ARCHIVES Sept/Oct./Nov./Dec. 2008

 

November 29, 2008
SAMUEL Z. ARKOFF and FANEX FILES

Alpha New Video released SAMUEL Z. ARKOFF: THE FANEX FILES on October 28, 2008, the first in a series of documentaries called THE FANEX FILES. These documentaries are culled and focused around the hours and hours of video footage as we captured our guests who appeared at FANEX throughout the years. Our actual first completed documentary focused on director Robert Wise, but Alpha felt that Arkoff had the better chance of mass audience sales, so we went with that one first. Our second entry will cover our Hammer guests, and perhaps after that one the Robert Wise feature will be released. People can buy the Arkoff documentary, on line at http://www.oldies.com , at a bargain price.

Seeing the documentary, directed by wife Susan and long-time collaborator cinematographer Jeff Herberger, reminded me of how we first encountered the iconic Samuel Z. Arkoff. Of course, it was over the phone, and he maintained a young assistant who acted as the go-between early on, but soon Arkoff was talking directly to Sue and me. He was very concerned that no one would remember him or the old American International movies, and I assured him that was never a problem. I stressed to Sam that he was involved with the 1950s AIP drive-in teenage fare. He was involved with the 1960s Vincent Price Edgar Allen Poe movies. He was involved with 1960s exploitative counter-culture movie fare. This morphed into 1970s exploitation and blaxploitation movie fare. And the list went on and on and on. Arkoff, who was still quick-witted and very sharp, seemed to be interested in the value of posters from AIP movies, and he claimed to have a mountain of them. He wanted me to find out specific prices for specific pieces and hinted that he might bring posters to the convention to sell. Well, our conversations, very pleasant and very satisfying, continued off and on several months before the show. He shared old stories about the movies, how he was the producer who first saw Mario Bava's BLACK SUNDAY and quickly purchased the film for American release. He reminisced about those quick-buck publicity gimmicks waged to make the opening weekend successful so the double-bills would have legs and find success outside of the few mid-western theaters in which they opened, in the middle of winter.

When Sam Arkoff arrived at the show, he was wheelchair bound but still enthusiastic and energetic. His speech haltered and was a tad slow, as if he were trying to find the words to express exactly what he wanted to say. But his thoughts were clear and his sense of humor intact. It seemed Arkoff had not seen Roger Corman, another guest at that year's show, for decades and he hinted he was looking forward to renewing acquaintances with his old cohort. The thought that our convention might bring these two giants back together, one more time, was very special to Susan and me and it made us proud to be part of such a reunion. When the meeting ultimately occurred, it seemed these two moviemakers had lots to talk about and lots of catching up to share. One thing Sam wanted to do was to stand tall, all on his own power, and walk to the podium to receive his Laemmle Life Achievement award, but Sam was very involved at the show, pushing himself around, meeting with fans, holding court here and there, that by the Saturday night award show he was probably bone tired. But after the fine introductory speech honoring him, the smiling Arkoff rose from his wheel chair and walked gingerly to the podium where he received a standing ovation even before he spoke. And at the end of his passionate speech (not bad for the lawyer who ran the business side of the company, leaving the late James Nicholson to handle the artistic end) he received another standing ovation. Sue and I were so happy that Arkoff found an audience of fans who remembered him fondly, his movies and American International Pictures. For Arkoff, the weekend became one long party, one of deeply felt remembrances and thank yous from thousands of fans.

Unfortunately, Sam Arkoff passed away one year after the show, most likely never seeing Roger Corman or any of the other stars who appeared at the convention ever again. Hosting a giant such as Arkoff during their twilight years becomes so important because most of these business folks never realized the influence their products had on the generation of baby boomers who grew up with AIP. Many fans started out by screaming to THE SHE CREATURE, followed the trend with I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF or INVASION OF THE SAUCER MEN, matured to the Gothic period horror movies such as HOUSE OF USHER and the more modern horrors of X, THE MAN WITH X RAY EYES. Their counter-culture spirit was drawn to movies such as THE WILD ANGLES and BORN LOSERS, and drug experimentation movie fare continued with THE TRIP. Soon the horror genre was reborn in 1970s films such as FROGS, BLACULA and THE THING WITH TWO HEADS. American International Pictures was always there in our youth, our adolescence and our early adult years. Producer and AIP co-founder Samuel Z. Arkoff spearheaded all these and other productions. And it was very special for all of us involved with FANEX and CLASSIC FILMFEST to remember and say thanks to the only surviving member of the company, and to show him that his films left their mark for an entire generation of now aging B movie fans. I am positive that Sam Arkoff left the show that weekend feeling emotionally overcome and appreciated, if not loved.

I am proud to say that Sam Arkoff's spirit and sense of humor comes through strong in the documentary, and we hope to keep the FANEX spirit thriving through this and other FANEX FILES.

On another side note, we never had Mr. Arkoff sign a release for the documentary, so we had to approach the surviving children, daughter Donna and son Louis. It literally took the very busy Donna (who is married to Hollywood producer Joe Roth) about six months to find time to view the documentary. She was in constant contact with Susan, apologizing and even inviting us to Hollywood to watch the documentary with her. But then she admitted one reason why she was so slow to watch our movie. She stated she never saw any movie footage of her father since his death, and the thought of seeing him magically reincarnated was quite emotional for her. But when she finally saw down and watched the footage, she immediately signed the release, gave us all her blessings and hope for continued success. We then had to pass this on to Louis, Arkoff's son, and he signed the release immediately allowing the film's release. It was very special for us to make the children of Samuel Arkoff so happy. These are the type of perks that Susan and I got from sponsoring these conventions. While the Arkoff convention lost tons of money, it was a success in ways in which Sue and I can never forget. Sometimes one cannot measure success by money alone.

November 4, 2008
What Really Frightens Us?

I find it constantly provoking to think about what exactly frightens movie fans in the horror movies they watch, decade by decade. The obvious question remains, do the same things that frightened people in the 1930s and 1940s continue to frighten us today? How has the substance of horror changed in the cinema from the early talkie days through the Millennial films playing in movie theaters today?

We all understand that before DRACULA (and even in 1935's MARK OF THE VAMPIRE that followed) the supernatural was usually explained away, often at the very end of the film. Classic Universal pushed the supernatural to the forefront with its vampires and werewolves and mummies (DRACULA; DRACULA'S DAUGHTER; WEREWOLF OF LONDON; THE WOLF MAN; THE MUMMY; THE MUMMY'S HAND). Whether the impetus of horror was the supernatural effects of the full moon, a plague perpetrated by blood borne vampire attack or the curse of the bloodline, mainstream horror no longer avoided the unexplainable.

By the 1940s, the horror moved from external to internal, chiefly realized by the cinema of Val Lewton. His delightful twist on THE WOLF MAN, CAT PEOPLE, involved the same sort of shape shifting predicated upon a village curse involving sexual arousal literally transforming the aroused into a predatory beast. However, the horror of CAT PEOPLE is purely psychological, Irena's fear being one of the mind, marrying the man she loves, but denying him sex in fear that giving in to her sexual urges will transform her into a beast that will slaughter the man she loves. The same sort of merging of classic monsters and the diseased mind carry over into other Lewton films, such as I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE and ISLE OF THE DEAD, where people fear they might become vampire-like creatures of the undead, resulting from a plague. The balance between psychological and supernatural tips completely toward the horrors of the mind with THE LEOPARD MAN. In this too long neglected classic, a child's murder at the claws of an escaped leopard soon motivates the local museum curator to kill the beast and use its skin, carcass and claws to continue its killing streak. Shades of PSYCHO. Perhaps horror cinema of the 1960s was born here. Lewton's THE SEVENTH VICTIM involves a modern-day satanic cult whose members punish a too-chatty young female member with death, using a knife-wielding assassin, a lurker in the city shadows, to track her down and do her in. Shades of ROSEMARY'S BABY? At first the cult tires to use peer pressure to have her drink poison, but her will to live is too strong. Finally, at her wit's end, the poor, pathetic female takes her own life by hanging herself in her own apartment.

Horror travels in cycles, and the psychological cycle would return in force 20 years later with PSYCHO, ROSEMARY'S BABY, REPULSION and a rash of copycat psycho thrillers created by Hammer, Amicus and even mainstream American studios.

But the 1950s became schizophrenic. Half of the horrors involved evolving technology and science going mad and sometimes creating creepy terrors in the lab. From this premise came the invasion of the giant bugs and mutant humans including GODZILLA, THEM, THE DEADLY MANTIS, TARANTULA, THE AMAZING COLOSSAL MAN, THE INCREDIBLY SHRINKING MAN, etc. Normal-sized science-gone-mad monsters included THE FLY, THE VAMPIRE, MONSTER ON THE CAMPUS, THE WASP WOMAN, etc.

Yet the other half of horror output of the decade returned to the decidedly supernatural. Hammer revamped the world of supernatural horror by returning werewolves, vampires, zombies and Frankenstein's monster to the forefront. Other supernatural classics of the era include Lewton alum Jacques Tourneur's NIGHT OF THE DEMON.

The 1960s horror arena, as stated, returned to the world of psychological horror, making the psycho killer a horror film icon. However, the supernatural reigned supreme with the continuation of the reinvented classic Hammer horrors, as well as supernatural exercises including THE HAUNTING, CARNIVAL OF SOULS and Mario Bava's BLACK SUNDAY and follow-up BLACK SABBATH.

Things evolved, becoming much more complicated in the 1970s and 1980s. Science and supernatural horror merged with classics such as ALIEN and ALIENS. These films are not quite supernatural horror monster romps, nor are they pure science fiction. But many horror movies of this era involved the horrors of our bodies becoming something they were not. ALIEN focused on alien reproduction and how living human bodies could cocoon alien monsters during their gestation period. The cinema of David Cronenberg also dealt with the horrors of our bodies transforming into something monstrous and alien. His early films such as SHIVERS, RABID and SCANNERS involve such monstrous transformations. And during his mid-career Cronenberg remade THE FLY with better acting and special effects than the original. Also born during these decades were the ultra-splatter movies that relied too heavily on graphic mayhem, dismemberment and grisly murders. Supernatural serial fiends such as Freddie, Jason and Michael Myers ruled the horror film world, replacing refined actors of the genre such as Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Vincent Price, Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee with franchise fiends that came directly out of the headlines (escaped lunatics from mental institutions, unfortunate child murder victims, psychopathic children running amuck, etc.). But most essential during this period of time was the debt of the most masterful modern horror film director, Dario Argento, whose supernatural classics (SUSPIRIA, INFERNO, PHENOMENA) stand toe-to-toe with his giallo (DEEP RED, OPERA).

During the 1990s J-horror arrived with an explosion of Japanese and Korean horror movies that were quickly bastardized in American revisions/remakes, but at least these Asian horror movies returned to the quiet horrors of ghost cinema with strong psychological insight. Urban legends became the fodder of countless scripts and the serial killer psycho fiend continued to dominate horror cinema. The serial killer genre reached an artistic peak with SILENCE OF THE LAMBS making Hannibal Lecter an almost sympathetic serial fiend. This decade marked the rediscovery of Italian and Euro horror DVD ( giallo standing side by side with supernatural visual representations of hell, as crafted by masters such as Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci), as America seemed eager to embrace foreign horror, as American horror was full of listless retreads that had historians declaring the death of the horror film genre.

Today horror is up and down, inspired and generic teen romps (DISTURBIA, ALIEN VS. PREDATOR) being released alongside more mature efforts such as THE MIST, remakes (good ones at that) of TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE and DAWN OF THE DEAD, wonderful satires that crack the whip such as SHAUN OF THE DEAD and nouveau zombie scarefests such as 28 DAYS AFTER and LAND OF THE DEAD. Even the vampire cinema, by way of graphic novels, underwent revitalization with 30 DAYS OF NIGHT. At least horror has once again gone mainstream and usually warrants a hefty budget, even though CGI and makeup effects too often go over the top and draw too much attention to the technique of horror, rather than focus on the substance. Once in a while a supernatural gem such as PAN'S LAYBRINTH comes along, merging the horror with fantasy, much as the fantasy genre has replaced the hard science genre of science fiction. Remember, in today's cinema zombies are brain dead victims, former human beings, who still try to survive by mimicking their past lives and existence, sometimes with humorous but cutting effect in SHAUN OF THE DEAD.

Today, horror fails to get under our skin. Instead, thunderous musical "stingers" assault our ears, booming us out of our seat whenever directors intend to frighten us with sudden jump cuts of horror. If the visuals don't knock us down, the thunderous soundtrack most likely will. CGI monsters and blood-curdling makeup technicians take the imagination out of grisly deaths by forcing us to see, in autopsy-like detail, the effects of horror mayhem that before we might only imagine. Or if we saw gore, it was only momentary. Sexuality, nudity, perversity and special effects rule the horror cinema today. Audiences, mostly young ones, do not seem satisfied unless they are given the "full Monty" of extreme splatter. Once in a while a movie such as HIGH TENSION or IN THE COMPANY OF WOLVES try to raise the bar, subjecting audiences to sensory assault, but assaulting them in artistic-rendering ways with higher artistic expectations. Too often horror movies such as UNDERWORLD and VAN HELSING seem more like video games than actual movies, and the director's purpose is little more than to marry marvelous mind-boggling CGI animation to create a Gothic world that seems less real than those creaky Universal (yet powerful and well produced) set designs from the 1930s (where skies were sometimes painted canvases). Today's films have computer-generated correctness with relentless pacing and action. Often plot and character have been sacrificed for the sake of producing a franchise roller-coaster ride from hell. When it's over audiences want to see it all over again and hopefully be just as frightened the second time around.

Fifty years ago horror truly made us think, feel, see and dream nightmares of horror. Today horror cinema is more about screaming, catching ourselves scream, and then laughing out loud and feeling dumb for being "had." Horror movies are more often products, usually franchise sequels, which seem closer to fast food restaurants than cinematic art. Somehow we keep consuming, but we continue to feel fat, bloated and unsatisfied. Rather, we feel as satisfied as a Big Mac and fries can momentarily make us feel.

September 21, 2008
Where Have I Been???

Brother Richard, Gary Svehla, and father Richard

Sometimes life gets in the way.

Between (also before, during and after) the time I cyber-published MIDNIGHT MARQUEE #76 and now, my Blog ceased publishing new features. Let me explain. During the past four weeks our efforts (begun last May) of moving my father Richard Svehla from assisted living to a nursing home worthy of him came to fruition last weekend. Richard is now safe and happy at Riverview Rehabilitation and Nursing in Essex, Maryland. The people there are wonderful and my father is doing well. He seems happy.

For those of you who do not know Richard from the pages of our magazine or from the FANEX conventions, he was the person responsibility for keeping the magazine going during the 1960s. When I wanted to do the first issue of GORE CREATURES back in 1963, he encouraged me, even to the point that he went out and bought me the hectographic printing system that we used for the first few years of publication. When my mother thought that the only kind of writing that mattered was fiction, she told me she felt I was wasting my talents and encouraged me to stop publishing my little fanzine. However it was Richard who became the buffer and told me to keep on keeping on. Besides, my father loved doing all the conventions we did then, manning the table, meeting friends and fans, and selling, selling, selling. My late friend Rick Neff once confided, jokingly of course, that he remained my friend so he could spend time with my father, and many of my closest friends felt the same way. Richard was always there in the basement, cranking out the issues, collating, addressing envelops, adding names to our database (then a plastic box with index cards), taking phone orders, going to the post office, etc. Without him, I wouldn't have gotten past issue #6, our first year of publication. He kept the enthusiasm going.

Richard was always listed as managing editor, even though for the past 35 years he was only involved with the shipping and sales (at shows) of the merchandise. However, his spirit permeates every page we ever published... either hard copy or digital. He deserves that by-line.

Richard, now enthusiastic and spirited at age 88, suffers from Alzheimer's and has shown symptoms of dementia for over five years (living alone he was able to hide his symptoms from the family). He remains slim and trim and his physical health is superior for any man his age (he walks without the use of a cane or walker)... his mental health is, alas, not so hot. He is still happy to see me and asks about the family (names he does not remember) and how the car is running, but his personality is still the same and he seems content to be sitting outside on the Riverview patio overlooking the Back River, a mariner and boats in the distance. My father loved the water and owned two different boats in his prime; he loved to fish and crab. He still loves the women and always hangs out with an attractive one. He plays Bingo, enjoys his meals and is doing better than merely getting by.

But the politics and bureaucracy of Medicaid and red tape has occupied all our free time for the past month. With Richard now settled in and happy, life, hopefully, can return to normalcy and this Blog can once again prosper more regularly.

Thank you all for understanding!!!!

September 21, 2008
TRUE BLOOD Reinvents Vampire Cinema

No cinematic genre has remained more metaphoric than the horror genre, specifically, the vampire genre. And HBO's exciting new series created by Alan Bell, TRUE BLOOD, creates a new vampiric metaphor for today's world.

During he classic Universal days, Bela Lugosi's Count Dracula was the Valentino of the Undead, the romantic bloodsucker who seduced females. He was the forbidden lover that every father warned his daughter against. He was the exotic/strange European that American women found mysterious, off limits but totally sexual. We never see Lugosi sink his teeth into human flesh, and we never see any droplets of blood (except when Dwight Frye cuts his finger). But we see the mating rituals and the intense gaze that the Count uses to mesmerize his intended victims.

After the status quo was maintained during the 1930s and 1940s, the 1950s presented scientifically created vampires with films such as ATOM AGE VAMPIRE and THE VAMPIRE, where blood-sucking fiends were created in the atomic laboratories or via chemical compounds formulated to help mankind. But the 1950s vampire image was about to be further re-invented by Hammer Film Productions, one generation after the Universal classics.

When Hammer arrived with its arsenal of blood, graphic violence and lush Technicolor, the vampire too had evolved. Now he was the victim of evil personified, seduced to the dark side by giving in to an insidious cult of the Undead in BRIDES OF DRACULA and KISS OF THE VAMPIRE. In Hammer's classic HORROR OF DRACULA, Dracula became not merely the romantic seducer but the erotic predator whose nocturnal visits to his victim's boudoir resembled physical rape as much as romantic seduction. When one of his own "brides" attempts to seduce his house visitor Jonathan Harker and sink her teeth into his neck, the Count returns abruptly to his library, his face smeared with blood of his latest victim, his eyes bloodshot and wild, as he attacks the woman and reminds her that humans are his victims--his alone! In these and other Hammer films, young girls and women wait for Count Dracula wearing scanty negligees, nestled in their beds, the French windows or doors open wide, their necks naked and exposed, their breathing labored and heavy in orgasmic pants, obviously becoming a metaphor for sexual intercourse. As Dracula's phallic teeth penetrate vulnerable necks, the girls are photographed as their fingers and fist flex and relax, an obvious sexual release.

During the decade of the late 1970s through the 1980s, in films such as Tony Scott's THE HUNGER and Kathryn Bigelow's NEAR DARK, the vampire cult became even more obviously sexual and morphed into a metaphor for the AIDS epidemic, which was spreading widely out of control across America and the world. The only solution was a transfusion of bad blood for good, as NEAR DARK emphasized, and the main idea was that the dreaded disease of vampirism was caused by the blood and could be cured by replacing the diseased blood. Blood borne pathogens replace superstitious and cultist evil. "The blood is the life, Mr. Renfield."

So where is the vampire cinema headed today? As Alan Ball's TRUE BLOOD shows us, vampirism is now a metaphor for alternative lifestyles, with the vampires in this film version of the Southern Vampire book series by Charlaine Harris "coming out of the coffin," so to speak. This is because a Japanese scientist has created synthetic blood that allows vampires to live among ordinary humans, even though biases and apprehensions still exist. The southern religious right, of course, does not accept a world of vampires among us. However, in the small southern burg of Bon Temps, cute little waitress Sookie (a now fully grown Anna Paquin) is attracted to the new vampire in town, 173-year-old Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer). Sookie is cursed with the ability to read people's thoughts, and her existence is a noisy one of little peace and quiet. She seldom dates because the sexual urges and games that men play are too-soon telegraphed by their thoughts (romance without mystery seems pointless to her). However, Bill Compton is the only person whose thoughts she cannot read, so this of course makes the vampire desirable. When Sookie saves Compton from a pair of hangers-on who are only interested in Compton to drain him dry and sell his blood, he returns the favor when the psycho-duo surprise Sookie at night and beat her to a pulp. The only "cure" is for her to drink some of Compton's tainted blood. No, she doesn't become a vampire but she does take on some of their attributes, including a wildly increased libido and enhanced sensitivity.

TRUE BLOOD is getting better week by week, and after all these decades of cinematic vampires, coming up with something invigorating in the world of vampire cinema is quite refreshing. The show is made for HBO cable and the series does not shy away from sex (one wild sequence in the premiere episode shows a glowing-eyed, full fanged naked vampire mounting an attractive young female from the rear) and gore (the unsettling beating Sookie receives, culminating with her spitting blood). But basically, the story is a romance of budding interests between affected Sookie and lonesome Bill Compton and the bond forming between them. But the show's metaphor for vampires as gays/lesbians coming out of the closet and attempting to be accepted in mainstream society is one of extreme interest and timeliness. Humans fear people who are different, and the vampires, able to suppress their urge for human blood by drinking the synthetic stuff (which is sold in "good ol' boy" vampire bars), are trying to fit in. Bill Compton even tells Sookie he is trying to remain as low-key as possible because he wants to make Bon Temps his home, against all odds.

We hope that TRUE BLOOD has a long life on HBO and continues to develop both character and theme. And once again, finding new relevance in the modern age, the vampire cinema continues to demonstrate its shape-shifting ability to adapt to any historic time period or social situation in which vampires may exist.

September 21, 2008
FRINGE Plots Steal From Classic Horror

J.J. Abrams, the producer/writer behind ALIAS and LOST, is now back with a new weird science fiction series on Fox, FRINGE. While the first two episodes were involving, mysterious and creepy, the plots drew my attention immediately.

The second episode was called "The Same Old Story," and man, they could not have used a better title. Even though the series has the edgy conspiracy feel of vintage X-FILES with the strangely twisted plots of LOST, the stories so far have reminded me of other movies.

For instance, in the premiere pilot episode sexy Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv) has to remember a face that she never actually saw, so the only way for her to save her agent friend (who, as it turns out, isn't actually a friend at all) is for the new age Dr. Frankenstein, the institutionized Dr. Bishop (John Noble), to fill her full of life-threatening drugs and place her almost naked in a sensory deprivation tub of water, allowing her to experience explosive events that happened in her immediate past. I turned to Sue and stated, hey, this reminds me of ALTERED STATES, and before I could say Ken Russell, who appears but Blair Brown, one of the lead stars from ALTERED STATES! Was she there to drive this plot point home?

Things got even weirder in the second episode, the one titled "The Same Old Story." The original story inspiration was a period piece, so this ultra modern variation cleverly disguised its inspiration, but the second episode was a clever re-thinking of THE MAN WHO COULD CHEAT DEATH. We could probably even attribute that film's forerunner and give credit to THE MAN IN HALF MOON STREET. Or better yet, we could also credit THE NIGHT STRANGLER, the second TV movie to feature Carl Kolchak. But here's the connection. In this FRINGE episode, we have an ancient fiend who keeps himself alive by using the pituitary gland of murder victims to keep himself from aging. Working together with another Dr. Frankenstein-style scientist, the fiend pretends to be another demented serial killer, who uses a muscle relaxing injection to paralyze his young, female victims so he can slice their face and skin backwards to expose the brain, but the method to his madness is his taking the gland while the victims are still alive. Finally he gives the women an overdose of the drug to allow them to die painlessly. Of course, by the episode's end, the formerly youthful man is transformed to old and ugly when our heroes rescue the latest victim and prevent our killer from stealing his latest pituitary gland.
The bottom line is that FRINGE has been recycling its main plot ideas from other better-known horror films of the past. It is true that J.J. Abrams is a fan of science fiction and horror cinema, but it seems a wasted opportunity to premiere a show as quirky and off-putting (I mean this in the most positive sense) as FRINGE and then dress it with recognizable horror film plots. Have Abrams and his crew run out of fresh ideas, or does he think it an homage to try to sneak these plots through to see if any genre fans will recognize the remake/remodeling occurring here? I cannot wait for the third episode to see if more of these shenanigans are afoot.