Carnography

Scanners (1981)

Time for a palate cleanser, I think. After the wet paper towel that was the Flatliners remake, it's always good to look at how a proper sci-fi/medical horror film does it. And so here we are with Scanners, a David Cronenberg film.

In the near future of the early 80s, there are people known as "Scanners", individuals born with telepathic and psychokinetic abilities as the result of a drug their mothers took during pregnancy. After global security company ConSec lose their one "tame" Scanner to an attack by psychotic rogue Scanner Darryl Revok, Dr. Paul Ruth brings in a "new" Scanner, a homeless man called Cameron Vale, to try to infiltrate Revok's group and stop him. Infiltrating the Scanner underground proves more difficult for Vale than was first anticipated, however, and he soon finds himself and Revok locked in a cat and mouse game... and that Revok has some surprising allies helping him with his plans...

As I sit here writing this review in my Ephemerol t-shirt, with my Scanners poster in the mail, and with a David Cronenberg category on this very blog, you might be able to guess that I'm a bit of a fan of this film, and you'd be right. Scanners was in fact the first Cronenberg film I ever saw - before even his remake of The Fly - and it set me on the Cronenberg-loving path I'm still on to this very day. The vast majority of Cronenberg's films deal with transhumanism, body modification and/or alternate forms of human evolution, and while Scanners is more grounded than, say, Shivers or Rabid (it's actually one of his most conventional films, in fact), it still primarily focuses on those themes.

Of course, the scene everyone knows from Scanners is that exploding head scene that occurs near the start of the film. The effect was created by make-up artist Dick Smith, who filled a latex head with dog food, leftovers, fake blood and rabbit livers, and then had it shot from behind with a 12-gauge shotgun. A low-tech effort for sure, but a very effective one - not to mention one that likely woke up audiences everywhere who might have thought they were in for a staid white-collar thriller up to that point. Of course, on the other side of the coin having a scene such as this as the second scene in your film and then not having anything that comes close to it until the film's climax probably bothered the people who had seen Cronenberg's previous films and were therefore expecting bizarre sexually-charged body horror from start to finish, but in the end it all worked out as Scanners was Cronenberg's most commercially successful film until he did The Fly in 1986.

The two biggest names in Scanners are Patrick McGoohan, best known for declaring that he was a man and not a number, and Michael Ironside, that hard-working character of movies and TV for about 40 years now. In fact, Ironside was just beginning his film career at the time he made Scanners, and his role as Darryl Revok was really his first major movie role and the one that put him on the map. It also showed us just how good Ironside was at playing psychotics, as his long TV and movie resume shows (among other roles, he's also been the voice of none other than Darkseid several times). Stephen Lack and Jennifer O'Neill (the latter of whom was actually top-billed but doesn't appear in the film until 37 minutes in) also perform well as the "good " Scanners fighting against the evil Revok.

The idea of the Scanners being created by a drug given to their mothers during pregnancy probably struck a chord with many people, as it bears some resemblance to the Thalidomide scandal of the 1950s and 60s, and because of that it leant an air of reality to the film; not only that birth defects could be so much out of the mothers' control, but there are also the fears of the next evolutionary step being able to replace us and the dangers they cause. Years ago, I made Nick watch Scanners with me, and the main thing he took away from the film was a complaint that telepaths shouldn't be able to do some of the things that the Scanners do - primarily the scene where Cameron Vale connects to a computer via a pay phone. But, you know, exploding heads were fine (not to mention the sex slugs from Shivers which he also had no problem with). Scanners certainly isn't hard sci-fi, that's true, but it's more within the limits of plausibility than other Cronenberg films, and what's more, it's good. It doesn't need to be scientifically realistic or accurate. Although it did spawn a franchise of questionable quality...

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Nightbreed (1990)

Best laid plans, yadda yadda yadda. Everything was going so well this month until I got hit first with a severe ear infection and then with a severe reaction to the antibiotics I was given to combat said ear infection. It's difficult to focus on anything when even sitting up makes you dizzy and you can't even keep water down, and so reviews had to be put on hold until I was feeling well enough to give this, my 200th review on this blog, the attention it deserved. And because it's my 200th review it needs to be of something special as well, so it's time for another of my (current) favourite films of all time - Clive Barker's Nightbreed.

Aaron Boone is a young man suffering from some mental problems, most notably a recurring dream of a place called Midian, inhabited by monsters, that he feels strangely drawn to. He tells all of this to his psychiatrist, Phillip Decker, not realising that Decker has ulterior motives for treating him - Decker is in fact a serial killer who is framing Boone for his crimes, and also wants to find Midian for himself. A chance encounter with another seemingly insane man in a hospital who also knows of Midian sets Boone on a journey to find the mysterious city; shortly after finding Midian and encountering some of its residents, however, the police catch up to and kill Boone for the crimes he has been framed for. His devastated girlfriend Lori refuses to believe that he was a killer, however, and starts her own journey retracing his steps to try to understand what was going through his mind before he died. This eventually leads both her and Decker to Midian and its monstrous inhabitants; meanwhile Boone's body has disappeared from the morgue...

First off, if you're going to watch Nightbreed for yourself, try to get hold of the recently-released Director's Cut, which restores about 20 minutes of footage that was cut from the original because of - you guessed it - studio meddling. 20th Century Fox didn't understand the story Barker was telling with Nightbreed, and so they cut the film to ribbons in order to reshape it into something they could understand, trying to turn it into a standard slasher horror movie rather than the dark fairy tale horror that it is. According to Barker himself, at one point a producer was even concerned that "The monsters [were] the good guys," to which Barker replied, "That's the point."

Obviously then, Nightbreed is not a traditional horror film. The "monsters" (the 'Breed or Tribes of the Moon as they're known in the film) live hidden in Midian, far away from humanity, because humanity over the centuries hunted them to near-extinction simply for what they were. It is a rather heavy-handed allegory for bigotry of all stripes, but really no less so than the X-Men. And of course, once people like Decker discover Midian, the 'Breeds' lives are in danger yet again as he brings down a literal redneck hunting posse onto them, simply because they are different (and because they reject Decker utterly). The fact that the 'Breed are the protagonists for the movie does not mean that they are literally "good guys" though; most of them are more than capable of defending themselves in combat if necessary, and some, like the Bezerkers and the feral Peloquin, actively enjoy killing and eating humans (although the latter usually refrains because it is against the Law set down by the 'Breed's god Baphomet). Regardless, until Decker brings destruction down upon them they've harmed nobody, and so of course we root for them to survive and get their revenge on the people who hate and harm them.

Another unusual and stand-out thing about Nightbreed is the casting of David Cronenberg as the murderous Decker. He's not normally thought of as an actor, although he does have an extensive filmography in that area - usually in small cameos or bit parts - but here he does play an evil serial killing psychiatrist very well. I think it helps that he looks "normal" (at least for a horror director) and so he has a "banality of evil" look about him - death in a tailored grey suit and glasses. Although the "Zipperface" mask he wears when he kills is remarkably disturbing for something so simply designed.

Obviously with this being a Clive Barker film, Nightbreed has a lot of outsider, eroticism and LGBT themes, which is probably another reason why the studio execs hacked at it so much. There's the idea of people being uncomfortable in their own skin and yearning to become someone - or something else, and eventually achieving that transformation but becoming hated for it. There's also a lot of raw sexuality on the part of the 'Breed, most notably in one scene where one member of the 'Breed seduces and incapacitates a prison guard while completely naked - also a homage to that other cult film ruined by studio meddling, Lifeforce. When Nightbreed was first released it was not well-received by critics, most likely because of its botched editing and marketing; but over the years it has achieved a much-deserved cult status, like several other similarly maligned films. Personally, I think it's a beautiful film, both in the incredibly detailed designs of the 'Breed and of Midian, and as that cautionary dark fairy tale where the monsters are the heroes who have to fight back against the evil people who want to destroy them simply for being who they are.

(And also, the characters of Rachel and Shuna Sassi were two of my earliest girl crushes.)

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Rabid (1977)

Being British and therefore living in a country that is officially rabies-free (bats in Scottish caves don't count, apparently), the rabies virus has always held a kind of morbid fascination for me. Growing up, the only time I saw anything rabies-related was when we would go on holiday and I would see the rabies awareness posters everywhere, complete with angry, snarling dogs and "DANGER!" in big red letters. It's safe to say that my imagination ran rather wild as I tried to imagine what kind of horrors rabies could inflict on a person. So when, years later, I discovered that David Cronenberg had made a film called Rabid, I just knew that I had to see it.

Rose and her boyfriend Hart are involved in a motorcycle crash where Rose is seriously injured. Luckily for her, their crash happened right outside a cosmetic surgery clinic who take her in and treat her using a new skin grafting technique they've been developing. Things seem to go well and Rose recovers after several weeks - except that the grafting as caused her to develop a phallic-esque, retractable "stinger" in her armpit and a thirst for blood to go with it. Even worse, all those that Rose attacks and feeds off develops a form of rabies which causes them to attack others and infect them, and so on. As Montreal falls into panic and martial law, Hart tries to find Rose, who is completely unaware that she has become a new Typhoid Mary...

Rabid was David Cronenberg's next film after his debut Shivers, and it continues some of the same themes as that movie. Specifically, it once again deals with the ideas of sexual freedom gone bad and fears about the spread of STIs (and this was still four years before AIDS was first clinically observed in 1981) that could result from that. Unlike Shivers though, Rabid also focusses more specifically on the idea of female sexuality and power, as Rose is a very attractive young woman who isn't afraid to use her sexuality to get what she wants (ie. blood). It also might not be too far of a stretch to read something into Rose's sexual aggression being linked to the very phallic stinger she has developed...

Having Marilyn Chambers in the role of Rose certainly helped with the sexuality of the film as well. In the 1970s Chambers was known for two things: being the Ivory Snow girl and for starring in porn film Beyond the Green Door. Rabid was Chambers' first mainstream movie role but she hadn't been the first choice for Rose - Cronenberg had originally wanted Sissy Spacek, but producer Ivan Reitman suggested Chambers instead after Spacek was vetoed because of her accent. Personally I think this was a good choice - I can't really see Spacek having the same impact on the film as Chambers did, especially as Carrie had been released so recently as well. It would have given the character of Rose a much different feel and thus changed the whole dynamic of the film as well.

The people in Rabid infected with the mutated form of rabies are described as "zombies" in most reviews and discussions of the film. They're not actually zombies, of course, as they're still alive when they're rabid and attack people, but this is far from the first time zombies have been misidentified as such in film and it's not going to be the last, and so there's no point in my being pedantic about it (much as it might annoy me). What is interesting in the film is that, unlike most movies that deal with scenarios of this nature (28 Days Later and Night/Dawn of the Dead spring to mind), the epidemic doesn't lead to an apocalypse scenario. The government's response to the crisis is quite reasoned and sensible for the most part, and by the end of the film they seem to have gotten on top of the epidemic. Of course, there's still scope for individual scenes of panic, such as the shopping mall scene where a panicking officer ends up shooting dead a mall Santa in front of a group of children - a scene which, despite its obvious shock and horror, never fails to make me giggle at the extreme absurdity of it.

Rabid contains many of the ideas that feature in most of Cronenberg's work - medical science gone wrong, transformation and the choice of whether to reject or accept the change and of course body horror with people growing new orifices and phallic appendages - and you can see the refinement of those ideas developing on from Shivers. It might seem slow and understated in places, but its almost "everyday" feel also helps with the atmosphere of the film and its creeping horror as the infection spreads. Apparently the Soska Sisters are planning on remaking Rabid, and while I am normally against remakes I'm interested to see their take on the film, especially from their feminist perspective.

 

Shivers (1975)

Of David Cronenberg's films, Shivers (also known as They Came From Within, The Parasite Murders and - my personal favourite, so much so that you'd think it was Italian - Orgy of the Blood Parasites) was the first one I ever saw; caught late one night on TV. To say that it blew my mind would be a slight understatement, and it started my love affair with Cronenberg's films that has remained to this day. When Nick complains about my taste in films I even use Cronenberg as a defence, pointing out all the films of his that he's actually enjoyed - The Fly, Scanners, Videodrome, The Dead Zone... Which was also convinced him to watch Shivers with me this weekend.

Set in a luxury high-rise apartment building - Starliner Towers - that's built on its own island, Shivers is pretty claustrophobic right from the start, and this feeling is emphasized further by the opening scenes advertising these luxury apartments being intercut with scenes of a young woman in a school uniform (we're later told that she's 19, but that and later information about her past makes things even more creepy) being attacked by an older man. He kills her, tapes her mouth shut and then proceeds to cut her abdomen open and pour acid into it before cutting his own throat. The building's resident doctor is called in to investigate, and as the day progresses he slowly discovers the truth of what has gone on. The girl was in fact a guinea pig for the older man's experiments, which were supposed to be about creating "benevolent" parasites to replace human organs, but became, well, sex parasites that wanted to infect everybody and turn the world into one giant happy orgy. The problem is that the girl had made several male friends in the building as well before she died, infecting them all, and so the parasites begin to spread...

Obviously, Shivers is all about sex, sexual politics and the like. It can also be seen as a film about the dangers of STDs or even HIV/AIDS (which makes it very prescient as AIDS wasn't recognised and classified until 6 years after the film was released). It's also something of a zombie movie, however - once the parasites get into a person's system, all they care about is having sex and infecting other people, preferably at the same time. Near the end of the film there are two scenes that particularly stand out to me as homages to Night of the Living Dead as well - one where our estwhile protagonist has to fight his way through a narrow basement corridor while dozens of the infected reach out and try to grab him through wooden slats in the wall, and one where he finally thinks he has escaped the apartment building, only to see the infected slowly coming towards him, arms outstretched, from over a hill. They might not be zombies in the most traditional sense, but zombies they are.

The body horror aspect of the film obviously comes in the form of the parasites - particularly in the way they seem to "nest" and grow in the abdomens of several of the men that "Patient Zero" had been sleeping with. We only really follow one of these men, however - the man on the DVD cover above, whom Nick and I dubbed "70s Ross Geller" because he really did have quite the resemblance in the film. As the film progresses he starts off with stomach pains and a little bit of blood from the mouth, to vomiting parasites onto people from 15 stories up, to eventually having his stomach burst open to release the mass of squirming parasites within (and yet still be able to wander around happily). At one point he all but names the lumps and swellings we can see moving about in his torso, and yes, that's pretty body horror-y.

Another character to note is Betts, played by film and horror icon Barbara Steele. Betts is a lesbian and the scene in which she is infected struck me as somewhat... awkward even when I first watched it at 15. Betts is in her bathtub, relaxing with a glass of wine, when one of the parasites forces its way up through the plughole and heads straight for her via her spread legs. It's pretty clear what happens to Betts then as she screams and thrashes and the water turns red with blood, and I have to wonder why they couldn't have come up with a different way for her to be infected as most people get infected via oral means, as this way seems a bit... uncomfortable, given the circumstances.

Continuing with my best efforts to be at least partially objective, I will admit that the film does start off slow and ramp up the tension slowly at first., and that the effects aren't all that great, it being the 1970s. The parasites, in fact, look far more like animated turds than anything else, which leads to equal parts humour and disgust in several of the scenes we see them in (the disgust I think was deliberate; the humour less so). The film also once or twice implies that children are infected by the parasites as well - nothing untoward is seen and I personally think it adds to the darkly disturbing nature of the film, but some people may have issues with those scenes.

 

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Jason X (2001)

I have a confession to make. This is actually my second favourite of all the Friday the 13th movies (after Jason Lives, that is). It's very much a guilty pleasure movie, since when I try to look at it objectively I can see that it isn't really that good at all, but there's just something about it that makes me grin whenever I'm watching it. It's probably the movie's sense of humour - something we hadn't properly seen since Part VI, that does it.

So, Jason X. In the not-too distant future, Jason Voorhees is a prisoner at the Crystal Lake Research Facility (let's not think too hard about how they captured him this time, although my own personal canon involves a naked co-ed on a stick). Everything is going well until the military (led by none other than David Cronenberg in one of his rare acting roles) turn up to take Jason so they can make super soldiers out of him. Jason escapes, everyone dies bar one scientist and she and Jason get cryogenically frozen together. 455 (or so) years later, a school space trip comes to visit the now-abandoned Earth, finds the two of them and decides to take them back for examination/saving/selling off to a museum (depending on various characters). So of course it doesn't take long for Jason to thaw out (rather wonderfully, the movie cuts the scenes of him coming out of the cryosleep with scenes of two teenagers getting it on, giving the strong implication that Jason's nookie senses are tingling and that's what's waking him up) and he's soon back to his old slaughtering ways.

I still can't defend it completely, however, no matter how much of a guilty pleasure the film is for me. At about one-third of the way through Jason X suddenly decides it wants to be just like Aliens, with Jason in the role of the xenomorph. Not only is this jarringly out of place with the rest of the movie, which is essentially stalk-and-slash in space, but the whole section looks as though it was shot at a LaserQuest of the Future, including the space marines' armour. Another glaring flaw is the character of android Kay-Em 14. Oh, for most of the film she's inoffensively fine, but then near the end she gets a "combat upgrade" and more or less turns into a video game character, except with worse dialogue. It makes me want to break something.

If you can manage to ignore those parts, however, you can manage to enjoy the film. It's got moments of pitch-black humour, and some really quite amusing throwaway lines ("Hey, you're lucky you weren't alive during the Microsoft conflict. Hell, we were beating each other with our own severed limbs."). It's also got by far the highest body count of any of the Friday the 13th films - 28 kills is the "official" count, but if you factor in the people who were on the space station that Jason inadvertantly makes the ship Grendal plough through, that's got to put him in at least triple digits, and most likely quadruple. And finally, it has the kill that just about everyone remembers - Jason beating a camper to death with another camper trapped in a sleeping bag. It's an amusing little touch that's greatly appreciated.

(Also, despite what some claim, Jason X does in fact fit in with the incresingly convoluted timeline of the Friday the 13th movies, although we'll have to wait till tomorrow's movie to see how.)

 

(...Wait, is that Optimus Prime doing the voiceover?)

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Movie Review - Videodrome (1983)

Max Renn is always on the lookout for new content to show on his satellite TV channel, Channel 83 - and the more hardcore and controversial, the better. When his best technician therefore comes across a pirate broadcast of a strange show called Videodrome, which consists of little more than people apparently being tortured by nameless, faceless men with no plot or explanation, he is of course interested and determined to find out more. This desire to learn more takes Renn down a dark and strange path, which includes a religion centered around watching television, what may or may not be hallucinations and the growing of a vagina-like slit in his abdomen, into which fleshy video cassettes can be inserted.

I've been sat here for some time trying to come up with the best way to describe and review Videodrome, and I'm still not too sure I've gotten it right. It's a disturbingly precient satire on the worship of television. It's a commentary on what people are willing to watch on television and how far channels will go to get viewers. It's a body horror movie about the dangers of getting too into your favourite TV shows. It's all of the above, on the brown acid. It's David Cronenberg, and what else should we have expected?

I think what struck me most when watching Videodrome is, as I said, how disturbingly precient it is. It's 31 years old, made in a time when so many of the television advances and channels we have now were only pipe dreams, and yet it manages to tap into the reality TV and "immortality" that TV recordings bring that are everywhere now. As television prophet Brian O'Blivion says, "television is reality, and reality is less than television."

Of course, it's also a movie about a man who grows a vagina in his abdomen from which he can pull a curiously phallic gun that fuses with his hand, and into which other (male) characters can shove fleshy, breathing videocassettes into. Freud would have a field day (although whether he would also explain what a woman wearing a red dress means is up for debate). Televisions breathe, shudder and bulge where veins pop out. At one point Renn takes a cat o'nine tails to one such "living" TV, which may or may not be in his head, or it may be his girlfriend. Or even his agent. Renn certainly isn't sure, and neither are we. Videodrome is in our heads as well.

Perhaps thankfully, the future that Videodrome predicts - with TV channels inducing tumors and hallucinations in their viewers to keep the ratings high - doesn't seem to have come to fruition (Or maybe it has, and I'm typing this on a quivering, fleshy keyboard that cries out every time I hit the return key, but the brain tumour from watching too much Animal Planet is making me think that all this is normal). But its themes have kept up with the times, and if nothing else it can still be seen as a cautionary tale of the dark side of TV.

Long live the new flesh.

 

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