I have an old friend, one of my oldest, with whom I grew up watching movies. Specifically, horror movies. It was our thing. From 1935s The Bride of Frankenstein (on 60s television), to new, groundbreaking and controversial movies like Night of the Living Dead at our local single-plex around 1970 (when we were both only eleven years old, and hardly intellectually or spiritually prepared to see those living dead chowing down on offal), we consumed as much as we could. We also regularly purchased the magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland. We were easily the most popular kids in our Dumont, New Jersey grade school as a result.
And we were both highly dispirited, as adults, in the ostensible horror revival that we saw (or maybe we should say witnessed) in the early aughts, particularly, yes, in the Saw franchise. My pal worked at a video store up to the very end of video stores being a thing and as the resident horror fan at his Tower Records outlet he was beset by younger customers enthusing about Saw and other pictures, and hed roll his eyes.
I liked horror movies, hed say. But I dont like these. While our own patch of cinematic heaven had room for both the old-school classics and the inheritors of Romero (which was certainly not the case for folks older than us, who would bemoan the terrible violence of the newer pictures), stuff like Saw was where we drew the line. Just as rock genre mavens would decry false metal, we thought this new stuff was Faux Grindhouse.
The grindhouse. That is, or rather was, a something-less-than-first-run movie theater that housed garish fare like Night of the Living Dead and the spate of films that followed. Not just an environmental location but a state of mind. An aesthetic, if you will. One cherished, as we know. by the likes of Rodriguez, Tarantino, Roth and others, but only rarely recaptured.
If you have access to the Criterion Channel you can now, through its 70s Horror collection, get a nice, hefty, often disquieting dose of genuine grindhouse horror.
Which despite the conventional wisdom that also calls it exploitation cinema, wasnt always made by Moloch-worshipping film creators pandering to the lowest common denominator. Directors such as David Cronenberg, Bill Gunn, Wes Craven, Larry Cohen and others, all represented in the Criterion Channels nicely curated 70s horror festival, took their low-budget prerogative to inquire into transgressive themes and make pointed, if at times camouflaged, statement about not just contemporary society but the human condition.
These filmmakers were not even the most grindy of the 70s grindhouse auteurs. Theres a whole guild of Italian directors, most prominently Lucio Fulci, who took sadistic cinema to new ultra-grisly extremes. Because the 70s were also noteworthy for lots of horror movies in which the word Cannibal was prominently featured in the title. (Dario Argento, another maestro of Italian horror, who made the first, untouchable Suspiria and other loopy greats, sits a little to the right of most of those characters.) These items are not part of the Criterion package. Which is not to say the pictures here lack for luridness, or griminess. As smart as, say, Cronenbergs films Rabid and Shivers are, they are fast-paced and packed with visceral thrills. They are very much down and dirty pictures.
Its in disreputability and obscurity that 70s horror films found their strongest footing, arguably. Tobe Hoopers 1974 The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was made cheaply, shot on 16mm film, as opposed to the larger gauge 35 that was used for Hollywood product, but it was also immaculately crafted. It brims with incredible shot compositions and camera movements, and is so confident as to ratchet up hysterical scares without getting anywhere nearly as gory as the movies title would suggest. (Which isnt to say theres not plenty of blood, eventually.)
But another component that gave Massacre a lot of its power was its come-out-of-nowhere obscurity. The cast was made up of unknown actors. Getting caught up in their story (despite the fact that these post-hippie kids looking for a pond were all kinds of not-very-likable), you became invested in their fate. And you had no prior attachments to, or associations with them to clue you in on just what would happen. In the 2003 remake of the movie, the lead actress was Jessica Biel. This made the TCMs original tagline, Who will survive and what will be left of them? kind of academic.
Looking at the various remakes of the films in this Criterion collection more than a half-dozen of the 23 pictures have gotten a rebooting or sequel of some sort its clear that even the better ones are afflicted by a self-consciousness that serves as a kind of creative wing-clipping.
2019s Rabid, written and directed by Jen Soska and Sylvia Soska, a talented Canadian filmmaking team, often casts itself as an overt homage not just to Cronenbergs 1977 picture but to the man and his entire body of genre work. In an operating room, for instance, the doctors don striking bright red robes just as the gynecologist twins the Mantle brothers did in Cronenbergs 1988 Dead Ringers.
In the original Rabid, which cast the porn star Marilyn Chambers in the lead role (and does feature nudity from her, albeit at a register very different from what was the case in Behind the Green Door), the protagonist Rose is something of a cipher, albeit an attractive one. She acquires a variation of the title condition after reconstructive surgery following a disfiguring motorcycle crash.
Cronenbergs view of the character is one of almost clinical detachment. The Soska Sisters take a perspective of female affinity and empathy. Here, Rose is a shy fashion designer disdained and abused by colleagues, including boss Gunther, whose clothing line is called Schadenfreude. (Hes played by Mackenzie Gray, who seems to be channeling Tommy Wiseau, not the greatest idea in this context. But he also utters a line in which the filmmakers seem to be telling on themselves a bit: Why do we keep recreating new trends?)
But once Rose (here incarnated by Laura Vandervoort) is transformed, the Soskas avoid a revenge of the wallflower scenario in favor of a slightly elaborate inquiry into Cronenbergian ideas that have found footing in the real world, including the notion of transhumanism.
Its interesting and engaging up to a point, if a little too frequently on-the-nose in some particulars. (Naming the transhumanist surgeon William S. Burroughs is almost inexcusable, even if people have paid respect to the visionary writer by using the handle of his signature character, Dr. Benway, more times than one can count.) And while it even features a reprise of the originals notorious mall-Santa gag, theres nothing in the movie that provides anything like a jaw-drop.
And theres the rub. The skeeviness and recklessness of Cronenbergs early vision (and this applies, too, to Cronenbergs 1975s Shivers, whose outrageous premise is Night of the Living Dead, only what-if-horny-instead-of-cannibal) can still rattle you in ways this picture doesnt.
The 2019 Black Christmas, the third film of that title, following the 1974 Canadian slasher pic (which is in the Criterion fest, and is also NOT a Santa is the killer item you may be thinking, rather, of 1984s Silent Night, Deadly Night, or of that Joan Collins episode in the 1972 Tales from the Crypt) is also a showcase for female filmmaking talent. Its directed by Sophia Takal from a script she cowrote with the astute critic April Wolfe. The serial-killer-stalking a college campus template gets fitted to a feminist sensibility. The protagonists, led by Imogen Poots, are sorority sisters fighting sexual assault and super-patriarchal frat culture. Their domestic dialogue features lines like I cant find my diva cup.
But while Takals superb 2016 film Always Shine was a galvanic exploration of female friendship gone toxic, Black Christmas sticks to positive archetypes. Thats not in and of itself a bad thing, but when done as laboriously as it is here, but it yields a story line whose resolution is every bit as predictable as any corporate-driven product. While the filmmaking has a commendable sense of propulsion, the complete absence of ambiguity makes for a less than resonant experience. Although Cary Elwess Roddy MacDowell impersonation is kind of noteworthy.
Veteran critic Glenn Kenny reviews new releases at RogerEbert.com, the New York Times, and, as befits someone of his advanced age, the AARP magazine. He blogs, very occasionally, at Some Came Running and tweets, mostly in jest, at @glenn__kenny.
Watch the '70s Horror Collection on the Criterion Channel
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The '70s Horror Collection on Criterion Channel Proves They Don't Make 'Em Like They Used To - Decider
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