Surreal. Surreal. It’s one of those words, isn’t it? It seems to me that often people aren’t 100% sure of what it actually really means exactly, but it still gets used an awful lot. A bit like “ironic”. However, a quick glance in the dictionary tells us that surreal means: 1.  Having qualities attributed to or associated with surrealism, and 2. Having an oddly dreamlike quality. Of course, dreams are strange, bizarre and often unsettling, so it’s little wonder that the word surreal is often attributed to things that bear one, or all, of these qualities.

When I came to chose which films I would cover for Days Are Numbers’ Surreal Week, I was a little bit daunted not only by the exact definition of the word surreal, but by the sheer number of films that could potentially be classified as surreal. With that in mind, I’ve decided instead to look at some of the kinds of films that are often described as surreal, and we’ll see how many of them actually cut the mustard (which is a pretty surreal saying in itself, if you think about it… You can’t really cut mustard, can you?). This method will also handily double as a whistle-stop tour of surrealism’s influence on film in general.

So, follow me now through the looking glass, and don’t dilly-”Dali”! Groan.

The Surreal Deal

If we refer back to the first part of the definition of surreal, we may want to clarify what exactly surrealism itself is supposed to be. Well, as I’m sure you’re all already aware (but I’m going to tell you anyway!), surrealism was an art and literature movement started in the 1920s by the likes of Andre Breton, Man Ray, Antonin Artaud, and yes, Salvador Dali. Surrealism was all about creating a forum for the mind-boggling, the eccentric and the shocking in the arts, and while this was easily achieved on canvas and paper (provided you had the talent, of course), nascent film technology was a bit more difficult to master. Many of the movement’s founding members gave it a go however, and with some very special results.

Early cinema was often pretty bloody strange anyway, as anyone who has seen George Melies’ A Trip to the Moon or anything from the German expressionist movement can testify. Surrealism proper takes it’s bow onscreen in 1928 with The Seashell and the Clergyman, directed by the largely overlooked Germaine Dulac, and scripted by Artaud. This was overshadowed the following year, however, by the infamous Un Chien Andalou, a collaboration between Spanish director Luis Bunuel and his fellow countryman Dali. Anyone who’s ever done any kind of film studies should be intimately familiar with Un Chien Andalou, featuring as it does several of the most pored over sequences in cinema history, including the notorious “razor slitting eye/moon passing cloud” opening. Un Chien Andalou is a fine and important film, but how much you enjoy it may well depend on how interested you are in the surrealist movement, as it is a film that almost exclusively reflects their aims and interests.

Bunuel would go on to have a long and varied career without ever fully losing interest in surrealism, and traces of it can be found in much of his later work, including such critical triumphs as The Exterminating Angel, Belle de Jour, and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. Dali, on the other hand, will always be remembered primarily for his painted work, but his adventures in, not to mention influence on, cinema would continue…

Dali Goes to Hollywood

The influence of surrealism on mainstream culture would be profound, if not always immediately traceable, and among it’s keenest students were some of the most widely watched American cartoonists of the 30s and 40s. Animators at Warner Bros.’ aptly named Looney Toons, home to many beloved characters including Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, gleefully lapped up the more zany elements of surrealism and applied them to their cartoon frolics. Even their more traditionally straight-laced rivals at Disney began taking their cue from Dali et al, with nutty ol’ Walt himself even beginning, but sadly never finishing, a direct collaboration with Dali on a short called Destino.

One Hollywood assignment that Dali did manage to finish, however, was his contribution of a frankly incredible, and still powerful, dream sequence to Alfred Hitchcock’s psychological thriller, Spellbound. Dali concieved and designed the revolutionary sequence, the direction of which was overseen by Things to Come helmer William Cameron Menzies, rather than Hitchcock himself, whose relationship with producer David O. Selznick was rather frayed at the time. Indeed, Spellbound itself is far from Hitchcock’s best film, and is probably best remembered today for Dali’s dream sequence alone. A startling addition to the film, it sees Gregory Peck trapped in a nightmarish, recognisably Dali-esque world of gigantic, staring eyes (which get sliced in two, a la Un Chien Andalou), mysterious figures, and bizzaro landscapes.

Spellbound was released in 1945, the year the Second World War ended. It’s at this point that the shadow of surrealism begins to fade away in mainstream American culture, at least for the time being. It’s not difficult to see why, either. Following their horrific experiences, a generation of war-hardy Americans decided to move away from the strange and unknown, instead reaffirming their national identity as wholesome, pure, and rather sterile, traits reflected in the popular entertainment of the time (think Leave it to Beaver etc.). In order to keep track of surrealism, we’re going to have to head elsewhere…

The Surreal World

Of course, Europe also experienced some “difficulties” during the Second World War, and while surrealism was pushed down on the agenda on that continent also, it was for slightly different reasons. From the early 50s onwards, European directors would begin to work with newly available light-weight equipment and very soon a “new wave” of independent filmmaking was developing in almost every country. Initially at least, and led by Italian neorealism, these movements were influenced by the very leftist, Soviet notion that all true art should possess a poetic realism, and ideally focus on the day-to-day lives of the proleteriat. Not much scope for surrealism there, of course, but within time almost every director of the Italian neorealism movement would add a splash of the fantastical to their filmmaking, most notably Federico Fellini.

 Ah, Fellini. Possibly the only film director to have warranted his own word; Felliniesque. But what does it mean? Well, it’s a catch-all adjetive used to describe the great man’s most famous films, including the likes of La Dolce Vita, 8 1/2, and Juliet of the Spirits, all of which could be described as colourful, fanciful, and peculiar. Surreal, in other words? Certainly to some extent, but I personally believe that Felliniesque should be interpreted as having one major difference from straight-up surrealism; namely that Fellini’s fantastical occurences usually take place in an everyday, perfectly explainable context. Think of the gigantic fish pulled from the sea at the end of La Dolce Vita. Yes, it’s strange, but it could probably happen. The record player blaring out the sound of church bells sat beside a real, disused church bell in Nights of Cabiria also springs to mind. It would seem that Federico rather ingeniusously found a way to import the surreal into everyday life.

The French New Wave is probably the post-war film movement most widely regarded as being somewhat surreal, but it too began under the influence of social realism, with the rural dramas of Agnes Varda and Claude Chabrol leading the way. It is possible to see traces of surreal humour in many of it’s later films, however, and efforts from Alain Resnais (Last Year at Marienbad) and Louis Malle (Zazie dans la metro) are as straight-up surreal as cinema gets; although I would argue that the output of the movement’s most famously “out-there” director, Jean-Luc Godard, couldn’t be described as truly surreal (too cynical and satirical, if ya ask me). Interestingly, possibly the most surreal international film movements of the era sprang from the east, the same breeding ground as social realism. Anyone who supposes that filmmaking under communist regimes was always drab or stilted should check out such fare as Czechoslovakia’s bonkers anarcho-feminist caper Daisies, or the East German children’s classic The Singing Ringing Tree and have their minds duly blown.

Feed your Head

When I started thinking about what films to include in this here surreal special, I instinctively decided that I should shy away from anything that could be percieved as psychedelic. But now that I’ve decided to take a more general look at the influence on surrealism in cinema, I’m going to attempt to explain why. Namely, that I think psychedelia is a completely different, albeit superficially similar, school of thought to surrealism. In much the same way that I find Godard a bit to calculating to be considered a genuine surrealist, I also find the movers and shakers of the Swinging 60s a bit too loose and, quite often, too vacuous. It was a movement primarily based on getting out of your skull, was it not?

That’s not to say that I don’t love psychedelic things, as I very much do, and I also concede that the aforementioned superficial similarity between all things psychedelic and surreal at least permits us to have a look at a handful of films from the era. My own personal all-time favourite psychedelic film is probably The Monkees’ vehicle Head, a freewheeling, almost sociopathic attempt to deconstruct the public image of the manufactured mop tops by having them mock a disabled cowboy, fraternise with Frank Zappa’s talking cow, and battle a giant Victor Mature, among other activities. Bob “Five Easy Pieces” Rafelson directed and co-wrote the script with none other than Jack Nicholson, who also contributed lyrics to the film’s fine soundtrack. Of course, you can’t talk about great psychedelic music without mentioning The Beatles, and their 1967 TV special Magical Mystery Tour is also a treasure trove of bizarre delights, even if it is notoriously uneven and lacks Head’s dark edge.

So intrinsically linked were psychedelia and music that it’s hard to find a psychedelic film without some kind of popular musician attached to it somewhere. Kooky Brit drama Wonderwall (yes, that’s where he got it from) had George Harrison twanging the soundtrack, and Nic Roeg and Donald Cammel’s dark crime drama Performance famously boasted Mick Jagger in the lead. In fact, the only psychedelic films I can find that don’t have some immediately obvious rock ‘n’ roll connection are the ultra-strange, and often completely mindblowing, westerns and fantasy fables of mad Chilean mystic Alejandro Jodorowski. But even then a little research shows that both of his most famous films, El Topo and Holy Mountain, were made with the help of late-era Beatles manager Allen Klein and that both were also enthusiastically supported by messrs Harrison and John Lennon! Still, they’re both great films, and due to their allegorical and philosophical stylings, they’re probably the closest psychedelic cinema comes to true surrealism.

A Nightmarelike Quality?

I would argue that the most surreal of all genres is horror. Yes, there are probably surreal variants of films from every genre, from comedy (Jacques Tati, Jerry Lewis) to westerns (generally those of the spaghetti variety, most notably Giulio Questi’s staggering Django Kill… If You Live, Shoot!). But horror, by it’s very nature, is the genre that most readily relies on the uncanny, the otherwordly, and the unusual to do it’s job, and these traits serve to align it closely with many fundamental aspects of surrealism. Just think of how many renowned horror films contain surreal elements, and you’ll find that the list is almost endless; The Wicker Man, Don’t Look Now, Dawn of the Dead, Rosemary’s Baby etc.

More than anything else, the one motif regularly used in horror that links it to surrealism is it’s use of dreams, or rather nightmares. The Nightmare on Elm Street series is undoubtedly the most famous example of this, but a personal favourite of mine is the framing device used by Ealing’s celebrated portmanteau film, 1945′s Dead of Night, which sees the narrator trapped in a recurring nightmare. Another great example of this is The Slayer, a little known slasher film from 1982, which contains a number of similarities to A Nightmare on Elm Street, but was in fact made two years before. In it a mysterious, barely glimpsed killer stalks his victim in both her dreams and her everday reality, and very fittingly, his victim just so happens to be a surrealist painter by trade!

In fact, of all modern filmmakers I can think of, the one who strikes me as having arguably the most surrealistic bent is none other than Italian horror maestro Dario Arento. Practically every film Argento has made since returning to the horror genre in 1975 (following a brief detour into westerns) has come with a generous side order of dark surrealism. Consider the schizophrenic logic of Profondo Rosso, Suspiria’s dark fairytale theatrics, or 1980′s Inferno as a whole, which almost feels like Spellbound’s Dali dream sequence feverishly stretched to breaking point over the duration of an entire film. As dazzling as Inferno is, however, I suspect Argento’s most authentically surreal film may be one of his most maligned; Phenomena. Appearing five years after Inferno, and initially released in many territories as Creepers, Phenomena boasts a beguiling plot that is so multi-faceted it is scarcely believable. Featuring sleepwalking, telepathic communication with insects, a razorblade-weilding chimp, and a murderous dwarf, it might require a few viewings of Phenomena for you to take it all in, but surely that’s the way any surrealist worth his salt would want it.

Back to Sur-reality

So, what lasting influence has surrealism had on modern cinema? Well, it’s hard to gage. It can’t be denied that we live in a time when bizarre images and juxtapositions are more prevelant in mainstream media than ever before, but that’s not necessarily a good thing. It would seem that even surrealism has been harnessed as yet another stylistic weapon of choice in our ever more corporate culture, and you only have to switch on your television set to see any number of bizarre advertisements selling any number of dull products.

What you won’t see, however, is anything really, genuinely, dangerously strange. Modern surrealism may be pervasive, but it has also been sanitised. That’s why I can’t really think of any modern films that I could really bring myself to describe as thoroughbred surreal. I could mention either of Michel Gondry’s popular efforts Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or The Science of Sleep, but aside from the fact that I don’t particularly like either film, they also smack somewhat of false surrealism. It seems to me that the point of both of those films is that they’re supposed to be surreal, so therefore they can’t really be properly surreal, can they? It all seems a bit forced. The same goes for the films of David Lynch, although I’ll give him the sublime and disturbing Eraserhead, which also helps back up my horror-as-surrealism theory. Thanks, Dave!

Really, one of the few modern films I can think of that I would unequivocally classify as being surreal is Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, and that was made over 25 years ago! Perhaps still best known as the man behind the madcap animations on Monty Python, Gilliam’s most recent films may have a tang of whimsical surrealism about them themselves, but Brazil remains as razor-sharp as the very razor that Bunuel and Dali dragged across an eyeball all those years ago. A kind of Fritz Lang-directed revue of George Orwell’s 1984, the film depicts a dystopian future in which human life is very cheap and all the better for it, as bungling bureaucracy is steadily swallowing it up. It’s this grotesque humour, combined with Gilliam’s off-kilter visual style, that marks Brazil out as not only a great film, but a truly surreal one, also.

When I talk to people who haven’t seen Ghostwatch (either because they were too young, or they were watching something else at the time), I sometimes feel like the deranged stereotype of a Vietnam veteran; “YOU WOULDN’T KNOW, MAN! YOU WEREN’T THERE, MAN!” I holler upon recalling the horror (and yes… the horror) of it all.

If ya don’t know, Ghostwatch was a mockumentary broadcast by BBC One on Halloween night, 1992. Clearly and cautiously signposted as a drama, the events depicted in this one-off broadcast nevertheless began to unfold with an astounding feel of authenticity. Ghostwatch purported to be an investigation of the “most haunted house in Britain”, carried out with semi-ironic enthusiasm by several loveable TV stalwarts of the day; Sarah Greene, Mike Smith, Craig Charles, and even Michael “Parky” Parkinson.

Things soon turned very nasty, however, as the family residing in said haunted house were invited to recount in creepy detail their ongoing torment at the hands of a malevolent spirit named “Mr. Pipes” on account of his habit of banging on their heating pipes. Now, I’m not going to lie or exaggerate for effect. I knew Ghostwatch wasn’t real from the off. I watched it from the start, so had seen the warning, and I was watching it with my mum, who definitely knew it wasn’t real, and reassured me accordingly. BUT, and as you can see it’s a big but, Ghostwatch was still fucking scary, really fucking scary, and weird.

This is partly due to the fact that it was so unprecedented. You have to remember, this was 1992. We weren’t so clued up on how telly worked back then, and we weren’t used to it lying to us or playing tricks on us. A handy reference point, perhaps, is the fact that Chris Morris’ epoch-shattering mock news satire The Day Today was still two years away. So into this telly age of innocence stalks a programme that looks, feels and smells like the real thing, and quickly turns into something so frightening and intense that you can’t quite believe that, even if it is a prank, the BBC has had the audacity to make it.

Ghostwatch is deviously cynical in the way it earns your trust. The popular presenters (each of whom still resides to some extent or other in the public consciousness) employed to bring it to life couldn’t have been better chosen. Affable lads Craig Charles and Mike “Smiffy” Smith would never want to scare you or make a fool out of you, would they? Carrying even more potential for psychological damage is the use of children’s TV presenter Sarah Greene as a roving reporter who at one point conducts a terrifying interview with the clearly traumitised young daughter of the house, who also happens to be covered from head to foot in scratch marks. I was 11-years-old at the time and still watched Greene on Going Live! Perhaps most dastardly of all is “Parky” himself who uses all of his hard-earned credibility as a National Treasure to convince us that he himself has been possessed by Mr. Pipes. Believe it or not, this is actually really quite convincing.

But it’s not just shrewd TV trickery that makes Ghostwatch such an unsettling brain-bomb of terror. It is also brilliantly written by Stephen Volk (who penned the screenplay for William Friedkin’s typically duff The Guardian two years before) and expertly directed by Lesley Manning. One of Ghostwatch’s greatest strengths is it’s employment of a surprisingly underused ploy in modern horror; namely keep all sightings of your spook, monster or killer fleeting. Mr. Pipes is scarcely glimpsed but eight times during the programme’s 90 minute running time, but each time he is, be it a half-face in the darkness or a shadowy silhouette behind a bedroom curtain, it sends a shiver down your spine. At one point the programme even has the balls to re-run a sequence in which we have seen Mr. Pipes to show us (deceitfully, of course) that he wasn’t there at all! No wonder the BBC’s duty-log went white hot with complaints while it was still on air.

Ah yes, the complaints… While I had been fully assured from the very beginning that Ghostwatch wasn’t real, others weren’t so lucky. 1992 was also still firmly in an era of four channels, and people flicking around for something to watch were incredibly likely to hop onto Ghostwatch without being fully aware it was a drama. The BBC may have felt they had their backs covered somewhat with the presence of a helpline, which when called would assure troubled viewers the whole thing was a hoax. Unfortunately, so many were scared shitless by what they were seeing that the line became jammed. It was also undermined somewhat by another devastating ploy in which Mike Smith fielded a (fake) call from a petrified mother whose young son had fallen into a trance whilst watching the programme and violently smashed a glass coffee table, cutting himself horrifically in the process. This was my personal most traumitising moment of Ghostwatch, I remember the woman’s voice being wild with emotion and frighteningly real. You just had to keep thinking to yourself; “They wouldn’t go this far, would they?”

In the end, maybe people were victims of their own foolhardiness to have accepted Ghostwatch as anything less than an elaborate prank. But as I’ve already made clear, the time was right and the entire production was sly enough to catch a hell of a lot of people completely off-guard. As a testament to Ghostwatch’s undiminished power, the BBC have never repeated it, and undoubtedly never will.

It is, however, available on DVD from the BFI, and take it from me, it’s well worth seeing if you haven’t already, and well worth revisiting if you remember being scared shitless by it, like me. Why not have a look at this clip below and see what you think? Please don’t have fucking nightmares.

Films based on comic books. There’s a few too many of ‘em about these days. And what’s worse is that they all seem determined to sap everything that’s remotely fun out of comic books in their transition from page to screen. Take that new Batman franchise, for example. It’s all so po-faced and pseudo serious, posing the question; “What if Batman was, y’know, a real guy?” Well, he’s not a real guy. He’s fucking Batman.

Anyway, if you want a masterclass in how comic books should be adapted for the screen, look no further than George A. Romero’s Creepshow. And since it’s Halloween, that goes double.

Creepshow is based on the notorious E.C. horror comic anthologies of the 50s. The video nasties of their day, these comics offered up surprisingly grim and gory fare for disaffected youngsters during the frightening first wave of the Cold War. These youngsters counted among them both Romero and legendary horror scribe Stephen King, who collaborated with the director to bring the lurid tales of their youth to life.

Creepshow bears the traces of both men’s love of these macabre comics, and the film could probably claim the prize for being the “fun-est” horror film ever made (second only to Gremlins, at any rate). What you get here is five fiendish fables, written with wry zest by King and realised with warped relish by Romero. There’s ‘Father’s Day’ in which a murdered dad seeks bloody, zombified revenge. ’The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill’ sees King himself give a surprisingly assured slapstick performance as a slacker hillbilly who goes through some frightening changes after contact with a fallen meteorite. ‘Something to Tide You Over’ concerns a betrayed husband plotting diabolical revenge on his wife and her lover, while ’The Crate’ sees a bloodthirsty ancient beast coerced into performing a similar task. Things come to a suitably creepy climax with ‘They’re Creeping Up On You!’ which pits a bitter, housebound recluse against an army of invading cockroaches.

Each segment is joyously witty and weird, but the entire film never shies away from the nihilistic darkness at the heart of horror comics, and there’s more than enough morbid mayhem on display to leave you at least a little unsettled. The best sequence is probably ‘Something to Tide You Over’, and not least because it boasts the dream double casting of Ted Danson and Leslie Nielsen. It also features an extraordinarily grim and inspired twist, in which Danson discovers the tragic fate of his missing paramour, that predates George Sluizer’s highbrow thriller The Vanishing by a good six years.

But George Romero’s direction is the real star of the show, and his use of luminous/ominous comic book colours (including, on occasion, animated frames and backdrops) gives Creepshow a unique and special feel that grants comic book fans cause to cherish it even today. Stephen King, overhyped hokum peddler that he often is, should also be applauded for a brilliant, barmy screenplay.

You can watch a fantastic trailer for Creepshow below!

Halloween, eh? It’s all about the silly masks. And they don’t come much sillier than the frankly abysmal mask the poor actor (one Joe Cornelius) playing the title creature of this 1970s Britsploitation “classic” was lumbered with.

Trog is of course short for Troglodyte, a prehistoric man, and that’s exactly what scientist Joan Crawford (!) has discovered in a cave. Naturally enough, old Mommie Dearest wants to study the wretched creature, but some sniffy, stiff upper lip types in the science community would rather have it destroyed.

As I’m sure you can imagine, based on that brief synopsis, Trog features numerous scenes in which Joan as Scientist Woman sort of trains her charge to be a bit more human by getting him to perform various menial tasks such as playing with balls etc. In fact, these scenes make up the vast majority of Trog, and as such it’s a little boring. The hairy blighter doesn’t get to go on his highly-anticipated bloodthirsty rampage until well into the final third, attacking and killing an impressive three people in just under as many minutes.

Still, the only thing you’ll probably remember Trog for is for boasting the most amateurish prosthetics job ever captured on celluloid. That and the fact that la Crawford (in her last film role) is clearly, and perhaps understandably, sozzled throughout. This is far from director Freddie Francis’ finest hour, too. Most famous for helming seminal Amicus horror anthology Dr. Terror’s House of Horror’s (which is set in a train compartment, not a house), he also turned in a selection of underrated mini-classics, such as Hammer’s little seen attempt at Hitchcock, Hysteria, and the Oliver Reed starring Paranoiac.

Anyway, watch this bloody trailer for Trog and you’ll see what I mean. I will personally give a hearty handshake to anyone who goes to a Halloween party dressed as Trog, with a special prize of ten pounds for whoever makes the best… No, make that worst, Trog mask.

What’s your favourite trilogy? Is it Star Wars? The Godfather? Or Days Are Numbers three part investigation into the history of film censorship in Britain, Banned for Glory (parts one, two and three)? My favourite is most definitely the latter.

Only joking, of course! (Or am I?) But overwhelmed as I am by the amount of related clips on YouTube, I thought it might be nice to revisit that seminal cycle of film writing with some added visual accompaniment. I actually find it rather hilarious that you can watch entire, gruesome sequences from notorious films that were completely banned but a few years ago, on a popular, freely accessible website. This is doubly hilarious when you bear in mind that YouTube not only heavily censors at the behest of questionable government’s (China’s, America’s, our own), but also steadfastedly refuses to show the slightest bit of boob, citing moral grounds (I feel I need to explain at this point that I DO NOT trawl YouTube looking for boobs – I only became aware of their policy after they took off a Charlie Brooker clip regarding the porn industry, so there!).

Anyway, moving swiftly on…

…Can you handle the sheer horror of The Cheese Mites? Believe it or not, this was the first film ever banned in Britain, way back in 1903.

A mere 68 years later, and Stanley Kubrick’s magnum opus, A Clockwork Orange, provoked the ire of the nation’s censors. Yes, pedants, it was never actually “banned”, but big Stan did withdraw it, and you couldn’t see the bloody thing for yonks. One place where you could see bits of it at least, was in BBC2′s superb documentary, Empire of the Censors, from 1995.

And viddy here, my droogs (ahem), the film’s majestic opening sequence in it’s entirety!

We all know The Exorcist is rubbish, don’t we? (Don’t we?!) So here instead is the trailer for the “hilarious” Leslie Neilsen spoof, Repossessed. A spoof of a film that was banned in Britain at the time, of course. It didn’t do very well here.

What could possibly drive a man to stalking the streets at night, murdering random passers-by with an electrical drill? Having his nice painting poo-pooed by a snooty art critic, that’s what! At least according to largely tedious Video Nasty, The Driller Killer.

The music from Cannibal Holocaust is both hauntingly sad and very, very beautiful. Why?

Simply the most disgusting scene in all of Video Nasty history, and thus probably the most disgusting scene in all of film history generally, watch here an unfortunate woman give birth to a fully grown man, in British Alien rip-off, Xtro. Or don’t watch if you’re easily offended/half-way normal.

What a palaver there was over the old ear-chopping scene in Reservoir Dogs! After Xtro, it comes as a welcome respite.

And finally… A trailer for one of only a handful of films still technically banned in Britain, the nigh impossible to find ultra-gory, incest melodrama, Nightmare Maker, here going under the longer title of Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker. WARNING: This trailer is a bit budget, and a bit weird.

That was a bit gross in places, wasn’t it? I just can’t believe that some lunatic has put that bit from Xtro on YouTube!

Anyway, here’s to when films used to be banned, not like now when you can watch them on your bloody iphone. And please, don’t have nightmares…

Good evening, and welcome back to Moviedrome… Sort of, anyway.

As part of our ongoing anniversary celebrations here at Days Are Numbers, we’re casting our mind back to an earlier blog about BBC2′s legendary late night cult film strand, Moviedrome.

Between the years of 1988 and 2000, Moviedrome was just about the only place on British television where you were guaranteed to see weird, wonderful, unique and always memorable films. It’s becoming increasingly easy to forget now that even the rarest of celluloid oddities are available on Amazon, or a mere mouse click away, but back in the day, Moviedrome was manna from heaven for adventurous film fans the length and breadth of the country.

Almost as much as the films themselves, Moviedrome was also essential viewing for the witty and informative intros to each film made by first presenter Alex Cox, and his later replacement, Mark Cousins. Below I have compiled some of the very best ones for you to look at whilst yearning nostalgically for a time when they actually showed half-decent films on TV…

…Beginning with the first Moviedrome intro for the first ever Moviedrome movie! Alex Cox presents the longest version of The Wicker Man known to man at the time.

Moviedrome’s best ever intro? Cox-y delivers a rather sublime and remarkably well-informed mini-thesis ahead of a screening of The Parallax View.

Mind you, the man often showed he had feet of clay. Observe here how he needlessly has a pop at Dario Argento in his introduction to David Cronenberg’s Rabid. Boo!

We’ll allow him to redeem himself by way of the curious set design for this introduction to Halloween, from his last Moviedrome series in 1994 (nice Third Man-referencing title sequence!).

Northern Ireland’s very own Mark Cousins took over in 1997, and I’d just like you to know that I do a mean impression of him. Today, you’ll have to make do with the real thing, as he introduces The Warriors in that very same year.

From 2000, the year Moviedrome finally bowed out for good, Cous’ takes a look at Don’t Look Now. The title sequence for this series was truly appalling.

Now, wasn’t that a lovely saunter down memory lane? They really should bring Moviedrome back, me and Aneet could present it, it would be amazing!

Thanks for watching.

The Cat o’ Nine Tails (Dario Argento, 1971)

So what’s been happening since the last time I did a Morricone Monday? Well, Michael Jackson died, of course. You may have noticed that this website was probably the only media outlet in the world that didn’t register some kind of tribute to the self-proclaimed “King of Pop”, and we’re not going to do that now (I don’t think it could be easily incorporated into a review of a Dario Argento film). But, “King of the Convoluted Intro” as I am, the point I am scrambling to get to is that the overwhelming response to Jackson’s death overshadowed several other news stories, including another celebrity passing; that of Karl Malden. I didn’t discover this sad news until a few days ago, so starring in today’s film as he does, I’d like to make this Morricone Monday a belated tribute to the big man himself. More on Karl Malden later.

The last time we checked in on Dario Argento, he had just released his debut feature, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, to great critical acclaim and commercial success. Obviously adopting the true and tested policy of “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it”, Argento would re-enlist Ennio Morricone to score his second film, and perhaps needless to say, like Bird… it would be another Giallo. That first film caused the popularity of the Italian murder mystery subgenre to sky rocket at home, as well as giving it a profile internationally. Argento’s second film, The Cat o’ Nine Tails, would provide the middle link in a thematic trilogy of Gialli that makes up the first stage of the director’s career (we’ll look at his third film, Four Flies on Grey Velvet, in the coming weeks). But how does it measure up to it’s predecessor?

The Cat o’ Nine Tails is just one of those (many) Giallos that has a plot that doesn’t quite add up, but here goes… Karl Malden stars as Arno, a blind puzzle maker who lives, and forms a cute if slightly questionable double act with, an orphaned little girl. One night the twosome are out walking when Malden, with his heightened senses, overhears a shady conversation between a scientist and a threatening, unknown figure outside a genetics lab. The next day there’s been a break-in at the lab, and newspaper man Giordani arrives on the scene. When Arno later learns that the scientist he overheard the night before has been mysteriously pushed under a train, he seeks out the assistance of the reporter, and the two resolve to solve the mystery together. Naturally enough, there are many more plot twists, not to mention several murders, to come, before Argento calls time on the whole thing with a sour and purposefully ambiguous finale which leaves certain pieces of the puzzle still in flux.

Dario Argento often cites The Cat o’ Nine Tails as his least favourite of all his films, and many of his fans hold a similar opinion. While I think this is simply ridiculous, based on the fact that Argento has not made a good film since 1993′s Trauma, I do have to concede that Cat… is certainly not one of the “King of Horror”‘s best. I feel this is partly to do with the plot, but not with regards to how confusing it can be (this is a Giallo, after all, confusion is par for the course), rather the story is often a little dry. Unlike Bird…, and the later Four Flies on Grey Velvet, The Cat o’ Nine Tails, with it’s trio of leading protagonists, lacks the nightmarish, existential, one-man-against-the-odds feel of the very best Gialli. Also the hokey scientific espionage at the centre of the murder spree leaves the film occassionally feeling a little trite and something akin to a John Grisham novel.

Having said that, plot certainly isn’t everything in a Dario Argento film, and there are numerous nasty and brauva set-pieces that rank with the director’s very best. The opening “train push” murder will linger grimly in the mind of anyone (like me!) who stands a good, oh, 6 foot away from the edge of the platform when a train is approaching. There is also a terrific sequence in which a character is locked in a mausoleum with the killer on the prowl outside that’ll be an equally big hit with claustrophobics. Wimps everywhere (like me!) will also wince at the film’s brilliantly staged, but grisly climax, which involves something rather painful-looking occuring in an elevator shaft. We also see some of Argento’s cryptic artistic flourishes develop on from his first film, most notably the mysterious, blood red retina which flashes onscreen before a murder takes place, and which calls to mind some of the visual motifs he would employ in his later masterwork, Profondo Rosso.

Another of The Cat o’ Nine Tails undeniable strengths is that of the character of the blind puzzle maker, Arno. To have a character deprived of sight attempting to solve a murder mystery is a touch of genius, and gives the sleuthing in Cat… an added depth. To make him a puzzle maker, too, is almost doubly inspired (there is no cat, nor whips, in the film incidentally, the title is a reference to the number of clues Arno unearths surrounding the murders). Arno is, of course, brilliantly played by Karl Malden, and adds up to one of Argento’s more sympathetic and believable characters.

1912-2009

Karl Malden would be the first international star to appear in a Dario Argento film (ahead of the likes of David Hemmings, Donald Pleasance, and Max von Sydow), and he should be instantly recognisable to any self-respecting film fan. In an odd way, Malden is most famous for providing the de facto conscience of wild and salacious Marlon Brando, appearing as he does in sizeable supporting roles in two of the acting legend’s most famous films; A Streetcar Named Desire and On the Waterfront. With his hulking, gentle giant demeanour, Malden creates the perfect foil for Marlon’s frenzied method acting, emerging as the most sympathetic character (dim-witted, well-intentioned best friend and courageous priest, respectively) in both films. He later put in another wonderful supporting turn in the wacky, Brando-directed One-Eyed Jacks. The Cat o’ Nine Tails was to mark Malden’s only role in a Euro horror film, but he did find the time to chalk up an appearance in the Spanish mafia revenge romp, Summertime Killer, just one of many films to partly-inspire Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill. The year after Cat…, Malden took on one of his most enduring roles, that of Detective Mike Stone in the long-running cop series, The Streets of San Francisco, opposite Michael Douglas.

When we looked at The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, we decided that it’s sinister, yet sumptuous, score was Ennio Morricone’s best work for Dario Argento. So how does the music for The Cat o’ Nine Tails measure up? Let’s hand over to Aneet miaow… I mean “now”.

Couldn’t find a UK poster for Death Line anywhere, so unfortunately the visual accompaniment above is the poster for it’s US release, under the rubbish title of Raw Meat.

Given the sheer scope for subterranean transport-based terror, I think it’s a crying shame that there isn’t a truly classic horror film set in the London Underground. 2004′s vacuously nasty tube tale, Creep, certainly couldn’t be described as anywhere near ”classic”, and neither could 1972′s Death Line, despite boasting as it does today’s Scene of the Day.

Don’t get me wrong, Death Line isn’t a bad film, it’s infinitely better than Creep, for example. It’s just that it’s not deserving of quite the high level of esteem it is sometimes held in on the grounds that it’s not a particularly well put-together film.

Directed by American Gary Sherman (whose only other film of note is the rather good Video Nasty, Dead & Buried), Death Line offers up the cracking premise that the rabid patriarch of a cannibalistic family, descended from underground workers trapped and abandoned in the fictional “Museum” tube station some 60-odd years before, has found a way to pop out onto the platform for some fresh meat, namely groovy Swinging Londoners of the early 70s.

Sherman sadly botches this idea at several turns, however, stumbling out of the traps by blowing the mystery behind the murders a mere 10 minutes in, following police inspector Donald Pleasance’s (oh, yes) investigation into the very first slaying. The film is also overly-concerned with rendering it’s commuter munching monster a touch too sympathetically. This is most obviously apparent in a painfully arduous and amateurish (though, strangely celebrated in some circles) ten-minute tracking shot through the cannibal’s dank lair. There is also the small matter of his supposedly blood-curdling, though in actuality rather hilarious, battlecry of “MIND THE DOORS!!!”

But while Death Line is nowhere near as good as it perhaps could or should have been, it is still a very entertaining watch, and thanks in no small part to the warped novelty that is a byproduct of it’s often cackhanded realisation. Will Malone’s creepy, kinky electronic score will surely linger in the mind for quite some time, but perhaps it’s the raft of kooky performances that prove most memorable. The aforementioned Pleasance is at his playful, waspish best in the lead, while many will recognise Norman Rossington from A Hard Day’s Night, playing his sidekick. Christopher Lee pops up in a near pointless cameo as an MI5 agent, but when I watched it at least, the biggest cheer was reserved for the appearance of Clive Swift AKA Richard from fucking Keeping Up Appearances (I love it when random sitcom staples turn up in 60s/70s British horror films, see also; Paul “Jerry from The Good Life” Eddington in Hammer’s The Devil Rides out and, most unsettling of all, Bill “Compo from Last of the Summer Wine” Owen in Pete Walker’s bonkers slasher, The Comeback).

So, with the sloppiness of Death Line and the actors therein in mind, let’s have a look at the scene in question. The trickiest sequences in horror can often be those leading up to the big fright, the scene in which tension and forebooding often culminates in an attack and bloody murder. The pratfalls are numerous, and many hack directors often manage to kill all that hard-won tension completely by having one of their characters take an unscheduled trip to the toilet, say, or something equally transparent and protracted.

What Gary Sherman chooses to do before a major set-piece triple murder in Death Line, however, is build up tension by inserting the most surreally mundane and awkwardly delivered conversation between two characters in horror history. Unfortunately, no one else seems to love this scene as much as I do, so I couldn’t find a clip solely comprised of it. However, if you kindly fast-forward to exactly 4 minutes in on the Death Line clip below, you will see this bizarre exchange in all it’s glory, right before the hapless conversationalists are bloodily dispatched.

I guarantee you’ll be quoting it for the rest of your life!

Slightly keeping with the vampire theme of yesterday (ahem) today’s newly formed RECORD OF THE DAY was simply too good for a Single of the Day’ accolade.  Why? Well read on my friend!

The majority of blogs normally post Hot Blood rarities around Halloween time (for the obvious reasons) but since a one-off pressing of the abum was released last week, there’s simply no reason why the fantastic Hot Blood should be kept just for Halloween.

 Majority of disco fans will probably know the band for their unique disco novelty single ‘Soul Dracula’ (see the fantastic video at the end of the post!) but Hot Blood were one of Germany’s finest disco exports (not hard I know but…) and the musical brainchild of no other than Stephan Klinkhammer – (Mr. Boney M. to you and me). it also had the ‘M’s Marcia Bennett of vocal and general heavy breathing duties.  Released in 1977, it bears all the kitchy hallmarks of disco of that era - sexy strings, the ‘woos-woos’, the mentioning of ‘disco’ and ‘dancefloor’, as well as a campy Dracula laughing! Those crazy Germans!

But still, this is still considered one of the best ‘horror/disco’ records around and originals go for crazy amounts so snap one up asap. The only drawback of the re-issue is that it doesn’t have the original sexy cover which features Calvin Klein model Lisa Taylor (Thanks to Disco Delivery for this bit of info!) but hey, you can’t win ‘em all. Sex, the 1970′s, Dracula, Boney M, busty maidens, disco, models, Boney M – what more do you people want?!

Here’s two ‘fang-shaped’ treats for ya!

hot-blood-blackmail

hot-blood-blackmail

The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982)

When Aneet and myself challenged each other to name our Top 5 favourite film composers recently(that’s the sort of crazy shit we get up to), rather interestingly, other than the legendary Ennio Morricone, subject of our regular Monday salutes, the only “scorer” we picked in common was John Carpenter. The horror and sci-fi master is a director of such overwhelming talent (even if he has gone somewhat off the boil in the last, say, 20 odd years or so) that it is often easy to forget what a distinct and ingenuous writer of film music he is. His uniquely sinister, synth-heavy compositions have helped to create nail-biting tension and menacing atmosphere in almost all of the many films and television programmes he has directed in his long career, with only a small handful of exceptions. One highly notable exception, however, is his 1982 film, The Thing, which is worthy of our attention today as he only went and got Ennio Morricone to do the music for him!

As we’ve already established, John Carpenter is one multi-talented git, particularly when it comes to music and films. In fact, he packed in his promising career as a rock musician in order to concentrate on directing his bloody brilliant films. Kicking off with groovy sci-fi fable, Dark Star (for which he composed an awesome country ballad title song), in 1974, Carpenter would write, direct, and score a bona fide classic every year or so for the next 7 years, culminating in 1981′s incredible futuristic thriller, Escape from New York. After exerting so much energy, not to mention displaying so much ability, for so long, you can’t blame Carpenter for wanting to share the workload on his next film. As already mentioned, Morricone was on board to provide the score, and the film itself would not be a Carpenter original, but instead a remake of 1951′s Howard Hawks-produced The Thing from Another World.

One of the, erm, things that first leaps to mind when I think about The Thing, is it’s eye-catching and distinctive logo, with the film’s title literally burning onto the screen (handsomely incorporated into the above revival poster, by American poster artist Tyler Stout). This logo and title sequence actually appear in the original version of the film, and indeed mega-Hawks fan Carpenter saw fit to use them to eerie effect on a living room TV screen in his horror classic, Halloween. It was a masterstroke of Carpenter’s to faithfully re-use such an incredible design, not to mention highly appropriate, as The Thing is that rare, um, thing; a remake that manages to be even better than the original, whilst simultenously remaining true to everything that made the original so great in the first place. 

As in the original, the relatively simple plot of Carpenter’s film concerns an American scientific research team camped out in the Antarctic, which stumbles upon a malevolent and irrepressible, shapeshifting extraterrestrial. In both films the teams have to use their wits to destroy the dangerous creature, but the remake conducts this battle between man and alien in a much darker pitch. Even though Howard Hawks wasn’t fully behind the camera for the original, the earlier film still bears several distinctive “Hawksian” traits. The director is noted for his favoured pairing of charming, if often befuddled, male professional and pragmatic, yet eccentric, sassy “gal” as his lead players in almost all of his films (Bringing Up Baby and His Girl Friday being the most famous examples). The Thing from Another World also features this combination in the guise of news reporter Scotty and spunky secretary Nikki Nicholson, trapped together in their mission to destroy the sinister visitor. John Carpenter, quite correctly, doesn’t recognise the south pole as an appropriate, or particularly likely, arena in which to engage in a snappy battle of the sexes, and dismisses these characters completely. In their place we get likeable, wise-cracking Kurt Russell as a tough nut helicopter pilot who soon discovers he’s completely on his own, surrounded by shady boffins, with a terrifying, metamorphising monster on the loose.

The Thing from Another World is one of those films that’s often used as an example of sci-fi as allegory. Like it’s genre bredren, Invasion of the Bodysnatchers, which appeared 5 years later, Hawks’ film is often cited as a metaphor for the imagined threat of communism on America at the time. Whether or not this really rings true, The Thing from Another World is a rather reactionary film, with the scientists involved in the expedition proving as villianous as the alien itself in their underhand mission to keep the interplanetary enemy alive for self-serving reasons. Carpenter does away with this mankind vs science riff also, and instead creates an atmosphere in which absolutely no one can be trusted, and the entire team share an overwhelming, apocalyptic fear of the creature reaching the outside world. The 1951 film has also been recognised as mirroring the cancer scare that hit America at the time, with the titular “thing” being read by some as a disease that can’t be cured (at least not at first). Similarly, some have seen the remake (released in 1982, remember) as being about the newly acknowledged AIDs epidemic, with a tense, hair-raising scene involving a round of emergency blood tests to flush out the creature, being the most apparent representation of this theme, and a typically, expertly directed Carpenter set-piece, to boot.

Another common trait between the two films is their use of special effects. The Thing from Another World was one of the very first films to have one of it’s actors appear to be on fire from head to foot. While this is common practise as a piece of stunt work today (and can be witnessed pretty much every Saturday night on Casualty), this was a staggering technical innovation in the early 50s, and had audiences screaming in terror. John Carpenter cleverly identifies the use of special effects as a real strong point in the original, and the ultra-gory anamotronics on display in his take on the tale have deservedly achieved a semi-legendary status. When I was growing up, The Thing was THE film for special effects, and even today they have lost none of their power to shock and disturb. The aforementioned blood test aside, the most famous effect is that of the camp doctor (as in RESEARCH camp, not Larry Grayson camp) in the process of defibrillating a wounded colleague. Little does the doc know, however, that the very man is he trying to revive is actually the shapeshifting thing, and a huge set of gnashers rip through the man’s body to tear the medic’s arms off! This unsavoury tour-de-force is a double joy to watch bearing in mind that not one single frame of it is computer-generated. The whole brutal ordeal is created by a combination of painstakingly put together stop motion effects, and the admittedly rather non-PC method of employing a real-life double amputee to stand-in for the freshly chomped doctor. They sure don’t make them like they used to!

So yeah, like Martin Scorsese’s take on Cape Fear (for example), a remake that actually manages to improve upon the original. How often does that happen? Sadly, about as often as John Carpenter makes a decent film these days. Immediately after the truly tremendous The Thing, his work wildly veered between the good (Starman, Big Trouble in Little China), the bad (Christine, They Live) and the so-so (Prince of Darkness, Memoirs of an Invisible Man). In the 90s he tried his hand at another remake, this time Village of the Damned, with markedly lesser results than The Thing, and his latest three films have all been truly awful (Escape from L.A., Vampires, Ghosts of Mars). Still, with some fresh work in the pipeline for the first time since the turn of the century, you wouldn’t rule out a comeback from one of the world’s greatest living directors. It’s also worth noting that Carpenter himself has recently been the victim of several turgid remakes, with spectacularly lazy and inferior rehashes of Assault on Precinct 13, Halloween, and The Fog all appearing in recent years. Next up, believe it or not, is The Thing. A remake of a remake!

But, what about Ennio Morrricone’s score? Aneet, shake that “Thing”!

I’d rather not shake any ‘Thing’ Alan but I will give you a rundown of Morricone’s ‘Thing’ hang on, that doesn’t sound right….

Anyway, as Morricone scores go, ‘The Thing’ is certainly one of the Maestro’s most unsettling, unnerving, and damn right scariest pieces of work to date. Perfectly complimenting Carpenter’s bleak visual landscape with eerie electronic menace it’s impossible to imagine any scene from the film without hearing the creeping horror of the score.

Morricone uses sparseness of sound to devastating effect. From the opening titles (Humanity Part 1) to the final scene (Despair), he manages to craft a sense of unease by conjuring up images of vast wilderness, loneliness and the fear of the unknown by making the compositions cold and stark. It howls and it leaves you with a real sense of desolation, claustrophobia, fear – and if you listened to it on your own at night like I just did scared shitless (sorry for the bad language – this is a family website after all). I personally think that this is one of Morricone’s bravest and challenging works of his career, since it highlights his incredible ability to adapt to different genres, decades and sounds with subtlety and intelligence which the film required.

‘The Thing’ should be recognised as one of the greatest horror film scores of all time. Since the film wasn’t well received (damn you E.T!) as well as the falling out between Carpenter and Morricone (I think there’s a theme going on here Ennio) over Carpenter’s use of his own compositions for several scene cues rather than using Morricone’s entire score (well, Alan did say that John was a workaholic or control freak – you decide) led the film and music being misunderstood and overlooked.

So, go out and find the ‘Thing’ for yourselves but before I go here’s the brooding and chilling Humanity (Part 2). Be scared and keep watching the skies…..