Portal:Horror/Selected article archive/2006
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[edit] May 2006
Halloween (also known as John Carpenter's Halloween) is a 1978 independent horror film set in the fictional Midwest town of Haddonfield, Illinois, on Halloween. The original draft of the screenplay was titled The Babysitter Murders. The film was directed by John Carpenter and stars Donald Pleasence as Dr. Sam Loomis, Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode, and Nick Castle as Michael Myers (listed in the credits as "The Shape"). The film centers on Michael Myers's escape from a psychiatric hospital, his murder of several teenagers, and Sam Loomis's attempts to track and kill Myers.
Halloween was produced on a budget of only $325,000 and grossed $47 million at the box office in the United States, making it one of the most successful independent films in history. Many critics credit this film as the first in a long line of slasher films inspired by Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960). The movie originated many of the clichés seen in low-budget horror films of the 1980s and 1990s, although first-time viewers of Halloween may be surprised by the fact that the film contains little actual graphic violence or gore.
Critics have also suggested that Halloween and its slasher film successors encourage sadism and misogyny. Others have suggested the film is a social critique of the morality of young people in 1970s America, pointing out that many of Myers's victims are sexually promiscuous or substance abusers, while the lone heroine is depicted as chaste and innocent. While Carpenter dismisses these analyses, the perceived parallel between the characters' moral strengths and their likelihood of surviving to the film's conclusion has nevertheless become a standard slasher movie trope. (continued...)
[edit] June 2006
Tenebrae (also known as Tenebre) is a 1982 Italian horror thriller film written and directed by Dario Argento. The film stars Anthony Franciosa, John Saxon, and Daria Nicolodi. After having experimented with two exercises in pure supernatural horror, Suspiria (1977) and Inferno (1980), Tenebrae represented Argento's return to the giallo form, a sub-genre he had helped popularize in the 1970s. The story concerns an American writer promoting his latest murder-mystery novel in Rome, only to get embroiled in the search for a serial-killer who has apparently been inspired to kill by the novel.
The film was released in Italy and throughout most of Europe without experiencing any reported censorship problems, but was classified, prosecuted, and banned as a Video Nasty in the United Kingdom. Its theatrical distribution in the United States was delayed until 1984, when it was released in a heavily censored version under the title Unsane. In its cut form, Tenebrae received a mostly negative critical reception, but in recent years the original, fully restored version has become widely available for reappraisal. The film has been described as "Argento’s last real masterpiece".
Argento has claimed that Tenebrae was influenced by a disturbing incident he had in 1980 with an obsessed fan. According to Argento, the fan telephoned him repeatedly, day after day, until finally confessing that he wanted to kill the director. Although ultimately no violence of any kind came of the threat, Argento has said he found the experience understandably terrifying and was inspired to write Tenebrae as result of his fears. (continued...)
[edit] July 2006
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is a novel by Mary Shelley. First published in London in 1818 (but more often read in the revised third edition of 1831), it is a novel infused with some elements of the Gothic novel and the Romantic movement. It was also a warning against the "over-reaching" of modern man and the Industrial Revolution. (The novel's subtitle, The Modern Prometheus, alludes to the over-reaching and punishment of the character from Greek mythology.) The story has had an influence across literature and popular culture and spawned a complete genre of horror stories and films. Many distinguished authors, such as Brian Aldiss, claim that it is the very first science fiction novel.
During the snowy summer of 1816, the "Year Without A Summer," the world was locked in a long cold volcanic winter caused by the eruption of Tambora in 1815. In this terrible year, the then Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, age 19, and her husband-to-be Percy Bysshe Shelley, visited Lord Byron at the Villa Diodati by Lake Geneva in Switzerland. The weather was consistently too cold and dreary that summer to enjoy the outdoor vacation activities they had planned, so after reading Fantasmagoriana, an anthology of German ghost stories, Byron challenged the Shelleys and his personal physician John William Polidori to each compose a story of their own, the contest being won by whoever wrote the scariest tale. Mary conceived an idea after she fell into a waking dream or nightmare during which she saw "the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together." This was the germ of Frankenstein. Byron managed to write just a fragment based on the vampire legends he heard while travelling the Balkans, and from this Polidori created The Vampyre (1819), the progenitor of the romantic vampire literary genre. Thus, the Frankenstein and vampire themes were created from that single circumstance.
Frankenstein is in some ways allegorical, and was conceived and written during an early phase of the Industrial Revolution, at a time of dramatic change. Behind Frankenstein's experiments is the search for ultimate power or godhood: what greater power could there be than the act of creation of life? Frankenstein and his utter disregard for the human and animal remains gathered in his pursuit of power can be taken as symbolic of the rampant forces of laissez-faire capitalism extant at the time and their basic disregard for human dignity. Moreover, the creation rebels against its creator: a clear message that irresponsible uses of technologies can have unconsidered consequences. (continued...)
[edit] August 2006
Gremlins is an American horror-comedy film directed by Joe Dante and released in 1984. It is about a young man who receives a strange creature named Gizmo as a pet. The creature then spawns other creatures who transform into small, destructive monsters. This story was continued with a sequel, Gremlins 2: The New Batch, which was released in 1990. Unlike the lighter sequel, the original Gremlins opts for more black comedy, which is balanced against a Christmastime setting.
Experienced filmmaker Steven Spielberg was the film's executive producer. The screenplay was written by Chris Columbus. Gremlins stars Zach Galligan and Phoebe Cates, with Howie Mandel providing the voice of Gizmo. The actors had to work alongside numerous puppets, as puppetry was the main form of special effects used to portray Gizmo and the gremlins. These puppets became the real focal point of the film.
Gremlins was a commercial success and received some positive feedback from critics. It was also at the centre of a large merchandising campaign. However, the film has also been heavily criticized for some of its more violent sequences. Critics alleged these scenes made the film inappropriate for younger audiences who could be admitted into theatres under its PG rating. In response, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) reformed its rating system. (continued...)
[edit] September 2006
Night of the Living Dead is a 1968 black-and-white independent horror film directed by George A. Romero. Early drafts of the script were titled Monster Flick, but it was known as Night of Anubis and Night of the Flesh Eaters during production. The film stars Duane Jones as Ben and Judith O'Dea as Barbra. The plot revolves around the mysterious reanimation of the dead and the efforts of Ben, Barbra, and five others to survive the night while trapped in a rural Pennsylvania farmhouse.
Romero produced the film on the low budget of $114,000, but after a decade of theatrical re-releases it had grossed an estimated $12 million in the United States and $30 million internationally. Reviewers criticized the graphic contents, but three decades later the Library of Congress placed Night of the Living Dead on the United States National Film Registry with other films deemed "historically, culturally or aesthetically important."
The culture of Vietnam-era America had a tremendous impact on the film. It is so thoroughly riven with critiques of late 1960s American society that one historian described the film as "subversive on many levels." While not the first zombie film made, Night of the Living Dead influenced subsequent films in the sub-genre. The film is the first in a tetralogy directed by Romero and spawned four unofficial sequels. It has been remade twice. (continued...)
[edit] October 2006
Halloween II (also known as Halloween II: The Horror Continues and Halloween II: The Nightmare Isn't Over!) is a 1981 horror film set in the fictional Midwest town of Haddonfield, Illinois, on Halloween night, 1978. It is the sequel to the influential film, Halloween (1978). Halloween II was directed by Rick Rosenthal and stars Donald Pleasence as Dr. Sam Loomis, Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode, and stunt performer Dick Warlock as Michael Myers. While other films in the Halloween series follow, this is the last one written by John Carpenter and Debra Hill. The film immediately follows the events of the first film, and centers on Myers's attempts to find and kill Laurie Strode and Loomis's efforts to track and kill Myers.
Stylistically, the sequel reproduces certain key elements that made the original Halloween a success such as first-person camera perspectives and unexceptional settings. The film, however, departs significantly from the original by incorporating more graphic violence and gore, making it imitate more closely other films in the emerging splatter film sub-genre. Still, Halloween II was not as successful as the original, grossing only $25.5 million at the box office in the United States despite its $2.5 million budget.
Halloween II was intended to be the last chapter of the Halloween series to revolve around Michael Myers and the Haddonfield setting, but after the lackluster reaction to Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982), Myers returned in the film Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988). (continued...)
[edit] November 2006
Witchfinder General is a 1968 British horror film directed by Michael Reeves and starring Vincent Price, Ian Ogilvy, and Hilary Dwyer. The screenplay was by Reeves and Tom Baker, based on Ronald Bassett's novel of the same name. Made on a low budget of under £100,000, the movie was coproduced by Tigon British Film Productions and American International Pictures. The story details the heavily fictionalized murderous witch-hunting exploits of Matthew Hopkins, a 17th century English lawyer who claimed to have been appointed as a "Witch-finder Generall" by Parliament during the English Civil War to root out sorcery and witchcraft. The film was retitled The Conqueror Worm in the United States in an attempt to link it with Roger Corman's earlier series of Edgar Allan Poe-related films starring Price—although this movie has little to do with Poe and only briefly alludes to his poem.
Director Reeves featured many scenes of intense onscreen torture and violence that were considered unusually sadistic at the time. Upon its theatrical release throughout the spring and summer of 1968, the movie’s gruesome content was met with disgust by several film critics in the UK, despite having been extensively censored by the British Board of Film Censors. In the U.S., the film was shown virtually intact and was a box office success, but it was almost completely ignored by reviewers.
The film has gradually developed a large cult following, partially attributable to Reeves’s 1969 death from a drug overdose at the age of 25, only nine months after Witchfinder’s release. Over the years, several prominent critics have championed the film, including J. Hoberman, Danny Peary, and Derek Malcolm. In 2005, the magazine Total Film named Witchfinder General the 15th greatest horror film of all time. (continue)
[edit] December 2006
Jaws is a 1975 horror–thriller film directed by Steven Spielberg, based on Peter Benchley's best-selling novel of the same name. The novel was inspired by the Jersey Shore Shark Attacks of 1916. In the film, the police chief of fictitious Amity Island, a summer resort town, tries to protect beachgoers from the predations of a huge great white shark by closing the beach, only to be overruled by the money-grubbing town council. After several attacks, the police chief enlists the help of a marine biologist and later a professional shark hunter to kill the shark. The film stars Roy Scheider as police chief Martin Brody, Richard Dreyfuss as marine biologist Matt Hooper, Robert Shaw as the shark hunter Quint, Lorraine Gary as Brody's wife Ellen, and Murray Hamilton as the greedy Mayor Vaughn.
Jaws is regarded as a watershed film in motion picture history, as it is the father of the summer blockbuster movie and one of the first "high concept" films. Due to the film's success in advanced screenings, studio executives decided to distribute it in a much wider release than ever before. The Omen followed suit a year later in the summer of 1976, and then Star Wars one year later in 1977, cementing the notion for movie studios to distribute their big-release action and adventure pictures (commonly referred to as tentpole pictures) during the summer season. The film is also thought to have advanced Spielberg's directorial career. The film was followed by three sequels, none of which Spielberg participated in: Jaws 2 (1978), Jaws 3-D (1983) and Jaws: The Revenge (1987). (continued...)
