HORROR WEEK: The Nightmare Before Christmas

" Kidnap the santa Claus, beat him with a stick."

I hated this film when I was a kid. It was such a favourite in my house I probably saw it three times before my 3rd birthday, and to a simple naive child with undeveloped ideals in regards to movies and Christmas, movies where there to make me happy, while Christmas was there for me to score tons of free shit off relatives and friends, plus so I could worship at the altar of Santa Claus (Brought up on American Television so didn't do the British version) . Yet here is a movie that has a three minute song/setpiece devoted to the many ways in which one could dismember, immolate and otherwise kill Santa Claus gruesomely, for fun. 3 year old me would not stand for this, so any time the idea of watching this film was brought up, I would cry, wail and scream, I would make deals and comprises (usually involving watching Labyrinth instead, which I simply hated and not terrified by. I stand by that. Because its shit.) You want to watch this film? Well I want to take my custom edition playpen cricket bat to your antique Victorian Piano, how about that?

Once I got to an age of proper consciousness, I passed a movie embargo and didn't watch it for like ten years. I would always be tired or sick, or have to study the next day, or go and kill the president of Panama with a fork, things like that. It got long beyond my petty little reason and became one of those things you just do, perhaps because I mistook stubbornness for awesomeness, although the line does blur. But eventually once I got into film in a big way, it became an blemish that needed to be rectified and I watched and realized something. This film was awesome. Beyond awesome. And I'd hated because of how good it was at its job, which was of course scaring the shit out of me. Its a kids horror movie with a soul, with a point, it looks nothing short of beautiful and at the same time its deliciously twisted and fucked up enough that Adults can see entirely different movies from their kids. In many ways it is a traditional Christmas movie, in which everyone comes together in tolerance, in celebration and in learning the true meaning of Christmas (LOL at getting to type that in a sincere context) but its darkness allows for these messages to actually have some value. Its not about good people learning how to be even better at Christmas time, its about monsters, literally, learning it. Its a true fairy tale precisely because it doesn't whitewash evil and darkness out of its world. And that is a rare thing indeed.

" What? Snake Eyes!"

I don't think anyone's going to argue that the main appeal of the movie, is its look but more then that, its feel. Its so rare to see an animated world come to life like this, and while CGI films and traditional Disney style animation can be both be magnetic and ascendant in their own ways, there's something to be said for having something real to hold onto, and the stop-motion does just that. It feels so much less synthetic and so much more organic. You get the idea that director Henry Selick (not Tim Burton, so suck it all of you who got that pub quiz question wrong) takes particular pleasure in crafting Halloween Town, and the varying monsters within. Some of which, scratch that, all of which, are kind of horrifying. There's the zombie boy lead by a chain, there's the goo-monster made from an uncomfortably coloured brown liquid, there's a fairly realistic werewolf. More so then the ones in Buffy anyway. There's a great effort made in not sanitising the threat, the fear of the things. Yes they can be funny. But no doubt is in my mind, just as there wasn't when I was three, that these are gross looking monsters that kill people. Similarly Jack Skellington, our anti-hero, though clearly more accessible then some of the others, is no slouch in that department either. Like a cross between a scarecrow and a skeleton with added spindlyness, the look of that character in and of itself is enough to entirely love this film.

But for me the greatest stroke of genius was whoever decided that this should be a musical. Particularly because the spoken dialogue at times has that 'bare minimum' feel about it. And yes, that could have led into some dangerous Andrew Lloyd Webber territory but thankfully the music is good enough to avoid that ( See that, Andrew Lloyd Webber just got slammed by implication. By implication.) and frankly, one would be tempted to call it Danny Elfman's finest hour, in spite of Edward Scissorhands. In song the story gets to soar as much as the visuals, and because of this it has 3 or 4 scenes to put it up against anything that ever came out of Disney, or even Pixar. The Oogey Boogie song is that perfect blend of hilarious and menacing, and again, whose ever idea it was to make the boogeyman a psychotic '20's gambling man who sings like a member of the New Orleans rhythm and blues revival deserves an Oscar. Love the sequence if only for Santa Claus' hilariously limp replies.

" Oh how horrible our Christmas will be."

But the movie belongs to Jack, and its appropriate then that so do most of the stand out moments, from the graveyard atop ledge extending whilst he sings to the wonderfully rich scene where he discovers Christmas land, which is as one would expect for this movie, heart-warming whilst incredibly creepy at the same time. Its just great to see a kids movie where the hero is so decidedly misguided that he spends 2/3 of the film making a colossal, hubris driven mistake that probably gets many innocent children killed yet is somehow still impossible not to root for. Its the mark of a great character that you're behind them when they're doing terrible things, and that's certainly the case of this movie. Henry Selick went on to make the excellent Coraline last year, and I think what makes both of these films work so well (although I'd say Coraline is perhaps the better film) is that the come from a great storyteller, a director of animation who cares about more then just how a film looks, meaning his films are as refreshing to the brain as they are to the eyes.

I'm not the hugest Tim Burton fan. I think he's made more bad films then good ones, and the good ones all seem to be a very long time ago. Ed Wood is probably the best, perhaps because its Burton moving away from all the things that Burton does. Yet this is probably the best iteration of what Burton came here to do, and ironically it was done by somebody else. Animation seems the perfect place for his mind to cut loose, yet when he tried it with The Corpse Bride it came nowhere near this. A stand alone film in cinema history, both for making stop-motion accessible and for being a seminal kids movie that scares the shit out of them. Even Pixar have never done that. There's flaws, its perhaps a little too simple and characters can speak their intentions a little too literally. But, you know, just look at it.

Rating: 8/10

HORROR WEEK: Pitch Black

" I'm not dying for them."

I don't think anyone is really going to argue that David Twohy is some kind of great film-maker. Dude wrote Waterworld. Any attempt he has made to write and direct a film outside the comfort zone of tried and tested genre material hasn't just been a failure, its been a catastrophic one. There's the Waterworld thing, which was a daring and novel concept that got everything so colossally wrong, it would have been much easier and required much less effort to be a much better movie. Then there's the Chronicles Of Riddick, which was Twohy's attempt to infuse political allegory and a transcendental air to sci-fi. Do you know what else tried to do that? Star Wars episode 1. And this was just as boring, arrogant and stupid as that movie. And frankly, you can't make a smart movie if you're stupid. So I guess the conclusion to take is that if you see the uniquely identifiable name Twohy on a film its best to go and see something less ambitiously awful.

And yet, the guy made one of the most exciting, surprising and even subversive horror movies of the last decade. Why and how, you all are no doubt asking in harmonious unison? Because the stakes are lowered, the grand ideas are gone and any and all attempt to be Stanley Kubrick has vanished, but what remains is Twohy's all consuming obsession with originality and subversion. And while his discernible lack of talent and ability to be coherent perhaps got in the way of that being best exploited in bigger films, with Pitch Black set against the rigid and familiar architecture of the sci-fi horror, and speaking to a generation with Alien and all the films that came after entrenched into their bones, that pursuit of originality feels starker, more satisfying and ultimately so much more successful. He knows the material so well that he knows what we expect at all corners, knows how the character dynamics usually play out and who usually dies and when. its this love and knowledge of the genre that allows him to do things in it that have never been done before, so if its occasionally brash, if its occasionally crude or inelegant, its vital enough to be forgiven. This, ladies and gentleman, is how a bad film-maker makes a great movie.

" Somebody's gonna get hurt one of these days."

What's great about Pitch Black for me, I think more then anything else, is its depiction of selflessness as something that is difficult to do. Its a horror movie cliche to have people sacrifice themselves to save the group, often without prior context, thought or difficulty. Say, Walton Goggins in Predators, an entirely selfish character who just randomly decides to die for strangers he has no reason to care about. Not only does it make no sense and so often betray character, but it reduces the gesture for when it should matter. In a way Pitch Black is a film entirely about correcting this. The film opens with a fantastically executed crash sequence, where pilot Fry's (Radha Mitchell) spaceship is crashing down to a planet, and she attempts to jettison all of her sleeping passengers into space to righten the course, in other words killing forty people to save herself. And this is the heroine of this story. She is stopped by her co-pilot, and lands the thing right anyway. What's great about this sequence, aside from it being exhilarating, is the cold logic of that act. Its horrific but understandable. Detestable, but somehow humanizing. This isn't the superheroine, the incorruptible badass chick archetype. Its a character we are asked to follow after we witness her doing the worst thing she'll ever do in her life, and frankly that's kind of awesome. I'm not saying Fry is some super fascinating, multi-layered character or anything, but she's flawed, so when her heroism does come, it is so much more affecting because selflessness doesn't come easy, and precisely because it doesn't is what makes it such an admirable act.

Riddick, the breakout character who has since had two video games and a terrible movie about his misadventures, is that dangerous psychopath that always seems to come along on these asides so they can be hysterically insane and get a really nasty death, kind of goes past that. He keeps his shit together and reacts to the situation better then anybody, perhaps because he doesn't care about anybody. He's calm, rational and considered, and although he's a constant threat, he's not dumb and doesn't attack people just because you know, he's crazy and that. Vin Diesel, whose subsequent career has made him kind of difficult to compliment, is terrific. He's both awesome in the conventional sense and an intriguing character, but there's an intelligence to him, which I think was brought by Diesel rather then Twohy. But again, the selflessness doesn't necessarily come from him, but the situation around, meaning we get to see the context in which it is brought out of him and thus it isn't trite and meaningless.

" Did not know who he was fucking with."

Like the equally successful Cube, a lot of mileage is got out of shifting character dynamics, and people doing things you don't expect. Twenty minutes in one would assume that Cole Hauser's mercenary Johns, is going to be the hero of the piece and Riddick the antagonist. But as we progress, the worst it brought out of Johns and the best out of Riddick. Watching the two compete for the status of alpha-male is probably the movie's strongest suit too, because Mitchell's performance can be a little flat at times, particularly when she can't contain her Aussie accent, both Diesel and Hauser are having a ball, and its a shame they both went on to be so associated with bad acting, because they're both great here. Twohy is also acutely aware of which of his characters you're expecting to die first, and because of this you're genuinely caught of guard by kills at least three times. Claudia Black's 'Shazza' (because she's Australian, dummy) goes way before you expect her too and extreme British stereotype Paris (get it) sticks around longer then you'd expect him too.

But the greatest trick Twohy ever pulled is who dies last, in a way that it makes such perfect sense, yet catches you off guard by a mile. As Fry gets carried off into the darkness by the CGI Bat monster thingies, its a legitmately emotional and affective moment in a survival horror film. And you can count those on one hand. The thing isn't perfect of course. Twohy's dialogue always feels a little too on message, and the scenes post-crash and pre-bat annihilation kind of plod along, and while I appreciate the minor characters being real people rather then hot models in space, they can be kind of annoying, particularly tomboy Jack and the aforementioned Paris. I kind of dug Keith David's Imam character in spite of the writing and not because of it, and there are moments of clunkiness scattered about.

" It ain't me you've got to be afraid of anymore."

But its a movie with such balls, such intent, and one that genuinely cares about its characters for the most part, rather then just looking at them as pawns to be rinsed in awesome ways. Its tense, appropriately scary and mostly thanks to Diesel, deceptively subtle. Its not Shakespeare, but its a great example of how great horror movies can be when they're on their game. The clunks, fumbles and missteps are forgiven because Twohy's focused the ambition that far exceeds his talent to an area where that is an attribute. But sure enough that's such a specific area that he'll never be able to do it again, but I'm happy that he pulled this one out at least.

Rating: 7/10

10 Days of Horror: 7 Classic Horror Movies Made Obsolete By Rip-Offs

Everybody starts the creative process with a source of inspiration, something that makes them do what they do. Personally I rephrase random crap I find on other movie websites in a slightly more rambling and slightly less hilarious way. As far as the motion pictures are concerned, if you somehow by some glorious accident make something that has been deemed to be original, then it as an absolute certainty that movie after movie will pilfer, rob and generally do everything just to the right of plagiarism until your once unique idea has its only distinction being that it was the first. Which is something I guess, but through no fault of their own the movie becomes a lot less impressive then it was thanks to countless cash-ins.

7) Psycho
Sure it remains a good movie, Anthony Perkins is awesome and it created a critically reprehensible sub-genre but almost every part of it his been dissected and re-applied to some film or another, dramatically reducing its impact. Killers with mother issues, slasher set-pieces and nice guys that aren't all that nice appear in almost every movie of a similar tone, and then there's Brian De Palma who quite possibly made eight different veiled rip-offs of this movie. Now its something that can only be appreciated rather then enjoyed, Perkins aside.

6) Saw
As far as I can tell, the alpha of the painfully derisive torture porn genre, the horror movie of choice for this decade, has been almost made redundant within six years or so of its release. Its actually a good movie, and in a bizarre way The Dark Knight owes it a lot. But partly by its own exceptionally greedy hand, seeing as Saw 6 is currently robbing suckers blind nationwide, and partly by other countless Captivity's and The Collector's trying to get in on the game, Saw doesn't look half as clever as it did in 2004.

5) Alien
In space no-one can hear you scream. But after 20 years of rip-offs, it probably isn't that much of an issue any more. Granted the John Hurt scene still lands, but otherwise the once great idea of ten little Indians in space looks a little tired now. Particularly because my generation went into this film having previously seen Event Horizon. Which didn't look so good.

4) Texas Chainsaw Massacre
To be fair, the inbred hick wasn't getting much in the way of press but after this film we've had three decades of deformed and frightfully uneducated residents of the American south hacking those nice libertarian college kids from the north to bits, with wearing their skin as a trophy being entirely optional. To think this was once an original concept that scared the bejesus out of people.

3) Halloween
Watch this now, and I challenge you not to be underwhelmed. Still defended by today's critics who aren't ready to sell out their childhood cinematic milestones just yet. But the problem is Halloween is a decidedly average movie, with originality the only thing going for it. Now we've seen this film done better by millions of others it no longer has any purpose. Sometimes quality, like in the cases of Psycho or Alien can get you through losing impact, but if you never really had it in the first place..

2) The Sixth Sense
M. Night Shyamalan. Or the man who made the twist cool again. And the one in this movie is a killer ( Not as good as the one in usual suspects though, which will remain the best twist of all time forever.) but aside from the fact that this is one of the most spoiled movies in history, every 'Psychological' horror from here to the I inside felt a twist was an absolute necessity. Thus as the twists got weaker and more contrived people began to get sick of being constantly duped and started telling M Night to go screw himself, and because the man became so synonymous with the twist ending, it cheapened the experience compared to when it happened organically.

1) Blair Witch Project
This real footage horror movie was one of the best high concept horrors ever made. There's nothing quite like seeing something you've never seen before done this well. Sadly, many less savvy film-makers thought so too and so My Little Eye, Cloverfield, Quarantine and many thousands more inferior knock offs were born. Making this brilliant concept as tired as anything else on this list.

10 Days of Horror: 5 legendary horror characters/species that are actually incompetent

After my last post which contained many long words chosen for their longness rather then their relevance, I need a post to get me back into the laid back half-assed swing of things. And after many painful moments of deliberation, I believe its time to expose all the great horror heroes and villains you all love so much for the incompetent losers they are. Whether it be killing teens inadequately, getting friends killed or just generally being stupid. Re-evaluation is upon them.

5) Jack Torrance, The Shining

Our boy Jack might be good at chewing the scenery and getting spoofed on the Simpson's, but in terms of being an effective psychopathic killer, this one's all talk and no action. Repeatedly bested in physical confrontation by a 20 pound Shelley Duvall, and repeatedly outsmarted by a ten year old boy. Jack just isn't up to snuff when it comes to actually paying off some of his grandstanding.

4) The Zombies, Zombieland
When zombies fail to bag themselves a single major or minor character in a whole frickin movie, they don't deserve to be called zombies. Embarrassment to their kind they are.

3) Ash, Evil Dead, Evil Dead 2
Fine, dude kills a lot of possessed people. But in the course of two movies, he loses all of his friends, two separate girlfriends and gets transported back to the 14th century. Whats the point in having a chainsaw for a hand if you just let every one around you die. He can self-preserve but he's the kind of leader that gets all of his men killed and considers it a victory.

2) Inter-dimensional giant monsters, The Mist
This is a neat little movie, but its monsters suck beyond belief. The big ones are pretty much Godzilla in size and fail to figure out how to bust through the single-glazed glass super-market wall which protects our survivors. They may be big but they are not clever.

1) Shaun, Shaun of the dead
This is the big one, because Shaun is one of the fictional heroes for the lower middle-class. The slacker who came good when the situation called for it, right? Wrong. Shaun is a moron, and does things that are ridiculously stupid again and again. Example 1: Choice of location, pulls his girlfriend out of a high rise flat, a high rise flat for fuck's sake, one of the safest places to hold down in a zombie apocalypse. To go to a ground floor pub with several entrances and exits that's its impossible to defend. Example 2: Stubborn assholism. Upon seeing the pub is already surrounded by zombies, continues in anyway. Getting his Mum, his best friend and two other innocents killed in the process. All so he can prove himself to his girlfriend. Which worked though, to be fair. Still an idiot though.

10 Days of Horror: What's the draw?

Said straightforwardly it seems like a remarkably simple question. The obvious response is to say that they're the fictional equivalent of the roller-coaster or the bungee jump. Selling you the illusion of danger from a place of complete safety. But in many ways, the origin of the genre comes from a place much less to do with adrenaline and more to do with psychology. Horror movies act as a safe environment in which our darker impulses and fantasies can be released, exorcised and eventually cleansed. In most horror movies, our surrogate is rarely the hero of the piece, rather we enjoy and are entertained by the terror and violence the villain unleashes and often we are on his/her side until the finale in which our moral indiscretion is appropriately chastised with the villain being defeated by someone who nine times out of ten is virtue incarnate, or at least becomes that way during the course of the movie. The villain punishes us for who we are and the hero is who we aspire to be.

So in that sense horror movies, or at least the less complex mainstream ones, represent our own guilt and need to be punished for all our sinful and impure ways. In the same way victims are often representations of wrong doing we experience in reality, rather then the exaggerated monsters that punish them. They may be promiscuous, amoral and jerks in some shape or form, not black and white evil, but the guy with the knife, or the ghost in the closest or the zombie that walks the earth is out to cleanse all forms of human imperfection until what is left is only the most resourceful, most noble and virtuous. In many ways horror films act is a compartmentalized version of a biblical judgment day, in which the villain is subtextually not the villain at all and instead a version of Loki, who in the context of a movie is perfectly justified in killing of whores and bullies.


We only change allegiance when the villain goes after our final girl, our final boy or whatever. The character who represents what we in the audience are supposed to aspire to and thus by passing this twisted form of judgment they defeat it. This is to say that horror movies, in their own indulgent way, are conservative morality tales, tauting age old Christian values and grotesquely punishing those who don't follow them. Just as the Bible does. The simpler horror movies at least. The Halloween's, The Scream's and the Nightmare on Elm Street's of this world.

But its clear that these movies only explore darkness and malevolence in order to exorcise it, and in that sense are much less subversive then they appear. We see these movies because whether our intellect and rational consciousness agrees or not, we subconsciously crave punishment for our indiscretions and thus seeing this done in horror movies is quite cathartic, however childish that world view might be. But the thing is once you've seen this play out more then a few times, it is inevitable that you are going to clock on to this not so subtle form of moral conditioning. Thus to ensure its own survival, the simple horror movie discovered post-modernism and irony, in a display of resourcefulness to put Neve Campbell to shame. By making light of itself, with horror comedies and spoof's and even to the particularly well educated satire's ( Although a satire is basically a spoof with the addition of subtlety, but usually their making the same points.) They could secretly push the same agenda under the guise of self-deprecation, its like Stringer Bell says, if product goes stale you don't start anew you just repackage. I may be the first person to compare the selling of drugs to horror movie subtext, and I feel good about it. Anyways, People are stupid and you should treat them as such. Meaning we can take what we always took from these films and have our own familiarity appeased too, thus selling us the same thing and allowing us to feel superior about it. The greatest trick that a perpetuator of morals or business can pull is making the individual thinks he matters, because they are much more likely to bite your ideology/merchandise if they think that they do.


With more complex horror films, however, its a different game entirely. Rather then trying to put you in your place, ethically speaking, they are more about exposing uncomfortable areas of your psyche and dis-affirming formula and the comfort that it brings. they're about making you realize things about yourself and what you believe that leave you in a place much less entertaining and much more terrifying. Both in terms of what's on screen and the crisis of identification you have with the monster rather then then hero, and in many cases the revelation that the hero is secretly the monster all along. Or they are forced to become one. There is morality in these kinds of films, but its more convoluted and the right choice isn't paved in bright lights. For example in Rosemary's Baby, forced to choose between her love for her child and the knowledge that it is very very evil. She chooses love over right and wrong. And can we really condemn her for this? Not in all honesty anyway. Similarly in films that focus solely in the villain, and there is no redeeming hero to speak of, American Psycho for instance, or Portrait of a serial killer. We are given no choice but to experience the world through a monster's eyes, and in many ways we are behind them every step of the way. It acts as a particularly twisted form of wish fulfillment that nobody wants to openly acknowledge, but every-one feels. There's a reason why a large percentage of all fiction, rather then just horror, focuses on violent confrontation in some shape or form, it just sugar coats it with moral justification. Batman beats up bad guys because its the right thing to do. Neo and Trinity kill shitloads of cops because it the right thing to do. Jack Bauer tortures and kills millions because its the right thing to do. We create this double standard because violence is something we all want to experience but don't because of the icky moral complications. So in our fantasies we create worlds where there are no implications and violence is the right and just thing to do. The horror genre is the only one to openly and consistently call bullshit on this, because in these worlds violent fantasy has consequences. People bleed when you cut them, and scream when you hurt them. They don't coddle you for what you experiencing and force you to face it and what it means.

So, for all the criticism it gets and all the protestations of crassness and inadequacy, quality horror films present a fantasy that does not exalt or celebrate or rationalize your dark impulses. A mirror is held up to all the twisted shit you allow you inner sicko to enjoy and you're forced to face up to this, so by facing darker desires honestly, and not burying them in a pit of moral panic like the Hostel's and the thousand other generic horrors out there, they have a much more valid point about the nature of human darkness and in a tribute to our own weirdness, we appreciate them for their honesty.

10 Days of Horror: More to come.

In tradition with the pointless religious holdover of resting on a Sunday, I am going to do a slightly shorter post today, which is more of a teaser for whats to come over the next week or so. Once my snark, my list making methodologies and Rolodex of horror movie thoughts regather, more shit will be coming at you. Tomorrow is the big one, where I attempt at least to get all analytical, psychological and sociological on why we do so enjoy having the shit scared out of us. Its going to be long, pretentious and 100% awesome. So be there or have a good excuse, like you were giving blood or something. Flu season is round the corner you know. After that, more lists and hopefully the next entry in my movie countdown which entirely coincidentally will tie in to my whole horror theme. Gotta love serendipity. The act of destined inevitability rather then the movie with John Cusack. Which sucked.

10 Days of Horror: The Best British Horror Films Of The Last 20 Years

I would go so far to say that generally speaking I have a less then passing interest in the British film industry. The majority of its output is uninspiring and we seem to get outdone by countries of similar global relevance. But in the spirit of the psychological process of denial, I have decided donate an entire post of this horror marathon to what my countrymen have given us during the course of what is roughly my lifetime. The best British horror films of the last twenty years then. Interestingly, not one of them is from the nineties. But I guess everybody gets a decade off here and there.

6) Severance
After trashing Christopher Smith's latest the other day, it seems fair to cut him some slack on this one. This film is funny in places, contains some good performances (From Andy Nyman and Tim McInnerny) and some clever black humor. Its far from amazing, but it for what it is it works, which is a lot more then can be said for some. Danny Dyer is the worst actor in history though.

5) 28 Days Later
To most people this would be higher, and it certainly is a stylish movie, but I think the second half fluffs it, despite how good Christopher Ecclestone is. Its still a landmark for re-igniting the British horror movie though, and it gave the under-rated Cillian Murphy a career.

4) Dog Soldiers
Its over the top, but the kind of OTT that can be relentlessly enjoyed. High in the running for the most entertaining horror movie of recent years, and its a pretty meanly executed siege movie. Some of the writing and acting may be a bit rough around the edges, but accomplished a super-human feat of getting a good performance of Sean Pertwee, so deserves mad props for that.

3) Shaun of the Dead
I think this is a good movie, don't get me wrong. But its a hell of an over-rated one. It gets by on its unabated love for all things zombie, an affectionate mockery rather then a scathing roasting. Also love about half the cast, Bill Nighy steals the movie with about five minutes of screen-time, and I also enjoyed Dylan Moran even if he is playing a stock douche. It also has a couple of moments of genuine darkness too, which catch you nicely by surprise.

2) The Descent
Director Neil Marshall second appearance on this list, after Dog Soldiers. The Descent is darker, more mature and contains some genuinely disturbing imagery. Marshall, proving himself a deceptively skillful master of pacing and possibly the best director of 'group of people get picked off one by one' movies that ever was. Probably the best out and out horror movie on this list given the fact that number one is a bit of a cheat.

1) Dead Man's Shoes
Yes its an arthouse movie about character but its also a slasher movie about bloody revenge too right. People get picked off one by one by the awesome Paddy Considine, who gives a performance here that will stay with you. A great example of why the best horror movies are made by non-horror directors. They just bring something else to it.

10 Days of Horror: 7 horror films that aren't really about what there about

Allegory is a one-stop port to credibility for the 'genre' movie. I say genre because it seems the polite and dignified way to put it, and has none of the implied ickyness that comes the term 'horror' movie. Its a great way for people to talk about horror without having to actually talk about it, not to dissimilar to when zombies are re branded as ' The Infected' or 'Ghouls' to avoid the kitsch factor that inevitably comes to pass when forced to say the word zombie. And seeing as were dealing with allegory, which is the critically appraised habit of speaking in metaphor, that seemed an appropriate way to ice-break. Anyway, the great thing about allegory is that you get the best of both worlds, you get to make important political points and scathing social commentary by means of people chopping each other to bits and getting eaten by monsters. Intellectualism by way of evisceration. The wonder that movies can be. SPOILER WARNING.

7) Aliens
Poor Ripley. You float 85 years in space, get told your kid has died of old age, get manipulated into being an adviser on a mission to save some colonists who tried to settle on LV-426 (Morons.) by everyone's favorite yuppie Carter Burke, watch the force of the American military get destroyed by a mixture of their own arrogance and slimy green things. become a surrogate mother to some random girl with a retarded name like Newt and a girlfriend to Kyle Reese only for them both to be killed in the opening seconds of Alien 3. Girl can't catch a break.

What its really about?

Vietnam. In which America tried to enforce their will on a distant land (read colonists on LV-426), got royally slaughtered (read Alien infestation), sent in the marines to sort shit and leave it to their commie god to sort them out, except it didn't work ( Read the aliens fucking up the majority of the soldiers) and thus Vietnamese and Americans killed each other until America had enough ( Read when Signourney Weaver has had enough) . The soldiers get disillusioned and the civilians disagree with their tactics ( Sigourney Weaver rips Gorman a new one. Oh Gorman.) , believing the war to be about petty political and financial motivation that doesn't have the people at its heart (Read Carter Burke = US Government, selling a good story but secretly just wanting the alien Eggs to make a weapon, and fuck anyone who gets in his way). With patriotism wearing thin the Americans Napalm the shit out of them (SW nukes the whole planet I believe.) and sulk off back to their homeland. And so James Cameron made his Vietnam movie in subtext.


6) Ginger Snaps
This film about two sisters fascinated by all things death, only for their life to take a turn for the ironic when one of them gets bitten by a werewolf. Bloodshed and Gore ensue.

What its really about?

The process of female puberty. Or when a girl becomes a woman, and the kicking and screaming that goes with it. In this movie conveyed by wolfing out. I guess horror isn't really the genre to whine about subtelty, but a biological event that happens every month ( or lunar cycle), leading to mood swings and attacking people who don't deserve it? This is allegory who's point you won't miss. Good movie though.


5) Night of the Living Dead
George Romero loved him some allegory, and every Dead movie is making some sort of sociological point in between, ahem, choking on them. The first one though, is surely just some zombie siege movie. No complexity here, just guys holed up in a farmhouse smacking down zombies with tire irons. Surely.

What Its really about?

Racism in 60's America. Oh come on. That's reaching. Except its not. Admittedly the first twenty minutes maybe is just your standard surface level ghoulfest but once we're introduced to Ben ( Read an educated black generation) , a black twenty-something who's adapting to this whole zombie situation really, really well. First saving Barbra from about 5 zombies and her own high pitched whining, then fortifying the house, figuring out a Zombie Achilles heal , finding a gun and discovering more survivors. Its safe to assume a dude know what he's doing. But White middle-class patriarch Cooper ( Read the racist and backward sect of white America) just can't accept this. He should be the one in charge and making the decisions (Read White resistance to black civil rights movements). Not this jumped up colored boy. To paraphrase. Cooper's conviction that he'd rather die then concede any ground to this man, inevitably leads to everyone getting slaughtered but plucky Ben. Who is duly shot in the head by some white farmer the minute he steps outside. Making the point that racism and hatred runs thicker then blood, or even the need to kill zombies.


4) Peeping Tom
One of the classic serial killer movies. Perverted sicko goes about killing women, filming it and watching it back. To see if he missed anything I guess. Nice guy.

What its really about?

Voyeurism of the storyteller. Sure voyeurism is a theme that Peeping Tom makes no effort to hide, but our man Mark's kind of watching is a stand in for Michael Powell's main theme, which is coming to terms with the voyeuristic nature of his life's work. The fabrication of emotions, characters and situations, often involving suffering, death and pain that he watched in silence while the cameras rolled. This is true of every aspect of storytelling. The writer lovingly creates his characters only to force upon them emotional turmoil and pain from a position of God like omniscience. ( Read Mark making the films of his kills, thus objectifying himself from the act.) The story-teller experiences his characters happiness ( Read the scene in which Mark joyfully gets Moira Shearer to innocently dance for the camera before killing her.) Their fantasies, both light and dark and their eventual destiny be it happy or tragic. Peeping Tom is an essay on the involuntary deity status being a storyteller provides, and the perversions that come with.


3) Misery
In which Kathy Bates smashes someone's leg with a sledgehammer. Other stuff happens too, like in which thinly veiled Stephen King surrogate no. 6 (James Caan) deals with a crazy fan who doesn't like the way he ended his latest novel. Coz she's crazy.

What Its really about?
Fans shutting the fuck up. Because you have to be crazy not to like the way he ends his writing right? crazy. Given that King gets endlessly criticized for his endings, this blatantly is a piece of STFU writing if there ever was one. Guys, did you write The Shining or Carrie. Did you write the script to Butch Cassidy or All The Presidents Men (William Goldman wrote the screenplay, if you didn't get that). No. You didn't. So where the fuck do you get off telling me how to write my books/screenplays. My watch cost more then you make in a year! Fuck you and your opinions. And if you continue to bug me, I will demonize you in literature, have that adapted into a movie, have you played by Kathy Bates and have her win an Oscar for portraying just how wrong you are. Now leave me alone, I have to write the sequel to Pet Cemetery.


2) The Host
This awesome Korean Monster movie is everything that can go right in the horror genre. Its fun, its scary and there's archery. This story of a monster dwelling in a city river coming a shore to feed on some Korean is a tale of a family torn apart and the love that pulls them back together. Only phrased in a way that doesn't make you want to puke all over your own face.

What its really about?

The environment. The Monster is created by the US government (of course) dumping unchecked toxins and chemicals into the city river, and as we all know if you don't take care of nature then nature will give you the finger. So substitute the monster for say as tsunami or a hurricane and you get this movie's point.


1) Dawn of The Dead
Romero mark two. The guy loves allegory what can I say. This movie makes the top spot though because its the smartest, most elegantly executed piece of horror movie allegory that exists, at least to the extent of my knowledge. Surface, its another Zombie siege movie, only taking place on a grander scale, exchanging a farmhouse for a shopping mall. Ken Foree killed enough zombies to earn a reference in Shaun of the dead, the ultimate tribute to zombie killing prowess.

What its Really about?

Consumerism. You see our Romero's zombies are innately drawn to places they felt safe in their pre-zombie existence. So it's little surprise that the corpses are naturally pulled toward a great Philadelphia shopping mall. You see we are designed and programmed by society to believe that certain things are good, some are some aren't. Family, patriotism, capitalism, football whatever. But above all to keep the world ticking we must, on pain of death buy bunch of shit we don't need down at the local mega store. Consumerism is so deeply wound into our system's that it can even survive the zombification process. You are not you're fucking khakis, fool. Only twenty years earlier and with some zombies thrown in.

10 Days of Horror: 7 Great horror films you've probably never seen

Sure we've all seen The Texas Chainsaw massacre, we've all seen The Shining and we've all seen The Exorcist ( Well except me, in what remains my greatest faux-pas as a film fan. I'm seeing it soon I swear.) But if you're a fan of horror, you burn through the big ticket names relatively quickly, leaving at a loss of where to go next. Thankfully desperation is the mother of invention and you find your way, maybe through endless and futile googling, maybe through having Film4 on at one in the morning, because you just had to watch American Psycho for the fifteen-thousandth time. ( That movie's fan base grows by the minute.) To all the obscure and unseen greatness that the genre has to offer. Or you could just read this.

7) The Vanishing
The Dutch, who are high in the running of most irrelevant film-making nations worldwide, did have this one under-appreciated gem to offer up. This clever concoction of Kidnap, intellectual evil and one of the most devastating endings to grace any horror movie, or movie for that matter. Remade with Jeff ' The Dude' Bridges in the role of the villain. No.

6) The Stepfather
Like many people, I came across this particular movie because of being a fan of Terry O Quinn. A.K.A John Locke from Lost. This story of a psycopath in search of the idyllic family promised to him by fifties TV is a an unexpectedly good movie. Or as good as its possible for an 80's slasher movie to be anyway. Mostly thanks to O'Quinn, who delivers a career defining performance, 20 years before giving a redefining one in the role we all know him from. Its ending is a bit shaky, as are some of the supporting cast, but Shelley Duval sucking in The Shining didn't make you enjoy Jack Nicholson any less right?

5) Cemetery Man
I have no idea why I watched this movie in the first place, but whatever, because this kind of awesomely ridiculous tribute to movie insanity is just in too short supply. We start off a cheesy Italian style zombie movie, morph into a twisted black comedy and then again into an almost existential WTF movie. Its clever ideas probably would have buckled under the straight to video acting that most of the cast had to offer, but thankfully its lead Rupert Everett, who has since been shoehorned into playing gay best friends and members of the 19th century literary aristocracy, delivers a much needed anchor to all the craziness. A movie you won't forget, whatever you think of it.

4) Eyes Without a Face
The argument that horror films born before the age of gore are redundant has never been more disproved then with this film, which goes to show that cinema just doesn't do creepy quite like it used to. This tale of a French doctor trying to restore his daughter's hideously scarred face by any means necessary is galling, to say the least. The kind of scary that genuinely gets under your skin and disturbs rather then the rinse and repeat gore that can be so easily brushed off these days.

3) Henry: Portrait of A Serial Killer
This one is relatively well known, but still under -seen. This calling card for gory excess is also much cleverer then you first think. The fact that Michael Rooker's career went the way it did is a genuine shame, because he did something special here. But be warned that few films are rougher then this, both in terms of image and tone.

2) Martin
George Romero, trademarked as the creator of the zombie genre ( Night of the living Dead and Dawn of the dead are two of the best horror films ever made.) is known pretty much as a one trick pony who who can't make a good movie without some form of corpse walking around. Martin didn't disprove this theory, but it widened the parameters of the meaning of that sentence, because Romero's take on the vampire mythos is one of the most intelligent there is. Its more of a character study then an all out horror movie, but it makes it no less effective.

1) Frailty
2001 was a good year for movies, just off the top of my head I can remember Fellowship of the Ring. Amelie, Moulin Rouge, Donnie Darko and more. But the one that has stayed with me most is this small movie directed and starring Private Hudson from Aliens. Cheap jokes aside, this is a cleverlytold tale of a single father who believes that God has instructed him to hunt down demons hiding in human form, whilst his eldest son slowly begins to believe that he's gone insane. A fantastic blend of quality story-telling and intelligent high-concept horror tied to real characters. Like all the best horror movies, it actually has something to say aside from all the carnage.