Behind the Couch

Portrait of Lovecraft by Juhoham ‘ That is not dead which can eternal lie. And with strange aeons even death may die .’ Howard Philips Lovecraft is a name that has become synonymous with macabre tales of cosmic horror, rife with the notion that just outside our realms of perception, is a cold, dark and nullifying world populated by unknowable and delirious beings that exist only to wreak chaos, destruction and madness. His work is guaranteed to disturb, provoke and chill the marrow of all who read it… Keeping up with the literary theme kicked off by National Poetry Day, throughout the remainder of October I’ll be taking a look at a few film adaptations of Lovecraft’s work in the lead up to All Hallow's Eve. Despite his prolific output and formidable legacy, Lovecraft film adaptations are not exactly rife and his work has been notoriously difficult to translate to the screen. His plots are draped around lengthy descriptions of atmosphere, alien landscapes and the emot...

2013 Dir. Andrés Muschietti Imagine, if you will, that Hansel and Gretel were too little girls who were saved by the wicked witch before their father – distraught after losing his fortune in the 2008 recession – could kill them in a raving fit of pique. Surviving for five years in the witch’s house deep in the dark woods, they are eventually discovered by their uncle and his girlfriend, who bring them back to civilisation and attempt to lovingly reintegrate into society. Imagine then, that the witch, who had reared them as her own and loved them dearly, followed them into suburbia to claim them back. This is the central premise of Andrés Muschietti’s darkly beautiful fairy tale horror, Mama .  The figure of the mother has always held a significant place in fairy tales. Fiercely protective and loving, or wicked and cruel, she can be a guiding force of goodness, or a figure of evil intent on harming her young. The central antagonist of Mama - the feature-length expansion of a ...

2004 Dir. Brett Sullivan Horror sequels can usually be a bone of contention with fans of the original. Often times sequels simply rehash the plot of the original, with an added emphasis on upping the gore quotient. They can sometimes reek of cashing in on the success of their predecessor and nothing more. It is a rare thing to find a horror sequel that not only matches the original film in terms of quality and originality, but that also opens up and continues the story with new ideas and something of its own to say. Ginger Snaps ended with Brigitte (Emily Perkins) putting her werewolf sister Ginger (Katherine Isabelle) out of her misery, but not before she was also infected with her lycanthropy. Brigitte had discovered a cure and when we last saw her she held salvation in her hand: a syringe of Monkshood (Wolfsbane). For all we knew she could have injected herself with it and went on her not-so-merry way. The film had a fairly closed ending that resolved its story nicely, thou...

1972 Dir. Pete Walker A group of actors are menaced by a homicidal maniac as they rehearse a play in an old abandoned seaside theatre. When it comes to British horror cinema, writer/director/producer Pete Walker is often unfairly overlooked. Beginning his career making sexploitation movies, Walker would later progress to deliberately antagonistic, subversive and antiauthoritarian shockers such as Frightmare , House of Whipcord and House of Mortal Sin . Amongst the nudity and gore of these films were scathing social commentaries on British class, conservative politics and the legal system. Unapologetic, violent, exploitative, strangely thoughtful and always anti-establishment in their outlook, Walker’s later films were controversial, not only because of the extreme content, but also because of their reflection on the darker, seedier underbelly of British society. Walker’s first tentative venture into the horror/thriller arena came with Die Screaming Marianne , featuring Susan G...

1967 Dir. Samuel Gallu AKA Blood Fiend The investigation into a number of grisly murders in which the victims bodies have been exsanguinated, leads detectives to a creepy Parisian theatre specialising in horror productions. Could someone at the theatre be responsible? No! Surely not ! Opening with a scene in which a woman is forced onto a guillotine and decapitated in front of an appreciative audience, only for her to emerge alive and well from behind the theatre curtain to accept her applause, Theatre of Death is intent on letting us know from the outset that all will not be as it seems. The lines between what is real and what is not twist and turn throughout proceedings. Setting the story in the real-life Theatre du Grand Guignol in Paris is an inspired choice. Between the years of 1897 and 1962 it specialised in the production of deliberately shocking and lurid plays, the raison d’être of which was to depict bloody scenes of murder and torture on stage to titillate and te...

1967 Dir. John Gilling When a group of British archaeologists uncover the secret desert tomb of a child Pharaoh outside Cairo, they invoke an ancient curse and the murderous wrath of a mummy... If the above synopsis sounds familiar, that's because it is. The Mummy's Shroud boasts a typical mummy movie narrative in which a group of stuffy British archaeologists go snooping around in a Pharaoh's tomb and one by one are violently killed by a mummy - in this case, the faithful servant of the child prince whose burial place they desecrate. It was the third mummy movie made by Hammer. Director Gilling and writer Anthony Hinds don't really bring anything different or unusual to the tale, as it unravels (pun intended!) in the most stringently conventional way. Gilling's prior Hammer titles The Reptile and Plague of the Zombies were much more interesting, offbeat and effective horror films that at least tampered with convention and expectations. While the predicta...

2000 Dir. John Fawcett ‘Monstrosity is explicitly associated with menstruation and female sexuality... woman’s monstrous nature is inextricably bound up with her difference as man’s sexual other.'  Laura Mulvey ( Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema ). ‘The release of sexuality in the horror film is always presented as perverted, monstrous and excessive; both the perversion and the excess being the logical outcome of repression.’ Robin Wood ( The American Nightmare ). Written by Karen Walton, Ginger Snaps tells of a young woman who is attacked by a werewolf on the night she begins to menstruate, and begins to transform into a monster. Links between the menstrual cycle and lycanthropy cunningly swirl together to form a twisted tale of monstrous pubescence filtered through a chilling body-horror narrative. The result is a dark, savagely funny and haunting film that staggers blinking and bloodied into the unkind light of day as the most significant ‘menstrual horror’ since Carr...

1983 Dir. Mark Rosman After a foolish prank backfires, a group of sorority sisters are stalked and murdered one by one as they attempt to dispose of a body while hosting a graduation party. Talk about an inconvenience! In true slasher style, we open with a prologue set in the not too distant past - to intrigue and set the scene for the bloodbath to come – in which a woman in labour experiences a traumatic birth in a large house during a crashing thunderstorm. Cut to years later, the house is now home to a sorority and the woman is revealed to be the house mother, Mrs Slater (Lois Kelso Hunt) – a formidable, cane-wielding dame who is overly keen for the graduating girls to vacate the premises. The young women have no such intentions though – they want to have a party to celebrate and they decide to play a prank on Mrs Slater. She ends up dead and the friends are left with her body to dispose of. It seems someone knows their secret though and begins to pick them off, one by one.....

1982 Dir. Juan Piquer Simón A killer, attempting to piece together a human jigsaw puzzle made from body parts, starts cutting up students on a college campus. Bad dialogue, terrible acting, gratuitous nudity, sloppy gore effects, and unexpected kung-fu ensue. Warning: may incite guffaws. Directed by Spanish filmmaker Juan Piquer Simón in his native Valencia (though set in the States), the marvellously trashy and overtly sleazy 1982 extravaganza Pieces is a scuzzy slasher that ranks down there with the worst best of ‘em. Notorious when it was released, it has gone on to garner a cult following. Containing no tension whatsoever, the film still manages to be highly entertaining due to it falling firmly into that old favourite category of the so-bad-it’s-good. On my first attempt to watch Pieces (several years ago when I first picked it up on VHS in a bargain bin) I got as far as the first chainsaw attack and was ordered to switch it off by whichever friend had the misfortune o...

2010 Dir. John Asher A group of friends find themselves stranded when their car breaks down while drag racing outside their home town. After deciding to try their luck at a nearby scrap yard rather than risk walking back into town, some careless horseplay with a loaded pistol leaves one of them wounded and in desperate need of medical attention. Meanwhile, the local sheriff’s office has just received notification that a serial killer has escaped from the state prison and is thought to be hiding out somewhere in the area. Alerted to the situation at the wrecking yard, the police and ambulance crew arrive on the scene only to face a long night of bloodshed and mayhem as a mysterious killer stalks the yard determined to slay everyone and leave no witnesses… Beware. The spare parts may be your own… Wreckage unravels as conventionally as the slasher flicks of the Eighties which so obviously inspired it. It even opens with a flashback sporting some gritty domestic drama in which o...