It's late on in 2010 and the days are getting shorter, wetter and colder. It's a bitter-sweet time for me, moving from the warmth and brightness of summer, to the cold dark winter nights. I love the carefree sunshine of the summer months, but I also look forward to the creeping darkness of the winter months; the way autumn steals the leaves from the trees, reducing them to twisted, clawing phantoms, and the feeling that as the days get shorter, you may become engulfed in a permanent night.
We wrap up warm when we go out and heat our houses when we're inside, preferably with a roaring fireplace. We constantly shuttle from the chill to the cosy, and that's a lovely feeling as the nights draw in; winter brings us all together.
I also love the knowledge that before Christmas and the end of the old year, soon will come my personal favourite nights of the year, better even than birthdays; the twin celebrations of Hallowe'en and Bonfire Night.
Split a few days apart on October 31st and November 5th, these celebrations have resonated with me from childhood, with their macabre imagery and the first chills of autumn/winter in the air. To watch horror movies by candlelight with the people you love is surely one of the sweetest feelings and never fails to give me butterflies as the day draws nearer. Then, less than a week later, to congregate with complete strangers around a blazing bonfire in a dark field, with the cold breeze nipping at your nose is another delight more easily shared than explained. These are my nights of the year. Dark, cold, spooky, cosy and invariably incredibly happy.
My love for these nights and their own very particular ambience reflects a lot about the things I grew up loving, much to the chagrin of the parental figures around me. As a kid I was, if not obsessed by horror, then a major devotee. Some children get that buzz from ball-games and sports, others from building things from whatever they can find - car parts, junk or Meccano sets.
Me? I always, ALWAYS loved films.
TV, yes, music and radio, sure, they've always been a big player in my life. I've always been obsessed by what we now post-modernically refer to as "MEDIA". Music, books, art, TV, radio, music have always held me in their particular thrall, but perhaps none more so than the humble movie. That beautiful feeling of the lucid dream as you give yourself to somebody else's construction of the world. That fleeting glimpse into another life, another place, another reality that the best movies do so well, and even the worst ones can even manage. It is pure magic, and has held me in its spell since I can't recall.
As with many kids, including the big one I've inevitably grown up to be, the cinema of the fantastic has always drawn me strongest. What we all unthinkingly term as sci-fi and horror movies are what drew me in the deepest. The infinite possibilities and imaginitive speculation of the science-fiction genre, in print and on the screen, gripped and thrilled me, and if I'm honest, still does. Anything's possible with sci-fi, only the limits of your imagination can bind you, and please be sure; I can imagine A LOT!
But inextricably linked with this is my overriding love for the horror movie. That illicit frisson of the forbidden offered for your enjoyment; the darkness, the supernatural, the gothic. Death, murder, revenge, blood, madness, mayhem, the creeping unknown, the terror of the infinite ages.
The feeling of witnessing ones own terror, pain and inevitably, death, albeit by proxy is a heady pleasure that has always fascinated mankind. That we choose to feel this in the company of strangers in a darkened room is in itself a fascinating phenomenon. And that children the world over, too young to be allowed admission to these communal acts of controlled fear, will sit alone and experience them for themselves at home, on video, DVD and web stream, bringing that scary other into the safety of their own domain, and tainting it, even if only temporarily is a powerful testament to the fact that as humans we need this vicarious thrill, even at a young age.
My earliest memories, I suppose, are all inextricably linked with these genres, from dancing with my sister in front of the TV on a Sunday afternoon as the thrilling Barry Gray theme music to Space 1999 filled the house, to being terrified by the sight of Charles Laughton as Quasimodo when they shown Hunchback at Saturday tea-time, a movie infinitely more terrifying to my young mind than the Universal horrors I would sit up to watch later that night.
I still get the same warm feelings as when I was younger when I watch Karloff stagger across the screen, Bela Lugosi wax lyrical about the "creatures of the night" and the music they make, and the pathos of Lon Chaney Jr and his slicked back do, furry feet and denim shirt creeping through a fog-bound sound stage.
I recall quite clearly being unable to concentrate at school when I was only four or five, as I knew that King Kong was being shown on BBC2 at 6.30 that evening. We stopped off at my grandma's and I was beside myself in my attempts to get my mum heading for home so I didn't miss a single second of the film - and this at about four in the afternoon.
Then, consider that moment at five years old, again sat in the darkened, threadbare theatre in old Oldham town, when a huge looking Blockade Runner sprinted across the screen, only to be followed by the immense rumbling mass of an Imperial Star Destroyer. I can still clearly remember that feeling of being pinned back in my seat with sheer awe. I was five years old, man; what chance did I stand? Like the rest of my peers, and as i was later to discover, my peers of all ages, I was hooked and my life would never quite be the same again. I was now a child of the Star Wars era.
And dammit, we were there first, and we were so damned lucky.
So where is all of this idle chit-chat and reminiscing leading us?
Well, what the hell was I saying..?
Oh, yeah..
So from the earliest age, my life has been filled with media "stuff" and genre icons in particular. So cut to me a few short years ago, having that same old discussion with myself; where am I going, what am I doing, what do I want to be when I grow up? And in your mid-30s that's maybe not the coolest conversation to be having with yourself, let alone your significant others. And the answer, as ever, after I'd sifted through the second bests and also rans, was that I wanted to make movies. The sort of movies that I love, and that resonate with me. The sort of movies that you just don't see much anymore. I have always wanted - no, NEEDED! - to write and direct. I never had any option, it's just who I am. I just always lucked out on the practicalities of that.
So with the support of my nearest and dearest, I took the step of changing my working hours to part-time and signing up for a degree that would enable me to fulfill those ambitions and forge a career in the industry.
Now, two years into the course, I am about to embark on my final year. This is the big one – make or break. Everything I have learned so far at university and everything I’ve planned to do comes to a head in this next 12 months. I need to write and direct, arrange and co-ordinate, plan and execute projects which show off my skills and hint at my promise in this field, giving me a decent showreel and a portfolio of work.
So for my final dissertation, I get to write and direct my own ten-minute movie of my own choice. Carte blanche. Anything goes. Whatever I choose.
And what do I choose?
What else but a short horror film? It’s just who I am.
Best yet, I have scripts written already for a couple of possible films – one, TRANSFER, needs to be cut literally down to half size, whereas the other, THE MIRROR GROUP, needs a bit of bulking up and rethinking from the current 5-7 minute script that it is, although I worry that the idea would really benefit from being 15-20 minutes in length. There is a third idea I have been mulling over for a while now, provisionally entitled THE SHADOW PEOPLE, which I have yet to write or make notes on, but there are already ideas and plot points forming the more I think about it.
And even before any of these things are decided on, there is the matter of my critical research project, which should help to inform and shape the material for the final film. Again, this leaves things wide open, with big decisions to be made. So naturally, I go back to who I am, what interests me, what themes and issues resonate within me, and also what just plain fires me up?
I have spent a lifetime (or with the amount of movie watching I’ve done, several normal lifetimes!) watching movies. Many of them science-fiction influenced, many of them horror base, and some a combination of the two.
For example, Ridley Scott’s ALIEN will always for me be the better of the movies of that franchise, with its melding of pure sci-fi and horror elements to make a scary movie with a realistic, and very considered, view of the future. It is famously referred to as a “haunted house movie in space”, whereas its sequel, the ingeniously entitled ALIENS is really a Vietnam war thriller set in a facsimile of Scott’s world. And you truly can tell a lot about a person from their favourite of these two movies, in a Beatles and The Stones kinda way.
Now this is all good and well in theory, but where does it get me to where I want to be? Nowhere fast, in honesty. I don’t have funds or resources to make a large scale, big budget sci-fi horror movie, not even on a Roger Corman or Ed Wood level.
So my mind then starts to think back to the people who have come before; my favourite film makers and how they got started, and how this could help to shape and inform my movie and the process of its creation.
I began by drawing up a list of directors whose work I loved, liked or was at least passingly familiar with, and their low-budget genre movies as calling cards for the industry. It read pretty much as follows:
DAVID CRONENBERG:
Stereo, Crimes Of The Future, Shivers, Rabid, The Brood, Scanners
JOHN CARPENTER:
Assault On Precinct 13, Halloween, The Fog, Escape From New York, The Thing, Christine
RIDLEY SCOTT:
The Duellists, Alien, Blade Runner, Legend
STEVEN SPIELBERG:
Rod Serling’s Night Gallery, Columbo, Duel, Something Evil, Jaws,
Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, E.T.,
Poltergeist (controversial, that one, but the evidence speaks for itself!)
GEORGE LUCAS:
THX-1138, American Graffiti, Star Wars
JAMES CAMERON:
Piranha II: The Flying Killers, The Terminator, Aliens, The Abyss,
Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Avatar
GEORGE A. ROMERO:
Night Of The Living Dead, Martin, Season Of The Witch, The Crazies, Dawn Of The Dead,
Day Of The Dead
TOBE HOOPER:
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Funhouse, Salem’s Lot,
Poltergeist (he was at least on-set most of the time!), Lifeforce, Invaders From Mars
WES CRAVEN:
Last House On The Left, The Hills Have Eyes, Eaten Alive, Deadly Blessing, Swamp Thing,
A Nightmare On Elm Street, Scream
SEAN S. CUNNINGHAM:
Friday The 13th, Last House On The Left, House, Deepstar Six
SAM RAIMI:
The Evil Dead (series), Crimewave, Darkman, Spider-Man (series)
ROGER CORMAN:
The Raven, The Terror, The Haunted Palace, X, The Masque of the Red Death,
The Tomb of Ligeia, Deathsport, Battle Beyond the Stars, Frankenstein Unbound
NORMAN J. WARREN:
Satan's Slave, Terror, Prey, Inseminoid, Bloody New Year
PETE WALKER:
Die Screaming, The Flesh and Blood Show, House of Whipcord, Frightmare, Schizo
ELI ROTH:
Cabin Fever, Hostel, Hostel: Part II, The Funhouse 3D
ALEXANDRE AJA:
Switchblade Romance, The Hills Have Eyes, Mirrors, Piranha
CLIVE BARKER:
Hellraiser, Nightbreed, Lord of Illusions, Tortured Souls
NEILL BLOMKAMP:
District 9, Alive In Joburg, Yellow, Tempbot
DANIEL MYRICK & EDUARDO SANCHEZ:
The Blair Witch Project
OREN PELI:
Paranormal Activity
PETER JACKSON:
Bad Taste, Braindead, Meet The Feebles, Heavenly Creatures, The Frighteners, Lord Of The Rings Trilogy, King Kong
Some of these names will be familiar to households the world over, others only recognised by horror fans and movie buffs. All share the same thing in common; one or more of their first movies was made as a low-budget genre piece, and for the most part, as budgets increased, they stayed faithful to their genre roots, working primarily within the boundaries of horror and science fiction.
My question, then is this; why is the low-budget horror movie such a well established way into the industry? How did these film-makers get the break with their projects? How did they go about setting up the production and eventually the distribution for these projects? How have they built upon these foundations to create long lasting careers? And how can I apply the benefit of their joint experience and knowledge to help me craft and produce my own low-bugdet horror movies?
Okay, that’s a whole bunch of questions, but I think pretty valid ones.
So here’s the starting point for my research, and over the coming weeks and months, I’ll update this blog to reflect my findings and thoughts, my progress and setbacks, and the ultimate outcome of my horror movie project.
Keep posted, and keep watching the skies.
