The Screengrab : time of the wolf

Honorable Mention: The Greatest Horror Films of All Time (Part Seven)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 22:45:00 GMT

ISLAND OF LOST SOULS (1933)

This is the original screen version of the H. G Wells story that has more recently been filmed and re-filmed under the title The Island of Dr. Moreau. While the Brando-Val Kilmer version is to be respected for its pure freak-out quality, this early talkie is still the most effective in terms of conviction and scare power, mainly because Charles Laughton's performance as Moreau is one of the all-time great prototypes of the mad scientist: a bloated power junkie with Fu Manchu facial hair and a fondness for the whip, he inspires none of the "Gee, he meant well!" sympathetic understanding that, say, Colin Clive's Dr. Frankenstein earns even at his most overwrought and barking mad. It's a measure of how strong a presence Laughton has here that the shop steward of his crew of half-human mutants is played by Bela Lugosi, only two years away from his own screen triumph as Dracula. Years later, after the roles dried up and the drugs took over, Lugosi would be a sadly depleted version of his former self, but at this stage in his movie career, you had to be one convincingly satanic son of a bitch to wade into his turf and start handing him orders.

INVADERS FROM MARS (1953)

This independently produced sci-fi horror movie was directed by William Cameron Menzies, best known as an art director and production designer so imaginative and assured that even the perfectionist (i.e., anal to the nth degree) producer David O. Selznick had absolute trust in him. When Menzies directed the 1935 sci-fi movie Things to Come, from a script by H. G. Wells, the futuristic design swallowed up the story, but here, the stylized look of the film does a bang-up job of conveying the paranoid hopelessness of the hero, a little boy who looks through his bedroom window one night and sees something weird coming in for a landing, and then has the devil's own time trying to find a trustworthy and open-minded authority figure who'll listen to his complaint that his mom and dad aren't...themselves. This one sets the standard for the subgenre of the scare movie seen through the eyes of a kid, a kid much like all those pop-eyed little ragamuffins in the audience.

MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM (1933)

This Warners film may be less well known now than the 1953 remake House of Wax, which was in 3-D and also helped launch the horror phase of Vincent Price's career. But this version is the one that really packs the goods. Lionel Atwill is the scarred-face sculptor whose waxworks sure do look realistic as all get out; Fay Wray, who had earlier teamed with Atwill in the 1932 Doctor X, gets to show off the lung power that made her the original scream queen for the first movie era when you could actually hear the screams. Also, the fact that this is a Warners movie means that it's more contemporary and lively than the Universal classics, which sometimes seemed to have been made to utilize a lot of Bavarian-villager costumes that the studio had picked up on the cheap. Like Doctor X, the representatives of the straight world here are wisecracking newspaper reporters, a constant of Warners films, because they had so many actors on the payroll who couldn't play anything else. And it's in color, but an early, unreal shade of Technicolor that adds to the sense of unease: the people look as if they've been hand-painted even before they get dipped in wax.

THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD (1951)

An especially choice example of the sci-fi film as monster movie: while the 1982 John Carpenter remake earns its props for the amazing special effects work by Rob Bottin, this one is hard to beat for the old-school pleasures of watching its hyper-competent, well-oiled crew of military men and scientists, plus a babe and a lovably slap-headed, wisecracking reporter, go about determining the best way to cope with the arrival of a homicidal "intellectual carrot" from outer space. (The carrot was played by James Arness, for twenty years the star of TV's Gunsmoke, and odds are that this is the closest he ever came to getting to play an intellectual.) Special kudos to Robert Cornthwaite for taking one for the team by playing Dr. Carrington, thus creating the indispensable but hard-not-to-snicker-at prototype of the "man of science" who, in this and a million sci-fi movies to come, would rush between the monster and the guys with the tanks and the flamethrowers and deliver a speech that goes something like, "Wait! Wait! This visitor has come to us from a civilization far advanced than our own! It must have had a good reason for hollowing the president out and using him as a hand puppet!"

TOMB OF LIGEIA (1964)

This was the last of the eight movies that Roger Corman directed based on the works, or at least the titles, of Edgar Allan Poe, and while it would go against everything Roger Corman stands for to suggest that practice may have actually enabled him to get better at something, this probably is the best of them. It may have helped that then-unknown Robert Towne wrote the script, but Corman also got some wild fever that compelled him to splurge on actual outdoor locations in the English countryside, which give this film a rooted, atmospheric quality and an edge over the ones set mostly inside a cardboard castle. Elizabeth Shepherd is fine as the doomed romantic heroine, and Vincent Price, the mainstay of the Corman-Poe films, cuts a striking figure in his top hat, black cape, and John Lennon sunglasses.

TIME OF THE WOLF (2003)

Just as The Fly showed us that cinema can transform something as banal as the fear of sickness into phantasmagoric terror, Michael Haneke’s Time of the Wolf showed us they can wreak utter horror out of something as ordinary as simple helplessness. Haneke’s nickname is “the Master of Everyday Horror”, but what is in many ways his most effective film doesn’t take place in his usual everyday setting of bourgeois comfort. That’s where it starts, as a couple find strangers occupying their cabin in the country; but it soon becomes clear that they’re fleeing something extraordinary. Haneke never tips what has caused a widespread breakdown of law and order: it could be a war, or an environmental disaster, or a plague. But one thing is clear: from this point forward, everyone is on their own. Authorities have disappeared, and people like Isabelle Huppert and her two young children find themselves at the mercy of the goodwill of others – a quality that, it soon becomes apparent, is decreasingly available. Nothing much happens in Time of the Wolf: it’s not gory, it’s not sensationalistic like many post-apocalyptic films, and most of its violence is implied rather than seen. But the more society falls apart, even in microcosm, with prejudice, sexual violence, strongarm tactics, and the specter of deprivation always increasing, the more the film creates a horrible, almost unbearable sense of unease. It may be Haneke’s most human film, as he seems to actually care about the fate of his suffering creations; but it’s also one of the bleakest, most depressing films ever made.

Click Here For Part One, Two, Three, Four, Five & Six

Contributors: Phil Nugent The Ripper, Dr. Jekyll & Leonard Pierce

Apocalypse Now and Then: Ten Great End-of-the-World Movie Scenarios, Part 2

Phil Nugent — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 21:00:00 GMT

THE QUIET EARTH (1985)

Suppose they gave an apocalypse and nobody came? That’s the question faced by the always-engaging Bruno Lawrence in Geoff Murphy’s delightful little sci-fi thriller, The Quiet Earth. Made in New Zealand before it was home to hobbits and every low-budget syndicated action show on television, the movie opens with scientist Lawrence awaking one day to find that, due to an experiment gone rather substantially awry, he is the last person left on Earth. By far the film’s greatest charms lie in the subsequent scenes, where Lawrence tries to balance his attempt to find out what happened (and if there is any way of correcting it) with his somewhat bemused attitude towards being the last living human being on the planet. This bemusement, unsurprisingly, slowly degenerates into neurosis and from there into near-madness as Lawrence transforms from the sort of quirkiness one expects from a guy who lives alone and doesn’t get out much into outright loneliness-inspired lunacy. (It is in these scenes that Lawrence has a brief but highly amusing conversation with Adolf Hitler.) When he finally discovers that there is at least one other living person on the planet — in a scene that can only be described as the post-apocalyptic genre’s biggest meet-cute — the movie shifts gears into a more conventional science fiction contrivance, but it’s kept alive by swell performances from Lawrence and the Maori actor Peter Smith, as well as some highly inventive and rapid-fire camerawork from director Murphy. The Quiet Earth is an interesting take on the whole genre, and it nicely blends its psychological approach with the typical what-would-you-do-if-you-were-the-last-man-on-earth gameplaying seen in such movies.

THE BED SITTING ROOM (1969)

The end of the world as brought to you by giggly British weirdos. Directed by Richard Lester, it depicts what's left of England after World War III, which, we're told, lasted "three minutes and forty-seven seconds... including the peace treaty." The cast includes Ralph Richardson in the title role (after he mutates), Michael Hordern, Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Spike Milligan, Marty Feldman, and Rita Tushingham, who trumps Shelley Plimpton by giving birth (to Christ knows what) after she's been pregnant for thirteen months. This is one of the most truly horrifying visions of the end of the world ever caught on film, because it's supposed to be a comedy but there isn't a laugh in it. It is the anti-Dr. Strangelove, demonstrating the desperate inability of talented people to make you laugh at its subject matter, and so making the subject matter seem terrifying to a degree that sober-faced when-they-drop-the-bomb movies such as On the Beach can only dream about.

THE BIRDS (1963)

This Hitchcock film has been the subject of considerable textual analysis and speculation as to its symbolic meaning, but I like to think that Sir Alfred made it just so that he boast that they'd let him. Imagine what the pitch must have sounded like: "So, Alfred, it's called The Birds, huh? What's it about?" "Check the title, Einstein. It's about the birds." "Birds, huh. The birds, though? Is it about any particular birds?" "Nope, it's about the birds. Pigeons, parakeets, ostriches, penguins, crows, buzzards, ducks, tufted titmice... " "I see. And what do the birds do exactly?" "Turn on us. Wage war on us. Peck our eyes out." "But... why do the birds do this?" "How the hell am I supposed to know? You think I speak toucan?" "Okay, fair point. How do we stop the birds in the end?" "We don't. They kick our ass. Make Rod Taylor their bitch." "Un-huh... so... um... " "Hang on, I'm sorry, I have to take this. Mildred, did you get ahold of the gentleman with the bulldozer yet? I really need to get those bags containing the money I made off Psycho out of the driveway, they're blocking the jet... " Hitchcock himself fought with the studio to prevent them from actually tacking the words "The End" onto the final shot of our feathered friends gathering to welcome the new day, sensing that it would count as overkill.

TIME OF THE WOLF (2003)

When Michael Haneke, the European director known as the master of everyday horror for his uncanny ability to wrench suspense out of the slightest disruptions to bourgeois culture, decided to make a post-apocalyptic film, it was dead certain that it wouldn’t be a typical mosh pit of explosions, zombies, and atonal stings on the soundtrack. And, indeed, Haneke succeeded in making one of the quietest, most subtle visions of the end of the world imaginable — but also one of the most disturbing, and probably the most depressing. Haneke gives us almost no clue as to what happened to bring about the end of civilization; all we know is that the authorities are gone, the power is out, the water is tainted and no help seems to be coming from anywhere. As with all of his films, we aren’t overwhelmed with gore or beaten over the head with abject terror: instead, we’re presented with the even more profound horror of constant uncertainty and abject helplessness. When Isabelle Huppert’s family arrives at their rural cabin in hopes of waiting out the nebulous catastrophe that’s taken place, they experience the one moment of hope in the entire film; Haneke, of course, strips them of it swiftly and heartlessly, and before you know it, Huppert and her children are utterly alone, with no more possessions than they can carry and no one to protect them against a world that has grown almost instantly feral. Soon enough, they are huddled in an abandoned train station where xenophobia and sexual assault are almost tangible stinks in the air and where they are completely at the mercy of the few people bothering to pass themselves off as authority figures. Through it all, very little in the way of violence or disruption actually takes place: what chills the soul is the omnipresent fear, the certain knowledge that just as it did in a fatal and inexplicable moment at their cabin, everything can go horribly wrong at any moment and there is no safe place, no safe time. A remarkably skillful, effectively understated, and powerfully upsetting drama that conjures an apocalypse that is terrifying because it is so small and petty.

WATERWORLD (1995) & THE POSTMAN (1997)

It is the mark of a true artist that he is never satisfied with his work. Take Kevin Costner, for example. Unhappy as a mere sex symbol, he transformed himself into an Oscar-winning director, but that, too, was not enough for this nobly ambitious man. He took the only logical next step: spending close to a third of a billion dollars making two ridiculous, overblown, awful post-apocalyptic epics that would almost single-handedly destroy his career. Now that’s dedication! First came the notorious Waterworld, an early global warming scare flick that became much more famous for its colossal cost overruns (and its feeble box office) than it did for its clunky story. In it, Costner plays Mariner, a gill-festooned mutant piss-drinker who comes into contact with a bunch of unmotivated pirates called the Smokers. The leader of the Smokers is portrayed by Dennis Hopper, in full-blown Hindenburg mode as always; pitted against the supremely wooden Costner, he is as overwrought and bombastic as the Mariner is stone-faced and boring. Between the two of them, you might just be able to build one decent performance, which would be one more than is featured in Waterworld. The movie, which cost $200 million and made back about thirty bucks, was such a disaster that Costner, never a man to rest on his laurels, decided that the best way to follow it up would be to basically make the same exact movie, except this time he would direct and star in it. Of course, The Postman cost a mere $80 million, not even enough for half a Waterworld, but it made up for it by being even worse. At least the former had decent sets and costumes, whereas The Postman was a jerry-rigged piece of junk that still cost a king’s ransom and yet ended up looking bad, sounding bad, and probably even smelling bad. In this post-apocalyptic world, civilization has collapsed and America has been taken over by the Promise Keepers. Costner, a bad movie actor who here portrays a bad Shakespearian actor, poses as a postal carrier from the reformed U.S. government in order to cadge free meals off of local yokels, but soon enough, he is dispensing real hope to the legions of downtrodden mopes who have to appear in this cruddy movie. The movie only once loses its putrid reek of vanity project, and that’s at the end, a jaw-dropping exercise in the inability to suspend disbelief: the Promise Keepers, despite their inhuman levels of military discipline, have a rule that anyone can be the boss if they defeat the current leader (played by a nose-holding Will Patton) in a punch-out. Naturally, the mighty Costner prevails, and then turns to the vast army of murderous brutes who have been marauding the countryside for a decade and says "There’s gonna be peace!" They all shrug noncommittally and wander off to become chartered accountants or something, and we’re treated to another replay of the scene where Kev makes a little girl cry by wrapping himself up in the American flag. In the annals of postal lore, this thing rates slightly below Patrick Henry Sherrill’s bloodthirsty Oklahoma rampage as a point of pride.

— Phil Nugent, Leonard Pierce

Click here for Part 1.