10/31/14 (Part Three): A Healthy Fear of Clowns

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31 Days of Halloween, All Hallows Eve, anthology films, babysitters, based on a short, Catherine A. Callahan, Christopher Cafaro, Christopher Eadicicco, cinema, clowns, Cole Mathewson, Damien Leone, disturbing films, evil videotapes, feature-film debut, films, films reviews, George Steuber, gory films, Halloween, Halloween night, Halloween traditions, horror, horror film, horror films, Katie Maguire, Kayla Lian, killer clowns, Killer Klowns From Outer Space, Marcel Marceau, Marie Maser, Marvin Suarez, Mike Giannelli, Movies, multiple cinematographers, Sydney Freihofer, trick or treating, VHS tape, violence against children, violence against women, writer-director-editor-makeup

What is it about clowns, exactly, that seems to instill so much subliminal fear in so many people? Could it be that a whole generation of folks were spoiled by Stephen King’s classic killer-clown novel It or, perhaps, the 1990 miniseries which served up Tim Curry as the most terrifying thing in grease paint and over-sized shoes? Was this fear compounded by the Chiodo Brothers’ cult-classic Killer Klowns From Outer Space (1988)? Perhaps this all leads back to mimes, which manage to seem both friendly and sinister at the same time: with their stark, white appearances and silent demeanor, there’s just something inherently…off…about the long-time street performers, poor Marcel Marceau notwithstanding.

Whatever the reason, clowns have been a reliable part of horror films (and childrens’ nightmares) for several decades now, although Curry’s Pennywise will probably always be the gold standard for these type of things. In the 20-odd years since It made a generation of kids afraid to walk too close to storm drains, there’s been more killer clown flicks than you can shake a stick at, most of them just as generic and faceless as the anonymous zombie films that used to clog video store shelves. Every once in a while, however, a film rises above the crowd and establishes itself as something ferocious, terrifying and utterly essential: Conor McMahon’s amazing Stitches (2012) blew me away earlier this year but Damien Leone’s intense, jaw-dropping All Hallows’ Eve (2013) may just have it beat, at least as far as genuine scares go. While Stitches was a pitch-black horror-comedy with a main villain who often felt like a bigtop version of Freddy Krueger, All Hallows’ Eve is a deadly serious, often hallucinatory voyage straight into the heart of darkness. Using ’80s grindhouse films as inspiration, All Hallows’ Eve is a brutal, ultra-gory bit of insanity that may just have introduced the world to its next iconic monster: Art the Clown.

Along with being a “killer clown” film, All Hallows’ Eve is also an anthology film, albeit one where all the various stories were written and directed by the same person, ala the instantly classic Trick ‘r Treat (2007). This, of course, has the effect of giving Leone’s film the kind of cohesion that’s usually missing in multi-director/writer affairs like V/H/S (2012) or The ABCs of Death (2012). By utilizing multiple cinematographers, Leone manages to give each of the segments, as well as the wraparound, distinctly different looks, a nicely realized tactic that adds immeasurable interest to the various stories. As with any anthology, however, the real proof is in the quality of the individual segments: as with everything else, All Hallows’ Eve doesn’t disappoint in the slightest.

Based around two of Leone’s early short films, All Hallows’ Eve consists of three separate stories and a traditional wraparound: in this case, the wraparound deals with a babysitter (Katie Maguire) watching over two young charges (Cole Mathewson, Sydney Freihofer) on Halloween night. The trio have just returned from a profitable night of trick or treating and the kids are eagerly divvying up their hauls when young Timmy discovers an unmarked VHS tape in his bag. Unsure of where it came from, the kids wheedle and cajole until their sitter reluctantly agrees to watch the video with them. The video, then, forms the meat of the film’s three stories: in between segments, we return to Sarah as increasingly odd things begin to happen to her in the house, leading her to the terrifying realization that what’s on the tape might be real…and that her and the kids might be the next victims?

What’s on the tape? Well, as mentioned, we get three different stories, all of which are completely batshit insane in their own fevered ways. The first segment begins with a woman meeting a mysterious, mute clown (our antihero Art (Mike Giannelli) in a deserted train station and ends with a deliriously Grand Guignol blow-out that manages to weld C.H.U.D. (1984) and Rosemary’s Baby (1968), with predictably nutso results. The second tale involves Caroline (Catherine A Callahan), whose artist husband has gone out-of-town and left her alone with his newest painting, a mysteriously covered work that gives Caroline a severe case of the heebie-jeebies. The segment takes a drastic left-turn when Caroline is besieged by some decidedly otherworldly visitors: I would never spoil the “twist” but suffice to say the middle segment, like the first one, manages to combine multiple horror subgenres into one crazy little stew and is anything but predictable. The final segment, perhaps the nastiest of the bunch, involves a woman (Marie Maser) who makes an ill-fated late-night stop at an isolated gas station. Our good buddy, Art, is there and it seems that he’s made a righteous mess out of the restroom (and the attendant): when the woman steps into the middle of what must be some little bit of Hell on earth, Art pursues her relentlessly, determined to take care of any and all witnesses to his work. Hitting the open road, the woman desperately tries to put the sinister clown as far behind her as possible. As she’ll find out, however, you can’t run from fate, no matter how hard you try.

Here’s a little bit of straight talk from your humble host: All Hallows’ Eve absolutely blew me away, no two ways about it. Despite what must have been an exceptionally low budget, the film is a hit in just about every aspect: stellar effects and makeup; good acting (especially from Giannelli as that terrifying clown); a fantastic electronic score that handily recalls John Carpenter’s synth work; some truly jaw-dropping gore setpieces (I absolutely cannot hammer this home enough: All Hallows’ Eve is ridiculously, explosively gory) and a truly authentic “grindhouse” look that’s one of the best-looking modern examples I’ve yet seen. Only the final, gas station segment had a look that I wasn’t particularly fond of: too blown-out and white, it’s almost as if the filmmakers tried a little too hard to approximate an old ’70s-’80s look, right down to the ubiquitous scratch marks/film flaws. Whereas the other segments look effortlessly real, the final segment looks a bit off, mostly because the aesthetic is a little too obvious.

Truth be told, I really only have one complaint about the film, a complaint that can also be leveled at a good many of the original ’80s grindhouse flicks: almost all of the violence in the film is perpetrated against woman, with the gas station attendant (Michael Chmiel) being the only male victim. This issue, of course, is absolutely nothing new as far as slasher and grindhouse films go: while movies like Friday the 13th (1980) managed to throw in plenty of male victims, they’re still distinctly ruled by the “male gaze,” particularly with regards to the depiction of female characters. While the terror in the second segment of All Hallows’ Eve is more universal, the violence in the opening and closing stories is distinctly feminine in nature, a point which definitely made me uneasy, despite how much I liked the film, overall.

This is not to say that All Hallows’ Eve is inherently misogynistic, mind you: unlike particularly egregious examples from the ’80s (see pretty much any ’80s Italian gore flick), there does not appear to be an explicitly anti-feminine agenda at play here. The most problematic moment, by far, comes with the resolution to the third story, a nasty little “twist” that comes a little out of left-field and resembles something from an August Underground production: this bit is extremely strong stuff and I could definitely see it prompting an extreme audience reaction. The underlying misogyny of the horror industry is certainly well-documented and continues to be a problem, although plenty of modern-day horror films such as The Woman (2011) and The Descent (2005) have taken steps to help correct that: my assertion here, I suppose, is that All Hallows’ Eve is no more explicitly misogynistic than any of the slasher and grindhouse films that it’s obviously seeking to emulate…the film is nothing if not an homage to a by-gone era, out-dated viewpoints included.

At the risk of continuing to ramble on endlessly, however, let me wrap this all up by stating, once more, how much I thoroughly enjoyed this film. It definitely won’t be for everyone: it’s incredibly grim and unrelenting, astoundingly violent and incredibly unpleasant at times. Looking at my other list, however (to paraphrase the late, great Mr. Ebert), I also see that the film is brilliantly made, especially for its obviously low budget, insanely energetic, genuinely scary and, above all, smart. This is a film that acknowledges tired genre tropes yet manages to inject new life into them via some truly inspired twists (the first segment, in particular, is a pretty dizzying genre mashup). It’s a film that’s actually fun to watch, even when it goes to some pretty dark places…pretty much the epitome of a good horror film, right?

There’s no shortage of invention and genuine talent on display here, whether from the folks behind or in front of the camera: Damien Leone is obviously a ridiculously talented filmmaker who, with a little luck, might develop into the next John Carpenter. All Hallows’ Eve is pretty much the perfect Halloween film, especially for folks who want something a bit darker than the usual fare. Oh, yeah…and that clown? Fucking terrifying.

10/2/14 (Part One): The Reason For the Season

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'70s films, 31 Days of Halloween, Assault on Precinct 13, auteur theory, babysitters, Brian Andrews, Charles Cyphers, classic films, co-writers, cult classic, dead teenagers, Dean Cundey, Debra Hill, Donald Pleasence, electronic score, favorite films, Film auteurs, Haddonfield, Halloween, horror, horror franchises, horror movies, iconic film scores, independent film, insane asylums, Jamie Lee Curtis, John Carpenter, John Michael Graham, Kyle Richards, Michael Myers, Nancy Kyes, Nick Castle, P.J. Soles, Sam Loomis, set in the 1970s, slasher films, small town life, writer-director

Apparently, I owe John Carpenter’s classic Halloween (1978) an apology. Despite regarding the film as one of my favorites for more years than I can remember and revisiting it at least once a year, it seems that I’ve been taking it for granted. Call me “lazy” or “too comfortable” but I’ve been treating the film as background noise for far too long now: something to have on while serving up gift-wrapped sugar treats for the young’uns or to zone out to after a particularly long day at work. Perhaps it’s due to the fact that I’ve seen the film so many times, kind of like how we all used to get burnt out on big radio singles back when there was radio. I’ve been looking at the movie for years but I haven’t really been “watching” it for some time now. Obviously, this was a situation that needed to be rectified.

For this year’s screening of the seasonal chiller, I decided to give it my complete and undivided attention: rather than just put it on, I wanted to try to view it (if possible) through unbiased eyes. Essentially, I had a question: if I were viewing this for the first time today, would it still have the same impact on me that it did when I was a kid? It’s a flawed experiment, obviously, since there are so many other factors to consider, not the least of which is that at the time I saw the film, I didn’t really have much to compare it to: by this point, I’ve seen more horror films than I probably thought could ever exist back when I was knee-high to a grasshopper. Nonetheless, I wanted to see if the film could actually still affect me: I’ve been hearing stories lately about young people laughing their way through recent screenings of the film and wanted to see if this forefather to the slasher film still had any of its raw power left. As it stands, I found out two separate things: the film hasn’t lost any of its power over the 36 years since its release…and it’s entirely possible that modern audiences have rocks in their head. I’ll try to prove the former but you’re just gonna have to take my word on the latter.

Since I find it nearly impossible to believe that there are any film fans out there who aren’t at least familiar with Carpenter’s masterpiece (or Rob Zombie’s brain-dead remakes, if that floats yer boat), I’ll just give this the Cliff Notes synopsis: 15 years ago, young Michael Myers (Will Sandin) brutally stabbed his sister to death and was sentenced to an insane asylum. Dedicated psychiatrist Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasence) spends the next eight years trying to cure and the seven years after that trying to keep him locked away. When Michael escapes from the asylum on the day before Halloween, Loomis tracks him back to his boyhood home, the small town of Haddonfield. Michael arrives in the town on Halloween, steals some supplies (knives and a William Shatner Halloween mask) and quickly sets his sights on decimating the town’s supply of teenagers, in particular Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis), Annie (Nancy Kyes) and Lynda (P.J. Soles). As day gives way to night, Michael skulks about, picking one person off after the other. Loomis is on the case, however, and has been scouring the town from top to bottom, hunting for any sign of his elusive ward. As Michael closes the distance between Laurie and her two young charges, Tommy (Brian Andrews) and Lindsey (Kyle Richards), will Loomis get there in time or will the resourceful babysitter be forced into a fight for her life against a silent, inhuman monster?

But back to that earlier question: did the film have any impact on me this time around or did I find myself re-evaluating my lifelong love for the film, ala Kevin Smith’s now odious Clerks (1994)? As it turns out, the film is still just as impactful (to me, at least) today as it was a couple of decades ago: despite knowing every twist, turn and plot development, I was still glued to the screen and even caught myself reacting to a few setpieces that I was sure would be old hat by this time. Now that the “Is it still effective?” question is answered, time to think about the “Why?” part. Why is Halloween still such an effective horror, even as it rapidly approaches its 40 anniversary?

The easy answer, of course, is that Halloween is still so damn effective because it’s such a well-made film. Yeah, that’s a bit of a cop-out but let’s increase the magnification to 1000x, shall we? First off, Carpenter is an absolute master filmmaker: that’s no hyperbole, rather one of those accepted scientific facts. By the time of Halloween, he already had a massively entertaining sci-fi epic under his belt (Dark Star (1974), as well as one of the most undisputed badass films in the history of popular cinema: Assault on Precinct 13 (1976). I’ve already written extensively about Assault on Precinct 13 in another blog but here’s the recap: Assault is one of those raw, primal films that sprung fully formed into the world, like Athena out of Zeus’ head, and proceeded to rewrite the rule book on what low-budget action films were capable enough. Suffice to say that Assault on Precinct 13 would be a feather in anyone’s cap: for Carpenter, he just called it his sophomore film.

But back to Halloween. So we’ve got a master director who’s just taken his first baby steps towards on helluva career. What else do we have? How about that iconic electronic music score? Short of the Jaws (1975) theme song (and maybe Jurassic Park (1993), come to think of it), I’m hard-pressed to recall another film’s instrumental score that’s so easily recognized and functions so Pavlovian among genre fans. The responsible party? That’d be our man John, again, who also wrote the instantly memorable score for Assault. So we have a master director and an amazing musical score…what else we got? Well, we’ve also got a pretty impressive cast, even if they’re mostly unknowns (with the exception of the legendary Donald Pleasence, of course). Despite appearing in a few TV shows prior to this, Halloween was also the big-screen debut of Jamie Lee Curtis, which also adds a few feathers to its cap: film fans, genre or otherwise, know Curtis as being one of the most dependable, strong and fun performers to tread the boards in this modern film era. Curtis’ performance as Laurie is a true watershed moment in horror, since it introduced the horror world to the notion of a strong female lead. While Laurie might not be quite in Lt. Ripley territory, her character is anything but a damsel in distress: Loomis may shoot Michael several times from a safe distance but Laurie goes mano a mano with the fucker, employing hangers, knitting needles, knives and whatever else she can get her hands on to inflict maximum damage. Loomis may be the guy who gets in the final shots (for all the good that does) but Laurie’s the one who softened up the devil, in the first place.

Unlike the scads of “dead teenager movies” that followed in its wake, the “victims” in Halloween are not a clichéd, unlikable bunch of cannon fodder: they might not be fully developed characters in the way that characters in The Godfather (1972) are, for example, but they’re also a light year away from the “horny/stupid/asshole” stereotypes that would pop up in just about every other slasher film ever made. Laurie and her friends may not quite look like teenagers but they definitely sound like them and it’s pretty impossible (for me, at least) to not feel empathy for them. Contrast this to something like Hatchet (2006), which delights in introducing super-shitty characters so that audiences will cheer when they get fed into a wood chipper: it’s a subtle but big difference.

Alright…so far, we have a film with a master director, excellent musical score, effective acting and sympathetic characters. What else does it have going on? Well, it’s got an exceptionally tight script, for one thing, a script which manages to dole out just enough information to get us intrigued but not enough to make us glaze over (I’m absolutely looking at you, Rob Z). It also has some pretty astounding cinematography, courtesy of Dean Cundey, the man with the camera who shot everything from Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks (1976) to most of Carpenter’s catalog (including The Thing, Big Trouble in Little China and Escape From New York), Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988) and Jurassic Park (to name but a very few out of a very impressive career). Cundey uses plenty of gorgeous wide shots in the film, along with that (by now clichéd) “killer’s POV” that’s name-checked in just about 99.9% of slasher films. If you watch Halloween and think, “Gee, this stuff is so cliché,” ponder this, Poindexter: this was the film that pretty much wrote the rulebook on this kind of stuff (if you held up your hand and said, “Bay of Blood (1971)!,” you get points for that, too).

So all that stuff’s thrown into the mix, which should go a long way towards answering the question, “Is Halloween actually a good film?” (Short answer: Of course.) The deeper question, however, is why is Carpenter’s film still so effective despite all the films that have come and gone since? There have been plenty of bloodier, rawer, more frantic, more hopeless and more eye-popping films over the years, no two ways about it. How, then, could I stand on my apple-box and bend your ears about this old dinosaur? Well, folks, there’s a pretty simple answer: like Hitchcock before him, Carpenter is an absolute wizard at creating tension so thick that you could cut it with a knife. From the opening credit sequence (and let’s be honest: it’s one of the coolest, if simplest, credit sequences in the history of the medium) to the final shot, Halloween is nothing short of a barely concealed live wire. Much of the credit for this impenetrable mood is due to Carpenter’s amazing score: rarely have there been musical tones that seem more suited for reaching into someone’s chest and squeezing their heart into strawberry jam. The film also has a deadly serious tone (despite some welcome comic relief via the ultra-snarky Annie), which helps with the oppressive atmosphere. Digging deeper, however, there’s another reason for this: Carpenter has purposefully crafted a world that oozes menace and threat from every pore, regardless of the time of day, the characters involved or the storyline.

Despite seeming the obvious way to go, the majority of Halloween’s narrative doesn’t take place during the evening: some of the flat-out creepiest shit happens right out in broad daylight. Carpenter does something so simple, yet devious, that I’m surprised no one else has really figured this out yet: he lets his monster just walk around among the unsuspecting sheep. During the lead-up to the night-time festivities, Carpenter manages to stick Michael into the corners or margins of just about every shot. Laurie notices Michael watching her from across the street, while she’s in school…Laurie notices Michael hanging out on a sidewalk, in her neighborhood…Michael is just driving a car around through the streets of Haddonfield, as natural as if he were cruising on a Saturday night. Unlike other cinematic monsters, Michael doesn’t seem to strictly a “creature of the night,” as it were. The majority of the kills occur after dark, but the stalking is pretty-much a 24-7 deal.

There’s a reason this works so beautifully and it has to do with that old chestnut of Hitchcock’s regarding showing the bomb: if a couple are sitting at a table and suddenly blow up, the audience is surprised and shocked but only momentarily. If the audience witnesses someone place a bomb under the table, set the timer and leave, however, than we suddenly have a whole other animal…we have suspense. The characters might not know about the bomb but we do, which has the natural effect of keeping us on the edge of our seats: we keep yelling at the screen, telling the idiots to get the hell away from the table but they, of course, won’t listen.

Carpenter’s bomb, so to speak, is Michael. In many ways, he’s like a living ghost that haunts Haddonfield. Since we already know who and what he is, thanks to the opening, Loomis’ description and the harrowing asylum escape, we already know what he’s capable of once he shows up among the “normal” folks. Laurie and her friends might not know who the goony guy in the Shatner mask is but we do and that makes all the difference. Since Michael is an omnipresent force in the film, we never reach a point where he’s not on our minds: we might temporarily forget him, as we get caught up in some bit of teenage minutiae but he’s always right around the corner to remind us. Once the killing begins in earnest and Michael becomes an unstoppable force, it’s almost like our fears have been confirmed: if only those idiots would have listened to us about the bomb, none of this shit would be happening. Thanks to this technique, Halloween has about a million times more resonance and power than generic slashers that merely set up a group of people, establish a threat, wait until dark and kill ’em all.

These are all great reasons to love Halloween, as far as I’m concerned, but there are plenty of other reasons. Nick Castle’s performance as Michael may be mute but he manages to instill no small amount of characterization, none the less: one of my favorite scenes in any horror movie, ever, is the bit where Michael lifts Bob (John Michael Graham) off the floor, nails him to the wall with a knife and proceeds to stare at him, slowly cocking his head to the side as if he were a dog watching a caterpillar. It’s a terrifying moment precisely because it’s such an innocent, human expression: we don’t expect this emotionless monstrosity to express curiosity, after all, since that makes him more uncomfortably human than we’d like. There’s another fantastic scene (in the same part of the film, ironically enough) where Michael puts on a sheet and Michael’s glasses and goes to see Lynda. She expects Bob while we know it’s Michael under the sheet: her goofing around turns to frustration when Bob won’t end the joke, while our hearts jump from our chest to our throat like a strongman test at the carnival. There are about a million ways this scene could have been played out but only one that achieves maximum chills and Carpenter nails it.

And there, in a pretty huge nutshell, you have it: my rationalization for why Halloween should still be considered not only a forefather to modern horror films but also one of the best examples of the genre that we’ll probably ever see. Like Hooper’s landmark The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), the original Halloween is surprisingly light on actual gore: there are plenty of strangulations and off-screen killing but this is about the furthest thing from something like Friday the 13th (1980) that you can get. This, of course, makes the numerous (and increasingly violent) sequels seem even more half-baked than the numerous TCM sequels: while there was some (small) precedent for graphic violence in Hooper’s film, there’s virtually none in Carpenter’s, despite the subject matter.

Despite not really thinking about Halloween in any meaningful way for years, all it took was one good, close viewing to remind me of all the reasons that this film was always one of my favorites. Like eating comfort foods, there’s just something about watching Halloween that seems natural and…well…good, to me. In a day and age where one-upmanship is the name of the game and jaded viewers have seen just about everything short of actual snuff films, it’s refreshing to return to something like Halloween and remember a time when it was possible for a horror film to make you think and feel without battering you into submission. Watching Halloween in this way has only reaffirmed my earlier love for the film: horror films wouldn’t be the same without Carpenter and Halloween wouldn’t be Halloween without…well…Halloween.