The night he came home

Halloween creeps ever closer, and so it is time to give you another great seasonal film recommendation. And I'm going to jump straight to the best Halloween film of all time; the one that bears the name of the season itself.

There are probably too many reasons I love Halloween (John Carpenter, 1978) for me to be coherent. I may as well just put the film on and stand there, pointing at it, shouting "That! That! That!" Alternatively, I could  pile dozens and dozens of copies of Rob Zombie's godawful 2007 remake in to a pit and then urinate constantly onto them, simultaneously drinking gallons of cheap lager to ensure there is no pause in my stream of contempt.

I really, really love this film. And because my love is an inarticulate, violent beast, I am going to simply list five reasons why Halloween is great.



1. The music.

I'm listening to it now. It's magical. Hey - you should listen to it too! Let's see if this works:




Ok, so hopefully you can now listen to it while reading. Cool. Anyway, the score, written by Carpenter, is a thing of eerie wonder. It is at once minimal and deceptively complex. The layers underneath the main theme build a sense of real dread. For me, anyway.

2. Mr Myers

This slim, spectral nightmare of a figure has wandered through my dreams ever since my young self first saw the film. Subsequent incarnations of the character have been somehow wrong - too bulky, too short, too 'I'm a monster'y. The origial Myers doesn't really seem to exist in this world, as if he's just passing through on the way to... I don't know, killing some angels. He's utterly unknowable, and thus utterly terrifying.

3.  The structure

Like all great drama, the film is tightly focused. Outside of a brief prologue, setting up Michael's childhood discovery that he really likes big knives, the film takes place over the course of 24 hours. Much of the story is set at day, which, for me, is when monsters are really scary. I mean, they should come out after dark, right? What kind of bold-as-brass psycho wanders around at day? Answer: a confident, patient one.

I love the time the film spends developing the town and the characters. The eventual descent into evening darkness is all the more creepy for having got used to the day. And, of course, once the night comes, it's here to stay. 30 Days of Night could have learned a trick from this.

4.   The cinematography

Carpenter really knows how to frame a shot. For years, I only had this story in a kind of sqashed up pan-and-scan TV version on VHS. This was back in the bad old days when TV broadcasters and VHS distributors alike thought nothing of lopping the sides of the picture off so it fit onto your resolutely square TV screen. But Michael Myers lives on the edges of the picture! That's where he lurks, all white masked and spooky. Only when I finally got to see a proper widescreen copy did I fully realise the brilliance of the film making. Rather than focus on the killer, as most half wit horror directors are wont to do, Carpenter keeps Myers on the periphery. He is occasionally to be glimpsed behind a hedge, in between washing, in a distant window; but rarely up close.

5.   The lack of reason

Sequels and (sigh) remakes have all tried to find a reason for Michael's Octobery slaughterfest. Lost sisters, star signs, ancient cults... a host of reasons why the man in the white mask might have gone into the murder business rather than, say, IT support. All stupid, all diminishing the character. Michael is great because he really doesn't have a reason for what he's doing, at least, no reason fathomable to us.

One of the greatest sins of the remake is to recast the young Michael as an angry greaser child with abusive parents and a terrible home life. The minute this happens, Myers has a motivation and a context, and is thus potentially cureable or at least understandable. Carpenter has no time for such nonsense - his Michael is from a seemingly normal, well-to-do family, with no obvious motive for his subsequent love affair with screaming and blood. He remains inscrutable, and that is why he is scary.

So, there we are. Halloween. If you haven't watched it, you should. If you have watched it, you should do so again. If you are Rob Zombie, you should go have a long, hard think about what you have done.

There's something in The Fog.

Many years ago John Carpenter made a wonderful film about fog. It was called, with a directness rarely seen nowadays, 'John Carpenter's The Fog'. I have just watched the remake, which eschews such solipsism and is content to be called 'The Fog' and not, for example,  'Some Fog, but not John Carpenter's The Fog, my Fog'.

Much to my surprise, I really liked it. A good remake! Well I never.  Remakes are almost always rubbish, generally missing the point of what made the original special in the first place and giving you a horrible experience that is all the more upsetting for containing a faint taste of the original. Kind of like vomiting up a really nice wine. 'Mmm', you think, as puke flavoured shiraz shoots out of your nose, 'this was much nicer on the way in.'

The worst offender of recent years was Rob Zombie's truly idiotic 2007 remake of The Best Horror Film of All Time, that being 1978's 'Halloween'. (Note: not 'John Carpenter's Halloween.' He was young, then, and humble.) There are so many problems with Zombie's remake that it is difficult to start listing them without descending into a feverish spiral of everlasting hatred that renders one unable to speak, stand, or do anything beyond stare in horror at the wall, not seeing the wall, looking through the wall. So I won't.

(Even though it was awful. And stupid. And poor.)

But for now, I'll leave it alone.

(And badly directed. And an insult to the human race.)

But that's for another time.

(And just plain thick.)


Moving on. There has been one really good remake of a horror movie in recent years, and that has been Zack Snyder's mental re-imagining of 'Dawn of the Dead'. And, if we go back a little further, to the 80s when I was younger and possessed of voluminous hair,  we have 'The Thing'. Sorry - 'John Carpenter's The Thing.' A great remake, which is about to be remade again. But on the whole, remakes suck.

In fact, if we're honest, most horror movies suck. I watch a lot of them, and though they please me in a base 'Oh look, someone's head has come off and that girl will probably get naked in response" kind of way, they are mostly a bit rubbish. The ones that are good, however, are wonders to behold. As we enter the spooky skies of the Halloween season, I thought I would share with you some of my favourites.

I'll just do one tonight, and briefly, for I have rambled enough. It seems appropriate to sing the praises of the reason I started to write tonight: 'John Carpenter's The Fog'. It's about zombie ghost pirates, which should be all you need to go and seek it out immediately. Having just watched the remake I am a little hazy on the plot details of the original, but I do know that it features the following:

Fog. Lots of spooky, pirate-concealing fog, that charges up the street and gets into your house through gaps and such. It is lit most beautifully, and probably tastes like evil candy floss.

Jamie Lee Curtis. She is good at screaming and being attacked by monsters. In this, she does both.

The cool and spooky line that provides my title tonight: 'There's something in the Fog'.

A classic 'small town under seige' feel, that keeps the dramatic tension... er... tense.

A small but well formed bunch of characters who make the town seem real and make you genuinely care when they are in peril.

A great, minimalist Carpenter theme that suggests all manner of eerie goings on, and brings a mythic feel to proceedings.

Look, it's me, John Carpenter's The Fog

So there. Go watch it on DVD. With the windows closed.

More to follow. Probably.

That was England

I've been a huge fan of Shane Meadows's brilliant films since late Summer, 2007. I found myself laid up for a couple of weeks after having a huge lump removed from my right leg. To help me cope with the pain, and to assuage the dissappontment of not being able to take the lump home, I bought myself a big box set of his films - the highly recommended This is Shane Meadows. 

I'd already seen the intense and masterful Dead Man's Shoes when my brother screened it for me and my horrified then-girlfriend after a drunken night out in 2005. As the film ended, I knew I had found a new favourite director. So I was very excited at the prospect of three brand new (to me) films to watch at my leisure. There was no girlfriend in the picture at this time, so I was free to watch whatever I wanted without having to excuse all the violence and nudity with pretend film theory:

'No, really dear, she has to be naked, because of... er... the semiotics of... auteur theory. Yes. Which you don't know about and I do. And I have to watch this bit in slow motion because of the frame... rate... dissonance. Why don't you go and make me some tea?'

Watching Meadows's films was a joy. 24/7, his first full length feature, is funny and bleak, often at the same time - a juxtaposition that was to inform much of his work. A Room for Romeo Brass introduces the incredible Paddy Considine, an actor who Can Do No Wrong, as troubled child-man Morell.

Best of all, though, and still my joint favourite with Dead Man's Shoes, is This is England. Chances are, if you know me, I have spent the last several years ramming the film down your intellectual throat, shouting 'You must watch this' and reacting with fresh incredulity every time I learn you still haven't. Well, that's because it's wonderful, and funny, and sweet, and upsetting, and smart, and unique, and... ooh... everything.

I'm not going to go into the plot here because a) you should have watched it by now and b) I'm going to talk about This is England '86, so if you haven't seen it, you may as well go and do something else. Perhaps you could sort out that pile of books next to your bed. Really - you can't be reading them all. Or, better still, go and watch This is England '86 on 4 on Demand. (I still think they should have called it FourPlay. That would have been better.)

Anyway. I have mixed feelings about TIE'86. It has been and gone, and I have loved it, but I remain... well, mixed.

Let there be no doubt, I thought it was magnificent. Really, really powerful television that dealt with important stuff without generally feeling like it was trying to be 'important.' The characters were well played and developed in believable ways through naturalistic dialogue. The film-making was well crafted without being showy and affected. The tone - which some reviewers have criticised as uneven - wove comedy, tragedy, drama and farce together in the way that drama seldom manages, but real life always does.

It was great. I loved it. If I see images from it, or think of moments, a little shiver goes through me. So why am I mixed?

Partly, I guess, because that is the intention. It is not a programme that leaves one with a definable sense of what it was 'about'. Soetimes TV and film can do this in a very unsatisfying way, where the final credits leave you wondering what on earth the point was. TIE'86 is more like tasting a variety of conflicting flavours and having them wander around in your mouth, bouncing off each other, making no sense together, making new sense together. Like chasing bitter stilton with velvety wine, or having a banana straight after a Twix.

But also, I think, I am mixed up because I don't know what it will be like, now, to revisit the original film. So many of the characters I know and love, and have got to know in the context of the film over the years, now have new dimensions, new back-stories. Hannah Walters, for example, was credited as 'Shoe Shop Lady' in the original film. A brilliant little vignette, funny and believable, feeling like a real character who would continue to exist beyond the confines of her little scene.

Now, having returned for the series, we learn that she was always called Trudy. She had an affair with Meggsy. And a son. Next time I watch that scene, it will have changed. Not for the worse, I think, but it will have become a subtly different scene. And it will be the same for any scenes with Milky and Lol, or Combo, or  Mr. Sandhu, or even Harvey - a bit part bully in the film who now always had an abusive dad and thus might be better understood.

Aesthetically I like all this. It is not like George Lucas's rampage through the pre-history of Star Wars, whereby every mythic reference was rendered depressingly mundane through pedestrian visualisation. The characters of Meadows's world have grown, and become more interesting and complex. This is just a personal thing. This is England, the film I watched in 2007, is gone. Next time I watch it, I will be a different viewer, with a different understanding, and so watching a different film.

This is, I think, a good thing, as well as a sad thing. Thank you again, Shane Meadows, for refusing to let me lie in my assumptions.

The patter of tiny feet

Morning, you. How's the wife and kids? Or the husband and kids? Or the significant other / lesbian life partner / crippling pain of loneliness?

As is well documented, I have no 'kids' and have no desire whatsover to spawn any. Having conducted a comprehensive range of mathematical simulations, I have concluded that they would be parasitic drains on my free time, finances and sanity. Ah, you say, but what about the joy they bring? And yes, they do seem to make other people happy, albeit in a rather annoying and tunnel visioned kind of way. Fair enough, you enjoy them. Just don't ask me to hold them or pass opinion on their attractiveness. Well, not until they are at least 18.

Liars, thieves and communists tell me that I'll 'change my mind', and that once I have children I will feel differently. I'll become all paternal and not mind at all that I suddenly don't have any money, time to spend with friends or perspective on the world outside the slobbering lump of noise and farting that now occupies all my time. I just 'don't know yet', because I haven't had the 'joyous experience'.

I wouldn't mind this attitude so much if it didn't so often come with an undercurrent of pity and superiority. Because I don't want children, I am incomplete; less alive, several squares back on the Game of Life. I may be living my life, but really, what is it for? I am, in essence, just pissing around until die, and when I do die my life will have been a failure, because I didn't leave any little versions of myself behind to annoy future generations. I don't really blame those who say these things to me, though. No, like so many things, this is symptomatic of a wider ideology - one which tells us how to be normal, accepted and 'right'.

I'm not just having a whine about this because it makes me feel different. It doesn't, really, except to occasionally irritate me. I'm nearly forty, and haven't change my mind yet. If I do end up changing my mind, that will be fair enough, and I'm sure it'll be lovely. But I have a problem with an ideology which seeks to ostracise anyone not producing the requisite amount of children for everyone to coo at. Firstly, it contributes to the subtle process of 'othering' which relegates same sex couples to the position of lesser human beings. And it makes those who are struggling to conceive feel not just sadness, but sadness and failure.

Also, it reduces the idea of conception - something which should surely be a privilege, a wonder and a miracle - to the level of a 'right'. Whenever I hear that someone feels they have 'the right' to have children, I feel profoundly uncomfortable. A right? Really? How odd. I can understand someone really, really wanting a child, and I can attempt to understand how painful it might be to be denied that. But to call it 'a right' kind of smacks of entitlement and selfishness. You may say that I can't really comment, as I have put myself outside the argument, and maybe that's correct. But... a right? To create life? Something about that just doesn't sit well.

And isn't it possible that while we're trying to preserve the environment of our little world, maybe a way forward is to have fewer children for a bit? To pause in our collective rutting and desist in filling the world with carbon producing oxygen thieves. Not to stop having them altogether, but maybe just to stop thinking of them in terms of a 'must have' accoutrement to the successful life. And to stop making people who don't have them feel like lesser citizens. That would be nice too.

Anyway. Rantings about ideology and the future of the human race aside, I have something to tell you. I am not expecting a child, of course. But I have something far, far better than a child.

I have Flimbleby. Here he is. Say hello.

Flimbleby is an Adipose. He is cute, loveable and fun to be with. Even better, he does not need food, sleeps quietly at night and can be left alone while we go to the pub. He has made us ever so happy since he came into our lives a few weeks ago, and I anticipate him doing for many years to come.

I recommend you get your own Adipose, to love and to cherish. In fact, I think that, until you do get one, you should feel a gaping chasm at the centre of your soul. Until you do feel this way, I will be sending you an endless stream of pictures of him and updates on his progress. Perhaps I'll even bring him to your house and make you admire him.

I know, you don't need one, You're fine without. But I promise you this. You'll change your mind. When you get older.

H based Star Wars trivia

Well, it's been an exciting few weeks. I went to Ireland, I didn't go to Cheltenham, I went back to work and I made a guitar go 'thraannng'. And thus I neglected to blog, of course. But now I'm back, and in greater numbers. For today, because Gav demanded it, here is some more of my comprehensive and enlightening Star Wars dictionary.

H


Han shoots first.

The surest sign of Lucas’ dithering descent into crapitude was his decision to change the coolest moment of Solo’s career – blasting Greedo in the nuts without warning – into a badly edited act of self defence. No matter what he did for the rest of the trilogy, it would always be viewed through a filter of namby-pamby cry-baby morality. Whereas before he came across as a super cool space cowboy who might just shoot you to see the look on your face. We can, I suppose, be thankful that we didn’t get the threatened ‘young Han’ in the prequels. No doubt we’d have learned that his dad, ‘Jim Solo’, used to beat him and that his sister was a stripper and that his only defence was blah blah blah.


Made only slightly better by the ineffectual ‘simultaneous shooting’ re-edit in the DVDs, which Just. Looked. Like. Toss.


Hoth

Hot shower? Not advisable.
Or you’ll melt the bathroom
There’s probably not much to do on an evening
Hunt the Wampa, anyone?