Over at The Bureau Chiefs, Ken Lowery and I take a look at the trailers for films coming out in September.
In comparison to the summer months, this fall is actually looking pretty decent.

Here’s a beardy, brooding Ryan Reynolds, star of Buried:

The first batch of Doctor Who novels featuring the Eleventh Doctor and Amy came out not too long ago. I’m a fairly consistent reader of these books, mostly because the bulk of my free time to read these days is shortly before bedtime, and frankly I’m never in the mood for anything too heavy, or too compelling, at that time of night. (I did skip out on the last few batches of Tenth Doctor novels, because honestly, I really don’t care about more adventures with the Krillitane or the Slitheen, especially when almost all of them felt compelled to include a plucky teenage girl as the Doctor’s temporary side-kick. I should probably go pick up that Sontaran one, though, because I guess it has Rutans in it too, and that’s the kind of nerd I am. Anyway…)

In comparison to previous offerings in the line, the new set of books are slightly larger, though still in hardcover. This makes them more durable, especially considering that the primary audience for these books is children, but as an adult reader it does rather make me feel like I’m reading a Perma-Bound book. It’s not exactly infantilizing, since the Torchwood books were in the same size and hard-cover format, but I prefer the cover-stock that BBC Books used for their Being Human tie-in novels. Those are closer to something in between a standard trade size paperback and that elongated mass-market size. On the other hand, with the new season, it does slightly feel like the core audience for the franchise is aging up a bit, and being closer in size to “real” books does have a slight psychological effect, possibly, of making the books seem more grown-up. In any case, moving away from the smaller, mass-market format does make them stand out from the rest of the tie-in novels in a bookshop, and that’s probably not a bad thing.

There’s very little continuity between the three books, or between the books and the television program. Normally, this is perfectly fine, but there are moments in each book here that give off the impression that the books were originally written with a Generi-Doctor and Companion in mind, with sudden declarations of the Doctor’s or Amy’s appearance or mannerisms inserted afterwards. More probably, the authors were writing from a brief, without having seen Matt Smith or Karen Gillan in the roles, and a more natural characterization simply wasn’t possible.

The first book in the set is Apollo 23, by Justin Richards, which also has the distinction of having the best cover of the three books, by far.

The plot involves the Doctor and Amy investigating the appearance of an American astronaut in a London shopping center, conincident with the death of a woman and her dog on the moon. This leads them to discovering an American prison on the moon for “the worst of the worst,” with a strong yet unspoken implication that the prison is housing mostly political prisoners, with again unspoken comparisons to the American prison in Guantanamo Bay. The political subtext is probably subtle enough to escape kids, but it’s mostly forgotten in favor of an alien invasion plot that bears more than a passing resemblance to the plot of “The Idiot Box.” Though the Doctor and Amy end up separated from one another for much of the story, and the American setting is novel for the series, the solution to the problem sounds, from a non-technical stand-point, much like the Doctor endorsing homeopathy. An “I’ll explain later” can go a long way in situations like this.

Next up is David Llewellyn’s Night Of The Humans, which features the Doctor and Amy investigating a distress signal at a planet-sized garbage dump in space, only to get separated from one another. Amy ends up with the Sittuun, a race of humanoids who all adopt Arabic names for themselves, while the Doctor ends up with the humans, savage primitives who worship cowboy films. Again, the political subtexts are probably going to go right past any kids, and the casting of humans in the role of evil aliens is clever and a subversion of the shows usual tropes, the inclusion of Dirk Slipstream, as a criminal Captain Kirk/Flash Gordon/Buck Rodgers type of space hero is gilding the lily somewhat, especially with his occasional references to previous encounters with the Doctor. (His recognition of the just regenerated Doctor is one of those moments that would seem to suggest that the book was written with a previous Doctor in mind.) Night of the Humans is also noteworthy in that it’s one of the very few of the new series book tie-ins to feature a “pile of bodies” ending.

Finally, there’s The Forgotten Army by Brian Minchin, featuring the Doctor and Amy at some relatively contemporary version of New York City that is being menaced by a resurrected albino mammoth. Unsurprisingly, it turns out to be a cover for an alien invasion, from tiny beings whose resemblance to troll dolls we are frequently reminded of. They’re a visually interesting idea, and a concept beyond the scope of a reasonable television budget, so they work well as villains here, though the separation of the Doctor and Amy is starting to feel a bit forced at this point, and while the invasion strategy, to make New Yorkers so afraid of nonspecific, invisible and potentially nonexistent threats is cleverly described, once again it feels like some political subtext has sunk in.

Overall, the three books are light, distracting reads. Fun for a fan of the franchise, but probably of little appeal to anyone else. Night of the Humans is probably the best of the three, and also the one that feels most like an episode of the television series. All three books suffer slightly from a similarity in plot, particularly the reliance on the Doctor and Amy being separated for much of each story. To be fair, it is a trope of the series itself, but as a plot device it feels extremely heavy-handed in this set of books. The next set of books, for my own taste, looks to be more promising, with another Gary Russell novel in the offering and the presence of Amy’s fiance Rory as a full cast member. Rory is great, and I’m looking forward to getting as much of him as possible. I even love the “talk to the hand” pose he has on this cover.

It’s good that the show is making use of him and…wait…what?

Really?

Well, fuck.

Over at the Bureau Chiefs, I take a look at the Free Comic Book Day titles available from comic book shops this Saturday as part of the event.

It’s the usual mixed bag of titles to pick up, titles to leave behind, and books that you’re getting for free, so what are you complaining about?

Nightlife, by Dale Lazarov and Bastian Johnsson, published by Bruno Gmunder

Lazarov’s third collection of wordless, gay erotic comics lives up to the standards set by his previous works. These are funny and human stories, porn fodder with recognizable and realistic scenarios and characters that reflect a diversity of types rather than an abstract porn ideal. Johnsson’s art has a clean, simple line that gives the stories an appealing, cartoony look that complements the stories nicely. Of particular appeal is the third story in the collection, “Closing Time,” featuring a casual encounter between a disparate pair of men that develops into a long term relationship. It’s a good closer to the book, a touchingly romantic moment from Lazarov, and a nicely drawn and subtle aging in the art by Johnsson.

The Chill, by Jason Starr and Mick Bertilorenzi, published by DC/Vertigo

I had high hopes for this, the first of the new “Vertigo Crime” line I held out much hope for. It’s a mystery about a serial killer, with roots in Celtic mythology and a supernatural edge. It’s exactly my kind of thing. I’d hoped for something along the lines of Phil Rickman or John Connelly. It’s not…bad, and Bertilorenzi’s art looks quite good in grey tones, and he knows when to overplay a scene for dramatic effect. But it does read, strongly, like a first effort in the comics form, the kind that would have been helped by a stronger editorial hand. It’s generally preferred in the comics format to “show not tell” but there a number of moments here when a little more exposition would have been useful. For example, when our short on personality lead suddenly decides to take the raving Irish man who might also be the lead, maybe, seriously and accept a supernatural explanation for the murders. That the book can’t quite seem to decide which character is meant to be the protagonist is problematic. While a certain amount of ambiguity is acceptable in a mystery, we don’t really have a mystery here. We know all along who is killing people, and mostly why. There isn’t even any real question as to whether the killers are using supernatural means. In this scenario, a little clarity on who we’re supposed to root for would have been helpful.

Grandville, by Bryan Talbot, published by Dark Horse

Let’s get the obvious out of the way first; this is a simply beautiful object. Textured, embossed covers, a gorgeous art deco, high-contrast design. It’s the kind of book that deserves to be faced front out on our shelves so that everyone can stop and admire it. The story delves into the kind of alternate world history that Talbot did so well in Luther Arkwright, but mixed here with a sharp, anthropomorphic design. It’s a bit like what you’d expect to get if Beatrix Potter turned her hand to gritty noir thrillers instead of children’s books. The story itself is fantastically crafted, with nice twisty conspiracy theories and political intrigues that fit the tone of the setting, while at the same time creating a nice parallel to more modern demands of mystery and thriller storytelling. The long and short of it is, this is a must have book, the sort of thing everyone who claims to love comics needs to get and spend time poring over.

This film and Psycho are pretty much the co-parents of the slasher genre. To be sure, there were plenty of films about maniacs carving up women with sharp implements released between those two films, but if Psycho established the tone of the genre, Halloween polished it into its most recognizable form.
(In this rather strained analogy The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is the creepy uncle.)

Many of the standard tropes of the slasher genre become popularized here. There’s the use of POV shots from the killer’s perspective, a film technique that was lauded at the time but is sometimes criticized now for identifying the audience with the killer. There’s the explicit connection being made between sex and death, with the more chaste a character is increasing their likelihood for survival. And there’s the “final girl” character transitioning from a passive figure that requires rescue to one that fights back. Though, in fairness, Laurie is very much on the line there; she fights back, but she still needs Dr. Loomis to deliver the killing blow.

What I find interesting is, despite how much of an influence this film was on the genre, particularly through the 80s and into the 90s (the genre seems to be strongly in decline now, with the few contemporary films that dabble in it borrowing more from the self-awareness of the Scream franchise), is that so many film-makers seem to have learned the wrong lessons from the film. Even John Carpenter and Debra Hill did, as Halloween 2, and all other films in the franchise, can be safely ignored, and it would be advisable to do so. Chiefly, the ramping up of sex and violence that occurs in other films. Yes, there’s a link between the two here, but later films magnify it in such a grotesque way it’s hard to dismiss the charges of reactionary politics and misogyny that the genre attracts*.

But the big problem, as I see it, is that the imitators came away from the film thinking it was about Michael Myers. It’s not, not really. By design, Michael has no personality, no real face. He’s a blank canvass. There is one, and only one, moment of personality to the character, and that is when he pauses to admire his handiwork in the kitchen. Everything else is projected onto him by the audience. He’s not “real” in a certain sense. Even Loomis thinks of him as an “it,” as a force of evil. But because of his distinctive look, he became the “face” of the film. Which leads us to Jason and Freddy and Chucky and a whole host of horror movie villains that become the “hero” of their films. Which, I admit, I find problematic. It shifts sympathy from the victims; the film becomes about checking out the new and inventive ways in which people are killed. And that eventually just leads us to plotless dead-end films.

I mentioned Halloween 2 earlier, and I think it’s a good example of how the point can be missed, even by people who got it right the first time. The sequel is the film in which various motivations get piled on to Michael. Oh, Laurie is his long-lost sister. Oh, he’s actually cursed by a Celtic demon. Let’s up the gore and the sex and make Michael the focus of the film, because all these people ripping us off are making so much money, we need to hop on that bandwagon too. None of that “extra” information makes the first film any better. It actually hurts the film to watch it with the idea that Michael has been plotting to kill his sister for fifteen years, and has been able to track her down without even knowing what she looks like or where she is (it all becomes a remarkable coincidence). Laurie and her friends were just in the wrong place at the wrong time originally. Now they’re the victims of an orchestrated plot by a cult of evil Irish people? It ruins the drama of the original film.

_{*I don’t entirely subscribe to the idea that horror films are necessarily misogynist. Yes, there are misogynist films in the genre, lots of them. But on the whole I think the genre is less prone to it than, say, action films or comedies.}

And here we are, the masterwork of the modern werewolf film. It’s been written about extensively everywhere, including here in the past, so I’m no sure what more there is to say.
I will anyway, of course.

A big part of why the film works is the focus on the protagonist’s mental state. The film opens with long scenes of empty roads and moors, with only David and his friend Jack’s conversation breaking up that monotony. We’re given reasons to like these kids right away; they’re good natured, if a bit full of themselves, but more importantly they’re likeable. After the attack, the bulk of the film’s shocks and scares are confined almost exclusively to David’s nightmares. It’s not until relatively late in the film that the audience is given any definitive proof that the supernatural is really at play and it’s not all just inside David’s mind. This works because, since we already like David, we sympathize and relate to his suspicion that he’s going crazy. Given the dictates of the genre, of course, we know on an intellectual level that he really is a werewolf, but on a craft level it helps keeps the focus on David as a relatable protagonist.

Which isn’t to say that the film is without flaws. The whole notion of David being haunted by the ghosts of his friend and the people he has killed, while a solution to the necessary exposition dumps, never quite comes off. It feels more like a shoe-horned excuse to bring some more gore into the film, especially when there’s a whole village full of people who know all about werewolves and what really happened to David right there from the beginning of the film…and David’s doctor actually goes there to investigate the original attack.

But apart from that, it is a superlative film. And the sequence where David stalks a hapless commuter in a subway station is easily one of the best horror film scenes ever.

This is one of the two vampire movies I actually like. (The other is this big slice of coded gay panic.) It largely got lost in the shuffle when it was released, probably partly because it was preceded in theaters by the only sort of okay The Lost Boys, and the fore-runners of the Twi-hards were too busy swooning over Jason Patric, Kiefer Southerland and the Coreys to appreciate the brooding intensity of Adrian Pasdar or the under-rated charms of Bill Paxton.

A big part of why the film works for me is that it resists the trends of that era regarding the “classic” monster types. Most monster movies were going for tongue in cheek or dark comedy, reserving real “scares” for the slasher genre. And the Anne Rice-ification of the vampire as tragic romantic figure was coming into full bloom as well. Kathryn Bigelow resists that. The vampires in her film are unrepentant murderers, inhuman monsters, something sickeningly unnatural. And being in that state has warped their minds in indescribable ways. They’re not romantic, they’re not tragic. They’re just wrong. They’re so wrong, there isn’t really a word for them. The word “vampire” never occurs in the film. There’s no garlic or crosses, no niceties about being invited in.

Which is why it’s sort of interesting that so much of the film revolves around adolescent ideas of romance. Farm boy Caleb meets a mysterious girl, Mae, who speaks in cryptic riddles before biting him on the neck and running away. The next thing he knows, he’s been abducted by her “family” who debate how to kill him before realizing that he’s “turned” and is one of them now, whether they like it or not. The next few days of Caleb’s life alternate between falling deeper into love with Mae and trying to somehow survive the horrific violence and carnage her family revels in, before a chance encounter between Homer, the eldest vampire ironically trapped in the body of a pre-adolescent boy, and Caleb’s sister provides Caleb with a chance to escape and the most plot convenient cure for vampirism ever contrived.

Caleb’s love for Mae is adolescent. It’s your stereotypical “love at first sight” and “Rome & Juliet” type of love, the kind of love that only exists in romance stories about adolescents. The conflict this creates in Mae’s family is adolescent as well. Homer “turned” Mae, and is jealous that Caleb is essentially stealing her from him, and the other members essentially bully Caleb in a, well, dickish sort of way. The turning point of the film is Homer’s entirely bizarre and sudden infatuation with Caleb’s sister, which seems motivated more as a means of getting back at Mae than an actual obsession.

In a larger sense the world of the vampires is one of an eternally arrested adolescence. While there is some indication that most of them were probably “bad” people before joining the ranks of the undead, their current motives are as much boredom as anything else. They need to drink blood, yes, but the savagery and ways in which they “play” with their food are borne out of having lived so long that they’ve seemly devolved to a child-like, amoral state. It’s effective because it makes good use of the lack of supernatural overtones to their vampiric state. When a vampire is overtly supernatural, it’s easy to accept that they’re evil just because they’re evil. Here, were care has been taken to make sure that the vampires are as “natural” and “real” as possible, their evil becomes slightly banal and pathetic. Again, appropriate to the tone of a vampire being something wrong and despicable, that line between contempt and pity being thin.

This is one of those very few ghost movies that manages to get everything right. This isn’t really that surprising; the 70s/early 80s was the height of talent working in supernaturally themed films in America. I’m not sure why this particular era was so good for horror films, but it produced too many highlights of the genre to overlook the coincidence.

One of the reasons the film works so well is it keeps the bulk of the hauntings psychological. Much of the film revolves around George C. Scott as a composer whose wife and child recently died reacting to things only he can hear or see. The question is raised as to whether this is really happening or if it’s all in his head. It’s not until he confides in others that the hauntings manifest in an overt enough manner to be beyond question.

Cleverly, the film largely avoids metaphor or symbolism in its use of a haunted house. A parallel is drawn between Scott’s recent loss of a child and the dead child who haunts his house, but there’s no “grieving process” going on here. Instead, the haunting is cast not as an emotional or spiritual problem, but as a mystery. The film is essentially a detective story, with the victim providing supernatural clues as to his identity and the motive for his murder. As the extent of the mystery widens, eventually reaching high political stakes, the power and extent of the haunting increases as well, until the secrets of the past reach an apocalyptic conclusion in the present. Interestingly for the genre, the film also presages the contemporary motif in ghost and haunting stories that, in general, helping a ghost is ultimately the wrong thing to do.

I hate zombies. Even more than I hate vampires. They’re a stupid, derivative and over-used monster that has come to prominence because it’s been embraced by people who watch cheesy 70s Euro-horror films ironically and film-nerds who remember reading an essay once about how the zombies in Dawn of the Dead “were a metaphor for consumerism, maaaan…”
That being said, there are a small number of zombie films I enjoy. Shaun of the Dead, Return of the Living Dead, Brain Dead and this Australian film. Of course, the three things those films have in common is that they treat the subject matter with all the reverence it deserves. That is to say, none.

Undead is another one of those horror films that’s a bit short on plot, but makes up for it in other ways. Most of the characters are one-note, but drawn well and fairly archetypal (power tripping authority figure, bitchy beauty queen, useless boyfriend, terrified rookie). On the surface level, it’s just the story of a woman trying to get out of her stifling small town to start a new life, and the zombie apocalypse that gets in her way. But it’s the complications to that basic plot that make the film interesting, combined with a certain black humor and zeal for the self-consciously “awesome” in a way that Chris Sims would approve of the word. See, it’s not just enough that, following a meteor shower, townspeople start turning into flesh-eating zombies. No, then the caustic rains start to fall. Followed by the alien abductions. And the giant thorny wall that materializes around the town, cutting off all contact with the outside world. And then our farm girl turned reluctant beauty queen turns to a hillbilly gun-nut who knows gun-fu to mentor her in the ways of the zombie fighter.
It’s all just over the top enough to work.

Zombies have become the convenient cypher for horror fiction and films in recent years, a catch-all metaphor for whatever social movement or concern at hand, and this film is no exception. Their use here is actually a bit heavy-handed in that regard, especially when coupled with the giant wall around the town. Our heroine wants nothing more than to escape her old life, but she’s literally trapped, and all the townspeople who were holding her back now literally want a piece of her. And, as she’s reminded by her bitchy beauty-queen rival, taking care of the town’s needs is her responsibility, a point driven home in the now apparently mandatory ironic ending.

But aside from all that, there’s another element of the film that I enjoy, and one well worth mentioning, though it borders on the spoilerish. The zombie massacre, where our heroes rack up an impressive number of zombie killings, is a staple of modern zombie films. It’s expected by the audience. The neat trick pulled here is the dawning awareness in both the characters and the audience that indiscriminately killing zombies is exactly the wrong tactic to take in the long run. It’s the sort of response that people who don’t know what they’re doing and don’t know the nature of the situation they’ve found themselves in would take, because it’s the sort of thing they think they’re supposed to do. It’s the sort of thing that people who watch zombie movies would do, and it only ends up making things worse.

This is truly one of my favorite, under-appreciated horror films. It works beautifully, with an exceptional cast, and a surprisingly subtle, for the subject matter, metaphor at it’s heart. It blends wonderfully different strands of horror themes; ambiguity, the supernatural, isolation, a Cassandra-like hero.

The film opens with disquieting imagery, possibly the most disturbing piece of steak I’ve ever seen, and Captain Boyd, recently promoted hero of the Mexican-American war physically sickened by the sight of his fellow officers eating meat. We soon find out that his revulsion is related to his promotion. Far from being a hero, he pretended to be dead, and the blood of his fellow soldiers dripped into his mouth as their bodies were piled on top of him. When he emerged from the pile, after a sudden burst of strength, he just happened to capture the Spanish commanders. Since exposing him as a coward would be bad for morale, his commanding officer punishes him instead by sending him to a remote fort in the Sierra Nevada mountains, staffed with a skeleton crew for the winter. Shortly a half-starved man arrives at the camp, telling the soldiers the story of his escape from a lost wagon train that has turned to cannibalism and murder to survive. The soldiers go to investigate, only to discover that the strange man was not entirely telling them the truth. From that point on, the story largely becomes a battle of wits and determination between Boyd and the cannibal, with the Native American legend of the Wendigo hovering over them, as it seems that eating human flesh really does make people stronger.

It’s the battle between Boyd and the cannibal that really drives the action. Boyd feels shamed for his cowardice in the war, and the cannibal is a charismatic figure who seems to offer a practical method of dealing with shame by joining with him in a sort of sect, and it is only by resisting the cannibal through an assertion of morality that Boyd is able to ultimately triumph. What’s intriguing about this is, by this point in the film, it’s clear that Boyd and the cannibal are not actually talking about eating people anymore; they’re actually talking about the concept of “Manifest Destiny” and American imperialism. It’s not that far off, as far as metaphors go, as the proposed “victims” of the cannibal’s plots are chiefly planned to be those who are heading over the mountains to California out of a desire to join in the Gold Rush. He plans to live off those whose goal is unfettered capitalism and commodity exploitation. The tone is darkly comic through much of this, very black-humored, and the ultimate resolution is both fitting and somewhat cynical in its acknowledgement that, however the drama between Boyd and his adversary works out, there will always be more men willing to live off their fellows to come along.