Behind the Couch

'Snow, Glass, Apples' by Julie Dillon With filmmakers like Catherine Hardwicke directing modernised fairy tales for teen horror audiences, it is safe to assume that more will soon follow – think of what Twilight did for romanticising vampires and making them appealing to teen audiences. Love it or loathe it, its influence on popular culture is undeniable. Fans of Twilight no doubt flocked to Hardwicke’s latest offering. A number of Hollywood horror-tinged adaptations of fairy tales are actually already in the works. Amongst them is the Julia Roberts starring Mirror Mirror , with Roberts tipped to play the Evil Queen. Directed by Tarsem Singh ( The Cell ), the film is a dark twist on the classic fairy tale, in which Snow White and the seven dwarfs look to reclaim their destroyed kingdom. Another film that refigures the tale of Snow White, with Snow White leading the charge into battle, is Snow White and the Huntsman , starring Kristen Stewart as Snow White, and Chris Hem...

With its central image of a young woman being stalked and menaced through a dark and foreboding forest by a sly and slathering beast, Red Riding Hood has always had its roots firmly planted in horror. Later literary adaptations of the folk story, by the likes of Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm, demonstrate a harsh conservative morality akin to many horror films (particularly certain 80s slasher films) warning of what happens to young people who ‘stray from the path’ and let their curiosity get the better of them. It is essentially a dark tale about rite of passage and crossing the threshold from childhood to adulthood. The forest, a place used time and again in literature and cinema to represent a place of hidden danger, primal fear and dark threat (but also, interestingly, freedom from the restraint and pressures of conservative society) serves as the suitable backdrop; a place that is as far removed from civilisation as possible. What further embeds the tale in horror is...

Throughout the years many filmmakers have adapted various versions of Little Red Riding Hood for cinema, most to investigate or exploit its coming of age subtext. In the early Eighties Irish filmmaker Neil Jordan collaborated with English writer and novelist Angela Carter on an adaptation of her book 'The Bloody Chamber.' 'The Bloody Chamber' is a collection of fairy tales, including Little Red Riding Hood, which Carter had reworked, reinterpreted and filtered through a 20th Century feminist viewpoint to give them a fresh and provocative perspective. Their resulting collaboration was 1984’s strikingly beautiful and dreamlike The Company of Wolves , a film that unfurls as the fever-dream of a young woman experiencing menstruation for the first time. Boasting a narrative of stories within stories and dreams within dreams, The Company of Wolves retains its haunting power even now, with its rich and intoxicating atmospherics. Angela Lansbury starred as the Grandmother w...

"The Company of Wolves II" by Olukemi With Snow White and the Huntsman galloping onto screens in the wake of, and from the same gothic fairy tale stable as Catherine Hardwicke’s Red Riding Hood , and Tarsem Singh’s Mirror Mirror to follow soon after, it looks like fairy tale adaptations are trending at the moment. They’re certainly not a new thing; fairy tales have often provided the basis for films throughout cinema history – either directly or loosely. I thought it might be interesting throughout the course of December to have a look at one of the most recognisable and enduring of these tales – Little Red Riding Hood. The tale of Little Red Riding Hood is centuries old. Most people will be familiar with it thanks to growing up with the likes of the slightly diluted version by the Brothers Grimm, in which a young girl and her grandmother are rescued from the belly of a ravenous wolf by a chivalrous woodsman. Earlier versions of the tale were much darker, and bleaker....

'Your hand, your tongue, Look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under 't.' - Lady Macbeth 'Appearances are deceptive.' - Aesop One of cinema's most compelling stock characters is the ‘femme fatale’ – a complex, seductive and dangerous woman whose cunning can sometimes belie her need for justice or vengeance, her rage, or a wounded heart, or sometimes just demonstrate her bitter cruelty. Less often, her motives were completely concealed from the viewer. She ensnares her lovers through sexual conquest, often leading them into compromising and deadly situations. ‘Femme fatale’ is French for ‘deadly woman’. Quite often these women were portrayed as somehow wronged and whose vengeance decimates all those who have wronged them. An archetypal character of literature, cinema and even art, the femme fatale is most frequently associated with Film Noir. Film Noir is a cinematic term used to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas – extremely popular th...

2007 Dir. Mitchell Lichtenstein The idea of the ‘vagina dentata’ (Latin for 'toothed vagina') exists in many cultures and world mythologies, and is generally thought to stem from cautionary folk tales warning men of the consequences of rape. It is an idea very much connected to female empowerment. While various horror and rape-revenge films such as  I Spit on your Grave ,  Last House on the Left  and  Ms 45  have featured avenging women castrators who defiantly make a stand against aggressive, toxic masculinity, Teeth goes one step further and explores this concept in a very  literal sense. That it does so with such pitch black humour and barbed social commentary really adds to the enjoyment and effectiveness. Dawn O’Keefe is a young woman who, like many young people in Bible-belt America, has pledged an allegiance to God to abstain from sex until she's married. Its in this context that the film has its edge, taking satirical jabs at the oppressive...