THE BRIDGE (2006) - suicide is painful

THE BRIDGE
(2006, UK/USA)

The Bridge begins with an extended montage of scenic views of San Francisco's beautiful Golden Gate bridge and the people who enjoy it. Driving over, walking over, sailing under or just enjoying the view. But then one of these 'scenic views' captures someone ending their life. And one of the many people walking across stops, gets over the railing and jumps. After that, it's compelling to watch and listen very intently, horrified by what might happen, while listening to the possible reasons that these people ended it all.

Certainly not a subject for everyone to want to watch, but an insightful, fascinating, carefully structured and tense documentary.

Director Eric Steel filmed the bridge for a year, shooting with long lenses from up to a mile away. He, like the bridge authorities, were on the lookout for potential suicides, preventing them whenever there was enough time. But as you see in the film, it can only take a few seconds to get over the barrier and over the edge.

The film recounts stories from the two dozen fatal leaps that happened over the year. It struggles with the reasons that people pick the bridge, especially when the 25-storey drop into the water isn't a surefire or painless way to die. One of the 'jumpers' even survives. His interview providing insight into what makes anyone contemplate and attempt what should have been suicide.


Families, friends and passers-by can only guess what finally pushed these souls to climb over the edge, describing how there can be few warning signs from even the most desperate. But with each new story, you never know which of the many possible outcomes it'll lead to.

Afterwards, I remembered one of the most famous San Francisco movies, Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958), had a suicide scene by the bridge. But that was a thriller, a dark fantasy. I'd never considered this wonder of the modern world to be a real suicide spot.


While the startling footage of actual suicides is the kind of mondo video clip that's specifically hunted down online, this film is very different because it provides so much context. Backstory, aftermath and implication. This is all provided from interviews, and not dictated through captions or voiceovers.

The Bridge is a valuable and astonishing film for talking at length about suicide and the widespread problem of serious mental illness.

The original 2003 New Yorker article 'Jumpers' is here.

Taking the Kool-Aid: three horrifying visions of Jonestown

You want horror? Maybe this is too much...

Real horror, actual horror, is deeply upsetting. It would be wrong if it wasn't. But it's misleading that we describe ourselves as 'horror fans'. Perhaps this is why strangers treat us more cautiously. Perhaps they are worried that we might enjoy the horror of actual tragedies. Of course, what we mean is supernatural horror, fictional slashers, impossible monsters... rather than the extremes of actual suffering. I just want to warn you that this story shouldn't be treated lightly.

I've seen many documentaries and recreations of tragic events, but this one proved to be powerfully depressing. It wasn't simply that hundreds of people died, it was that they'd taken their own lives, all at the same time, because they were told to. One Sunday morning, late in 1978, I saw photographs of dead bodies, possibly for the first time. In a news magazine there were pages of colour photographs of the aftermath of Jonestown. If I'd seen photos like that before, they hadn't been in colour. Hundreds of people face down in mud. I still remember the brightly coloured t-shirts, the fact that there were children as well as adults, and I mistakenly assumed that the victims were South American.

I recently decided to learn more about the Jonestown 'massacre', prompted by the showing of a recent documentary on TV. I'd not considered the movie versions, assuming they were exploitation flicks. Curiosity now compelled me to see how the events were depicted and exploited. This is the type of incident that gets described as 'something out of a horror movie' and inevitably leads to one being made. But these dramatisations beg the question - is this really the way it happened? Were they actually made into horror films?

The first to be released was Guyana: Crime of the Century (also called Cult of the Damned) and was sold as horror. The events then appeared as a TV mini-series in 1980, Guyana Tragedy. From the cover art, I thought this was also exploitation, but the cast and the writing credentials are quite impressive. More recently in 2006, was a new documentary titled Jonestown. Interviews with survivors, relatives and eye-witnesses to the life and works of Jim Jones. I've watched all three.

GUYANA: CRIME OF THE CENTURY

a.k.a. Cult of the Damned

(1979, Spain/Panama/Mexico)

Dull recreation that eventually packs a punch

There's a fine line between exploitation, and drama based on real events. The timing of this film and the TV movie both seemed far too soon to be at all respectful. In terms of accuracy they both appear realistic, but the exaggerated accent on torture and gunplay places Cult of the Damned firmly in the category of exploitation.

The fateful events at Jonestown climaxed in November 1978. As the news reports began, the scriptwriters must have started taking notes. The first finished version of this film, 110 minutes long, premiered only 10 months after the event! Their knowledge of the facts would have been limited, while investigations was still in progress. To cover themselves, they resorted to fictitious character names, even calling the Guyana encampment 'Johnsontown'! 

This was directed by Rene Cardona Jr. Unsurprisingly, he was the scriptwriter on another true-life dramatisation - based on the story of the Andes air crash that resulted in cannibalism, Survive was also sold as horror. The result here is mostly lacking in drama or tension, even when you know what's going to happen. The first 90 minutes are very dull - the director only seems to take an interest whenever there's violence, like the opening scene with the splashiest onscreen pistol suicide I've seen.

It follows the events from Jones' church in San Francisco onwards. Stuart Whitman plays Jim Jones as an unconvincing bible-basher, no more enthusiastic than the average TV evangelist. Given such a meaty role, Whitman does very little with it. Yvonne De Carlo (The Munsters) and Bradford Dillman (Bug!) take their roles more seriously as Jones' colleagues. Gene Barry (The War of the Worlds) plays the congressman who visits 'Johnsontown', unwittingly triggering the fateful final events. Not a bad supporting cast, considering.

I can't say what's inaccurate about this version, but it's very noticeably a community of white people who travel down to Guyana, when in reality there was a majority of African-Americans. The jungle scenes are convincing to look at, right down to the look of the buildings and the chilling sign set up behind Jones' throne. It read 'Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it' (see the screengrab at top). The film relishes in showing a few torture scenes and makes the most of any shootings, filmed with a handheld camera, as if the victims were being chased at close quarters. 

The climax is simply staged but horrific, the most extended depiction of the events in the three versions I watched. But it succeeded at being the most powerful, possibly because I watched this first. It ends leaving many loose ends, with even the demise of many central characters not mentioned at all. Cult of the Damned also describes incidents not mentioned in the TV movie or the documentary. Is this because they never happened? One scene has the congressman's delegation demanding entry into a large warehouse, only to discover it's an overcrowded, under-equipped hospital. A turning point as they realise that 'Johnsontown' has serious problems...

VCI have released the film on DVD from a soft-looking transfer, letterboxed widescreen, with a muffled English-language audio track. This is the longest version of the film that was made. I think it's the original length cut that was released in Mexico. It was then re-edited and shortened for a US release.

GUYANA TRAGEDY: THE JIM JONES STORY

(1980, TV, USA)

An impressive and accurate dramatisation

Three months after the US release of Cult of the Damned, came an impressive mini-series (shown as two back-to-back TV movies, I believe). The script was by Ernest Tidyman (The French Connection, Shaft), using the real names of characters and locations.

The research was partly based on a book and the news reports from The Washington Post. Many of the dramatised incidents are also described in the 2006 documentary, Jonestown - a testament to the accuracy of the research. Unlike the linear narrative of Cult of the Damned, Guyana Tragedy starts with Jim Jones in Jonestown, on his throne, haunted by memories of his lifetime.

With a three hour total running time, this story goes all the way back to his childhood. As Jones successfully built up a congregation in a rundown Indianapolis neighbourhood, he faced open and violent racial prejudice when he refused to restrict who was welcome in his church. His enormous success lead to a string of grateful property donations which built up his funds for a series of idealistic projects, centred around and communal living. He first set up an alternate society in the redwood forests of California, before moving to San Francisco. 

Jones starts off as an inspirational figure, an outspoken socialist, and a challenger of racism. But ends up as a paranoid, power-mad dictator, over-reliant on drugs, punishing and sexually abusing members of his congregation. Whenever a scandal breaks publicly, he runs away, ending up in the South American jungle in a specially built community. When Jones believes the authorities are closing in, he simply talks his followers into the abyss. His ranting is based on an actual recording made at the time.

The climax is more dramatically staged than Cult of the Damned, with an impassioned eleventh hour challenge to Jones' decision. Powers Boothe (Southern Comfort, Frailty, Sin City, 24) rightfully won an Emmy for his performance as Jim Jones, though at the time he wondered if he'd ever work again.

Levar Burton (Roots, Star Trek: The Next Generation) plays one of the congregation, as does Irene Cara (the same year as the movie Fame). Angela Cartwright (in the same year as Alien) plays Jones' wife. Brad Dourif (Alien Resurrection, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) plays his attendant doctor, Diana Scarwid (Psycho III) plays the doctor's wife. There's also Ned Beatty, Randy Quaid, Meg Foster (early Cagney and Lacey), and a very brief appearance from James Earl Jones.

I was glad to see Rosalind Cash - she was one of the highlights in The Omega Man, who I'd always hoped would get far more work after playing such a strong and impressive role. It's good to see her in another high-profile role.

The quality of the cast demonstrates what a major TV event this was, but the DVD makes it look like grindhouse that's not worth restoring. Hopefully such a major drama as this exists in better shape than this DVD from VCI. The soft image is the least of its problems. There are constant jumps and film faults. Missing frames, film damage, video faults and poor audio. This would look bad on VHS.

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JONESTOWN: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF PEOPLES TEMPLE

(2006, USA)

Eyewitness accounts of Jim Jones' life and death

I thought this documentary would contradict the old dramatisations, but it told many of the same stories as the TV movie. At least here there are interviews with many of the people who knew Jones at every stage of his life, even when he was a child. I was surprised that there were survivors of Jonestown. 

There are still insights and surprises about Jones' life, not least his abuses of both his power and his parishioners. It details each of his projects, all of which he ends up running away from until there was nowhere else to run. The final mass suicide being described by eyewitnesses losing their entire families is of course both shocking and moving. 

With a tragedy of this scale, I'm still struggling to understand how it could happen. The documentary gives valuable clues. For instance, Jones kept his followers sleep-deprived, and successfully isolated them from each other, even their own family. This infers he'd discovered (or, I'm guessing, borrowed) some efficient methods for keeping his followers faithful. Failing that, there were armed guards who patrolled the compound, supposedly to keep danger out...

The documentary is of course the most reliable and accessible way into the story, but I felt that both the dramatisations made more of an impact in the final scenes. I had to see it all to believe it could happen. However he convinced them, the fact remains that the majority of victims willingly drank poison, which was mixed in with a fruit drink. Today, the reference to "taking the Kool-Aid" are Jim Jones' only legacy. A rather flippant catchphrase derived from a truly horrendous event.

Jonestown the documentary is widely available (there's a trailer here on the UK site for Artefact Films) but I was surprised at how poorly treated the Emmy award-winning TV series looked on DVD. It's a powerful film with an excellent cast that still deserves an audience. There are several different DVDs out there. I hope that they are all better than the one (from VCI) that I saw (pictured above).

I previously compared documentaries to dramatisations of the Charles Manson murders and the 1972 Andes plane crash that inspired Survive! and Alive. 

(Update April 2012: while the "taking the Kool-Aid" phrase was still being used on TV and in the political arena at the time of writing this, I've only just learned that the victims were actually drinking Flavor-Aid on that fateful day, a product similar to Kool-Aid.)

MANSON (2009) and his HELTER SKELTER (1976)

MANSON (2009, UK documentary)
HELTER SKELTER (1976, US TV movie)

Real-life horror as entertainment

I just had a depressing week looking into the Charles Manson murders. While he's not convicted of committing any, he incited his followers to torture and slaughter two households on consecutive nights in 1970. Living outside LA in a sort of hippie commune, his 'family', Manson had failed to get anywhere with his band and was running out of money. He planned to take revenge on the society that excluded him by inciting a race war, the prophesied 'Helter Skelter', by murdering respected and influential white people, and leaving clues that incriminated radical black groups.

The first attack was on a house being rented by Roman Polanski and his new wife Sharon Tate. Polanski was away on business but Sharon and three friends were all tortured and killed in a frenzy. Sharon was eight months pregnant. The murderers were three women, one man, all aged about 20, Manson wasn't with them.

Watching two different accounts brought home the emotional devastation to the families and friends, and the panic that hit L.A. in 1970 when suddenly faced with random murderous assaults in the home. Like any big news story, the documentaries and dramatic reconstructions soon followed after the case was closed. American TV waited a fairly respectful six years before making Helter Skelter, and made extra money by releasing it as a film overseas. As recently as 2003, The Manson Family recreated the murders again and there was an American TV remake of Helter Skelter in 2006. Last week, a new documentary aired on British TV.

MANSON
(2009, UK)

Neil Rawles' new two-hour programme mixes dramatic reconstructions, a little archive news footage and a long interview with 'family' member Linda Kasabian. She gives eyewitness accounts of both the infamous Manson 'family' murders. Everyone else who was there are still serving life sentences.

The reconstructions are OK, but while the actor playing Manson looks the part, he didn't impress. The actress playing Kasabian was far better, adding reality to her reactions as she watches the murders. She also evokes sympathy and generates suspense as she tries to escape Manson's clutches without meeting the same fate.

The saddest part of the doc was the actual crime scene photos, which I'd not seen before. These brought home how brutal and tragic the murders were, and should derail any anti-hero status of Manson and his followers. The case was all the more newsworthy because one of the victims was a Hollywood actress - Sharon Tate had starred in The Valley of the Dolls, Polanski's The Fearless Vampire Killers (Dance of the Vampires) as well as the offbeat horror Eye of the Devil.

The documentary focuses on the events leading up to the murders, including a torture scene that puts Reservoir Dogs in the shade, with Manson wielding a sword. It skips the lengthy court case, which many other programmes have detailed. While Manson is a good documentary to start with, it's a huge subject. A look at Manson's life would be a story in itself, as he seems to have spent much of his life drifting, causing plenty of other mayhem. Not that I want to become an expert, but I'm still not clear on how on Earth he could influence his gang to such extremes.

HELTER SKELTER
(1976, US)

I then went back to see how this TV movie compared to the new account. Helter Skelter was mainly based on the transcripts of the court case, where Kasabian was the star witness, so it's not a very different story, but a very different approach. Even though it was sold as a horror movie, it's mostly a courtroom drama, the emphasis being on how the prosecutor can make a case against Manson stick, even though he hadn't committed any of the murders.

It begins with the discovery of the bodies at Sharon Tate's house, a scene made all the more painful by the reactions of Polanski's agent as he identifies them all. From the documentary crime scene photos, the bodies are even laid out accurately.

Despite two more murders the next night, the police still don't have any conclusive evidence and only by a stroke of luck, months later, inside prison, do they get the lead they need...

For a TV movie this has more good performances than bad. But as a movie, it's lacking stars, recognisable faces even, or glossy production values. It looks like TV, but the subject is far more gruesome than any other seventies TV movie.

The actors playing 'the family' are all pretty good, but the prosecutor and defender annoyingly try to outshout each other in court, and there's no insight into them as people or even lawyers. George DiCenzo as Vincent Bugliosi is also lumbered with several speeches and the movie's 'voice of the establishment', verbally slapping Manson down after final judgement has passed.

To hint that this is a horror film, the star of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Marilyn Burns no less, plays Linda Kasabian. She gets to do her frightened, crying bit as she relives the flashbacks of the murders. The Sharon Tate murder is noticeably not recreated though.

It's Steve Railsback who makes this the best Manson movie. His chilling, staring portrayal was his career-defining role. Since then he was an unlikely romantic lead in The Stuntman (1980) and had a recurring role in The X Files TV series before another chilling role as inspirational psycho Ed Gein (2000).



I'm guessing that the international cinema release of Helter Skelter was a 'harder' version with swearing and more violence shown, as well as being cut down to under two hours. This is the version that was released on VHS (the UK cover art is pictured at the top). But it was originally made for TV as two 90 minute episodes and has no swearing and less blood, to meet TV guidelines. I think that this longer version is the one currently available on DVD in a 2 disc set.

MILK (2008) - serious seventies flashbacks

MILK
(2008, USA)

Gus Van Sant's new film opens in UK cinemas this week. I don't normally plug new releases, but this one is exciting for me personally because it's a subject close to my heart - the gay rights movement. Some people may identify their teenage years with The Breakfast Club or some other John Hughes' movie. For others it might be Napoleon Dynamite. Back in the 1970s, I wanted to be someone in Quadrophenia (an anti-establishment punk rebel) or National Lampoon's Animal House, (a drunk but popular under-achiever). But in reality, I was far closer to several characters in Milk, being a closeted teenager at the time, and an out-and-proud politically-involved idealist of a few years later. But this was all in rural England rather than San Francisco, where it was all happening.

For a new audience to the story, Milk should prove an encouraging reminder of grass roots political activism. How the energies of an abused minority can even be diverted from the destruction of rioting and channelled into a positive force. In a time of murderous queerbashing and a hostile police force, it was very easy to get angry or keep very, very closeted.

I like Van Sant as a filmmaker, and when he gets weird and experimental with stories based on real-life, it can be fascinating. His takes on the death of Kurt Cobain (Last Days) and the Columbine High School murders (Elephant) were far from straightforward docu-dramas. But a film about Harvey Milk would be wrong to take such a chance with.


Van Sant tried for years to get this project made. The script by Dustin Lance Black (who's also worked on the Bill Paxton TV series Big Love), and the casting of Sean Penn, finally helped the film to get made. The story is of a gay-rights activist who successfully campaigned his way into San Francisco City Hall in the late 1970s against all the odds. Harvey's story was well-known in the gay press, and later in an Oscar-winning documentary (see below), but I can't imagine many people knowing about it now. So I was surprised when the film pre-empted the story's shock ending right at the start. I'd like to have seen an audience taken surprise by Milk's assassination, with the sense of foreboding building up suspense, rather than just being ironically insightful.

The recreation of the 1970s is as I remembered it, and was scrupulously reconstructed with the help of many who were around at the time. Using the actual locations of Harvey's camera shop on Castro Street, which became his campaign office, and the spectacular City Hall, where much of the story took place, make it all look totally convincing.


Sean Penn, as Harvey Milk, is an uncanny performance, not only reminding us totally of the person in the news footage, but also channelling his ideals and personality - a dedicated man fired up to make some positive changes - not in it for the money, and balancing the big issues with the plights of individuals. A charismatic speaker and not without a sense of humour. The sort of person who could give politicians a good name.


Seeing photos of Penn, Emile Hirsch and Josh Brolin in 1970s clothes and hairstyles makes each of them instantly recognisable compared to the original characters they play (whose photos are included in the end credits).

While gay rights were a hard sell in 1970s USA, things were about to get disastrously tougher. We really needed Harvey inside City Hall in California in the AIDS-blighted 1980s, making his death all the more tragic and untimely.

For a while, I thought he'd opened the doors to a more accepting government and society, and that things could only get better. But the long-established gay community of San Francisco still has a vocal anti-gay presence. On our last fleeting visit in 2007, we witnessed an impromptu sidewalk demonstration by vocal Christian moralists on a high-profile street corner in central San Francisco (see photo). Proof that once a battle is won, the fight is far from over.

The film's UK website is here and here's the YouTube trailer.

Timed to coincide with the UK cinema release is the welcome return of the documentary The Times of Harvey Milk, newly remastered for DVD on its 20th anniversary. I look forward to seeing it again, a wonderful feature-length documentary with interviews and footage of the real life Harvey Milk and his adversaries. This was the first time the story won an Academy Award but not, I suspect, the last.

PAURA - LUCIO FULCI REMEMBERED - VOL 1 (2008) - new DVD

PAURA - LUCIO FULCI REMEMBERED - VOL 1
(2008, USA)

The late Lucio Fulci directed some essential Italian horror films, my favourite of which is the extraordinary Zombie Flesh Eaters (1979). While he was a cult figure, and received some attention overseas before he passed away in 1996, he never had much respect in his own country.

Mike Baronas picked up on this recently while producing DVD extras for several of Fulci’s films and, spurred on by not properly meeting his idol, he felt he had to pay tribute somehow and also help people know more of what he was actually like. As Baronas explains in his introduction and liner notes for Paura, he’d ideally like to have done this in a book, (maybe as a companion piece to Beyond Terror by Stephen Thrower, which focusses on Fulci’s films rather than the man himself). While there’s no chance of a book at the moment, Baronas and co-producer Kit Gavin made this DVD to get something out there.


I met Mike Baronas briefly at the Pittsburgh HorrorHound Weekend, where he accompanied Al Cliver and Ottaviano Dell'Acqua, both stars of Zombie Flesh Eaters. Now I’ve had a chance to see his DVD.

Not knowing anything about the project, I was initially disappointed at this not being a documentary about Lucio Fulci's life. It's more of a packed DVD with extras - 88 tributes to the man himself. There are three groups of interviews - collaborators, actors and peers, as in horror movie directors and producers in the Italian film industry who knew Fulci or knew of him.


The memories and anecdotes are honest, sometimes giving a little too much detail, like his tobacco-chewing habits! But the more you hear, a rounded, honest and complete picture emerges of what Fulci was like and how he worked. Many actors and co-workers talk of him very fondly indeed. It’s a fantastic testimonial.

Paura also serves as a valuable overview of many familiar names in Italian horror, some whose names I’ve often heard, but whose faces I've never seen. Such as Ruggero Deodato (Cannibal Holocaust), Lamberto Bava, Luigi Cozzi, Michele Soavi and many, many more. It's also fascinating to see so many actors from this very seventies genre, nearly thirty years later.


On the main menu page, it’s worth seeking out a slightly hidden extra that takes you to an introduction from Baronas. His quest to re-establish Fulci in the canon of great Italian directors has sent him round the world collecting these interviews. His presentation, which explains the events that motivated him, are preceded by an astonishing gallery of photos of him together with each of the contributors.

The DVD is then best experienced in three options of ‘Play All’. Each interview is introduced by photos and a list of their credits In Fulci films. Though the accompanying music gets rather repetitive despite the rarity of the photos. There is nearly four hours of material in all.


This is a labour of love, aimed squarely at Fulci fans who want to get to know the man better. Having watched it, I can’t wait to see his films again.

The Paura DVD is available on this site. There’s also a review here, with screengrabs.

BEWARE THE MOON: Remembering AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON - a preview

At the Pittsburgh HorrorHound convention in June, An American Werewolf in London was screened, just before the preview of a new feature-length documentary about the making of the film. I was again reminded how good it was and how well it stands up today, as a horror film, a drama and a black comedy.

First I'll recall the original film, then preview the new documentary, Beware The Moon.

AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON(1981, UK)

When I first saw this in an English cinema back in 1982, its shock-moments were what impressed me. It was bloodier than the slasher movies of the time, but was still recognisably a John Landis comedy. But the humour could cruelly flip into nightmare at any moment – one scene memorably mixed the Muppets with terrifying Nazi demons. This was the first film where I was caught out by someone waking up from a dream within a dream.

It’s an unusual werewolf film, depicting the nightmares that prefigure David’s realisation of what he’s becoming. The creature’s victims also hang around in limbo to haunt him, a new angle to the mythology that enables his dead best friend to keep him company, despite advancing decomposition.

Besides delivering a horror film that avoids horror cliches, I also love the film because it’s a great London film. I grew up here, and to see an accurate and witty depiction of the city from an outside perspective is a treat. Besides using locations especially familiar to tourists, there’s also the backpacker experience out in the countryside, where entering a local pub feels like breaking the law. American Werewolf captures this bizarre experience, that’s also just as intimidating for city folk as it is for tourists. London hospitals, the police, public transport are all amusingly observed and a great introduction to the London behind the brochures.

At the time the publicity concentrated not on the comedy, the romantic heart of the film, the location, or the psychology… but on the special effects for the werewolf transformation. With no A-list stars I guess this was logical, but similar werewolf effects had already just appeared in The Howling, (the embarrassing reason for that is explained in the documentary). The humour of The Howling was more subtle, Joe Dante’s trademark in-jokes were aimed at horror fans. It’s also a great film, but even less widely seen. 1981 was a crowded year for wolves because there was also Wolfen, starring Albert Finney and a young Edward James Olmos. An overly serious eco-thriller about urban wolves, Wolfen had showcased the use of a low-slung steadicam doubling for a wolf’s point-of-view. Coincidentally, it also has a police decapitation, though American Werewolf did it far better.

These three wolf films were heavily cross-compared, but this isn’t important now that we’ve had over a quarter century of perspective. American Werewolf easily stands the test of time and works just as well today. It’s originality and humour certainly makes it certainly worth all the attention it’s getting again.

BEWARE THE MOON: Remembering AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON(2008, UK)

Paul Davis presented this 'director's cut' of the new documentary that he wrote, directed and presented, about the making of An American Werewolf in London. The Pittsburgh screening is the longest it will ever be, in an 105 minute work-in-progress version. He dedicated the screening to monster-maker Stan Winston, who had sadly died just a few days before.

Almost all the main cast and everyone involved behind the scenes is interviewed. It tells the story of the film, of how it came about and how it was received. Besides John Landis and Rick Baker’s extensive involvement, there are the leading actors David Naughton, Griffin Dunne and Jenny Agutter (Logan’s Run, Equus, Walkabout). There’s even most of the British supporting cast, down to the actress from the faked porn film, shot specially for the Piccadilly cinema scenes. Unfortunately for Landis, the soft-core porn scenes were the very first to be filmed, which gave his British film crew a very slanted idea of what kind of story they were going to be working on!

It’s good to hear the traditional British thespian perspective of John Woodvine, who played David’s psychiatrist. Regular Landis collaborator, George Folsey Jr, has a particularly disturbing screenshot looming behind him, and talks extensively about the problems he faced as the producer. The rest of the crew are well-represented, from the cinematographer Robert Paynter, to the stunt driver Vic Armstrong, who’s now a major stunt-co-ordinator and action unit director for the biggest Hollywood thrillers. It’s all the more interesting for being a film made outside of a Hollywood studio.

The idea for American Werewolf began in former Yugoslavia, back when Landis was in the junior production staff working on the war/heist/comedy Kelly’s Heroes (1970), when he was also training as a stuntman. On location he witnessed local gypsies who resembled extras from the old Universal horror The Wolfman (1941), who actually believed in ancient superstitions and were burying a man swathed in garlic, in a ceremony to prevent him from rising from the dead.

The incident inspired a script, which he was still talking about with Rick Baker when they were making Schlock (1973) together. But only after three smash-hit comedies (Kentucky Fried Movie, National Lampoon’s Animal House and The Blues Brothers) could Landis finance the unusual story, mainly because of the edgy mix of humour and horror. In the end, it needed help from a British film financing fund, ending up as a ‘$10 million negative pick-up deal’.


Rick Baker, integral to the success of film, had been mulling over Landis’ ideas over the years as to how he could engineer special effects for the transformation. Landis was very specific about what he wanted to see, which made the direction clear but not the techniques to be used. Baker had started off in horror films and as an assistant to Dick Smith (the modern godfather of make-up effects). In Schlock, a savage satire of Trog, he dressed Landis up as an apeman throwback. Baker also appeared in Kentucky Fried Movie as a gorilla running amuck in a TV station (Landis cameos as a TV director fighting with him). I remember being impressed by Baker’s work on Squirm, It’s Alive, and The Incredible Melting Man in the seventies. His early creations even helped pad out the cantina bar in Star Wars (1977). But Baker also had a specialty for realistic animal make-ups, especially large apes. He played a huge part in the 1976 King Kong, which he famously received no credit for. Although he performed inside the suit built by him and Carlo Rambaldi, and was in 99% of Kong’s scenes, the producer Dino De Laurentiis span the publicity as if a life-sized robot was all that was used!

Baker’s work on American Werewolf was ground-breaking and hugely influential, the central transformation having to withstand the scrutiny of a harshly lit set. Jekyll-and-Hyde scenes had traditionally been done by optically cross-fading between make-ups while the actors were held in position. Baker and his crew instead built mechanical effects that would change shape before the camera, while still looking organic. Baker and the actors describe in detail shot-by-shot how the scene was achieved. At the time, Landis ensured no publicity photographs of the final creature were released.


Baker, still hugely busy in Hollywood today, tells a great story about the scene when the boys are attacked by the wolf on the moors. The interviews with Baker and Griffin Dunne intercut as we hear both sides, when the two of them try to appear to fight to the death without wrecking Baker’s effects. We then hear from members of the crew nearby, hearing the blood-curdling sound in the middle of the night, when Dunne is asked to ‘scream as if he was being murdered’.

There’s also the real story behind how The Howling ended up using similar effects but was released beforehand – a howler originally reported as Baker’s assistant, Rob Bottin, running off with his special effects secrets!

The wolf make-ups aren’t the end of Baker’s contributions, he also had to envisage the many dream effects, the living dead make-ups of all David’s victims and especially Jack’s decomposition. The original actors involved, in particular Griffin Dunne as Jack, have much to say about the physical and psychological effects of looking and acting as a corpse with its throat ripped out.

Landis and Baker continued to team up, first on Michael Jackson’s groundbreaking pop video for Thriller. Jackson’s enthusiasm for American Werewolf lead to them being hired to change Jackson into his very own wolf creature. Baker also had to create the famous zombie make-ups for the dancers, with little preparation, and even appeared as a zombie in the final promo. (For more information, I’d recommend Cinefex magazine, issue 16 was devoted to all Rick Baker’s early work, up to 1984).

Later, Rick Baker made up Eddie Murphy as radically different characters in Landis’ Trading Places and Coming To America – early multiple roles for the actor who still uses the technique as a regular basis for his Hollywood comedies.

I don’t want to spoil the many anecdotes. It’s full of stuff I didn’t know and it’s great to see everyone again. It helped me appreciate more about the agonies of make-up effects, as well as the trials of seemingly easy location shoots. With jokers Landis, Naughton and Dunne providing a lion’s share of the stories, the documentary is as funny as it is engaging. Davis has succeeded in both exploring his obsession, as well as explaining it for anyone who hasn’t seen the film. It’s rare that a feature-length documentary about a movie can be so entertaining.

Behind the behind-the-scenes documentary

Before the premiere, there was a Q&A session with the the documentary director Paul Davis, director John Landis, and the star David Naughton.

Landis said he was initially shocked to hear that someone had started on a movie documentary without sorting out clearances and copyrights first – normally the way it’s done. He said that the whole project could have been doomed from the start, never to see the light of day. (Thankfully, with his help, this has now been sorted out).

He was amused to have been tracked down for his Beware the Moon interview via MySpace, but was sufficiently impressed by the roster of interviewees that and is now a strong supporter of the documentary. He even announced that it would be included in a Blu-Ray release of American Werewolf within the next two years – much to the surprise of the director, Paul Davis. This is the logical place for the documentary, but I hope it gets more public screenings when it’s complete, and even finds a wider audience, possibly on TV.

David Naughton talked about first getting cast werewolf and admitted that the nude scenes looked a lot less intimidating in the script than when he actually had to perform them. Naughton looks very different today, mainly because his hair is now strangely uncurly. Perhaps it was the experience of filming…

The next day I talked to Paul Davis and his producer Romy about this big project that started out small. They had travelled from London for the screening.

Spookily, Davis was born while American Werewolf was being shot (the porn theatre scenes, he reckons). He first saw it on VHS at the age of three! Indelibly impressed with the film, but exasperated by the lack of extras on a DVD release, he decided in 2006 to interview everyone connected with the movie.

Romy Alford-Sancto took a year out from her film production course to produce Beware the Moon, and described the process as a domino effect, that got easier once people heard who’d already been interviewed. The crew ended up visiting New York and Los Angeles to get the biggest names.


Cameraman Anthony Bueno shot it all on HD video and also edited it – arguably the hardest task. They also travelled around so that Paul Davis could present the documentary from the original filming locations as they appear today. Beware The Moon therefore also serves as a great guide to making your own American Werewolf pilgrimage – London Zoo in Regents Park, Tottenham Court Road Underground Station (doubling for Piccadilly Circus) are easy to find, but the original Slaughtered Lamb exterior was shot in darkest Wales, and was almost impossible to locate, as it is now a private residence. Romy described a chain of coincidence that helped them find it eventually f. Apparently John Landis still has the original prop of the legendary pub sign.

Thankfully, most of their wishlist of interviewees agreed to appear. The only notably missing contributors are the late Elmer Bernstein, who composed the original music, and actor Brian Glover who issued the original warning “Beware the moon, lads…”. They both have a good excuse for not being interviewed, as they are unfortunately neither living or undead.

As a fan, and having shot hours of usable footage, Paul Davis would ideally like it to be much longer, while Landis is advising a shorter cut. But Beware the Moon will officially be completed in Los Angeles later this year, hopefully adding more of the rare behind-the-scenes footage. I can’t wait to see it - it’s marvellous when your favourite films get this much attention.

A complete list of participants, and a couple of clips have been unveiled on their ‘KesslerBoy’ (it’s the name of Naughton’s character) MySpace site and the website is also being prepared.

As the original script for The Wolfman (1941), written by the late Curt Siodmak, is being reinterpreted for a new wolfman movie, it’s the ideal moment to spend time with An American Werewolf in London. They’ll have a tough time making a better film.

SURVIVE! (1976) - an exploitation nightmare

SURVIVE!
(1976, Mexico, Supervivientes de los Andes)

A true story more famous than the films

There’s always been an appetite for movies based on real events, especially gruesome ones. It’s now common to see reconstructions of fresh, shocking crimes in TV documentaries, like the Columbine shootings, but it used to be more of a taboo, usually out of respect for the families of the deceased. In the 1970's it was usually exploitation movies that moved in too soon, despite protests. TV movies were only beginning to gain spectacular ratings with dramatisations such as Helter Skelter (1976), that focused on the Charles Manson family killings. But the events in Survive! were too strong for TV.

Other seventies horror movies that tried to gain attention by announcing they were based on truth were The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), The Amityville Horror (1979), and even The Exorcist (1973), though their connection with facts were all found to be extremely tenuous.

Survive! told a story that I knew to be true. I’d read the story in the Sunday supplements and seen colour photographs of the survivors trapped high in the Andes, after a small commercial flight crashed, way off course. When all hope of rescue seemed lost, they faced months of being snowbound, without any food. The only way they could survive was to eat the dead…


I ventured to the cinema to see what couldn’t be shown in the papers, even though I was too young to see an X certificate at the time (over 18’s only). Before home video, it was much easier to prevent the under-aged from accessing adult movies. It felt like a much bigger deal than it is now.

I saw Survive! at the end of 1976, on an unsuitable double-bill with an Alistair MacLean thriller, Fear is the Key. The posters and publicity were mercilessly playing up the cannibalism angle. Survive! played in my local 'grindhouse' cinema, Studio 7, which always had the dodgiest films and the lowest-budget horrors. I steeled myself – I was new to gore on the big screen…

But what I got was a low-budget Mexican film that had been dubbed into English. Little did I know, Robert Stigwood and Alan Carr had picked this up cheap and marketed it for a wider English-speaking audience, making themselves millions of dollars in the process. Perhaps Survive! helped finance their movie blockbuster Grease? Strangely, Survive! is missing from both Stigwood and Carr’s resumes on IMDB.

Mid-1970’s, this story was a timely gift to cinema – it fitted both the disaster movie and horror genre. Instead of Hollywood having to brave the protests against making a bad taste movie, they simply had to revoice the Mexican film to make a pile of money, one of Paramount Studio’s biggest hits of 1976. Though the news stories had already sold it for them, the marketing didn’t pull its punches. The posters showing the scene of a naked body being pulled through the snow, the trailers freeze-framing on the shot where flesh is cut from a corpse. Tasteful. (…and also on youTube).


I haven’t seen many Mexican movies, but I’m impressed with Survive! The plane crash is well-mounted for the time, and the snow-bound set looks just about convincing. But because they’re sticking fairly closely to the facts (despite changing the names of all the characters), the camera keeps its distance and you never get to know any of the characters very well. The rescue mission is similarly covered almost like a news story, in a very dry, uninvolving manner. For such an emotional story, there’s only ever real feeling when someone loses a relative.

For most of the time, it's a straightforward telling of real events in an unambitious TV movie style, but things suddenly get gruesome for the initial scenes of cannibalism. Flesh being flayed and a couple of half-eaten corpses are both shock effects more suited to Italian horror. Although the scenes are intact in the UK home video, I certainly didn’t see them like that in the cinema (they were mostly censored out). Seeing these brief scenes for the first time on video, I was shocked at how far they went at the time.

The Mexican version is 26 minutes longer than the English version that played in the UK and US, much more of the attempted rescue mission is shown. It was directed by veteran Rene Cardona, who was 70 at the time! Cardona was no stranger to Santo wrestling movies or Mexican horror, such as the infamous Night of the Bloody Apes.

The English version adds a photographic montage at the start and end, and lays on even more documentary-style voiceover. Obviously all the actors are dubbed, fairly loosely, into English, but this was a standard practice for foreign films in the seventies.

Besides cutting out large chunks of the story and tightening up many scenes, the order of events is changed in the English cut, like the timing of the discovery of the tail-section of the plane. A re-ordering of the facts to suit the flow of the narrative. But the most noticeable change is the addition of almost wall-to-wall music, a score by TV composer Gerald Fried. The Mexican version hardly has any music in it, giving it a more realistic feel, but the English version sounds like a TV movie, with many musical themes sounding far too upbeat. When the rescuers are out looking for the missing plane, they get a jaunty adventure theme, despite the fact that they are about to give up all hope.

Some credit is due though. The moment when the survivors decide to eat their dead colleagues and go out to their frozen graves, has a suitably nightmarish accompaniment, that reminded me of a cue from Jerry Goldsmith’s score for Poltergeist II.

I can’t imagine what the relatives thought of this film coming out so soon after the crash ordeal. The publicity from the news stories must have been upsetting enough. The story never really went away either. Hollywood eventually filmed their own version of the story as Alive (1993), a respectful twenty years after the crash. But despite the bigger budget and location filming, it’s hardly any different from Survive! It's the same story, but this time with English-speaking actors. The film peaks very early with the horrifying plane crash. But the cannibalism is only slightly less exploitative, the bodies in the snow now barely recognisable as human. There’s a bit more action as the survivor's attempt to reach the outside world, to tilt it towards the adventure genre. Alive felt less gritty than Survive! and concentrates more on melodrama, which the young cast barely carries off.


The best way to learn about these events is through a documentary. Both movies end with their rescue, but the story was really only half over - the survivors then had to face the press as the world learned that they had eaten human flesh. Joy at their survival was replaced with angrier reactions, opinions divided by moral and religious concerns.

Only recently have all the survivors felt comfortable talking about their ordeal in front of cameras, and they even revisit the crash site in a new feature-length documentary, Stranded! The Andes Plane Crash Survivors (2007), also called Stranded: I Have Come from a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains. Besides recalling their experiences, a camera found in the wreckage documented some of their story. Then the final moment when they were rescued was of course filmed by a news crew - a wonderful moment to see.

Watching the new documentary, hearing what they were thinking at the time is a completely different experience to seeing recreations of what they were driven to do. The various versions of this story through the years demonstrate how perceptions change.

Of course, if you still want to see it, there are only two ways to see the original Survive! at the moment. The Mexican version is on DVD as Survive: Supervivientes de los Andes and runs at 111 mins - there's a Mexican trailer included, and good English subtitles. (Available here from CD Universe.)

The shorter English version is rarer, on a long out-of-print VHS. But they still sell for low prices on eBay. Strangely the VHS (released by Thorn-EMI) was from a far better-looking print than the current DVD. The colours are more vibrant and the grading brighter. The VHS runs just under 82 minutes and is uncensored. The end credits cheekily list everyone who helped redub the film, but only mentions six members of the original cast!

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GOING TO PIECES: THE RISE AND FALL OF THE SLASHER FILM (2006)

GOING TO PIECES:
THE RISE AND FALL OF THE SLASHER FILM

(2006, US documentary)

New documentary on eighties horror films is a bit too revealing

Unrated region 1 NTSC DVD (Velocity/Think Film)

This is a good introduction to the sleazy genre of slasher films, that started in the seventies and hogged the eighties. High concept thrillers where teenagers were cut to ribbons - high body counts, inventive death scenes, and two-dimensional characters. The special effects relied on quick edits, prosthetic latex appliances and plenty of fake blood, and were sometimes the best bit in the film. There were plenty of shocks that made you jump out of your seat, a few groans for the shocks that fell flat, and if you were lucky, suspense. Some of them can’t be taken seriously today, because of atrocious acting, zero plot, fashion, and excess padding.


This new documentary celebrates the genre, weeds out the great films that do work and hopefully whets the appetites of new fans. Many of the films mentioned have since been restored uncut for DVD, because of their enduring appeal. New viewers now don’t have to be frustrated by the excessive censor cuts, when the films were first released.

There are wall-to-wall interviews with the directors and stars of the classic slasher films, including some that I haven't seen before. I was most interested to see the directors of the original Prom Night (1980) and My Bloody Valentine (1981). Sad to say that Bob Clark, director of Black Christmas, has since passed away after a road accident.

I still watch many of these movies, and I’d like to add a couple of criticisms. While many of the interviewees are very proud of the innovations and plot twists they dreamt up, it’s a shame that this DVD will introduce new fans but simultaneously spoil the endings, indeed show the endings, of most of the films mentioned. After seeing all the best scenes and the end of the movie, why go out and buy it? Having said that, the montages of gory effects certainly are impressively done, celebrating the excesses of the time.


Also, this history of the slasher genre, based on an exhaustive book of the same name, pretends to tell the story sequentially, starting with Friday the 13th (1980) and Halloween (1978). Only later on does it mention the films that came beforehand, films that influenced the genre and inspired those two films. Credit where credit is due, Friday the 13th ripped many death scenes from Mario Bava’s Twitch of the Death Nerve (aka Bay of Blood, 1971) – these are mentioned briefly halfway into the documentary. Halloween was also heavily influenced by Italian horror, John Carpenter admits he liked the the innovative prowling camerawork in Dario Argento’s earlier films.


While the story of the US films influencing each other as they turn into box office hits, Black Christmas (1974) easily predates many slasher themes (killer in a frat house, teenage victims, escaped psycho), and pioneered the madman on the phone plot twist later used as the crux of the story in When a Stranger Calls (1979). I’d have preferred if all these 'inspirations' were more thoroughly covered early on in the story.

A Nightmare on Elm Street’s Freddy Krueger, Friday the 13th‘s Jason Vorhees, and Halloween’s Michael Myers got even more famous after this movie cycle, as well as many big stars still working today. But it’s the lesser known films that I’m happy to see included in this entertaining and informative docco.

Perhaps now we could get a restored My Bloody Valentine, so that we can finally see the scenes promised to us at the time, in the bloody pages of Fangoria magazine? A miner’s pick must have been one of the nastiest weapons of the genre – let’s see it in action!


Do you want to see more?
For more classic posters, visit the Internet Movie Poster awards.

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