Drive - Nicolas Winding Refn - 2011

For Bob...

A 1973 Chevy Malibu. Not quite the quintessential example of the American ‘Muscle Car’, but certainly in keeping with the aesthetics of the needlessly large, gas guzzling, yet somehow intensely attractive beasts that once roamed the American Highways, cruises through the streets of a Los Angeles straight out of the Michael Mann textbook. Brightly lit corporate headquarters aim towards the sky, surrounded by a shimmering neo-noir freeway vista that stretches on forever, a mid 1980s vision of the perfect city, detachment as a dreamy aspiration. Inside the car though, a beautiful couple, the man, mesmerising, with the channelled stoic cool of Delon in Le Samourai (1967), McQueen in Bullitt (1968) and O’Neal in The Driver (1978), is tempered with a warmth, exchanging stolen glances with the Jean Seberg esq waif like beauty in the passenger seat. The Soundtrack, reminiscent of Brian Eno’s ambient Apollo soundscapes swells towards transcendence as their hands clasp over the gearstick, and my heat skips a beat with joy.

I’m concerned, has Nicolas Winding Refn somehow found a Being John Malkovich (1999) like portal into my mind? As with Drive, he somehow seems to have formed a chimerical combination of everything I look for in a movie. Whilst it carries all the signifiers of 80’s pulp genre cinema I love so much (Neon titles, pounding score, car chases, love story, mobster double crossings and a vengeance delivered with Tom Savini esq levels of grue), the delivery echoes the influences of my even more beloved 1970’s New Hollywood (characters defined by mood and actions rather than needless exposition, Robby Muller esq. Cinematography and a disturbing thesis on the violent capabilities of man). It’s not without a knowing wink does the gangster Bernie Rose (Albert Brooks) deliver the line "I used to produce movies. In the 80s. Kind of like action films. Sexy Stuff. One critic called them European. I thought they were shit".

The plot, as should be the case in mock genre exercises is simple enough, a lonely ‘best in his trade’ wheelman/mechanic/part-time stuntman finds himself falling in love with the young mother in the next apartment, unfortunately the young mother’s husband is being released from prison and owes money, which if not paid will see retribution served upon the wife and child. Upon agreeing to help for her sake, the driver finds himself involved in a botched heist, which leads to a price being put on his head by local Mafiosi.

Our unnamed protagonist (Ryan Gosling), as stated, carries himself like the anti-heroes of films past. He opens the film as the archetypical cinema wheelman, calm, collected; every word and move carefully planned (and like most male viewers, proves the subject of my biggest mancrush since John Cusack in Grosse Pointe Blank (1997)). Yet unlike his hollow eyed Melvillian predecessors, this detachment begins to crumble upon meeting Irene (Carey Mulligan), whom his desperation to protect as the film spirals out of control begins to reveal a hitherto unseen proclivity for violence buried within him, he can and indeed shockingly does lose control of his Eastwood toothpick chewing surface cool, though rather than feed us a backstory explaining away this side of his nature, this remains as an ambiguity. As this violence begins to take hold, Refn asks questions about the brutal capabilities of man when cornered, and also by making it all so visceral asks questions of the viewers enjoyment (parallels with Cronenberg’s A History of Violence (2005) haven’t gone unnoticed).

It has been noted by many critics of the film that considering its title is Drive, there is a distinct lack of this titular aspect. I’d disagree with this, there are several showcase scenes showing our protagonist at work, and rather than the empty spectacle of quick cuts that usually make up the car chase, Refn again chooses to echo the subtler pleasures of a cinema thought lost. Like in the previously mentioned Bullitt or Two Lane Blacktop (1971), the sounds of a rev counter redlining, and a quick gear shift carry just as much excitement as a crossroads pileup.

On I could go, but I think my love for the film is suitably conveyed. This is very much fanboy worship thinly disguised as criticism, for this is one of my favourite films of recent times. I’m male, 18-30, and have pretentions towards enjoying a more cult and ‘cultured’ variant on genre cinema, it was pretty much destiny for me to fall in love with this picture, and so it goes...

A New Post!?!?!

Well it's been two years afterall...

Young and Innocent - Alfred Hitchcock - 1937

The British period of Hitch’s career often finds itself boiled down to a case of The 39 Steps (1935) and The Lady Vanishes (1938) (i.e. the two with Criterion Releases) considered as must sees, the rest, essentially throwaway. This of course is far from the case and solid arguments can be made for the greatness of The Lodger (1927), Blackmail (1929), Sabotage (1936) and the film that gave this blog its name, the original version of The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934). Many feel that Young and Innocent too deserves a more respected place within the Hitchcock canon; alas I’m inclined to disagree to an extent.

The film, whose title when mentioned in casual conversation sounds considerably less wholesome until mention of its directors name, actually fits safely within the mode in which we find a good percentage of Hitch’s output, that of ‘the wrong man’ thriller. Following the murder of a renowned actress, a friend of hers Robert Tisdall (Derrick De Marney) finds her body and is himself accused of the murder, with a flimsy case of motive placed upon him due to money being left to him in her will.

He manages to escape custody and proceed to go on the lam, coercing the local police chief’s daughter Erica Burgoyne (Nova Pilbeam) into aiding him in escaping the manhunt, and to help in his quest to find a tramp who has in his possession (wait for it... *cough*), a raincoat of Tisdall’s which was stolen by the murderer, had its belt used in the murder and was then given to the tramp and which will thus prove Tisdall’s innocence and lead to the capture of the real murderer... right... Not that I have any problem with outlandish plots from Hitch, a man whose oeuvre often features credibility stretching macguffins in order to progress matters, but a used raincoat?

The film actually opens in a startling fashion; we immediately bear witness to a raging domestic argument while a thunder storm thrashes away in the background, in an unusual turn, our murderer is revealed right away in an oppressively atmospheric scene transported from the bleak noir this film never manages to become. The following ten minutes manage to retain some of this downbeat vibe, as Tisdall finds the victim’s body washed up on the shore, and soon finds himself accused and fingered for the blame by a seemingly corrupt police force wishing to close the case quickly despite a paucity of strong evidence.

Once Tisdall makes his rather farcical escape from custody though, the film becomes more a comedy road caper than intense thriller. Those hoping for a Bonnie & Clyde hit the Home Counties scenario will find themselves rather disappointed. A lot of the blame for this can be attributed to De Marney’s performance, his Tisdall comes across as so smug and self assured that his innocence will be proven that the audience is never really given to worrying for his fate. Pilbeam’s ‘Jolly what-ho’ attitude towards the situation is also rather more Enid Blyton than Hitchcock, further reducing the suspense.

Pilbeam’s Erica has the makings of an interesting character, she appears to have taken over the maternal role for her large family (the actual mother an unexplained absentee), and as the eldest child suddenly betraying her chief of police father to go on the run with Tisdall, this makes for an intriguing act of rebellion against her re-positioning within the family hierarchy that is never fleshed out.

Once we can gradually accept this as one of Hitch’s lighter pictures though, there are small rewards to be garnered. Edward Rigby’s turn as the sought after tramp ‘Old Will’, is a humorous one, and the closing set piece features one of those classic ‘Hitchcockian’ virtuoso camera moves that we see at least once a film. In this case an audacious pan and zoom across a ballroom as Hitch zooms right into an extreme close-up on the face of the murderer revealing his presence within the room (in a scene that also has an unpleasant reminder of a world before 'The Black and White Minstrels' were considered tasteless...).

Fluffy, throwaway, and with slight central performances, Young and Innocent may be second grade Hitchcock, but it still manages to entertain just enough in its brief 80 minutes to make it worthy of inclusion in any personal ‘British period’ Hitchcock retrospective you may be planning.

By the way if you embarrassed to ask for a copy of the picture at your local DVD retailer due to its misleading title, why don’t you try its alternative American title of The Girl Was Young? Hmmm actually.....

When too lazy to add a new review...

Just redesign the page a bit instead!

You may notice a new header at the top of the page, the theme is that it's meant to recall the opening credit fonts and colours of Late 60's/Early 70's Italian Giallo pics and other such exploito classics of the era.

The background pic you may recall from my old review of Chris Petit's Radio On (1979).

Hope y'all can dig it.

More review soon I swear to ya, I am determined to make the title of this blog less ironic.

Cheers

Lee

Duel - Steven Spielberg - 1971

Ahh 1971, a landmark year for the ‘New Hollywood’ crowd by anyone’s estimation. Billy Friedkin released his first masterwork with The French Connection, Peter Bogdanovich released what is arguably his only masterwork with The Last Picture Show, a young beardy future mega-lo-maniac made THX 1138, not to mention Altman’s McCabe & Mrs Miller, Ashby’s Harold and Maude, Monte Hellman’s Two Lane Blacktop, Alan Paluka’s Klute, Richard Sarafin’s Vanishing Point..... well you get the picture. In the midst of all this, a young California State dropout was stuck doing episodes of Night Gallery and low budget TV movies. Given a project to direct a quickie adaptation of a Richard Matheson short story out in the California desert, the youngster just happened to create a genre masterpiece, and the breakout that would soon make him the world’s most bankable director. This of course was Steven Spielberg, and the little TV Movie in question Duel.

This is hardly an early example of the Spielberg we know and erm... love? today though. Duel is instead a film with such a studied minimalist framework and structure that I feel you can comfortably place it alongside the more radical studio funded works of the period, such as the aforementioned Two Lane Blacktop.

The plot can be described within the briefest of synopses, a white collar salesman named David Mann (Dennis Weaver), is driving across southern-eastern California when he suddenly finds himself terrorised by the unseen driver of a large tanker truck. After initially toying with Mann, the truck driver begins to attempt to kill him, forcing Mann to have to eventually fight back.

This barebones approach to the plot is complemented by Spielberg’s minimal usage of dialogue, which finds itself trimmed down to exclamations of disbelief from Mann together with the occasional (and somewhat unnecessary) inner monologue. The soundtrack is equally minimalist, largely making use of the diegetic, such as the truck’s roaring diesel engine and the asinine radio talkshows that emit from Mann’s car stereo.

Whilst Spielberg himself refers to the film as a simple chase picture and nothing more, the framework allows us to place our own subtexts onto the film. Certainly European critics of the time (upon seeing the extended 90 minute theatrical European release) saw the film as variously an ‘indictment of machines’, or a film of ‘Father’s failing and women taking control’. Most famously some critics read the film as a battle of the ‘middle-class bourgeoisie vs. the working classes’. This is the thesis with which my own view of the film aligns most closely.

I personally read the film along the lines of the other road movies being made by youthful directors of the period, films which were consumed by a sense of displacement, disillusionment, and anger. I see Duel as channelling this countercultural anger into a pointed attack on the white collar Middle American bourgeois. Where most of the other road movies of this period, despite their generally downbeat tone, still managed to exude a certain romanticism towards the freedoms of the open road. Duel instead sees the road as a purely hostile and dangerous place.

The film’s protagonist ‘David Mann’ can be seen as a stereotypical symbol of mid-scale corporate America. An everyman salesperson under pressure to meet targets, white collar, conventional tie, driving one of the best selling 4 door family saloons of the period in the form of the staidly designed Plymouth Valiant, and with a malcontent wife and two children at home in a detached house on a quiet suburban street. Weaver brilliantly embodies Mann as stuffy, uptight, a heart-attack waiting to happen and nothing if not emblematic of the revised ‘American Dream’ that the good capitalist American of the 1960s should aspire to.

If we see our protagonist as a symbol of white collar America, our antagonist, the unseen driver of the grime ridden, seemingly unstoppable juggernaut that terrorises him, can be seen as a twisted descendent of the pioneer spirit. A primal road man whose unwillingness to conform to societal values, can be seen as the corrupted offspring of Tom Joad back for revenge on a system that denied his own American Dream.

If the counterculture had taken a certain satisfaction in ironically embracing symbols of the American pioneer spirit (for example, Billy & Wyatt in Easy Rider (1969)), as defenders of the right to a spiritual freedom oppressed by modern American attitudes. Then Spielberg appears to take pleasure in turning this in its head. The displaced wanderer of the American highways is now the aggressor and oppressor, with Mann now the victim in what has been quoted as “a Kafkaesque world in which seemingly random and inescapable acts of psychological torture flourish and thrive”.

Spielberg emphasises the towering presence of the truck roaring up to Mann’s rear bumper with intimidating close-ups. Something we notice at these times is that the trucker’s front bumper is covered in licence plates from other states across the country, displayed like proud trophies from his previous victories. This destroyer of conservative normalcy and decency is gradually swallowing up the nation, picking it off state by state.

So if we can see the truck as a symbol of bourgeois fear, we can take this further and consider Spielberg’s own suggestion that, rather than Mann being scared of the trucker attacking him, it is more a fear of loss of control. This proves for the most interesting reading of the film on a contextual level. This is a Middle America scared of losing control of the stability and prosperity it had enjoyed since the economic boom of the 1950s. American conservative values were being challenged by the counterculture, political dichotomies seemingly dividing the nation in two.

Spielberg refuses to provide any comfort for Middle America, and so the film concludes with Mann having to resort to his own sense of primal instinct, a complete ‘loss of control’ of his own restrained conservative demeanour, he can only attempt to guarantee his survival by ridding himself of his white collar symbol (his car) in order to defend against his aggressor. Spielberg suggests that Mann has had to resort to the mindset of his adversary in order to survive, resulting as Ryan Gibley has stated in the "crumpled defeat of the middle-American male".

Oh yeah, the film’s a bloody exciting thrill ride too...

The Great Ecstasy of the Woodcarver Steiner - Werner Herzog - 1974

If we can procure one thread that manages to run throughout the twisted catalogue that forms the 40 plus year career of everyone’s favourite German madman Werner Herzog, then it surely that of the wilful outsider, people who transcend societies self imposed boundaries in some form of euphoric personal odyssey. People who stumble along the fine line of genius/fevered craziness, inebriated by their need to push the limits of personal endurance. People who we can’t help but see as varied series of reflections on Herr Herzog himself.

We don’t have to look far to find examples of this, from his infamous exploits with Kinski bringing to life egomaniacal adventurers bounding along the Amazon and through the jungle in Aguirre: The Wrath of God (1972) and Fitzcarraldo (1982), to his documentaries charting the lives of people who choose to outcast themselves in some of the world’s most inhospitable places such as the Sahara in Fata Morgana (1971), Antarctica in Encounters at the End of the World (2007) and in Alaska with a shit load of hungry Bears in Grizzly Man (2005).

The Great Ecstasy of the Woodcarver Steiner proves to be one of the greatest examples of this auteurist trait. Following an astounding opening sequence in which we see a ski ‘flight’ played to us at 1/20th speed set to the mesmeric tones of regular Herzog collaborator Popol Vuh. We meet the titular Walter Steiner, a gangly and unassuming young Swiss man with a penchant for woodcraft and throwing himself 170 metres through the air off ramps with only a pair of sticks on his feet for protection.

Here we enter the mad world of Ski-flying, that’s right, not ski-jumping, but its altogether more extreme offshoot ski flying. Rather than attempt to contextualise the event for us, and attempt meaningful psychological examination of those who take part, Herzog explains it all with the previously mention super slow speed camera footage. This stunning imagery captures perfectly the sheer euphoria (or ecstasy) the competitors feel upon embracing the closest we can come to the grace of flight without evolving ourselves a pair of wings.

Unfortunately, the graceful flight is often not met with an equally decorative landing, and we also get to witness what happens when it all goes horrifically wrong upon returning to terra firma. Though rather than some garish ESPN style ‘When Ski-Flights go wrong!” exploitation, Herzog even lends these scenes an elegiac touch.

It is this conflict of the ecstasy versus the danger that we find Steiner caught it. Steiner was at the time the most amazing ski-flyer the world had ever seen, other top competitors it seemed even avoided events he was involved in, as whatever length the pack would set, Steiner would throw on another 30 metres. This leads to an event in Yugoslavia where Steiner crushes previous records to such an extent that he is left with little safety run off, culminating in him having a bad fall, leaving him bloodied and concussed.

It is here that the film becomes especially interesting, as Steiner wishes to leave the event, but the organisers begin to apply pressure, demanding he perform again for the paying audiences. Here the film begins to raise questions of an athlete’s responsibility to his fans, as Steiner becomes convinced that they only come to watch because of a car-crash mentality bloodlust, waiting for the moment when he pushes the limits just one step too far. We leave Steiner as a melancholy character unsure of his future within the sport.

In a back catalogue peppered liberally with must see pictures, I’d go as far to say that The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner is right up there with the very best of Herzog’s oeuvre. He always seems to be at his best when he transcends the sometimes quotidian seeming nature of the subjects he chooses and wraps them in a dreamlike weave, blurring lines between documentation of an event and artful romanticism. Nowhere is that better found than here.

Possession - Andrzej Zulawski - 1981

If ever an argument can be made against generic pigeonholing then surely exhibit A for the prosecution would be Andrzej Zulawski’s apocalyptic horror/art-house/thriller/drama/surrealist domestic dispute picture Possession. The film is often advertised as a horror film in the vein of the European demonic possession films that were released in the wake of Bill Friedkin’s The Exorcist (1973), and one of the film’s region 1 DVD releases even sees the film unceremoniously dumped into a ‘Drive-In’ double pack with the late career Mario Bava Repulsion knock off Shock (1977). If there is one place Zulawski’s picture explicitly does not belong, it’s that ye old home of American teenage mating rituals.

The film begins with images of a decrepit late cold war era Berlin. Zulawski casts the action primarily in streets that surround that omnipresent image of government control and repression in the form of the Berlin Wall (it should be noted here that Zulawski is very much a victim of government oppression, he has, since this picture spent his career making films in France following suppression of his work in his native Poland).

We immediately find ourselves in the company of Mark (Sam Neill) who appears to work for some shady government agency, and is just returning from an extended assignment. He arrives home and is immediately caught in a domestic argument with his spouse Anna (Isabelle Adjani). With this Zulawski throws the audience immediately off kilter. The argument refers to many things we are not privy to, and tensions between the pair have clearly been building for some time, exploding before our eyes without clear exposition within the first minutes of the film, leaving the viewer confused in medias res.

For the first thirty or so minutes, the film comes across like Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) recast with mental patients. Both central performers give such extreme performances that it’s amazing that they remained stable following conclusion of the picture. Sam Neill, not a stranger to psychological horror, flits wildly between Somnambulistic calm and hysterical rage, whilst Adjani (who deservedly won the best actress award at Cannes for her performance) provides a stunning mental collapse that soon becomes deeply uncomfortable to watch. Previous to this picture my primary experience of Adjani’s work had been her ‘kooky’ turn in Polanski’s The Tenant (1976) and her purposefully muted and ethereal performances in Walter Hill’s The Driver (1978) and Herzog’s remake of Nosferatu (1979), which made the impact of her performance here all the more overwhelming.

After this opening half hour, and Mark’s subsequent hiring of a private investigator to find out what his wife is up to, the film’s previous preoccupation with the breakdown of a family unit makes way for surrealism and symbolism, as it is revealed that as well as conducting an extra-marital affair with the sinister bi-sexual kung-fu loving Terrence Stamp alike Heinrich (Heinz Bennett). Anna is also shacked up in a dilapidated squat with a creature that appears like the half formed afterbirth of a H.R. Giger creation (actually created by Carlo Rambaldi, who would go on to operate ET!) . A mess of phallic tentacles and goo, could this creature be a result of Anna’s frenzied insanity? (ala Cronenberg’s 1979 divorce catharsis The Brood) And holy shit is it slowly evolving into something more human possibly? (Clive Barker was surely taking notes).

The film descends further into delirium as Anna appears to miscarry in cinema’s most disturbing subway passage scene outside of Gasper Noė’s Irreversible (2002). Bodies begin to pile up, Mark gets involved in a relationship with an idealised doppelganger of Anna, the government agency decide they need to ‘terminate’ Mark’s contract, and all the while Anna’s secret lover begins to evolve as the plot moves towards complete Armageddon.

If this all sounds like unbridled chaos, that’s because it is. Fortunately Zulawski somehow manages to keep control of proceedings and directs with the assurance of someone who truly believes in his work. The opening half of the film is played out in cramped modernist apartments that seem to be as much made up of tight corridors as rooms. Zulawski’s camera prowling round the abodes with a frenzied abandon complementing our protagonists increasingly fractured states. By the second half though, he cools and we seem to be in a Berlin more akin to the Lower East Side in the early 80’s, large old spaces crippled by a decaying ghettoisation. He then turns everything on its head and creates an action cinema pastiche to conclude proceedings. By this point it is more than evident Zulawski is one of those precious mad fuckers who laugh in the face of the ‘language’ of cinema.

Zulawski has continued a career of defying generic expectations he has gone on to subvert such areas as science fiction, the period drama and the musical. A one of a kind maverick, enter the world of Zulawski with an open mind and reap the benefits of a disturbed and fevered imagination.

Detour - Edgar G. Ulmer - 1945

When we think of the locations in which the classics of film noir were set, usually a combination of stygian back alleys and pernicious drinking dens come to mind as our gumshoe protagonist finds himself way out of his depth in a city of hard knocks. The genre did though create a small niche in its appropriation of the road movie, changing the highways of the United States from a never ending vista of self discovery to a place of fateful self-destruction. The roots of this sub-genre can be seen in the likes of Fritz Lang’s You Only Live Once (1937), a tale of an ex-convict on the run for a murder he did not commit, and Raoul Walsh’s Bogie starring trucker flick They Drive by Night (1940). Today though, the most renowned cult classic of this period is a $30,000 poverty row quickie that goes by the name of Detour.

Despite its impoverished birth, the film is not without the previous form to suggest that it may be worthwhile, namely émigré director Edgar G. Ulmer. Though by this point he had been reduced to knocking out ‘made in a week’ b-movie fodder, Ulmer had wandered the hallowed hallways of UFA during the 1920’s, adding his production design talents to such classics as Der Golem (1920), The Last Laugh (1924) and Metropolis (1927) before joining the Diaspora of German talent that headed for Hollywood following the election of the National Socialists. In Hollywood he most famously brought his expressionist talents to the direction of the Lugosi/Karloff picture The Black Cat (1934) before gradually falling out of favour with the major studios.

His talent for the hallucinatory atmospheres of expressionism are still in evidence even here in the story of downtrodden New York dive bar pianist Al Roberts (A permanently perspiring Tom Neal looking not unlike Michael Rooker’s Henry). Roberts becomes disconsolate when the singer in his bar (and his ‘gal’) Sue (a barely used Claudia Drake) decides to leave New York and take the much clichéd stab at fame in Hollywood. Roberts soon decides to follow her, but must make his way across the country by thumbing rides. Once he reaches Arizona, Roberts, whose existence has become increasingly transient, thinks that he has finally found some luck when Charles Haskell (Edmund MacDonald) a shady pill popping bookie in a sleek convertible offers him food and a ride all the way to Los Angeles. His luck is soon out again though when Haskell appears to have a heart attack and upon trying to help him, Roberts becomes convinced that he may have inadvertently caused his death. Fearing police reprisals Roberts decides to hide the body and assume Haskell’s identity until he arrives in LA.

This plan appears to work out until he foolishly picks up a hitchhiker named Vera (Ann Savage, an apt name for a hellcat performance). Vera acts standoffish with Roberts and soon drops the killer line “What did you do with the body?” Vera it transpires had earlier ridden with Haskell and is well aware she is now in the car of a dead man, and so becomes Roberts bête noire, as she makes increasingly ludicrous demands of him in order to secure her silence. The film soon decamps in a Los Angeles of cheap motel rooms and car lots, with Vera thundering around the screen like a fireball hurtling towards the sun, as the film heads towards its bleak denouement.

The film clearly provides an intriguing premise, but the most interesting aspect is Roberts, who as our first person narrator comes across as untrustworthy. His story comes across as the increasingly subjective ravings of a possible madman. This is a guy who despite playing in dive bars, has a David Helfgott like talent for the piano. A man whose girlfriend leaves him to find fame, but then agrees to his on a whim decision of marriage. As his bad luck story continues, Roberts is almost pleading with the audience to believe his increasingly farfetched tale.

Set with knocking out 68 minutes of main feature seat warming fodder, Ulmer somehow created an embittered slice of classic noir, a world where everyone is on the make. Where the only person we are meant to trust may just be the loosest nut of the lot of them.

It seems that this film is now public domain and can be watched or downloaded for your viewing pleasure here http://www.archive.org/details/Detour, completely gratis! You now have no excuses not to check this king amongst b-movies out.

Dead Snow - Tommy Wirkola - 2009

It may just be the self-righteous Guardian reader that exists within me, but is it not right that we call time on the hackneyed usage of Nazis as an irredeemable evil, free to be killed off as violently as possible and without remorse “cause the tenets of national socialism ‘n’ Hitler ‘n’ the final solution ‘n’ all that” makes it ok. This argument may hold little water but whilst many Nazis were of course rather unsavoury types to say the least, many were simply ordinary German soldiers conscripted to essentially defend their country, just like the Brits, just like the Russians etc. In years past with the horrors of the Second World War as still a fresh and haunting memory, the use of the Nazi’s as a voiceless evil unit of übermenschen to be wiped out was somewhat more understandable, a catharsis if you will. Therefore the sub-sub-sub genre that is the ‘Nazi-Zombie movie’ found its genesis in films such as Ken Wiederhorn’s Shock Waves (1977), a film worthwhile purely by merit of it including both Hammer hero Peter Cushing and the king of Poverty Row John Carradine slumming it for quick bucks, and Zombie Lake (1981) a film by Jean Rollin at his ‘poor man’s Jess Franco’ worst. Well I say poor man’s Franco but then the Spanish soft focus merchant made the equally poor Nazi brain muncher Oasis of the Zombies in the same year.

In this age of supposed enlightenment though, several generations removed from those who fought in the battlefields of Europe, Africa and Asia. Do contemporary German viewers of cinema really deserve the indignity of being told that their grandfathers made up a nation of purely malevolent beings just ripe for beyond the grave butchery?

Bah, whatever you fucking hippy Lee etc. Anyway, whilst such shenanigans have continued to mine a rich vein in computer games such as the Castle Wolfenstein series and the recent Call of Duty 5. It has taken Norwegian horror buff Tommy Wirkola to resurrect this dubious tradition for the cinema screen with Dead Snow.

After opening with a typical pre-credits first victim gets felled with a cheap scare scenario, the film has us following a group of young medical students on a doomed skiing vacation in the mountainous landscapes of northern Norway. As the film presents the opening half hour of exposition we are made aware that this is a post-Scream generation of disposable teens, very much hip to the tenets of slasher cinema. In the case of one of the gang, the filmmaker’s inspiration is quite literally worn on his sleeve as he parades around in a t-shirt bearing a poster for Peter Jackson’s comic grue tour de force Braindead (1992).

The film proceeds to lay on the self-aware slasher film clichés as thick as possible. With tongue wedged firmly in cheek, we witness a creepy wizened stranger arrive at their cabin to spout local histories not generally provided by lonely planet guides, as we find that the area was during WWII a shipping channel for the allies which the Nazi’s attempted to unsuccessfully blockade. We then witness members of the group foolishly split up to search for missing friends, false scares chalked up and a promiscuous pair sign up as the first victims by choosing to copulate in a freezing outhouse. After half an hour of this post-modernist pastiche though, tedium does begin to set in as the whole enterprise threatens to slip into banality.

Thankfully we soon see the proper arrival of the zombies, as the film’s uneasy balance of seriousness and comic homage gives way to pure ‘splatstick’ and thus proceeds to go batshit insane for the final 40 minutes. All previous attempts at developing character arcs and creeping dread are thrown off the mountainside in favour of Raimi/Jacksonesqe farcical carnage as creative dismemberment becomes the order of the day, and cliff side zombie fistfights, snowmobile massacres and wilderness survival techniques that would turn Ray Mears a whiter shade of pale take precedence. All set in the sort of scenery that would usually be reserved for the grandeur of a Bond ski-chase set piece rather than zombie intestine wrestling.

It also becomes evident that the usage of Nazis as the enemy here does admittedly work rather well. The eternally sharp uniforms of the Wehrmacht make for a wonderful contrast against the snowy backdrops, and for once the concept of athletic and savvy zombies works in the films favour, as they really do proceed to work with military precision, frequently outflanking and outthinking our young protagonists.

Whilst never destined to join the ranks of classic zombie cinema. Dead Snow overcomes it’s stiffly directed slavish adherence to cliché in the opening half and does enough to make you enthusiastically recall the copious claret and freeform butchery of the latter half in recommendations to friends. Worthy popcorn fodder for the gorehound, and returning to my original point, I just saw Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds (2009) since I wrote the opening paragraph, and excitedly revelled in 2 ½ hours of the wildest Nazi bloodlust. Colour me hypocritical scumbag!

Deathdream - Bob Clark - 1974

It’s a well established notion that the horror film is a primary visual means by which to incorporate a subtextual representation of, and commentary on, the times in which it was made. Reaction to real world traumas channelled through the cinematic medium can be seen from the post World War I doppelgangers and distortions of German Expressionism to the Cold War “the reds walk among us” paranoia that found itself a staple of the 50’s drive-in B-Movie. If the relative sanity and prosperity of the early Sixties therefore saw somewhat of a lull in horror cinema, then the unbridled chaos and loathing of the fallout from the countercultural implosion saw horror return to the forefront of cult cinema at the tail end of the decade.

From George Romero’s watershed Night of the Living Dead (1968) onwards, we can easily play ‘spot the allegory’ as references to the counterculture, civil rights movements, Nixon’s politics and the Vietnam War abound. A good overview of how this era would go on to influence the 1970s careers of Carpenter, Craven, Cronenberg et al, can be seen in Adam Simon’s documentary An American Nightmare (2000). One film from this fruitful period that isn’t provided with an overview in the documentary though is Bob Clark’s Deathdream (also known by the even more generically 42nd street grindhouse title of Dead of Night).

Clark (who mined a rich vein in cult horror during the mid Seventies with this, Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things (1972) and Black Christmas (1974) before finding infamy in 1982 with the teen sex ‘n’ slapstick romp Porky’s) boldly takes on the issue of veterans returning from the Vietnam War, tapping directly into the uneasiness of the period.

The film at an intrinsic level is essentially a contemporary retelling of W.W. Jacob’s famous short horror fable The Monkey’s Paw. Here a fresh faced infantryman Andy Brooks (Richard Backus) is seemingly killed in a striking low budget fever dream recreation of Vietnam in the film’s opening scene. We then cut to his family who are informed that he is M.I.A. and presumed dead. His mother’s refusal to accept this leads her to pray for his safe return, which duly takes place the following night. Except now rather than the vivacious all American apple pie eatin’ young gun that left them, he instead returns as an anaemic and disturbingly somnambulistic young chap with a sideline in casual canine slaughter and family friend butchery.

It is finally and unsurprisingly revealed that Andy is now a slowly decaying member of the undead (make-up for which is provided by a debuting young war Veteran named Tom Savini) who needs human blood to keep himself relatively ‘fresh’. The film never attempts to play this for laughs, thankfully averting any images of Weekend at Bernie’s esq. scenarios. Nor though does the film particularly attempt to force cheap scares upon us. Clark instead envelops the viewer with a creeping dread, a fatalist approach that makes it clear we are not in for a happy ending. Everything in the film hints towards misery, from the mise-en-scene of the middle American mundane, in which our protagonist’s hometown is everywhere and nowhere, a world of identikit prefabs and greasy spoon cafes, through the wonderful lighting of the family home’s hallway, the staircase lit like a shadowy representation of their collective mental disintegration, to a minimalistic soundtrack so intensely coarse it sounds like it’s being scratched across the celluloid.

So to return to the subject of horror as allegory, Clark here paints a picture of the difficulties faced by veterans returning from war, attempting to return to normalcy after witnessing months of shocking atrocities. Throughout the first half of the picture Andy is like a pent up ball of post-traumatic stress, finding himself unable to communicate the horror of his putrefying form with those he loves. The scenes of his self-preserving attaining of blood from people by using syringes (in a clear precursor of Romero’s Martin (1977)), and watching his eyes roll back in a hit of junkie lust clearly reminds us that for some the only way to escape the war still raging on in their minds was to turn towards narcotics. While Deathdream is hardly Born on the Fourth of July, it is still a film that resonates far beyond its current undervalued position as a cheapo early seventies fright flick.