgin Spring probably did it better – it did, after all, inspire LHOTL, with its story (which actually originates from a 13th century ballad) all but identical.

I think its visceral potency is down to Craven’s essential talent as a director. There are many great touches, including a lingering shot of the rapists awkwardly brushing grass off their hands after the act and some powerful jump shocks, in particular when one of the fleeing girls suddenly meets with the machete of one of her pursuers. And for all the fact that the team originally planned the film to be pornographic, and for all the weird lasciviousness of the opening section, it ultimately does not sexually objectify the girls. The scene in which they are forced to strip is about showing their total vulnerability rather than providing salacious thrills.

Lovefilm encourages users to grade films using five stars. But I found it pretty much impossible to rate Last House On The Left. It’d be easy to dwell on all its many failings, but it has a raw energy which makes it impossible to ignore. Despite its own tagline, ‘It’s only a movie,’ I rather think it’s both more and less than that.

Ruminations — No Comments
27
Aug 09

Comic horror

comics

I’ve read a couple of wonderful comics lately, Christophe Blain’s Isaac The Pirate (thanks, Aaron), and Osamu Tezuka’s Buddha (thanks, Rich).

You’ll probably be aware of Tezuka already – he’s the man that helped to kickstart manga and anime in Japan in the 50s with Astro Boy and other such fusions of Disney and earlier Japanese visual arts, like kibyōshi. Blain’s not so familiar to British shores, but he’s a stalwart of the French comic scene, having worked on the Dungeon series.

Obviously, then, these two creators are utterly different, and these comics are too. Buddha is an eight-volume epic that explores Buddha’s life, from his birth as a prince to his enlightenment and death, and as it does so, tells various stories about the people around him, from reformed bandits to clairvoyant babies. Isaac The Pirate, meanwhile, is a dark two-volume tale about an artist that takes to the seas, joining a band of pirates and meeting master thieves and thugs while he wends his way back into the arms of his beloved wife in Paris.

What they absolutely share, however, is irresistibly heady combinations of lightness of touch and unflinching gazes upon life’s cruelties. Both feature as a natural part of their courses death, torture and suffering, with characters mercilessly despatched while others act in ways that you really wish they wouldn’t.

For example, there’s a scene in Isaac The Pirate’s first volume, To Exotic Lands, in which the pirates encounter in the frozen seas of the Arctic a drifting ship with starving Swedes on-board. The events that follow are harrowing and shocking, coming as they do after a long sequence in which you develop a respect and affection for many of the crew. Isaac’s love, meanwhile, is in constant threat of being extinguished – through his death, hers, temptation or the distraction of the waves – a sombre kind of tension, given that it’s one of the only purely good things any characters have.

And for all Tezuka’s Disney doe-eyed animals, exaggerated expressions and the way he often inserts characters from his previous comics into the stories – and himself – he doesn’t hesitate to depict the other side of his world. Genocide, fathers persecuting their children, bloody revenge: his Buddha is a man forged by violence and horror. Other characters go on terrible journeys of discovery, the brutality behind the things they do only mitigated by Buddha’s teachings of forgiveness and that behind everything lies a reason.

In both comics, the humour and levity all this is contrasted against seems utterly casual. Their balance of light and dark gives them a sense of consequence and truth that so many books, films – and other comics – lack. It’s got to have something to do with their visual style, I think. Both are brilliantly expressive, Tezuka in particular spanning from beautiful and detailed panoramas to goggle-eyed cartoon exaggeration.

So, yeah, I can’t recommend these two comics enough.

I’ve read a couple of wonderful comics lately, Christophe Blain’s Isaac The Pirate (thanks, Aaron), and Osamu Tezuka’s Buddha (thanks, Rich).

You’ll probably be aware of Tezuka already – he’s the man that helped to kickstart manga and anime in Japan in the 50s with Astro Boy and other such fusions of Disney and earlier Japanese visual arts, like kibyōshi. Blain’s not so familiar to British shores, but he’s a stalwart of the French comic scene, having worked on the Dungeon series.

Obviously, then, these two creators are utterly different, and these comics are too. Buddha is an eight-volume epic that explores Buddha’s life, from his birth as a prince to his enlightenment and death, and as it does so, tells various stories about the people around him, from reformed bandits to clairvoyant babies. Isaac The Pirate, meanwhile, is a dark two-volume tale about an artist that takes to the seas, joining a band of pirates and meeting master thieves and thugs while he wends his way back into the arms of his beloved wife in Paris.

What they absolutely share, however, is irresistibly heady combinations of lightness of touch and unflinching gazes upon life’s cruelties. Both feature as a natural part of their courses death, torture and suffering, with characters mercilessly despatched while others act in ways that you really wish they wouldn’t.

For example, there’s a scene in Isaac The Pirate’s first volume, To Exotic Lands, in which the pirates encounter in the frozen seas of the Arctic a drifting ship of starving Swedes. The events that follow are harrowing and shocking, coming as they do after a long sequence in which you develop a respect and affection for many of the crew. Isaac’s love is in constant threat of being extinguished – through his death, hers, temptation or distraction of the waves – a sombre kind of tension, given that it’s one of the only purely good things going.

And for all Tezuka’s Disney touches of doe-eyed animals, exaggerated expressions and the way he often inserts himself and characters from his previous comics into the stories, he doesn’t hesitate to depict the other side of the times he depicts. Casual genocide, fathers persecuting their children, bloody revenge: his Buddha is forged in violence and horror. Other characters go on terrible journeys of discovery, the brutality behind the things they do only mitigated by Buddha’s teachings of forgiveness and that behind everything lies a reason.

All this is contrasted with humour and levity that seems utterly casual. These comics’ balance of light and dark gives them a heady sense of consequence and truth that so many books, films – and other comics – lack. It’s got to have something to do with their visual style, I think. Both are brilliantly expressive, Tezuka in particular spanning from beautiful and detailed panoramas to goggle-eyed cartoon exaggeration.

As such, I can’t recommend these two comics enough.