Ruari and Mark go to the (toy) fair!

Hail all you nerds, geeks, dweebs, poindexters, and all other assorted types of this great underground culture we have going right here. As far as greetings go I think that was fairly comprehensive and long winded, for those who don't know who I am i thought I'd hijack the first bit of this post for a brief introduction. My name is Ruari (Rory) and I'm Marks pundit/co-host/sexpig on the Cult Friction show, and now apparently co-blogger for it and all (if you are a regular listener, I'm the funny one).

*an aside I was going to make some sort of "yeah, funny looking" joke there, but this is radio so I don't think it works.


THE TOY FAIR!

This weekend saw the 59th London Toy Fair, strictly for toy industry types and authenticated press types, so naturally your two cocky sonsofbitches radio reporters were there to lie steal and cheat our way in.

Which we did.

Well OK they were kinda lax, and we sorta just looked like poor, sodden newsroom interns (I even had a hat) but we got our flashy press badges and sauntered on in, here's some of my favourite bits...

Lego Stand

HOLY CRAP I LOVE LEGO!!! This stuff was quite literally the building blocks of most of my life (predictable joke) and to be honest i never really stopped playing with having merged all my friends collections together about 2 years ago in order to build a GIANT tower. Now obviously the highlight of the Lego stand was the giant Lego dudes.

Definition of futility, trying to interview plastic bricks, Mark, you have failed me for the last time!

As suspected the star wars franchise was there in force (predictable joke), and most of the attention was to the prequels (barf) however there was a showing from some more classical types...

Can you tell which Dr Jones is made of Lego?

Ahh Indy my good chum, how nice, you realise we are hat buddies right? Unlike the star wars aspects most of the Indiana Jones was from the pre shark-jumping, fridge-nuking, Jar-Jar era and I was sorely tempter to nick the little short-round figure who as well as being ever so slightly racist was also VERY small, wish they had a melting Nazi face figure...

I suppose Lego is just made of plastic...

Wow, theres like a hundred of these.
I really really hope rule 34 doesn't apply here

Nerdy Collectors Stuff

No toy fair would be complete (like I've been to loads) without a keep-it-in-the-box collector item stall and this one was no disappointment

It might look cute, but Mark actually has an STD,

that's a really hairy growth.

Tribbles, wow, I never, ever thought I'd see these as a toy. Mainly because they can be faithfully recreated by a furry pillow or practically any small dead animal. Though these ones did have the distinction of making two sets of noises the normal purr and a high pitched scream that indicated an nearby Klingon (who have apparently used specially trained warrior squads to eradicate the great cuddly menace!). But to be honest even the Tribbles couldn't hold a candle to the...

Side Note: it never gets old calling Mark "Marky McFly"

Wow a flux capacitor, that's sweet. Admittedly it didn't do much bar light up and occasionally enable us to transverse time and space, but still. I'd love to have one of them in my cupboard to confuse the meter-readers.

They also had a life sized star trek captains chair advertised, but I didn't get a picture of that so I'm not telling you about it. Myeh.

The Shootpad

Ok this thing was totally really good (I'm sick of typing sweet, seriously must have used that word like 30 times and this was the best my thesaurus had except for sugary or candy, now i feel hungry).

Basically its a dance mat for football games depending where and how hard (it has Wii-style sensors to track how far back and fast your foot is) you kick the ball, you pass, shoot, tackle, hack, dive, argue with referee, swear at crowd, snort coke and start a riot.

Ok I might of added my own there but still I had a brief go on this thing and despite not being able to move (ironically the actual D-pad was borked) I loved it. the feeling of being able to control your power with actually kicks is immensely satisfying and pretty much eliminates hilariously short long passes. It also has some of the pseudo-fitness aspect that allows Nintendo's little white box to appeal to that all important non-gamer demographic. Having just sounded like a PR rep I'll just let you have a gander for yourself.



Ok so it has a few niggles, the two swaggeringly annoying jockesque personifications of dickweedery in the advert aside. The previously mentioned lack of being able to move, sort of turned the game into a weirdly stereotyped idea of the American perception of "soccer" and when we got there it looked as if someone had given on of the pads one too many match-winning strikes and broke the ball. But overall the sheer "I'm a total football legend" feeling it gives you added with its ability to work with any footie game out there makes it a great addition to your console.

So there we are, my top three rides at there fair, we'll be discussing all of these and many more on Thursday at 6, tune into to our sultry tones at www.wiredradio.co.uk

Clever Designs!

For more visit /www.behance.net/Gallery/Glennz-Tee-Store-Designs/149088

The Cult of Blood Feast!!!

"Cult; a system of religious worship especially as expressed in ritual, a devotion or homage to a person or thing, a popular fashion especially followed by a specific section of society, denoting a person or thing popularised in this way.[1]" This is 'cult' as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary. Cult, in relation to film, seems to be a term that is thrown around within the annals of cinematic history making many film historians, critics and scholars question the make up of what exactly a cult film is. Barry Keith Grant makes the points out that whilst straddling a multitude of genres that the cult movie holds a certain common denominator which elevates it to its given status. Generically films which have the term cult attached to them tend to be those of either a science fiction or the horror categories however the cult movie can also take established genres and modify and/or blend various generic barriers such as musicals or westerns, "simply transgress(ing) the boundaries we usually associate with the notion of genre[2]." By taking a threefold look at 1963's Blood Feast taking in to account the idea that exhibition, distribution and reception are key in the films cult status we see not only the far reaching influence its director Herschell Gordon Lewis had on an entire variety of movies but the birth of a new sub genre within cinema. And thus the Gore film was born.
Herschell Gordon Lewis' Blood Feast throws up its celluloid fists in front of the face of mainstream taste and proper cinematic construction insofar that it transgress levels of technical, narrative and conceptual competence however it is for these reasons that we consider Blood Feasts' place in the history of the horror (or gorror movie) to go beyond that of a standard horror film. To begin to even consider this film as worthy to write an essay on is symbolic of its cult reaching status asserting that this represents "an opposition to established cultural values.[3]" Jeffery Sconce refers to this type of cinema as "paracinema[4]" films that stem from various genres such as the "sword and sandal epics, Japanese monster movies[5]" and of course the gore movie. Lewis was no stranger to the world of exploitation. After leaving his job as a teacher, Lewis got into the world of film by making various short safety films for the workplace before getting into the world of the "nudie cutie" or "skin flick[6]. Never properly finding his way into the Hollywood mainstream, Lewis films made their returns from specialist cinemas that would show X rated material. He and his associate David Friedman noting the rise in the use of skin in Hollywood decided to make films from a different approach. Throughout their discussions, Lewis and Friedman went through a litany of subjects that they could exploit finally coming up with the Gore film. It was the perfect antidote to an already tiring market that was under too many restrictions. "You better never show a woman's breast but feel free to hack it off with a machete.[7]"
And so began the process of making what was to be the very first gore film. With a minuscule budget and the backbones of a script Lewis and Friedman began shooting in Miami in the summer of 1963. The films hurried approach and somewhat camp acting styling from its cast members give Blood Feast its cult appeal in so much as its direction is absolutely dreadful. Nearly all of the actors in the film were untrained and inexperienced in front of the camera. The actress who played Mrs Freemont, Lyn Boulton was noted as one of the three worst female performances in all of cinema[8], her scene in the exotic catering store, being hypnotised by the villain, is extremely amusing. Amongst the rag tag of wannabe actors were two ex carnival workers or "carnys[9]" playing the chief of police and the professor of Egyptology as well as the films main attractions, the playboy bunnies (which promotional material played up to great effect). Fortunately for the male audience they were presented in compromising positions with some times very little or no clothing on them. Unfortunately for Lewis most of them could barely act which wasn't too much of a problem saying that they mostly were cinema fodder for our archetypical (ahem) fiendish screen villain, Faud Ramses played by none other than Mal Arnold. Arnold's performance is considered one of the great comical highlights of the film, the local actor who was keen to impress, added a limp and a very odd Bela Lugosi accent to make the character of Ramses more menacingly credible. It is note worthy that Arnold character of Ramses is considered the very first machete wielding mad man laying the grounds for future maniacs to come such as Jason, Freddy and Mike Myers[10]. The continuity of the film is also questionable with various props and costume parts randomly changing such as the police chiefs spray painted straw hat and the incongruous chase scene at the end where the police who are like Olympic athletes in comparison to a limping Ramses fail to catch him. Even the films dialogue (most of which was improvised on set or prompted to the actors of camera) is ludicrous; two scenes of note include the young man who's girlfriend has had her brains scooped out before him unrecognisable wailing and crying and the films last line, "He died like the garbage which he came from[11]" is with out a doubt the line that just pushes the film over the edge in to plain farce when Faud dies in the back of a moving trash van. However all these directorial foibles add to the films growth of fans over the years and its beatification into the sainthood that is the cult film. Frank Henenlotter in Jeffery Sconce's essay remarks that these inept aesthetics of the film in some ways adds to its charm, "you're sitting there shaking your head, totally excited, totally unable to guess where this is going next, or what the next loony line out of somebody's mouth is going to be. Just as long as it isn't stuff you regularly see....As long as it's different, as long as it's breaking a taboo (whether deliberately or by misdirection). There's a thousand reasons to like these films.[12]"
Film writers have acknowledged the lack of plot within the structure of Blood Feast to be of significance due to the emphasis on the spectacle rather than the mundane storyline. Previous horror films such as the Universal or Hammer Horror productions relied heavily on the build up of plot within its storyline to build up terror of the film whilst Blood Feast pushes boundaries on what is shown. What many have commented is that it is not the absurd plot of the movie that is meant to grasp our attention however it is the "aesthetic[13]" that is the key element in making theses films what they are. The script was only fourteen pages long however it was a skeletal structure to allow the depiction of what Jonathan Crowe credits Lewis contributing to the horror film: meat. Fake concoctions of blood, guts and animal entrails were used in the film to depict scooped out brains, eyeballs, intestines and most famously a tongue. Lewis wanted to push the envelope in terms of blood exploitation by doing what previous films had not done. "Everyone died peacefully in the movies...we broke and entered the skin...there was a whole bunch of taboos that we set out deliberately to violate in order to position our picture.[14]" This can be used to explain the films longevity in the eyes of many of its cult followers and how it continues to shock to this day. Lewis, theorising on his work, claims the horror within Blood Feast is not behind the blood or the splatter effect but through the organs, "People can replace blood with a transfusion, they cannot replace their intestines, their heart, their liver etc.[15]" Crane reiterates this by stating that "those of us fortunate to see any of Lewis' productions it is specific (splatter) scenes rather than the narrative as a whole which imprints themselves on the viewers memory." Stylistically the films grainy, retro, over saturated colour adds to the appeal within the cult world. Blood Feast's promotional posters sensationally played this up with the tag "more grizzly than ever in BLOOD COLOUR!"[16]
Generically Blood Feast ties in with the more mainstream ancient Egypt themed movies which preceded the film, such as the Mummy (1932), the villain Faud Ramses (Mal Arnold) being the practitioner of an ancient blood sacrifice to the goddess Isthar (although the authenticity of such research into the Egyptian Blood rights was a mere plot addition and was not based on fact whatsoever.) Lewis however embellishes the gory details of post corporal burial rights, which many audience members would have been familiar with, to extend to living playboy bunnies. HG Lewis was out to make the blood the key spectacle of a movie of (the blood was made from anti diarrhoea lotion mixed with cranberry sauce) which became known generically as the gore film or the gorror film thus earning him the honourable title "The Godfather of Gore[17]." "The theme of Blood Feast was one I felt lent itself to the kind of low budget, intensive production that we were geared to make."
The question remained, Who would handle a film like Blood Feast? Not known to be one to take his work too seriously HG Lewis was surprised at the reaction of various friends and co workers "fall down throw up and turn green[18]" at the rough cut of this film. Given the fact this was 1963 and people were not so used to this level of gratuitousness Lewis was hounded by various censor boards in places where the film was going to be released to cut the films excessive violence which unfortunately would have left nothing but very bad acting and a very flimsy plotline in the film. Due to the reactions of people who were making the film Lewis decided on opening the film in a quiet Drive in movie theatre in Illinois where audiences where at first its reception was luke warm until the tongue scene where Lewis describes, "and then comes the tongue scene and suddenly everything goes dead quiet and all you can see are these white eyeballs staring up at the screen. That one brought 'em up short.[19]" Blood Feast was screened across America through the Drive in theatres which were at the height of their popularity especially in rural areas. However the early 1960's would be the golden age of the Drive in which was suffering to the popularity of television and eventuly the rise of the home entertainment centre such as the VCR. Blood feast in this sense represents a lost age in cinema exhibition which adds to its cult fan base.

The films somewhat laughable advertising campaign (which in most cases was word of mouth) also added to the hype and the furore that Blood Feast was having across America. Posters (which themselves have become stuff of pop art) would contain elaborate disclaimers and admonitions such as "this is no publicity stunt warning. If you are the parent or guardian of an impressionable adolescent, DO NOT BRING HIM or PERMIT HIM TO SEE THIS MOTION PICTURE.[20]" This particular disclaimer shows us how aware the film promoters were in their target audience demographic i.e. impressionable adolescent males. There was also a lengthy disclaimer at the beginning of the films trailer with a man in a rather authoritarian tone warning the audience of the most unusual pictures ever filmed. Publicity stunts also ranged in ludicrously from white paper barf bags with a disclaimer written on the side proclaiming "You May need this when you see Blood Feast,[21]" to the producer Friedman granting an injunction against his very own film in a particular town to get more publicity. All these represent a time when exploitation was creeping into the mainstream and wasn't confined to the Grand Guignols and the nudie booths. Although at the time (and to this day) audiences found this film repulsive, there is an innocent quality that lies in this film, one that harks of a lost America in the form of the Drive in movie theatre and the sense of fun and camaraderie felt amongst the cast and crew in the making of the film, qualities that fully adhere Blood Feast to the status of a cult film.

Blood Feast is a great example of a badly made film, a film maker's guide on how best not to assemble a cast, crew, plotline, character, setting and one that proved to be one of the most enduring cult movies of all time, standing along side the likes of Ed Wood and many more exploitation flicks of its kind and era. Blood Feast would lay down the inspiration and influence for films such as Night of the Living Dead, Brain Damage, Bad Taste, Re animator and the Evil Dead series[22], even some of the films of John Waters, all which have respectable cult followings. What makes these films stand out is their disrespect, "because they seem so obviously to fly in the face of respectability....these films sometimes intensifies the horror, making the movies seem morally irresponsible or even gleefully amoral to the degree that they mock the seriousness of violence and death.[23]" These films however ludicrous represent the beautifully innocent within the weird and grizzly. There is a sense of encouragement to the guerrilla independent film maker that these films can transcend good taste, in the words of Lester Bangs "any loon sane enough to realise that the whole concept of 'good taste is concocted to keep people from having a good time, from revelling in a crassness that passeth all understanding....Fuck those people who'd rather be watching The Best years of our lives...We got our own good tastes.[24]" Blood Feast is celebrated in it's not only the genre breaking film but the notion that the film is aesthetically "bad" comply fails to conform to the artistic and political mainstream. Herschell Gordon Lewis was not someone who made these films for any personal accolade, "your ego goes out the window and you make a picture for the audience.[25]" And shock, dismay and terrify he did going on to make thirty two films in a twelve year span each one more gruesome and exploitive than the last. There are even plans for a Blood Feast 2.


Bibliography

Sconce Jeffery Trashing the academy: Taste, excess and an emerging politics of cinematic style. Screen Vol 36.4 Winter 1995
Palmer, Randy Herschell Gordon Lewis; godfather of gore: the films/ by McFarland and Company Publishers North Carolina 2000
Curry Christopher Wayne A Taste of Blood; The Films of Herschell Gordon Lewis Creation Books International 1999
Prince Stephen The Horror Film / edited and with an introduction by Stephen Prince Rutgers University Press New Jersey 2004
Grant Barry Keith Unruly Pleasures; The Cult film and its critics. FAB press Guilford 2000
The Rough Guide to Cult Movies ed Simpson Paul Rough Guides Ltd London 2002

The dead are coming back to life and are eating the flesh of the living!

America in the mid 20th century was at boiling point in terms social and political change. The threat of communism, all out atomic war, the assassination of John F Kennedy, the Bay of Pigs, the escalating crisis of Vietnam, the peace movement, civil rights, student riots etc were all being played out on the world stage and Hollywood reflected the mood quite adequately with successions of movies with spies, espionage and war. Horror movies also tapped into the anxieties of a nation. Before the release of Psycho in 1960 the American Horror Genre was implicitly driven by the threat of the outside. Most movies made in the horror realm focused on the evils that was communism that terrorized the American way of life with such Sci-fi horror crossovers such as Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and Invaders from Mars (1953) . Hitchcock's Psycho marks a change in attitude to the genre as a whole and the way horror movies are made. Whereas before in the horror movie the protagonist overcomes the invader whose motive is to interfere with American way of life it is the infamous shower scene that highlights the shocking quality of Marion Cranes's "meaningless[2]" death. Wood proclaims that her stabbing by Bates is "probably the most horrible incident in any fiction film[3]." Psycho's horror therefore lies in the fact that it has come from within and not from the outside thus shaking the system of how horror movies effect their audiences.

Woods claim that "Hollywood cinema has implicitly recognised the horror genre as both American and familial" resounds throughout most American films within the genre. Night of the Living Dead is no exception. By breaking the film down scene by scene we can see this claim as a template on how films of the horror genre attack and break down these two elements at the core of American life, patriotism and the nuclear family model to frighten and disturb to full effect. "One might say that the true subject of the horror genre is the struggle for recognition of all that our civilisation represses and oppresses.[4]"

[pic] Night of the Living Dead was created by George A Romero in 1968 with help from a group of financiers. The plot was loosely based on the novel "I am Legend" by Richard Matheson that centred on the story of the last man on earth. The plot centres on a group of people who are caught in a race for survival when hoards of the un dead unexplainably attack and eat the flesh of living. These zombies however do not seem to be of the traditional docile, controlled workforce for evil type but are more self controlled beings that have no other motive but to eat other people. It is here that the film has its most shocking quality, the fact that these creatures have no motive other than consume for themselves. Romero exposes gore that although seems tame by today's standards shocked and appalled audiences of the time. Disembodied corpses and half eaten heads provided shock value like no other; where as traditional film making would pan away from someone's death we see the full result of the zombie's meal. This was on one level a mere shock tactic which many contemporaries regarded as low brow and tasteless, Reader's Digest at the time dedicated an entire article on the film and tried to promote it being banned from theatres across the country. However it is not only the gruesome elements of the film that linger in the audience's subconscious. The film peels away the facets of the American way of life slowly throughout the film and it is here where Night of the Living Dead deals its psychological blow.
First we look at the films settings. The camera in the opening shot of the film pans down from the stars and stripes (Romero's metaphor of "America-as- graveyard[5]" i.e. the zombies live under this banner as well) to an American country side cemetery. It is here where we first encounter our enemy right in the heart of the grounds of a societal institution (in this case the church.) Our female protagonist (whom we assume is the heroine) finds shelter in a deserted farm house which represents with no surprise the home in which the zombies surround. This besieging is a classic "recurrent, claustrophobic image (within) the horror film...the home is one's final sanctuary, the last place to take a stand[6]." As the night of the living dead envelops the house our heroes find themselves quickly running out of options as slowly and surly the un-dead close in little by little. American Film Genre's by Kaminsky points out this motif in such films as Straw Dogs (1971) , The Omega Man (1971), The Birds(1963) , The Thing(1980) , The Amityville Horror (1979) and Romero's follow up Dawn of the Dead (1976). It is not just the violence that drives home the horrific predicament of our protagonists but the elements of realism portrayed in the film. Romero employs the use of the media within the film to show how the Government was dealing and comprehending (somewhat futilely) with the situation by use of the television and radio. Producer Karl Hardman who not only created the make up and sound but also played Harry Cooper in the film remarks in the 1990 documentary on the film that the response by the audience to these media clips were "phenomenal[7]" as they referenced real towns in the Pennsylvania region. "We attracted...attention by movie goers because of this.[8]" This is some what reminiscent of the famous Orson Wells radio adaptation of War of the Worlds.
The characters in Night of the Living Dead are forever memorable for their demise rather than their heroic efforts to stop the zombies. One by one each character embodies something that is relevant to the American way of life and as the film develops we build up an emotional catharsis towards them accordingly to their actions. Wood "draws on Marcusean Freud....the notion of ideology as a form of social conditioning with the view of the unconscious as the receptacle of the energies repressed by the patriarchal family[9]." There are three notions of the family in this film alone the first being the brother and sister at the beginning, Johnny and Barbra. The second are Judy and Tom who are a young couple and lastly the Coopers, Harry, Helen and their Daughter. Firstly the composition of the couples; Judy and Tom clearly represent the beginnings of a family, the young couple survival is paramount for the future therefore they are the most likely to gain audience sympathy to survive the horror. This illusion that "their survival is guaranteed...generically[10]" is shattered when they are burned and eaten alive half way through the movie.
The existing nuclear family is also present however they are far from the stereotypical 'perfect white toothed all American family unit.' The father is irrationally angry and takes out his fury and irritation out on the rest of the group. Wood points out not only the representation on the "disintegration of the patriarchal family[11]" but also on the wife's insular role within the story "trapped in the dominant societal patterns[12]." "Their demise at the hands of their zombie daughter is the films judgement on them[13]." This notion is one not unfamiliar with Hollywood as we have seen in such films like Rebel without a Cause although Jim (James Deans character doesn't eat his parents) it is interesting to see the extremities the movie industry will go to show these societal insecurities.
Wood also remarks on the relationship of brother and sister Johnny and Barbra. In the first scene Johnny's sinister play acting with his sister shows the break down of this idea of the perfect family by enlightening their inherent "familial resentments on each other[14]." In a cruel twist of irony we see in the final attack by the zombies on the house being led by none other than the 'zombified' Johnny ;"some obscure family feeling driving him to devour her.[15]"
[pic]
As with all horror movies we must have our strong hero who in this case is a black man (many writers citing this as a social commentary which Romero denies... " Duane Jones (the actor who played Ben) was just a friend of a friend[16]." ) If anything this is a liberal reassurance that this man from a minority shall save the W.A.S.P protagonists in the house. His presence defines if anything his role as protector of these families and their way of life. In the end his efforts are in vain as he is killed by the posse of sheriffs and local mobs armed with guns. The stark ending of this film leaves a void in the audiences' belief in all that is good and righteous. The sting in the ending is that there although we assume in the end of the day that the zombie attacks will be repressed our heroes might as well been devoured from the beginning. Why this film scars the American psyche is because there was no happy ending. Americans up until the 1970's were used to overcoming adversities such as war and depression however this notion of a happy ending seems to parody the loss of the Vietnam War. Romero is often mentioned in terms of political film making however he states than when making Night of the Living Dead he was not trying to be overtly political more so wanting to give the audience "a roller coaster ride.[17]"
Night of the Living Dead was a catalyst for many films that broke down barriers by showing the unpleasant side of the American way of life not solely through the genre of horror but in other areas too in films such as Easy Rider (1969) and The Parallax View(1972) . Night of the Living Dead changed modern horror in terms of the meaningless way violence is portrayed on screen. Directors of films such as The Hills Have Eyes (1977; Wes Craven) The Evil Dead (1982; San Rami) The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974; Tobe Hopper) Halloween (1978; John Carpenter) American Werewolf in London (1981 John Landis) have all tipped their hat to Romero for not only inspiring their methods and their ability to make films on a shoestring budget but also how to rip into American society's subconscious by raping the idea of the family and the homeland. Romero would go on do direct three more "living dead" sequels each dealing with the zeitgeist of its times. Dawn of the Dead (1976) Day of the Dead (1985) and Land of the Dead (2006) has their own spin on the powers that be and the ideologies behind them. Night of the Living Dead however will remain not just as a cult movie but as a benchmark that every horror movie maker would have to reach from then on in.

Hills Have Eyes in 1970's American Horror

According to Robin Wood, "the 70's was a period in which the evolution of the horror genre produced films more gruesome, more violent, more disgusting and perhaps more confused than ever before in its history."[1] This was an age that saw the horror movie take on many forms and issues whilst maintaining the shock factor that resonates from the earliest "splatter and gore films"[2] (such as those made by Hershell Gordon Lewis of the previous decade(. Among the many films that populated the exponential growth of the genre in the 1970's, Wes Craven's The Hills Have Eyes (1977) is seen as a defining film in the maturing of American horror film- largely due to the issues its deals within the social realm as well as the aesthetic horror it presents on screen. To understand the film's place in cinematic history, we must take into account the socio- political environment the film was born out of as well as previous filmic influences.
According to the critic Gregory A. Waller, the "modern era of the horror movie began in 1968,"[3] and the cinematic evidence supports this statement. Films such as George A Romero's Night of the Living Dead (dir G.A. Romero, 1968) and Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby (dir R. Polanski,1968) had both been made in this year, and both touched on aspects that did not only have shock value like the Hershel Gordon Lewis 'intensive gore'[4] film, but also a deeper, more sociological undertone which amplified their impact on the viewer - In other words, "the genre had become more aware of itself in terms that it knows that is a scary movie, not only of American life but generic memory."[5] Whilst many saw it as a low budget zombie Sci-Fi horror, Night of The Living Dead can be viewed as a take on the invasion of the family unit and American social values, rather than the veiled communist threat that was typical of the invasion movie.

In the pre-hayes code productions of the 1930's and 1940's, Hollywood endeavored to test the boundaries of the horror film, as Thomas Doherty highlights in Pre-Hayes Code Hollywood. [6] Exploitation and gruesome imagery was used to push the envelope in films such as Tarzan(dir WV Van Dyke, 1932), Freaks(dir Tom Browning, 1932) , and King Kong (dir M.C.Cooper, 1933). Tarzan could be seen as a radical, racial adventure move,[7] Freaks; a body shock-horror,[8] King Kong; human sexuality at its most brutal, manifested in a violent oversized gorilla.[9] Naturally, these movies exerted a strong influence on the horror genre. Robin Wood also discusses these elements in films such as Frankenstein, taking the riotous actions of the village people against the monster to symbolize the reaction of the proletariat against the upper classes. This provides a further link to the science fiction cycle of the invasion from another world,[11] symbolic of the incursion of a different system of ideals - in this case, Communism. "The Threat in the 1930's horror was always foreign i.e. horror exists but it is un-American."[12]- Essentially the essence of any horror movie lies in this "other"[13] presence or threat which takes many forms and shapes throughout the history of the genre. The medium of the cinema is classic escapism into dreams, whilst the horror movies do the exact opposite- they are the escape into terror. The late1960's saw a shift in the genre from a more public and sociological arena (like science fiction) to a much more personal, psychological terror, an important feature in its development. The social fears addressed were no longer collective, but internal and personal - this can be seen in the attack on the home. The internal manifestation played on the fact that the once impenetrable fortress of the family unit can be invaded, violated, and effectively destroyed. Wes Craven's The Hills Have Eyes exemplifies this, showing the American family under threat in the realm of the horror movie.[14]

Boasting a career that spans four decades, as a director of such seminal horror films as The Last House on the Left (dir Wes Craven, 1972) in the early 70's, the Nightmare on Elm Street in the 1980's and the post modern Scream Trilogy in the 1990's, Wes Craven is, to say the least, a venerable figure whose name is synonymous with the American Horror film. In his 1977 feature, The Hills Have Eyes, Craven explores the more primal instincts of man when his private safehaven - his family home- is attacked. For Craven, "the family is the best microcosm to work with. If you go beyond that you're getting away from a lot of the roots of your own primeval feelings."[15] Robin Wood sees the family as being the unifying master figure in relation to such issues as violence, rape, cannibalism and revenge motifs within this genre, which I will discuss individually during the course of this essay. Wood considers the evolution of the horror film in the familial sense. The family comedy of the 1930's turned sour and petered out in the 50's, evolved into the family horror film with such early examples as Psycho(dir A Hitchcock 1960) .[16] Night of the Living Dead also features a family fighting for their lives when under threat by a zombie hoard only for them to be consumed from within by their own mutated daughter. Wood sees this as a recurring motif which can also be seen in Meet Me in St Louis (dir V Minelli 1944) where Margret O Brien symbolically kills and eats her parents.[17]


The premise of Craven's The Hills Have Eyes centers around two families, one, the standard "white bread" American family as Craven describes them, who are stranded in the desert far from civilization; the other a rather mutilated half breed of human who eek out their living in the wasteland in a rather violent and primeval way. In essence this Darwinian film is about two families pitted against each other for survival and power over one other (although there is no clear cut reason for this clash). However, as D.N. Rodowick highlights, by the end of the film it is not clear who is more monstrous; the Carters or the mutated family who double them throughout the film.[18] Rodowick again notes that the end of the film depicts equally bloody revenge for each act of violence perpetrated against the Carter family. Even the family dog, Beast, gets revenge for the death of its partner, Beauty, by ripping the jugular of Pluto the rapist out of his neck. The two teenagers, left alone in the car, attempt to kill off the opposing patriarch by blowing up their trailer and immolating him much in the same way as their father Red was killed- hung and burned to a tree. The final battle boils down to Doug and Mars exemplifying what Rodowick sees as "the ultimate struggle for parental authority."[19] The films haunting final image is that of Doug's face after he has viciously, repeatedly stabbed his attacker. There is no trace of a happy ending that would befit a comedy; no tearful, joyful reunion with his surviving family. Instead, we fade bleakly out to red, symbolic of the bloodshed we have just witnessed. Such features as the attack on the American family, cannibalism and a bleak nihilistic ending betray the influence of earlier films such as Texas Chainsaw Massacre(dir Hopper, 1973) and Night of The Living Dead; reaching their pinnacle in Craven's work.
The Hills Have Eyes shows a blending of various subgenres on thematic levels that drive towards the modern horror film, as we know it. Throughout the film the viewer is left in suspense, constantly questioning who will survive and what will be left of them. This was a common trait in many horror films from the 1960's onwards, notably The Texas Chainsaw Massacre where our young protagonists are chased by an axe wielding mad man only to escape and fall back into the clutches of the demented family again. The Night of the Living Dead is equally as tense as one by one each of the survivors are plucked from the security of the house and succumbed to the violent forces of the encroaching zombies. The Hills Have Eyes is no exception from the dispatching of violence. Each killing within the film has a certain formulaic quality to it as Rodowick notes in his essay 'The Enemy Within.'[20] Here the violence explores the theme of revenge. Here, each killing and act of violence is seen as a struggle between two families dealing with each other on a mirrored basis. "The family," Wood remarks, "is besieged by its dark mirror image, the terrible shadow family from the hills."[21]
The 1970's saw an escalation of violence on the silver screens of American cinema. This was a direct influence not only of the previous mentioned "gore and splatter" films but also from uncensored, violent European exports, like the Italian horror classics by directors Fulchi and Argento. This period was renowned for the increase of violence on all levels, in all genres from crime/detective movies (The French Connection(dir W Friedkin 1971) , Dirty Harry(dir Don Seigal 1971) , Shaft(dirG Parks 1971 ) to Westerns (Man Called Horse(E Silverstin 1970) ) and War films (Patton dir W Schaffner 1971 , Murphy's Wardir Peter Yeats 1971 ).[22] The final scene from the 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde(dir A Penn, 1967) also testifies this; here the two protagonists are cut down by a hail of bullets in slow motion. A never-before-seen level of violence invaded the American theatres.[23] Westerns had also taken to the taste of the apocalyptic with such films as Once Upon A Time in the West(dir S Leone 1968) , where we a see the figuratively heroic Henry Fonda turn bad guy and The Wild Bunch(dir Peckinpah, 1969) , where gun violence and death reach gruesome heights. These blood soaked factors could even be attributed to increase of violence on American soil - the Kennedy assassination of 1963, the killings of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King to name but a few, all of which had lasting effects on the psyche of American film going audiences. These elements slowly but surely crept into the mainstream horror movie, making violence a mainstay of the modern stem of the horror genre.
Craven had always argued in his depiction of violence in films like Last House on the Left and The Hills Have Eyes to be a realistic portrayal of actual violence. It is a comment on how the violence in Vietnam became the television "junk," effectively inuring the American public. "I tried not to make the violence romantic but to make it real," Craven maintained, "so that people would be affected and speak out against it."[24] The end of the 1960's marked the end of "The Summer of Love." 1968 was a year marred by violence, riots and assassinations along with the heightening of the conflict in Vietnam. The cinema of the time, of course, reacted accordingly, solidifying "the age of Saturn where violence and death reign."[25] The peaceful hippie commune of 1969's Easy Rider(dir D Hopper, 1969) provided a contemporary cinematic influence on The Hills Have Eyes. This portrayal, however, was a strong juxtaposition to the real life commune dubbed "The Family," led by the infamous activist Charles Manson. At the time, they were involved in the brutal murder of Sharon Tate, Roman Polanski's wife. Again, even the title "the Family" leads us to question the moral order these films conveyed to a potentially gullible public. Robin Wood has argued that the American Horror movie is in fact...
inherently familial - an alternative definition of those 'good old values' that the Regan administration and the 1980's Hollywood cinema are trying to convince us are still capable of reaffirmation.[26]


The threat in the Hills Have Eyes is not an external one- it is one that is indigenous to America , as Rodowick says,"the threat is a product of white society[27]"- one that threatens the Carters way of life internally. The threat in the film is...
...omnipresent in the textual landscape [...] harsh and primeval, the desert is literally a testing range which incorporates and entraps the self enclosed, self sustaining space of bourgeois domesticity represented by the Carters' trailer.[28] The sour taste this leaves in the American audience member's mouth is that
the idea that the home, as it appears in Straw Dogs(dir S Peckenpah, 1971) and Night of the Living Dead, is no longer a place of refuge.[29]
Rape, fear of rape and its depiction was another taboo topic that reared its ugly head post 1968 cinema. Rosemary's Baby portrays fear of rape by the devil, Deliverance shows scenes where a member of a doomed white water rafting expedition is lost and subject to rape and torture from a local mountain man. I Spit On Your Grave(dir Zarchi 1978) (another controversial rape revenge thriller) goes hand in hand with Craven's The Last House on the Left, which deals with a parent's revenge for the rape of his child. The violence in The Hills Have Eyes is centered around that of women; that is to say "all violence (within the film) is predominantly against women."[30] Rodowick points out that
if the violence in the film seems gratuitous, excessive and meaningless in any commercial cinema, then this is due in part to the passive roles delegated to them in most narrative structures. Violence is meaningful for men because it is the struggle over women.[31]
Rape here, therefore, largely represents a branch of violence that was oppressive of women during this period (with the exception of the film Deliverance dir J Boorman 1972 ). Rape as a cinematic theme, is a form of sexual violence which relates directly to the escalation of violence and aggression present in American society at the time.
Cannabalism is another recurring theme in Amercian cinema of the time that appears in The Hills Have Eyes. Cannibalism also appeared in Night of the Living Dead and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which I have mentioned above for their extreme use of violence. Wood observes that throughout the horror genre cannibalism functions as a means aggression or survival- within the context of The Hills Have Eyes, it is a means for the family to sustain itself. The younger generation, in this case the baby in the Carter family, are being devoured by the old. Cannibalism, according to Wood, "represents the ultimate in possessiveness, hence the logical end of human relations under capitalism."[32] The idea of cannibalism is one that is frightening and repulsive in the eyes of civilized western society. It represents a full breakdown of moral and social order, hence its shock value. The biggest shock factor within this motion picture is that the events in this film occur at home, within the American heartland, portraying an American white-bread family resorting to (now alien) primitive instincts such as using their dead mother as bait - ultimately, Darwin's theory in action. The Christian ethic of respect for the dead must be removed in order for the 'civilized' family to survive. This can be trying for an American audience, where there is such a strong emphasis placed on social order and Christian values. The Hills Have Eyes represents a confluence of many strains of cinematic development in the American Horror genre of the 1970's, but also, and possibly more importantly, bridging the gap between modern day horror film and earlier examples. The direct influence of this era of horror movies is still felt today and it is just as disturbing as ever. In this era of horror film, The Hills Have Eyes has explored issues in cinema such as cannibalism, the family, issues of violence, rape, women, revenge, morality and much more. While every film has its flaws, The Hills Have Eyes represents a coming of age of the American horror film in an extremely volatile decade. The Hills Have Eyes represents not only a turbulent time for American society, but an important stepping stone for the American horror film.


Bibliography
Wood Robin Hollywood; From Vietnam to Regan (New York, Columbia University Press 1986 Rodowick David N The Enemy Within: The Economy of Violence in The Hills Have pp 321 - 330 Eyes in the Planks of Reason: Essays on the Horror Film ed Barry Keith Grant (London Scarecrow Press, 1984) Wells Paul, The Horror Genre: From Beelzebub to Blair Witch (London, Wallflower Press, 2000) Doherty Thomas Pre Code Hollywood: Sex, Immorality and Insurrection in American Cinema 1930 - 1934 (New York, Columbia University Press, 2003) Schneider Steven Jay Horror Film and Psychoanalysis: Freud's worst nightmare ( Cambridge University Press 2004)
Biskind Peter, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls. (Bloomsbury Publishing Plc London 1998) Kaminsky, Stuart M American Film Genres (Nelson-Hall Inc Publishers Chicago, 1985)
Waller Gregory A , American Horrors: Essays on the Modern American Horror Film. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987.

The Greatest Screen Deaths of all time!

In keeping with our tribute of the greatest on screen deaths we at Cult Friction are pleased to bring you some of the most mind shattering deaths in cinema history including a piece on the infamous Wilhelm Scream!!!!!

http://www.filmsound.org/cliche/

Ill be back! - A look at the Synthespian

Cinema was the first ever medium to truly immortalise actors and performers. From the earliest big screen names to the latest Hollywood stars, all these performances will be recorded and stored forever in the minds in the visual heavy media of the modern age. However due to the advancement in computer technology some stars are making posthumous appearances on screen and television. In some instances where an actor has died during the making of a film certain directors would either wrap up shooting or if there is enough footage of said actor use careful editing techniques along with doubles to complete the production. This technique has been used somewhat laughably in Ed Wood’s seminal B Movie Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959), where the headline actor Bella Lugosi, who had only been used for barely 5 minutes, was replaced. In the early nineties a similar tragedy struck the production of The Crow (dir Alex Proyas, 1994) where lead actor Brandon Lee was killed by a loaded prop weapon. The producers of the film were able to finish the film by painting Lees digitally composited onto that of a body double. This method was also utilised for Oliver Reed’s character in the 2000 blockbuster Gladiator (dir Ridley Scott) as well as recreating the famous signature tune of the film musical Singing in the Rain with the exception of Gene Kelly break dancing as opposed to his normal routine and most astonishingly the creation of an entirely new character using the image of Shakespearian actor Lawrence Oliver in the 2004 science fiction film Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. Such modes were developed early on by the Kleiser-Walczak Construction company who created the Synthespian Project in order to “create life-like figures based on the digital animation of clay models.”

The appeal of bringing back some of Hollywood’s seminal actors has been conceived in the early days in the creation of virtual humans. Rendezvous in Montreal, a simple scenario where a crude models of Humphrey Bogart and Marilyn Munroe meet for a coffee, was an early use of virtual humans created by Thalman in 1987 for a demonstration of CG humans at an electronics fair. This has however brought issues to light regarding the treatment of the rights of images, one such law known as the ‘Astaire Bill’ which was drawn up by the California Senate. The estate of Fred Astaire, with backing from the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), “sought to restrict the use of computer generated images of the late actor,” However in light of such possibilities many actors have chosen to have their faces digitally scanned in order to be used for future projects along with certain studios buying the rights to the images of such famous stars such as Marlene Dietrich and Vincent Price. “Arnolds famous threat, ‘I’ll be back’, may take on new meaning.