Remember Tobe Hooper's Salem's Lot?

My good friend Brian, AKA Apparition (who writes a damn good blog himself as part of the horror bloggers coalition, check it out!) inspired me with his recent post to revisit Tobe Hooper's seminal television adaptation of Stephen King's Salem's Lot. Unlike Brian, I was only 2 when this aired in 1979 and was unable to watch it when it was first rolled out. I'm almost glad I missed it cause I guarantee you I would have filled my Wranglers if I had.

I've never been that much of a vampire enthusiast. I appreciate Browning's Dracula primarily for the magnetic performance of the great Bela Lugosi, but without that inimitable Hungarian thespians histrionics, it would be a rather dull and stagy affair. I didn't appreciate Langella's late 70's take on the count much beyond the hysterical giggling fit his coiffure gave my friend and I during one late night viewing that led us to refer to the film as Conair Dracula, a practice we continue to this day. I especially dislike the notion of a tragically sexy and romanticised bloodsucker, so soccer mom shower nozzle masturbation fodder such as Interview with a Vampire, True Blood and Twilight do nothing for me. I do love Murnau's Nosferatu though. Sure, it's slow and outdated, but the atmosphere is like a lead funeral shroud and Max Schreck's take on the Count is in my top 3 portrayals along with Gary Oldman and Salem Lot's Reggie Nalder. I love Coppola's Dracula more as an audacious, experimental art film with psychotic, wildly varied performances than as a Vampire film per se. I have decided after this most recent appraisal that Salem's Lot is without a doubt my favorite Vampire film of all time.

Credit must be given to King's source material. Above anything else, King has always been remarkably adept at populating his tales with an array of relatable characters who interweave to create a small town mosaic we can all find truth in. Tobe Hooper takes this great foundation and builds a veritable mansion of a film atop it. He makes us believe in this town, its people and their struggles. As the film develops at it's own languid pace, we have the opportunity to get to know these characters, come to care about them and to fully understand the complex relationships they all have with each other.

This has a lot to do with how well cast the film is, but even more in how Hooper takes this large assemblage of actors from disparate backgrounds (English stage training, 70's cop show, Eastwood westerns and Z-grade exploitation) with huge age gaps (8 to 80!) and pieces together a cohesive tapestry of performances. For me, this deft handling of his cast is no more apparent than in the cat and mouse exchange between Kenneth Macmillan's constable and James Mason's Straker at the antique store concerning a dark suit. The subtle, tension filled battle of wills playing out underneath the surface of their seemingly quiet conversation is some of the best acting I've seen in any movie, let alone a horror flick made for television! This is but one example in a 3 hour film filled to the brim with such well played interaction. David Soul brings a tough intelligence to his role and Geoff Lewis is a particular standout with his sad, wounded, lost loser just trying to get by as a nobody in a small town.

But I'll be damned if the whole thing doesn't eventually come down to Reggie Nalder's Barlow for me. THIS is how a vampire is supposed to be! Unearthly, disquieting, terrifying, revolting, plague ridden, ratlike and just generally monstrous beyond human comprehension. There's a scene toward the end when Barlow springs from his coffin so utterly horrific that I, at 32 years of age, jumped back from the TV and pulled my hands toward my chest cause I didn't want him to get me! Hooper's presentation of this piece of visual dynamite is the model of restraint and film making skill. We see Barlow only when we need to for exactly as long as we need to. He's barely in the film, but his Satanic presence permeates every frame as he wordlessly looms over the towns decay and eventual destruction. The archetype of a bloodsucking creature who manipulates the living, feeds off of them, infects them and lays waste to their ideals and innocence is perhaps the most deeply rooted fear we as humans have and Barlow in Salem's Lot is the penultimate expression of such an atavistic oppressor. The way I see it, Vampires don't date, they don't save you, they don't pine for lost love while playing the harpsichord and they sure as shit don't sparkle. They ingratiate themselves, they corrupt, they feed, they destroy, then they move on to the next town. Like the plague rats that laid waste to Bremen!

Other than pontificating on my opinions concerning Vampire cinema, I wanted to write this because I feel Tobe Hooper is a monumentally underrated director. His signature style is all over Salem's Lot. The crane shots, the ensemble cast, the way he develops and executes his scares, it's all here in spades. Please revisit this bona fide Vampire classic if you've grown tired of the shaved chest, pouty lipped, bodice wrinkler aesthetic bloodsucking cinema has adopted in the last decade. You won't be disappointed and you might just be reminded that Hooper is about a hell of a lot more than The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The man truly is a master of horror in my book and no matter what the bulk of folks in the genre circles I run say, The Mangler is entertaining and fun as hell!

Splice: One man's critical appraisal

There are a great deal many reasons why Splice is such a breath of fresh air to theatrical horror. It's devoid of insipid, superficial teenagers and their immature antics. It features remarkably strong actors in all the lead roles whose dedication and integrity to their craft produces performances of such a caliber rarely seen in the genre. It boasts wildly imaginative creature design work from the preeminent practitioner's of practical effects, the illustrious KNB. The Director has deft skill behind the camera and took the time to compose beautiful shots and create a unifying visual atmosphere throughout disparate locations. Whether or not you appreciate the manner in which the film's story plays out is nearly irrelevant in the face of so many inarguable pluses. The reviews I've read have picked up on the obvious science run amok theme, which, despite being both patently fascinating and scarily prescient, is certainly nothing new to the genre. The film is reverent of its forbear Frankenstein, in not only thematic construction, but in the sly naming of its two leads after actors from Bride of Frankenstein. Still more reviewers have picked up on how potent its parental metaphor is. As a father myself, I was keenly impacted by the painful truth concerning the difficulties couples face raising a child which shines through the outrageous nature of the surrogate scenario. What I don't hear many people discussing is the startlingly feminine nature of the film. Sarah Polley's performance is absolutely brilliant in this, but the most stunning thing about it is that she portrays the lead character. Not the lead character in the sense that Jaime Lee Curtis played the lead in Halloween, as an empty, pure vessel who events and action happen TO and AROUND. No, that's the standard lead female role in a horror film. Sarah Polley's Elsa is a lead character whose decisions and actions DRIVE the narrative and propel the story. Adrien Brody as her more timid mate, is constantly playing catch-up and reacting to the consequences of her decisions, effectively placing him in the traditional female role. This is hugely important to take note of. Elsa is a fully realized, 3-dimensional character with her own psychological baggage, wants and needs. If you think a while on it, you'll realize there are few such female characters in the history of the horror film. Perhaps it is this narrative decision that makes the film so unique, for it steers the tone into unfamiliar waters that may seem murky and frightening to the bulk of the male viewers. Adrien Brody's Clive becomes a nagging naysayer and sulking buzzkill. The focus becomes Elsa's exhilaration with the discovery of her maternal instinct on her own terms and without the input, either emotionally or genetically, of Clive. So, a third of the way into the film, we have the story of a driven, intelligent career woman whose ambition and vision supersedes that of her husband deciding (against Clive's withering wishes) to further their research, push scientific and ethical boundaries and to expand their family unit. In the interest of fair warning, there be spoilers and unchecked theoretical postulations ahead. The Spliced hybrid child is named Dren by Elsa and quickly becomes the other focal point of the story. The tale has now become one of mother and daughter struggling to find a middle ground between protection and imprisonment, nurturing and belittlement, discipline and tortuous abuse. Women are vastly more complex creatures than men so it stands to reason the dynamic between two with a filial connection would be a veritable powder keg of contrasting, powerful emotions. Elsa wishes to educate Dren, to make her pretty, to see her flower and take flight. But when Dren becomes increasingly, uncontrollably powerful and threatens to figuratively and literally take flight, the dark side of Elsa's lioness protective instinct kicks in and it is devastatingly unsettling to behold. In an earlier scene in which she applied make-up to Dren, Elsa proffered a tellingly traumatic anecdote concerning her own adolescence with her own unstable mother. "My mother wouldn't allow me to wear make-up. She said it debases women. But who doesn't want to be debased every now and again?" This line of dialog no doubt seems confusing and conflicting to most men. As well it should. As men, we never have to consider the tipping point where our own desire for attention becomes unwitting, potentially harmful self-exploitation. This is an issue and a stage in women's lives that has tremendous and lasting impact and the nature in which their guiding female figure (or lack thereof) comes into play is of paramount importance. So Dren, tired of her imposed sequestering, exerts her budding power and attempts an escape. She is knocked unconscious by the only mother she's ever known, strapped to a table and maimed, shorn of her gender identifying clothing and callously scrubbed free of the make-up that was earlier so lovingly administered. Elsa has gone from gentle gal pal to stern, psychoses-inducing matriarch in a manner that while admittedly brutally fantastical, is grounded in a sadly highly identifiable (to women) truth. So not only does the film deign to allow characters to behave in complex, sometimes detestable ways without crossing into outright villainy, it has the temerity to boldly confront the epic, generation spanning struggle that is entering into and dealing with womanhood. Then of course there is the much ballyhooed and oft derided sequence of inter species sex between Clive and Dren. Sure, it occasions some childish giggling and uncomfortable scoffing, but this moment is about a lot more than gross out titillation and implied incest. It's about a young woman, confused and coming into her own, being held back and dismissed, then seeking attention in a naive manner from someone who readily gives it. It's about someone in a position of power being weak and exploiting her need to be noticed. This may be the moment everybody laughed or said "Ewwwww!", but those reactions were no doubt brought about by an uneasy acknowledgement that this sort of thing, sans the genetic hybrid element, happens all too often. This is a complicated, challenging film that has a lot more for women to relate to than men. It's had my head working overtime since seeing it and I will no doubt continue to unearth its mysteries for years to come. I'm not asking my male compatriots to go into the film with a Women's Study mentality, just to consider that a film about issues foreign to us might be a beneficial watch and perhaps, just perhaps, more horror films with TRUE female lead characters and themes pertaining to the feminine experience might not be such a bad thing.