From Zombos Closet

January 2008

Interview: Mark Clark

/ Authors, Books (Non-fiction) / 2 Comments

It’s not that actors no longer give good performances in horror films (they still do), and it’s not as if direction, editing, and special effects weren’t important in the classic horror film era. But in most modern horrors, concept is more important than cast. Horror has become a director’s genre more than an actor’s genre. During the classic era, the genre’s biggest stars were Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Vincent Price and Peter Cushing. In the years since, its brightest luminaries have been Mario Bava, George Romero, Wes Craven and M. Night Shyamalan. (Mark Clark in Smirk Sneer and Scream)

Director Justin Channell’s company acronym, IWC Films, seen on his Heretic Film’s distributed Die and Let Live zombies and pizza flick, sum’s up the current state of horror cinema rather well: IWC stands for Idiots With Cameras. While I admire his light touch of humor, I fear the ring of truth in those three letters is precisely why horror cinema is mostly relegated to backhanded reviews or begrudging nods of minor acceptance. Making the situation worse, it’s not just the idiots holding cameras, but also the ones pretending to act in front of them. Then you have the ones writing incomplete scripts without a hint of drama, pathos or depth, and others directing with those scripts, with nil basic training, because the digital age makes it appear so gosh darn easy to do–and Aunt Edna and Uncle Joey are available Tuesday for free.

Before the digital age gave any idiot with a camera the potential to become another Hitchcock or Romero, but not the sense to learn first, shoot later, horror movies more often than not had drama, pathos, and good acting that was sometimes even great. Even though many of these films were made for a quick buck, too, actors still acted, and writers wrote complete–if not always stellar– scripts. Directors learned their technique and approached their films seriously. Even if the script was underwhelming and the direction uninspired, you could still count on yesterday’s classic horror actor to give it his (or her) stylistic all. It may not have been naturalistic acting, but it was acting that convincingly and realistically entertained. Mark Clark, in his Smirk, Sneer and Scream: Great Acting in Horror Cinema, reminds us of this golden age.

If your looking for detailed plot synopses, look elsewhere: Clark focuses only on the memorable performances that show each actor’s ability to bring the house down. And while his predilection for classic horror actors fills part one, the other two parts of his book examine mainstream actors–those thespians briefly caressing the horror genre to leave their permanent scars–and the often neglected leading ladies of fright. From Boris Karloff to Anthony Perkins, and Bette Davis to Jodie Foster, Clark lists the roles that bewitched us into becoming horror fans in the first place.

After reading his fascinating book, I invited Mark Clark to step into the closet and talk about Smirk, Sneer and Scream…

Tell us about your background and how you came to write Smirk, Sneer and Scream?

I loved the classic monster movies as a kid, and even imagined someday writing a book about them after reading (and re-reading) Edward Edelson’s Weekly Reader type book, GREAT MONSTERS OF THE MOVIES. After college, I worked as a newspaper reporter and film critic for about 10 years. I eventually left that line of work because I wanted to write what I wanted to write, instead of having to write about whatever I was assigned to cover. Toward the end of my newspaper career, I discovered Tom Weaver and the Brunas brothers’ UNIVERSAL HORRORS, which brought back for me the idea of writing about horror movies. I also began writing articles and reviews for magazines like MONSTERS FROM THE VAULT, MIDNIGHT MARQUEE, SCARLET STREET and FILMFAX and launched my online DVD review column.

Why write about acting in horror films? I mean, it’s generally assumed that horror actors are not good actors, right?

Well, I wanted to write a book about horror films, but didn’t want to write a simple history. That had been done to death. I wanted an original angle, and it occurred to me that nobody had ever provided a real appreciation for the great acting performances that had been given in horror films over the years. Horror actors are usually treated like second-class citizens by critics and Academy Award voters, but that’s pure snobbery. Many fine actors worked in the horror genre, and did superb work there. I think Boris Karloff’s work in FRANKENSTEIN or THE BODY SNATCHER, for instance, stacks up with the best screen acting by anybody in any picture.

Also, I wanted to turn the spotlight back on the actors a bit. Even those people who write seriously about horror films these days tend toward narratives where the major players are directors. This is, I think, largely due to the influence of the “autuerist” film theory which emerged in the 1950s and quickly became dominant in critical thought. Personally, I believe that auteurism can be limiting, especially when oversimplified. Sure, directors are important, but film remains a collaborative art. And, as I note in my book, back in the 1930s, nobody went to see a movie based on the name James Whale or Tod Browning. They went based on the name Karloff or Lugosi. Actors and their work, as I see it, went a long way toward defining and shaping the genre, especially during its infancy.

Would you say the acting in classic horror films is different from today’s? If so, why?

Wow, these are great, thought-provoking questions!

Thank you. I amaze myself sometimes, too.

Film acting in general is much different than it was in the 1930s, 40s and 50s. And of course it’s completely different from silent film acting. During the classic movie era, actors performed in a manner that was very stylized and distinctive. It wasn’t necessarily naturalistic, but it could be very expressive. Stars tended to develop a recognizable persona they carried from film to film, but the best actors among the big stars (Humphrey Bogart, Bette Davis, Cary Grant, for example) were able to take that persona in a lot of different directions through subtle variations. With the rise of the Stanislavsky “Method” school of acting, all that changed. Naturalism became the new ideal, and anything stylized was dismissed as “phoney” or “camp.” The best screen actors (Marlon Brando, Dustin Hoffman, Meryl Streep) seemed to vanish into their characters and became almost unrecognizable from film to film. There are a few performers today who have an approach that’s a sort of a hybrid between the classic era and the modern era – actors (like George Clooney, for instance) who have a true star persona, but are capable of submerging into character when necessary.

Of course, this tectonic shift in styles was felt in the horror genre, too. Plus, other changes also had a major impact. The breakup of the studio system brought the death knell for typecasting in the classical definition of the term. Studios couldn’t force an actor to make a career out of one type of character or film. Or, at least, not as easily. If actors had always been free agents, as they are today, we might never have known such a thing as a “horror star” in the first place. Nobody wants to get pigeon-holed as one type of character or too readily associated with one type of film. It’s seen as a bad career move. Left to their own devices, most if not all of the great horror stars would have abandoned the genre to stretch their muscles in different sorts of roles. In the last 20 or 25 years, the only actor who comes close to being a true horror star is Robert Englund. Now, I’ve interviewed Robert and I like him a lot. He’s very intelligent and very funny. But let’s face it, his body of work isn’t going to make anybody forget about Boris Karloff or Peter Cushing. Anyhow, the lack of horror stars has turned horror into more of a director’s genre. Although there are still good performances given in horror movies, often the acting almost seems beside the point. CLOVERFIELD, for instance, strikes me as pretty well-acted, but the film derives most of its power through technique, rather than performance. That’s common now.

You devote a chapter to the leading ladies of horror, including actors like Bette Davis, Jaime Lee Curtis, and Simone Simon. Why? Isn’t horror a man’s game?

Now you’re baiting me! Actually, I found writing that particular chapter more enjoyable than any other in the book. In retrospect, I think an entire book could be written on the subject of women in horror films – not a compendium of biographies like Gregory Mank’s two-volume WOMEN IN HORROR FILMS, but rather a survey of how women’s roles in horror films have reflected the changing place of women in American society over the past century. It’s a fascinating subject, which I touched on (again somewhat indirectly) in SMIRK, but which deserves further consideration and discussion. In the context of SMIRK, my primary focus was to draw attention to the many great performances by women that have graced the horror film, like those by Mia Farrow in ROSEMARY’S BABY and Sissy Spacek in CARRIE in addition to those you mentioned. There were so many great ones, it was tough to narrow it down. That was the hardest part of the entire project, actually — keeping it from growing as big as the NYC yellow pages. There are so many great performances out there, it was impossible to cover them all. My book was intended to be a starting place for discussion, not the final word.

In our email discussions, you mentioned there were  elements you were trying to weave into Smirk, Sneer and Scream you don’t think fully came off. Can you elaborate on them?

Some of them I’ve already touched on, like the impact the rise of method acting and the breakup of the studio system had on horror film acting, and on the evolution of the genre itself. While writing the book, I tried to deal with these developments in a way that, looking back, was too subtle – you can get the narrative, but it’s broken up in bits and pieces in several different write-ups, rather than being stated in a clear, unified manner. I won’t be making that mistake again. In my current book, all my ideas are up front, offered in a clear, linear way. For better or for worse!

Who’s your favorite actor in classic and contemporary horror, and why?

Among the classic horror performers, it’s almost impossible to go wrong with Peter Cushing or Lon Chaney Sr. I think Lionel Atwill and George Zucco are underrated. I love Bela Lugosi and Vincent Price. But my favorite is definitely Karloff. He was just such a master. At the top of his game, his performances could be tremendously subtle and moving. He could scare the hell out of you, or he could break your heart. I don’t think any other horror star has a filmography as full of varied, three-dimensional characters as Karloff, and I don’t think any other star had as significant an impact on the development of the horror film. For decades, he was the face of the genre, the same way John Wayne personified the Western. In terms of contemporary horror films, I tend to like individual performances more than particular actors.

How did you conduct your research for Smirk, Sneer and Scream?

I watched and rewatched hundreds of movies and took copious notes. Very detailed notes. Lots of rewinding, pausing, jotting things down. I tried to break down the physicality of the actor’s performance – not just the line delivery but posture, gait, gestures. What was he or she doing in the scene that really brought the character to life? How did he or she relate to the other players in the scene? How did the actor’s choices differ from or align with the performer’s work in other films? Or with the way other performers had approached similar roles? The hardest part was not getting distracted by other elements in the film, staying focused on just the acting aspect. It required a great deal of discipline and could be exhausting, frankly. Try it some time and see!

As a writer, what’s your regimen to get words onto the page?

A source of ongoing pain, frankly! I tend to write in fits and starts, working very intensely for a while and then not at all for a while. This is absolutely not the way to approach writing, and I am trying to become more steady and disciplined. It’s also a big reason why I took me so long (over six years) to write SMIRK. I need to improve if I’m ever going to write all the books I want to write.

What other books can we see from your digital pen? More on horror, I hope.

I’m currently co-authoring (with Bryan Senn) a book with the working title SIXTIES SHOCKERS: HORROR FILMS OF THE 1960s. It’s going to cover, comprehensively, one of the richest, most varied and most dynamic periods in the history of the genre, a time when the classic horror era overlapped with the dawn of the modern era. I’m especially interested in writing about the way the social upheavals of the era played out in that decade’s horror films. I’m very excited about it. I hope to finish it this year and have it on the market in 2009. Again, McFarland will publish it.

Shameless plug department: By the way, if anybody else out there liked SMIRK, I urge them to check out a book called SCIENCE FICTION AMERICA. Edited by David Hogan, the book contains essays from several writers (including me) about the way social issues have been portrayed in sci-fi films over the years. All the essays are excellent. My two (about I MARRIED A MONSTER FROM OUTER SPACE and the first two ALIEN films) are the best work I have published so far. SCIENCE FICTION AMERICA is available from McFarland.

What’s the one question you’ve been dying to be asked, if any, and what’s your answer?

Q: Can I buy the film rights to SMIRK for a million bucks?

A: Yes. Just make the check payable to me.

Cloverfield (2008)

/ Movies (Horror) / 4 Comments

CloverfieldMonster
Zombos Says: Very Good

In 1954’s classic horror movie, Gojira (Godzilla), the atomic age of mass destruction spawns the monstrous reptile Godzilla, a prehistoric creature rising from the depths of the Pacific Ocean to wreak havoc on Tokyo. As city buildings crumble to dust and thousands of people die, a humbled military fight back in a futile attempt to stop the destruction. A renegade scientist is finally convinced to use his own weapon of mass destruction to destroy Godzilla, but he takes his own life to make sure the weapon will never be used again.

In Cloverfield, we have a newer horror movie more suited to our age of uncertainty and unreason, in which a monstrous creature of unknown origin comes from the depths of the Hudson River (or so it seems) to destroy New York City. With no conclaves of nodding scientists struggling to understand why and no military strategy sessions to explore best options for defense, it’s not clear where it–a huge bat-like creature that looks very much like the huge bat-like creature in The Angry Red Planet–comes from or why it’s destroying everything in sight; but the sudden appearance leaves no time for heroics, strategies, or any of the characters making sense out of what is happening. As Manhattan crumbles into dust and people die, a desperate and overwhelmed military fight on as the creature and the many smaller multi-legged beasties tagging along with it wreak havoc and death.

This is not the first time New York City has been laid waste by a giant monster that comes out of the harbor. In 1953’s The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms another prehistoric reptile, awakened by nuclear radiation, stomps and chomps down on the city and Coney Island until a radioactive isotope, shot from a rifle held at the top of the Cyclone roller-coaster, enters the creature’s earlier bazooka-induced neck wound to stop it cold; but not before a virulent contagion, spread by the blood oozing from that neck wound, takes it’s devastating toll on the population. The Manhattanites in Cloverfield do not fare much better.

What is different here is we get to see the carnage from the civilian perspective, at street level, without miniatures being stomped on, when a going-away party turns into a nightmare for five twenty-something friends. There is no renegade scientist (sane or questionably sane) to save the day, no atomic age rationale to explain and provide a simple solution, and the friends are only trying to stay alive under killer circumstances. Keeping us shoulder-to-shoulder with them is director Matt Reeves shaky camcorder view of the carnage and chaos throughout. Yes, it is one of those point of view, found footage movies. But stick with it even if you are not all that into such techniques of storytelling as it is worth your time.

What you will see is the non-stop recording of Rob’s (Michael Stahl-David) party by his friend Hud (T. J. Miller) morph into a reasonable contrivance for the found footage delivery. We follow Rob and friends up to the rooftop to see what is going on after the building shakes and the power goes out, then hastily run down the stairs and onto the street with them as things heat up. When the Statue of Liberty’s head comes, very impressively, crashing and rolling down the street, confusion and fear kick in, leading to an escape run to get out of Manhattan. The rough handling and sudden gaps in scenes as Hud mishandles his camcorder creates realistic, nerve-wracking tension, and a damn-it-Hud-stand-still annoyance from us; but the quality of his experience, and therefore ours, is exactly what you would expect from anyone using a camcorder during a crisis situation, responding to events unfolding in rapid succession while trying not to trip over their own feet in the process.

This is where a suspension of disbelief comes in handy: Hud keeps filming EVERYTHING through his camera, even though any normal person would chuck the bloody thing and run like hell for safety. All found footage movies must, eventually, rely on the viewer to disengage common sense for the story to work; some use a more natural integration of it, like Troll Hunter, where a bunch of college students are already filming a documentary within the movie’s framework, so they would, naturally, want to record everything that happens. Their found footage is plausible enough, because of this, for us to accept.

Cloverfield integrates its shaky cam with precision, providing enough visual teasers to keep scenes tense and visually engrossing. Given the twenty-something generation’s need to be constantly connected socially to share every storm and urge, it is not a long stretch to believe Hud would keep filming through thick and thin. YouTube and Instagram love you-are-there footage like that. I wish I knew the brand name of that camcorder, though, since its battery life is amazing. It never wears down

Also amazing are the claustrophobic and dismal scenes of turmoil. While the man-in-suit Godzilla and Ray Harryhausen’s stop-motion monsters were state of the art for the 1950s, today’s minute-timer, media-savvy, audiences require more realism and relevance. Seen through Hud’s camcorder, the mix of scene staging, tantalizing creature glimpses, and frenetic action stay believable through its lens. Highlights include Rob turning on the camcorder’s night vision in the subway tunnel to see what’s spooking the rats—really should have done that sooner—and Hud’s close-encounter of the monster kind, giving us a long hard look at the skyscraper-sized creature’s face: classic terror elements jazzed up for the digital age. Scripter Drew Goddard knows his horror: the Brooklyn Bridge encounter, reminiscent of a similar monster-whump in It Came From Beneath the Sea is a terrifying jolt.

While Cloverfield is classic horror at heart, there is a love story driving the action in the right direction too (gladly for us horror fans; sadly, not really well for the characters).

After Rob has a blow-out with his girlfriend at the party, when she later calls his cell phone, hurt and pleading for help, he is off and running to save her, even though his path leads right into the chaos. His friends decide to stay close. Reaching the building where Beth (Odette Yustman) lives, Hud’s “don’t tell me that’s where she lives!” line sums it up best. This is when the struggle really begins.

For all its social-generational look and feel, Cloverfield relies on good old-fashioned horror themes like big monsters whumping big cities to deliver the shocks.

Sweeney Todd
The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007)

/ Movies (Horror) / 4 Comments

Zombos Says: Excellent

The best horror film of 2007 is a musical about an unkempt barber who gives nasty-close shaves and an unkempt woman who bakes meaty pies with lots of heart (and other body parts), plying their trades in an unkempt 19th century London  gorging happily on its Industrial Age.

And, yes, there is blood. Hammer horror bright, fire-engine red, hissing through the air like steam from a boiling teapot, or pooling on the floorboards like piss from a mangy dog. Mingling with the hiss and the puddles are songs; vindictive and forlorn, and sung deeply from the throat of damnation, crying out for vengeance through the unkempt, morose alleyways and lawless byways of Fleet Street, home to the courts, the barristers, and Judge Turpin.

Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman) is unkempt in body and soul. He covets Benjamin Barker’s wife. The lecherous cur has Barker imprisoned on false charges, rapes his wife, steals his infant daughter, and becomes the object of vengeance that consumes Barker, now calling himself Sweeney Todd, who returns fifteen years later to his decrepit flat above Mrs. Lovett’s (Helena Bonham Carter) failing pie shop. Mrs. Lovett covets Sweeney–always has–even as Sweeney covets his glistening silver set of  straight razors. All these Grand Guignol ingredients whip together in Tim Burton’s mighty tasty version of this Gothic and gory folie à deux, which leaves out any whimsy to be found in the stage version.

The Stephen Sondheim musical, in Burton’s hands, becomes an unrelentingly dark tale of deliverance to sin for some, and the loss of innocence for others. This is Saucy Jack’s London; an oily smudge from endless smokestacks coats everything, and daylight barely filters through the grime. The only bright spots to appear in this otherwise gloomy environment are the splotches of red spraying from severed necks, and there are lots of them–both severed necks and splotches.

Promptly taking care of Signor Pirelli’s blackmail attempt, the necessity for getting rid of the foppish con man’s ample frame leads to a mutually satisfying business agreement between Todd and Mrs. Lovett, and sets both on their merry way to hell in the bargain.

With a shock of white in his hair to show how much his soul has lost, Johnny Depp’s Sweeney Todd is the perfect instrument for wielding death. In John Logan’s screenplay and Christopher Bond’s musical adaptation, not a hint of remorse nor glint of redemption show in Todd’s ashen face or in his words as bodies follow one another down the chute to the oven room below.

Burton dotes on a long, disquieting interlude of song and blood with Sweeney slashing necks and slack bodies dropping effortlessly. The absurd blood-letting lulls you into a comforting sense of surrealism until the jarring thwacks of his victims, with limbs akimbo and brains splattered, hit the hard cellar floor with a smack.

Burton skillfully uses the advantages of camera and angle here, increasing the horror of the deed by bringing us closer to it than the stage play ever could; we see the terror-filled expressions of disbelief on his victims’ faces as the razor slices deeply through skin and artery, and we cringe as their bodies are unceremoniously dispatched. It is a moment of sublime terror rarely captured in a horror film, let alone any musical I know of, so let this be a nightmare warning to those of you prone to such things.

While Sweeney Todd sinks deeper into the abyss, young Anthony Hope (Jamie Campbell Bower with a bit of Goth about him), happens upon Johanna–Todd’s daughter, now the beautiful prisoner of Judge Turpin–as she looks out her bedroom window. Hope and Todd arrived on the same ship into London, one filled with innocence and expectation, the other with experience and hatred. Parting ways as they disembarked, their paths meet up again as Hope runs afoul of Judge Turpin and his bully-boy, Beadle Bamford. More wicked than the beadle Mr. Bumford in Oliver Twist, Timothy Spall’s repugnant, ratty Bamford, with his extendable and lethal walking stick, exudes all the grimy detritus around him with malicious glee. It’s an unsavory performance to be savored.

But the machineries of young love and seething hatred will not be stopped. As Hope seeks to rescue Johanna from the clutches of Judge Turpin and Beadle Bamford, Todd’s hatred consumes him, turning his singular revenge plans for Judge Turpin into a plurality. Aided by Mrs. Lovett, reaping the burgeoning profits from his modus operandi, the madness begins in earnest. Soon her pie shop is buzzing with eager patrons munching away on their fellow Londoners.

Toby, the street urchin formerly in Pirelli’s abusive charge, unwittingly helps serve up the meat pies until a thumb winds up in a most unexpected place and he realizes what the huge meat grinder in the cellar is really used for. His dashed hope of finding a home with Mrs. Lovett is not the greatest tragedy in this story of loss and no redemption. More tragedy awaits as another unpleasant discovery is made and more blood is spilled.

Oh, yes, there will be blood. In the ending of Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd, there will be much, much more.