HorrorFest 2022 on Monday Morning Diary (October 10)

 

by Sam Juliano

As autumn forces its way in, attempting to cool down the summer temperatures, we move deeper into October and towards Halloween.  I have been busy finishing up Irish Jesus in Fairview, which is nearly ready for the initial editing stage.  I am almost ready to sign up for the cover art work as well.  This second novel is substancially longer than the first, and will end up between 140,000 and 150,000 words.

Ballots for the All-Time Greatest Films voting can be submitted on this thread or any other future ones.

Jamie Uhler’s Horrorfest 2022 begins this week, after the initial music review lead-in.

Of Unknown Origin (G. P. Cosmatos… 1983) monster/psychological horror

I found during the pandemic that revisiting and refining my idea of the guilty pleasure in movies was a helpful agent to my ever eroding mental health. One film I’ve screened no less than four times over the last 36 months or so is the George P. Cosmatos/Sly Stallone vehicle Cobra (1986). A futurist tale of violent fantasies where eroticism is glimpsed only for the viewer at the slickness of clothed, perfect bodies and cult-driven bloodshed, a film almost made as a 90 minute music video. You know, the sort of thing anyone should theoretically be heavily invested in watching as the world careens ever closer to the brink, chaotically away from anything approaching normalcy. I love it so much that I do what I always do: explore the careers of the chief artists behind the project, as completely as possible. I knew director Cosmatos a little*, he being the director of the ultra-jingoistic and problematic Christ parable Rambo II and the peak entertainment Western Tombstone, a film that when it appears on cable guarantees my butt on the couch for its duration. Next I did Leviathan, a sci-fi Horror that was mostly passable if not for the much better similarly themed Abyss that James Cameron did around the same time. Then there was Escape to Athena, a decent action comedy set in World War II with Roger Moore that is only worthwhile to those that are piqued with ‘action comedy with Roger Moore’ in the description. It does have a tremendous motorcycle chase sequence (Cobra similarly has a wonderful car chase set piece), virtually the reason I’d recommend it at all. Needless to say, I was growing a bit underwhelmed, that is, until I watched Of Unknown Origin.

It’s the story of Bart (Peter Weller), a lawyer who has recently finished renovation on his midtown brownstone home, a beautiful abode for his wife (newcomer Shannon Treed) and young son. It’s a clear keeping-up-with-the-Jones style splurge, the doing only a promised promotion at the firm can really afford. It’s clear his beautiful partner comes from money so he’s trying to make everyone happy, risking it all to put off the gleam that becoming a partner seems as much justified as inevitable. But once his wife and child leave for vacation Bart is left to manage the three floors that also now house a huge rat looking to cause havoc, a problematic addition to his life as he approaches an incredibly busy period at work.

By the time we’re steamrolling into the third reel, Bart’s perviously tranquil, perfect life and sense of self have been thoroughly ravaged. Returning to his most primal state begins to right the ship; professionally he calls his bosses bluff about his future at the firm just as the sparkling patina of his new beautiful, renovated brownstone and polish lawyer dress code are thrown out the window. The final battle is with the beast, as much metaphorical as it is physical, and armed with a makeshift homemade warrior suit of armor he descends to the pits of the house–the basement—where the rat has fully taken residence. In the end Ahab will fight his white whale (the film makes several direct clear references to the Melville novel to promote this reading), the question is if the sea and those he’s previously loved will know (and love) the man they will eventually return to. Or more importantly will he love them?

After screening such an odd duck of a film I sought the opinions of others—have I read the film like others have or is it largely maligned? The most I could gather through the usual online searches is that it’s mostly been relegated to a weird Jaws clone, just grossly inferior as who could take a measly, small rat as seriously as a murderous, near unkillable Great White shark? But this is a lazy, unskilled read, this isn’t just a monster movie, the real Horror is in the fake existence the rat’s presence threatens. Bart has crafted a day to day worth now in need of puncturing, the promise of affluence and domestication a numbing agent that Bart must overcome to kill his adversary and reclaim a real, complete control of his psychological and physical existence. In a way you’d take the lead, the great Peter Weller, an Australian, and pair the film with perhaps Australia’s greatest Horror creation—1971’s gonzo masterwork Wake in Fright—and see an evolutionary tie in double bill. Men going back to the land, wherever that lands, hoping that wherever that leads it is to a higher plane, knowing the Horrors that must be trampled through to get there. Here is total spiritual Horror, a masterpiece.

Siege (Canada)

Given Horror’s penchant for providing frights in examining contemporary social anxieties, the last couple of years seem ripe for the picking. Because of this, it’s hard to watch a recent Horror film, especially the ones that garner the attention of film chatter online or in person amongst fans, that aren’t in some way probing race, class strife, or ecological/biological crisis. At some point though, you almost wish horror, as in the creation of actual scares or filmic excitement would return as the bellwether of the genre, allowing us fans to probe and dissect meaning rather than having it smack us in the face as obvious, and then thinking it alone delivers the work to greatness. I thought this a lot leading into this season, perhaps because for the first time in years I’ve tried to watch a bunch of recent Horrors, more than the usual 8-10 works any Horror fan will do year to year to keep up with the trends on an annual basis but a real run through. It revealed a climate where subtext is now generally just the text, and what a subtext would normally do—provide the film a deeper reading or more fruitful worth on repeat watches—is wholly gone or never actually developed, Horror directors now deciding that what they want their film to say is what the film should be as plot, never realizing that this is a rudimentary reorganization of filmic narrative process in creative development, and goes without saying that this will almost always deliver misguided, poorly made films.

I bring all this up for Paul Donovan and Maura O’Connell’s Siege (Self Defense outside its native Canada), an urban assault action thriller, because its reason for existence is abundantly clear, but when all is said and done, becomes cool additional fodder towards near (or actually realized) greatness instead of handicapping it at the knees before it even begins. The real life Halifax Police Strike of 1981, an event where police went on strike for 53 days to improve wages leaving much of the city without patrol, is the backdrop here. With no police and recent riots, the city placed on curfew lockdown, a right-wing fascist group patrol the desolate streets looking to terrorize and take hold. They take up inside a small gay bar and their provocative actions lead to a bartender dying. Looking to clean up any witnesses they begin execution style murdering the rest of the homosexual patrons of the watering hole. In the bloodshed one is able to escape and outrun their chase, eventually finding refuge in an apartment housed by (what turn out to be anti-fascist) liberals willing to help protect the man. The fascist group eventually spend the film laying siege to the apartment building, hoping to live out their violent, extremist fantasies in real life. Only guerrilla tactics and a bunch of real smart maneuvers can save the group, which, coupled with the cracking script and environment ingenuity provide a film with a bunch of really entertaining and inventive set pieces. In the end we’re left wondering a famous Rage Against the Machine lyric, “some of those that work forces, are the same that burn crosses”.

Coming on the heels of John Carpenter’s similar Assault on Precinct 13, made a few years prior to some proclaim—it’s one of his 4 greatest works to me—you can see where Donovan and company found a way into crafting a great genre film. With a pinch of the additional heightened political exactness it more than makes up for not possessing Carpenter’s supreme directorial craft. Carpenter loved the studied the studio professionalism of Howard Hawks, specifically his masterpiece Rio Bravo, and seeing both films (Assault on Precinct 13 and Rio Bravo) it’s easy to see how Carpenter, like Donovan, saw Action Horror applicable as a modernized Western. Donovan’s film is a bit more exploitative in nature, so its Rio Bravo template would be something like the lost Val Lewton produced masterpiece Apache Drums, a frenzied, often scary Western where pounding drums provide a steady beat to the terror of flames engulfing a small community outpost on the frontier being attacked by the titular tribe of the film’s title. Of course, the fascist nature of Donovan’s film makes it both politically relevant to contemporary audiences making the film highly worthwhile but also as a reference point to another film on this lineage, Green Room (2015) where again extremist right-wing thugs look to murder anyone in opposition, this time a band isolated inside a punk club’s dressing green room during a Hardcore festival gone wrong. All these films show just how worthwhile a knowledgable film history is, how all these things tightly interrelate over generations and how story, and action directing craft not being tied up in woke subtextual nonsense as an end all be all, matter. But also, sadly, how political movements don’t. There, evil things just never go away, and a film from 1983 can be as relevant then as it is now. Still, thanks to Severin Films, Siege is easily obtained on a sparkling new DVD (from 2021, and it’s steaming—with ads—on both Tubi and Amazon Prime), and maybe history can be recalled a tad bit easier with changes made going forward. Or not.

Mutant (J. Cardos… 1984) zombie/vampire

For all the discussion on political movements or subtextual meanings on Horror from the previous piece, it’s hard at some point to not begin dwelling on the works of George A. Romero, especially his feature film debut Night of the Living Dead (1968). It’s almost the archetype for my points both ways; its supreme attention of Horror and filmmaking craft giving audiences a genuinely thrilling and scary picture, but also implanting the genre with such a singularly ‘important’ work for scholarly study that its imitators would seek to begin making films about their politics first and foremost and never fully understanding that the verve of its interwoven story and subtle motifs were the reason for its great terrifying power.

Mutant, made by stuntman-turned-director John ‘Bud’ Carlos’, is a film that applies its politics as thievery to the aforementioned Romero, it doesn’t have much to say in this regard but knows that if it mimics Night of the Living Dead it can perhaps share a few Drive-In double bills or attain a VHS box blurb to pique enough interest to get a good return on its small production budget. It’s the story of brothers Josh and Mike Cameron, who in hopes to reconnect after years apart hop in Josh’s classic ’69 Mustang for a sightseeing vacation around the US. As ‘Yankees’ they quickly find trouble in the South and are run off the road by a group of pick-up truck attached hillbillies and then marooned in a small, nearby red-neck town. Attempting to find some R&R and a tow truck to remove their car from the creek it’s now half submerged in, they enter the only working business at night time—a heavily Confederate flag draped hole in the wall bar—only to be reconnected with their ornery road rage companions and get into a fight that needs police and small town hospital intervention. Amidst all this it just seems off, the town first of all is desolate and eerie, it’s not just a racist small town but perhaps one that also has contamination from toxic waste turning people into zombies who live for the night time like vampires. But the film, as political reading, is also off, its two central characters are white guys (unlike Romero’s choice for lead, Duane Jones) so all the racial stuff seems half-baked to down right silly. Of course, the lead actor is also low-genre (soon to be) legend Wings Hauser and our cop is low-genre (washed up) legend Bo Hopkins, so is it all worth it in the end for entertainment?

Well, in a word, no. Though being made by a stuntman the film is comically inept in its action set-pieces, and they’re few and far between anyways. Plus, as great as he always is, Wings Hauser is largely wasted here, mostly because the reason(s) outlined in the previous sentence. No worries, I’ll have more to say on him this month, and why I view him as Jeffrey Combs’ equal for supreme B-movie acting from the era. So if you’re largely unaware, just wait, his due is coming and the films to first explore his brilliance, in store. But in the end, I suppose he nearly makes Mutant watchable (and the film had us laughing in spots), and that’s a feat in-and-of-itself. Still, for completists only.