Behind the Couch

1987 Dir. Chuck Russell Demonic child-killer Freddy Krueger returns to haunt the dreams of the teenagers of Springwood, this time turning his murderous attention to the residents of a psychiatric hospital. What he doesn’t count on though is the return of Nancy Thompson, the first teenager to ever defeat him, who teaches the youngsters how to hone their dream powers to try and destroy him. “Sleep. Those little slices of death, how I loathe them.”* While a big success at the box office, A Nightmare on Elm Street 2 was panned by critics and fans of the original. Head of New Line Bob Shaye wanted to try and bring Freddy Krueger back for another outing. Once again he approached Wes Craven, writer and director of the original film , who declined to helm the project as he was working on Deadly Blessing . However, Craven saw this as an opportunity to have some creative input to an ongoing series which he believed had already veered into lacklustre quality, and he submitted a treatme...

1985 Dir. Jack Sholder Five years after Freddy Krueger was seemingly defeated by teenager Nancy Thompson, a new family move into her house on Elm Street. Jesse, the teenage son, begins to have terrifying dreams of a horribly burned man with knives for fingers who wants to possess him in order to continue murdering the children of Elm Street. The man of your dreams is back! While he was attempting to find a studio to back his script for A Nightmare on Elm Street , director Wes Craven was financially destitute. He lost his savings and his house, and his marriage fell apart. To make ends meet he worked as a script doctor, and when New Line offered to produce A Nightmare on Elm Street , Craven was so broke he had to sign over all the rights to the studio who eventually insisted upon an open ending to the first film in order to set up a sequel. As an indication of what to expect from the Elm Street sequels, just consider that head of New Line, Bob Shaye, famously likened the proc...

1984 Dir. Wes Craven When a group of high school friends begin to die while they sleep, level-headed Nancy soon discovers that she and her friends are being stalked in their dreams by the vengeful, now demonic, child killer their vigilante parents murdered years ago. Can she stay awake long enough to put a stop to his bloody killing spree and save her own skin? One, Two, Freddy’s coming for you… A Nightmare on Elm Street really needs no introduction. Wes Craven’s ground-breaking slasher was released at a time when cinemas were saturated in body-count movies featuring teenagers being stalked and murdered in isolated locations by vengeful (and morally conservative) bogeymen. Despite sticking to the by-then conventional narrative structure of the slasher movie, Craven injected new life into it by deploying a supernatural twist and delving into the most primal fears known to mankind. The director effortlessly preys on childhood fears of the ‘bogeyman’ and scores a major coup by ...

Casey Becker : What's your favourite scary movie? Phone Voice : Guess. Casey Becker : Um, Nightmare on Elm Street ? Phone Voice : Is that the one where the guy had knives for fingers? Casey Becker : Yeah, Freddy Krueger. Phone Voice : Freddy, that's right. I liked that movie. It was scary. Casey Becker : Yeah, the first one was, but the rest sucked. Last October I revisited the Halloween series in the lead up to All Hallow’s Eve, and the year before that I found myself back at Camp Crystal Lake as I delved head first into the Friday the 13th films. This year I thought I’d try and keep up the tradition of a month long marathon exploring an Eighties slasher series and have decided to watch all seven A Nightmare on Elm Street films (including Freddy vs. Jason and the 2010 remake). These things just have to be done sometimes. A Nightmare on Elm Street is one of the most successful series in horror history, and love it or loathe it, there’s no denying the impact t...

Christopher Lee as Dracula Established in 1976, Westport Arts Festival is not only one of Ireland’s longest running festivals, but an on-going celebration of the arts in and around Ireland. With over 100 events spanning two weeks, this year’s festival – which runs from 1st – 14th October - represents one of the most ambitious to date. Amongst the array of events are screenings of Hitchcock’s masterful thriller North by Northwest , Hammer’s classic adaptation of Dracula . Aside from the film screenings, festival goers can look forward to a staggering amount of live music, comedy, theatre, visual art, literature readings and workshops. This year’s programme is as diverse, interesting and exciting as last year’s, with the work of both local and international artists promoted throughout. Organised entirely by volunteers, the annual Westport Arts Festival has been a fixture in the Irish arts calendar since 1976, making it one of the longest-running festivals in the country. It has...

Issue 17 of Paracinema Magazine is now available to pre-order. As ever, its packed to the gills with all manner of insightful and provocative articles and essays on genre cinema. Amongst the titles in this issue are “Endemic Madness”: Subversive 1930s Horror Cinema by Jon Towlson , You Can Clean Up the Mess, But Don’t Touch My Coffin: The Legacy of Sergio Corbucci’s Django by Ed Kurtz and I Don’t Want to See What I Hear: Paranoia and Personality Eradication in The Conversation by Todd Garbarini. Issue 17 also contains one of my own essays, an examination of the Gothic influences of Sergio Martino’s giallo Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key , titled Black Cats and Black Gloves.  Sound good? Head over to Paracinema.net to pre-order your copy now. Go on, support independent publishing.

2011 Dir. Robin Hardy Based on Hardy’s own novel Cowboys For Christ, The Wicker Tree isn’t so much a sequel to The Wicker Man , more a curious companion piece. Incorporating many of the same themes, it is the tale of two young chaste American missionaries who travel to the wilds of Scotland to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ to people who ‘don’t believe in angels.’ Seemingly embraced by the local community, the pair are invited to participate in the annual May Queen celebrations, with inevitably fatal consequences… The Wicker Man cast a long shadow over cult horror cinema. While it is none other than Robin Hardy who has returned to plough the furrow of folk horror, religious extremism and earthy sensuality he tilled with that film, the results this time around are much less fertile. The source material, his novel Cowboys For Christ , unfurled as a slow-burning, evocatively written work that pitched modern evangelical Christianity against paganism and built slowly and surely...

While staying with my parents recently in my home town of Lurgan, County Armagh, I naturally decided to pay a visit to a few of the local graveyards. Top of my list was Shankill Graveyard. Located just outside the town centre, and surrounded by a residential area, the site upon which Shankill cemetery stands was a place of worship in earlier centuries. Shankill Parish church was originally situated here before it was eventually moved to the town centre. The outline of a double ring fort is still noticeable. Amongst those at rest in the cemetery are the Brownlow family, who established the town in 1610 when they were given land beside Lough Neagh by the British government during the Plantation. They eventually contributed to the development of the linen industry the town became famous for throughout the seventeenth century. Their family vault is situated in the centre of the cemetery where the old church once stood. Apparently, well off English families such as the Brownlows, sough...