There Are Such Things

A History

of Horror

with Mark Gatiss Episode 3

Airdate: October 25th 2010.

UK. BBC4

Well, Gatiss’ personal journey through the history of horror continues and although entertaining as a series and really worth a watch, for me personally, this third episode didn’t quite press my buttons and, once again - and please remember that this is a very personal response due to familiarity with most of the material - my basic lack of oomph with this episode comes more from what has been left out than what has been chosen to showcase the genre.

Having said that though, Gatiss is an entertaining and assured personality to watch in this kind of documentary milieu and he instills confidence that he does know what he is talking about and isn’t, in any way, faking it. His love of horror shines through down to his little parodies of shots from movies like Psycho, The Omen and Halloween.

The episode starts well on a classic of the zombie genre, Night of the Living Dead. I won’t call it the first of the genre because it isn’t by a long shot (not even the first of the shambling wave of undead movies which it brought into popularity) but it’s certainly the most influential of its sphere. More importantly it’s one of the most successful low budget independent movies ever made, which had quite an impact on the explosion of the horror genre when it was realised that a cheap investment in this flavour of movie had a good chance of reaping a swift profit at the box office. It would have been nice, however, if Gatiss might have mentioned Herk Hervey’s phenomenal surreal ghost movie Carnival of Souls as a probable influence on Romero’s masterwork... at least in terms of what could be done with a budget made out of smoke and mirrors.

After this, the intrepid Mr. Gatiss rounded up Mr. Tobe Hooper and talked about one of only two films featured in this episode that I’ve never bothered to watch, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre... partially because I get squeamish about chainsaws but mostly because I’ve never really seen the point in watching this particular variant on what I am presuming is just another “body count” movie. Perhaps I am wrong though because both Mr. Hooper and Mr. Gatiss had some interesting things to say about it... except, like Psycho... as far as I am concerned, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is not a horror movie... it’s merely a thriller (and I’ll leave that argument there for now).

Next up was a tour into three of the more famous demon-child movies... those which involve either the devils spawn or a form of demonic possession. It goes without saying that these kinds of movies are shot through with strong religious overtones which can make them fairly unpalatable to people with either a strong religious persuasion or, equally, a strong anti-religious persuasion.

The first movie covered was Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby... which in my book is just an okay film. Mr. G then moved on to The Exorcist, which is a pretty good horror movie as it goes and is pretty much a masterpiece in sound design as it happens... probably its major feature actually as it would probably fall flat on it’s face without the contribution of the sound department. He then moved onto the first (and best) of The Omen movies, punctuated by some new interview footage with the writer, Mr. David Seltzer himself, which was nice to see. It’s here that I learned the one new thing in this episode that I hadn’t already known... that Charles Bronson was originally in the running to play the role made famous by Gregory Peck in The Omen.

A sidestep back to Romero and a small piece on his pseudo-vampire film Martin was up next. This is the other movie I’ve never bothered to watch... although people have been telling me to watch it for years. Mind you, they were saying that about Romero’s The Crazies for years and that one turned out badly for me. I think I need walking dead people to truly appreciate Romero. I suspect I’d actually prefer the remake of The Crazies to my experience with the original. I feel similarly about Romero’s segment in Argento’s Two Evil Eyes as being a “not great” piece of movie making. Anyway, that was a long way of saying that I shy away from Romero films that don’t feature shambling zombies and a small bunch of people in peril. So I’m not rushing out to see Martin anytime soon.

The next stop for this episode took us into David Cronenberg territory and took a long look at one of his early and best movies, Shivers. A film which was an early entry into a genre of horror which was, at one point in time, almost exclusively the province of horror that is what one still thinks of today when one describes a film as being Cronenbergian... the body/horror movie. Gatiss continued his interview with Barbara Steele, who I’d forgotten had a part in this movie, and her overly dramatic way of recounting events was, as usual, perhaps a little inappropriate but entirely entertaining (hmmm... I wish someone would interview Barbara Steele and Franco Nero in the same room at the same time... that would be hilarious).

Then a quick nod to consumer society and its much talked about metaphorical appearance in Romero’s Dawn of The Dead (a great, horror comfort movie to relax and unwind with on a Sunday afternoon) before arriving at Carpenter and his breakthrough movie Halloween. Now it has to be said that I’m a big admirer of Carpenter but I am not in any way an admirer of Halloween. I think it helped popularise American cinemas decline into the slasher movie but no mention was made as to where the true roots of the grubby US slasher film really lie... the Italian giallo. Argento’s huge influence on Carpenter (even to the music, listen to Halloween and then listen to Goblin and Gaslini’s score to Deep Red which came before it) was not once mentioned and nor was the real template to these kinds of movies... Mario Bava’s Bay of Blood (aka Twitch of the Death Nerve) which is a dead ringer for the carbon copy US movies which came after it.

More disturbing for me was that he had Carpenter there but no mention was made of what is, for me, Carpenter’s greatest horror movie, The Fog. Which is a shame but what can one do? As I said before, for a series which has been as remarkable for what it hasn’t included as much as for what is has, I still think that with this short series, Mark Gatiss knocks it out of the park and gives people less familiar with these movies a very interesting taste as to what is out there for them to explore.

And, fittingly, the episode ends with another Universal horror introduction parody to bring us full circle to the one which opened the show with because... after all... there are such things!

Whose hand was I holding?

A History of Horror

with Mark Gatiss

Episode 2

Airdate: October 18th 2010.

UK. BBC4

Ok, that wasn’t so bad. As I’d suspected in my review of episode one (right here), the second episode of Mark Gatiss’ love letter to horror movies was a little more informative to me in places... quite simply because I don’t know the period and examples of horror highlighted in this episode as well as I do the stuff in the first.

The show opened, again, with another movie parody and I think (although please correct me if I’m wrong) that the Hammer film scene being referenced in this sequence was, in fact, the pre-credits sequence from Dracula A.D 1972... a Hammer film I like particularly well because I remember growing up in that period, love the flared trousers and funky music and... well... it’s got Caroline Munro in it.

After this Mr. Gatiss did some stuff on Hammer and it surprised me that I knew pretty much all the info in this sequence... I must be more into Hammer than I thought. There were two glaring ommisions that I can see, however... at least in terms of what I personally would consider to be the two Hammer films which most reflect how great the studio could be... Quatermass And The Pit and The Devil Rides Out were not included in this show.

But I soon cheered up when Mario Bava popped up in relation to his first commercially acknowledged feature film as director, Black Sunday and parts of the pre-credits sequence were shown. Barbara Steele was being interviewed by Gatiss and she still comes across as beautiful and “dramatic” now as she always did in interviews. Very over the top but charming with it.

Again though, I was a trifle disappointed when the enormous contribution to the genre by Bava was dropped after a few minutes and we moved on to somebody else. After the show had spent a fair bit of time building up the inestimable talents of Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, I would have thought they would have at least mentioned one of Mr. Lee’s Bava movies, The Whip And The Body.

There were some other great horrors featured. Roger Corman was interviewed although, again, nothing here we haven’t heard before. And also, my favourite number one scary movie of all time, Robert Wise’s 1963 adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, titled merely The Haunting. This is a truly terrifying movie and Mr. Gatiss was quick to talk about it’s fine details... like the fact that you don’t really see anything and that the house is the dominant character itself, which when you think about it is no mean feat when you have actors like Richard Johnson, Claire Bloom and Russ Tamblyn running around inside. It would have been nice to have heard Mr. Wise tell the story of how he shot it using a new widescreen lense which was still in the experimental stage because it gave the image the kind of unsettling distortion he wanted... but like I intimated in my first review, there probably wasn’t enough money in the pot to do 100 episodes of the series... gotta keep things moving along there.

And after that Mr. Gatiss took me into territory I was really unfamiliar with, I’m pleased to say. The Home Counties Horror angle he’d so cleverly worked up as a sub-genre I wasn’t even aware of was quite interesting to me... as were the portmanteu films he mentioned too.

Now I tend to steer clear of movies comprised of short stories because, well hit and miss is an understatement as far as I’m concerned. These movies never have the time to work up the characters to the point where you can actually sympathise with them and usually end up being much more miss than hit (the one notable exception I can think of, Dead of Night, was briefly mentioned by Mr. Gatiss). But to be honest... he’s piqued my interest. Wouldn’t mind seeing a couple of the anthology movies he covered because some of the imagery looked quite interesting. I’ll have to try to get hold of a couple of those... so that’s one good thing come out of this series already for me. I’m going to explore a little more outside my box on that one.

As for the distinctly British, pagan/folklore movies highlighted in the last segment of the show, well - I’ve never really been the biggest fan of either the Wichfinder General or The Wicker Man, even though both movies feature scenes of amply endowed young ladies running rampant and even though the latter movie features one of the most brilliant and unexpected endings in movie history (right up there with spaghetti western The Great Silence). There’s just something about these two that I’ve always found to be a big turn off... maybe it’s the emphasis on physical horror as opposed to supernatural scares which dampens my enthusiasm for these kinds of movies... but whatever it is, I’ve always given these one short shrift.

That being said, I now have Mr. Gatiss to thank for getting me interested in a movie called Blood On Satan’s Claw which I have never seen but seem to remember having some tie-in novel/adaptation of it in paperback when I was a kid. The film looked kind of interesting and my curiosity is now even more piqued since I’ve found out that Wendy Padbury, who played one of my favourite Doctor Who assistants Zoe Herriot, is in the movie. Will have to take a serious look at this one.

So there you go... a good second episode hitting similar kinds of marks as the first. The one big weakness for this one was, of course, no Caroline Munro interview... which I see very much as a missed opportunity.

Now the third episode looks like it’s going to be dealing with horrors of the 70s and 80s... my least favourite period of movie horror, at least as far as the US movies go with their hack and slash fodder which seem more like dumbed down and less well made copies of the stylish Italian gialli which I suspect must have heavily influenced them. I can only hope that Mr. Gatiss spares some time for some of the Spanish and Italian horror movies which were being made at the time!

We Belong Dead...

A History of Horror

with Mark Gatiss Episode 1

Airdate: October 11th 2010. UK. BBC4

I have really mixed feelings about the first episode of Mark Gatiss’ A History of Horror, currently airing on BBC4. I’ve got lots of grumbles sure (haven’t I always) but the whole thing was so well put together and showed the genre in such a positive light that I’d have a hard time condemning it on just one episode.

It had me hooked right from the first moment so I really shouldn’t complain. It starts off with what I first thought (for a few seconds) was the original pre-credits, Edward Van Sloan introduction to the 1931 version of Frankenstein and I was all ready to throw up my hands in outrage because they were screening the clip in the wrong aspect ratio when I realised that it wasn’t actually the original version but a really well done parody of it. Some of the words were changed but a lot of the key expressions from the original were used and the guy they got standing in for Edward Van Sloan was so absolutely brilliant at mimicking the mannerisms, intonation and timing of Van Sloan’s original performance that I couldn’t help but be impressed. This was an amazingly well done parody.

Now I don’t know much about the writer/host of this show other than he’s done some stuff with Doctor Who and he was in the recent Sherlock mini-series as Mycroft Holmes so I can’t really comment on the job he’s done here compared to much of his other work. What I can say is that I suspect that a lot of the problems I had with the rest of the episode feel like they are just due to budgetary restrictions and so are therefore probably not Mr. Gatiss’ fault... and to be fair to him, he did start off with a disclaimer stating that he was only covering the bits he was interested in and not giving a full history of horror cinema (like that was ever really going to happen anyway... I wish).

Also, to be fair to him, my only real problem was with the lack of detail and, basically, a lack of any new or revelatory material dealing with the time period he was talking about... in other words, there was nothing we didn’t already know at the end of the programme that we’d not heard before since it was all stuff that has been put in various books over the years (notably by universal Horror scholar David J. Skaal whom I’m surprised Mr. Gatiss didn’t interview or at least acknowledge in the credits of this episode. But then again, Gatiss did happen to pick on my personal favourite period of movie horror for his first episode... the early 30s to the late 40s... when the Universal Monster was King of the Horror Hill and RKO was distributing those fantastic but more subtle alternatives to them, produced by Val Lewton. Quite frankly I could have watched an entire ten hours straight just on the first few Universal movies alone so I guess I was never going to get enough detail to satisfy my own cravings for this particular period.

I was surprised, however, that classic Universal characters like The Mummy and The Wolfman were relegated to just minor mentions given their importance to those early films. Ditto for Lon Chaney Jr who in his time there played all their main characters - Dracula, the Frankenstein monster, the Mummy and the Wolfman and who was the only person until very recently to play his titular Wolfman character Lawrence Talbot. He was a very important player in those early Universal movies but the documentary was more interested in his dad (another great) than it was his equally iconic son.

Was also surprised that when Mr. Gatiss was detailing the end of Lugosi’s career, he failed to mention his poverty row pictures and his infamous collaboration with Edward D. Wood Jr, which I think just about says it all in terms of the state Lugosi found himself in at the end of his life.

And I also grudgingly admit to possibly being a bit of a movie curmudgeon when it comes to this stuff because I was waiting for my favourite Universal Horror werewolf movie to come up, the 1935 Werewolf of London which was their first stab at it and which pre-dates Chaney Jr’s more famous version by 6 years... and it didn’t get a mention.

So, for me, there were some glaring omissions which I personally would have said were essential moments of celluloid history to cover... but to be fair this was probably pitched at novices to the genre and maybe too much to quickly would have been a bit of an overload. And I have to say my main complaint was not with Gatiss’ writing and delivery, which were both concise, well written and well pitched, but with the revelation that one of my favourite genre directors, John Carpenter, thinks so little of the cycle of movies produced by Val Lewton. That was something of a disappointment to me.

Hmmmm... maybe it’s a cop-out but I can’t really get to grips with this series just based on one episode. I’d say it’s pitched at novices but there were some little in-jokes, such as that Van Sloan parody at the start, which were not made apparent within the main text of the show and which seemed pitched squarely at viewers a little more familiar with the material. Plus it had a nice “needle-drop” soundtrack on it too, with cues from the period under scrutiny like Franz Waxman’s gorgeous Creation music from Whale's The Bride of Frankenstein juxtaposed with equally beautiful cues from 30 years or more later like the use of Pino Donnagio’s museum music from De Palma's Dressed To Kill.

So it was all a bit of a mixed bag for me on the first episode I’m afraid but that’s not a bad thing... I’ll definitely watch the next one to see what that’s like. And that Gatiss character seems an amiable enough chap and seems quite photogenic... what with all that gingery-red hair contrasting nicely with blueish lighting schemes. It looks like he’ll be covering the Hammer Horror movies for his next show. Now this is good news for me since I know relatively little about the Hammer films... I’ve literally only seen around maybe fifty of their horror movies and only read two books about them so I’m quite eager to learn about this little unexplored niche of traditionally British horror movie making. So I have to say... I am quite looking forward to seeing the second episode now.

Hopefully it will give me something to get my teeth into. :-)