5 Frightful Tales for Friday the 13th

When I was first asked to do a list of films to mark Friday the 13th….well I’ll be honest, I may have sobbed a bit. Quietly. Just out of sight.

There are twelve films in the Friday the 13th series, including the one where Jason went into space, the one with Freddy Krueger and the remake. That is a lot of time I am not going to get back.

Thankfully I was assured I could pick *any* five films I wanted, as long as they're horror pictures.

You can imagine the relief. So here we go – five different horror films, for five different moods, and five different frights.

For the Gorehounds: Night of the Living Dead [George A Romero (1968)]

The original and still arguably the best zombie film, Romero starts proceedings with typical B-movie tropes. The opening feels amateurish, overlong, another cheaply made independent picture. Then as the shock of a sudden zombie attack changes the tone, Romero injects the proceedings with an increasing sense of tension. Gruesome imagery lead to an unforgettable climax. A deathless horror classic.

For the Film Snobs: Peeping Tom [Michael Powell (1960)]

Not only was this picture about a murderous psychopath who films his victims at the moment of their deaths – with the audience made implicit by sharing his visual point of view – banned, it ended the career of film-maker Michael Powell. Carl Boehm plays the cherubic Mark, whose mind has been distorted by the invasive psychiatric theories of his father. His crimes are in fact a twisted continuation of the father’s work. Peeping Tom is innovative, chilling – and even features a dance number performed by Moira Shearer, the star of Powell and Pressburger’s The Red Shoes. Unmissable.

For the Conspiracy Fans: The Shining [Stanley Kubrick (1980)]

Stephen King disowned this cinematic adaptation of his haunted house story – then later (in 1997) directed his own television miniseries starring Rebecca De Mornay. Kubrick’s earlier film is a tour de force of audio and visual depth, a layered masterpiece of technique. It’s a nightmarish echo chamber that draws in the audience and allows their imagination to drag them deeper. Recent documentary Room 237 for one demonstrates just how much fascination the film still holds.

For the Romantics: Braindead (Dead Alive) [Peter Jackson (1992)]

While Shaun of the Dead popularized the ‘rom-zom-com’ term, Peter Jackson had already ploughed that gunky furrow with this gruesome comedy. Timothy Balme and Diana Peñalver play our star-crossed lovers Lionel and Paquita (“zoo….what is zoo?”). Standing between them is Lionel’s terrifying mother (Elizabeth Moody, unforgettable), who is then zombified by a weird rat-creature.

Cue kickboxing priests, undead sex and a very Freudian final confrontation between Lionel and Mother. Also, a lawn-mower figures prominently in the proceedings. Finally, a romantic comedy that trades suggestive glances for gushes of bodily fluids of all kinds flying at the screen. One more time everyone – I kick arse for the Lord!

For the Chills: Ringu (Ring) [Hideo Nakata (1998)]

Hideo Nakata’s film is Kubrickian in its use of sounds and repetitive images. That it takes the theme of Koji Suzuki’s novel – which updates traditional Japanese ghost stories to modern times – and then uses film to illustrate how this takes place shows not only an understanding of storytelling, but a fantastic technical imagination as well.

Ringu terrifies because it stays in the memory. Its scares are based around the idea of a virus that passes from host to host – just as viewers of this film are then compelled to share it with others, in case maybe there is something….other happening here. 

-Emmet O'Cuana

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Nothing Here is Vegetarian: Hannibal Season One

Before we begin, you must all be warned, nothing here is vegetarian…

Bryan Fuller is no stranger to death. His series Dead Like Me detailed the after-life and times of grim reapers in Seattle. The visually incredible Pushing Daisies presents almost as a fairy tale, the story a pie-maker with the ability to revive the dead. Heck, he has even called his production company Living Dead Guy! So who better to execute a portrayal of the pre-Silence of the Lambs, pre-Red Dragon Hannibal Lecter?

Immortalised by Anthony Hopkins in the 1991 thriller Silence of the Lambs, reviving such an iconic figure comes with the huge expectation and the very real risk of failing to measure up. Fortunately, Fuller and his team manage to pull it off. For me, this reimagining is far more sinister, aided by the restrained and controlled portrayal of Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen, but then this is a depiction of the character at a different stage in the storyline.

Hannibal manages to sustain a sense of distance between the detailed 'design' of the murders and Lecter's involvement. The audience never directly sees him performing these horrific deeds, but he seems to know too much. His implied participation enough.

In this respect there is a conflict between the known and the unknown for the observer of this long-form Lecter story. I know Lecter is a psychopath. I know he is a cannibal. However, the characters with whom he interacts, for the most part, do not. I watch him feed them gourmet meals featuring exotic cuts of meat. I listen to him discuss the details of horrific murders while displaying no emotional response. I know things that make this story ten times worse than the characters within it, creating a tension that compels me to watch on despite knowing it will all, at some point, go very wrong.

He is inherently evil, or at least he comes across that way. His calmness and callousness are juxtaposed brilliantly with the inner and outer torment of Will Graham, played by Brit Hugh Dancy. While Graham is in constant battle with his demons, Lecter has long since accepted them, even harnessed them. Graham becomes his personal play thing, whose life he near destroys for his own curiosity. However, Lecter does slowly reveal elements of his true self, albeit in a manner that is both calculated and deliberate, and which goes unobserved by most around him.

The imagery of Hannibal is, at times, both horrific and beautiful. As much as I want to look away, the aesthetic portrayal of these graphic and violent crimes is simultaneously compelling and stomach churning. The players that support the Lecter/Graham slow waltz are convincing, in particular Laurence Fishburne as Special Agent Jack Crawford, who is blissfully ignorant of the psychopathic tendencies of the man with whom he occasionally shares a meal.
 
Apparently Fuller has plans for seven series of Hannibal culminating with the events of the Thomas Harris novels only after the first four are completed. With relatively low ratings, it’s a positive that the show has been re-commissioned for a second season. Hopefully networks are beginning to realise that there are other mechanisms for capitalising on television series, such as downloadable content or DVD sales. But that’s another story…

Hannibal is not for the faint-hearted, or more accurately, faint-stomached, but the first season is out now on DVD and Blu-ray.

-Stevie O'C

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