Blair Witch: Resurgence

The Blair Witch Project was the first horror of my generation that I remember becoming part of the zeitgeist. So it was nice to finally have something to talk about with my peers, even if most hated it, even if I got the living pish kicked out me for liking it. All that mattered was I came out the cinema that day a complete wreck, and it felt great.

 Mary Brown feelin’ great.

The Blair Witch Project’s pioneering viral marketing campaign was so successful that audiences were unable to determine whether or not the footage they were watching was real. A modern sequel was never going to be sold like the original, especially in a climate where social media is ubiquitous and the majority of folk using it are chomping at the opportunity to spoil things for others because nobody will touch their genitals.

In an unusually creative turn for a commercially released film, Blair Witch was initially shot and marketed as The Woods. The actual title wasn’t revealed until its first public screening at Comic-Con; the audience thought they were watching a random horror called The Woods. Nice touch, lads.

The lads, writer Simon Barrett (left) and director Adam Wingard (right).

Wingard and Barrett are the most exciting and consistent collaborators in the genre, so when a teaser for their new film The Woods was released I got intense palpies. Imagine the nick of me when I found out it was actually a direct sequel to one of my favourite horrors; I felt like the mouse that caught the Babybel or whatever. The original had some potential to build upon and I knew these lads were perfect for the job.

The Blair Witch Project was also the first commercial found footage film and on a superficial level it focused primarily on people being lost in the woods. After a few watches I tapped into the metaphysical subtext, these people weren’t simply walking in circles and finding themselves back at the same spot - they were falling deeper and deeper into the curse they were already fated to live and die through, a nine circles of hell sort of deal but on a far less operatic scale. The idea of capturing something like that on physical media still fascinates me, these crusty students getting lost in the woods didn’t just take a photo of a ghost, they captured another realm.

Mike going tonto at the first circle. Coward.

When I sat down to Blair Witch I tried my best to mute all expectations, which I’ll tell you right now ruined any chance I had of fully enjoying the giant Aero I just bought from Poundland. The last film Wingard and Barrett made was one of my favourites of the decade and Blair Witch was a sequel to one of the best horrors of all time for fuck’s sake. But I was immediately relieved when Blair Witch picked up on the metaphysical theme in the opening five minutes. They presented the notion that the house the missing crusties found at the end of the original never existed, despite countless search parties on foot and in the sky. They were instantly on the ball and I could enjoy what was left of my Aero.

In addition to the perpetual progress of technology, the entire found footage format that The Blair Witch Project pioneered has changed, they were never going to be able to pull off the hoax of the original, so if the jig’s up, what do you do? Blair Witch didn’t follow the tracks of its predecessor, there was no shoehorned fan service, instead, it developed themes and tones, but most importantly, Wingard and Barrett appreciated that what fundamentally made the original work was simply how terrifying it was.

Mind that? Mind how terrifying that was? Fucked me right up for months.

Blair Witch isn’t a film about people getting lost in the woods, it’s a film about people being chased through the woods. It excels at being

I’m gutted that creative marketing, inventive storytelling and carefully crafted raw fear have proven fruitless and haven’t cracked the wall of mainstream homogenised horror. People just don’t know how good they could have it.

Stop saying this film bombed, you nerds.

-Danny

Recommends: Twin Peaks OST & Bohren and Der Club of Gore

  

This week, well last week, the tireless Mondo Records released what could be one of the the most iconic and essential scores of the past 30 years: the Twin Peaks soundtrack. 

Lovingly packaged in a deluxe-but-not-deluxury lasercut packaging with "damn fine coffee" coloured wax, Angelo Badalamenti's magnum opus has never looked and sounded better.

The album treads a cool-cat fine line between smokehouse jazz and teledrama lavishness. Pure eye-line lit, cigarette smoke hustle. The last dying embers before the night hits. Pure noir mixed with the musical equivalent of crash zooms as someone on Days of Our Lives finds a dead body while out on a jog. Julee Cruise's haunting ghost-pale vocals on "The Nightingale" and "Into The Night" echoing the stories main theme of Who Killed Laura Palmer? The voice haunting the stage of wooden paneled hotels and truckstop reflections, lingering over each actor like a sheet. 

Double bass, fingerclicks, and vibraphone at first sounding cool, confident, but slowly peeling back like wet wallpaper revealing darkness and mystery. Coming slowly down the hall, touching the walls as it goes, scraping bits off as it comes.

Badalamenti's score is nothing short of a masterpiece and even isolated from the film, makes for one of the greatest things you'll ever put on your turntable. Inimitable mood music, turning your flat into a whisky soaked cube of smoke reek and desire.

So while I'm here, I thought id recommend a follow up album to listen to. A basic follow up to the Twin Peaks soundtrack. A shade darker, but no less incredible.

Bohren & Der Club of Gore started out in a bunch of metal and hardcore bands in Germany, soon deciding to focus on other things, they naturally started playing Jazz. Jazz mixed with their past band mentalities and natures, coalescing into their own slow, slick version of Doom Jazz. Patient and deadly, moody and focused.

"Sunset Mission" is B&DCOG's greatest album (and one of my favourite albums of all time). Sounding distinctly similar to the Twin Peaks soundtrack but its own oilier versions. Where Twin Peaks goes for noir-drama, Sunset goes for pure oil black sludge. Replacing diners and hotels for abandoned industrial estates and alleyways in the rain. Chimneys in the night blasting out steam, lit by the streetlights in the industrial estates. Languidly lurching towards you like its been shot in the leg, the album knows when instruments are needed, not cramming it with pace and hooks. Everything builds and pulses. Vibraphone trickles in and fucks off, strings move and recede, the drums gloomily played like they're being hit by a guy who's joints have frozen, horns rasp in from another room then float into another. Everything is cool, slow and creepy. 

Its a pure transformative album, listening to it in the car or on a run completely changes the landscape. Things go from benign to suspicious. Time slows. Everything crystallizes, and its fucking amazing.

I'll stop now, but aye give Twin Peaks a buy and a listen, but if you want to meet its goth wee brother, listen to Bohren & Der Club of Gore's "Sunset Mission". Its an oil black slick of gloom and you'll love it.

-findlay

On Tour, Live from the field: VHS Trashfest, Glasgow 9/9/2016

The environment in which you watch a film can define, transform, reshape and cut new angles into it in ways you never thought.

I’ve watched Carpenter’s The Fog in the hull of a boat with 100 people in the pissing rain, a physical, tangible atmosphere you couldn’t replicate. I’ve watched The Entity alone in the house, terrified to even be in the house as soon as the credits end. Something watching it with a crowd could never have given me. What I’m saying is, sometimes it’s not just the film itself that gives you impact. It’s ~how~ you watch films that also do it.

VHS Trashfest, which it seems is now a yearly event, piled in with Physical Impossibility and Scalarama Glasgow to tapebend and ritualise one of the truest and purest and most revered formats for all genre lovers: the VHS tape. And what better way than to show 3 totally whacked out, cult, weird, funny, gory, disgusting films that you’d steal from yer uncle’s house when he was on holiday in Egypt. Not only that BUT there’s raffle prizes, trailers, good beer and a fucking VHS swapshop beforehand where you can trade, buy and get a hoot out of tapes. And maybe, secretly, have a good smell of those clamshells baby. Oh aye! The Video Namaste boys joined by Owen and Scott were inhaling copies of Lethal Weapon 2 like Dennis Hopper fae Blue Velvet.

knees are sweaty, stallones spaghetti

Screenings like this are important as fuck, not because we all had to sing happy birthday to a Video Player, no no, but because group screenings are a great way to share experience, meet fans of the genre, see things you’d never be able to and generally support local cinema and Feed The Scene. Go!

Get Crazy (1983)

Right, okay. I’m not going to do gigantic spiels on all these films because they’re all too good and it’ll last forever but Get Crazy is the best. Full on shambling, rip roaring, anarchic, punk rock, backstage documentary, drug-filled, drug-fuelled, kitchen sink, ideafest with amazing humour, constant non-sequiturs and daft stunts. Basically a new wave riot in the shape of the Critter ball, all about saving a theatre from being shut down and a huge New Year’s Eve party. Replete with cameos from Lou Reed, Lee Ving of Fear, Dick Miller and Fabian, this film does not stop. If one gag misses, there’s one like 30 seconds away that’s sure to actually have you clutching yourself with laughter. I’ll never stop laughing thinking about Malcolm McDowell’s arsehole-Mick-Jagger-type character Reggie Wanker, getting his heart broken and singing the most fucking hilariously pokerfaced emotional song. Lost in the mire of rights and producers, Get Crazy hasn’t been released on DVD or Blu-ray so seeing this was a genuine treat.

Night of the Creeps (1986)

An all timer. Fred Dekker’s 50’s b-movie, brain eating parasite throwback is full of beautiful cinematography, hilarious lines, belting practical effects, wee naked aliens and most importantly: some of the most loveable and iconic characters of the 80’s. A first time for Richie, Owen and Scott who all seemed to love it big time. For me and for Danny, it was one of those showings that I mentioned at the start. Reshaped. I’d always watched Night of the Creeps on my own or maybe with one other person, but in a room full of people who Got It, it totally changed. I noticed the soundtrack more, the beats and the laughs were noticeably so well placed, the deep love for the characters ~deepened~ by the crowd’s reaction to them and the little self-aware references in the film were clearer. Like, the Vaseline was wiped from the lens and I saw Night of the Creeps not as one of my favourite little underrated horrors but a full on party film. A fucking joy.

Blood Diner (1987)

YES. I love Blood Diner, man. Oh so it’s a loose sequel to Blood Feast, but set in a small town and features two weird as fuck brothers taking orders from their dead uncles brain in a jar to kill and take parts of women to build a new woman so that you can invoke an ancient Egyptian goddess? Ah cool, wait its directed by a woman? SIGN ME UP. Blood Diner is fucking disgusting, hilarious, and one of those vhs fever dreams of crushed blacks, misty lightning, body parts in fridges and a singular riotous vision from the great Jackie Kong. If there was ever a bleary-late-night film to site and warp yourself to. It’s this.

VHS Trashfest was fucking great. Amazing films run by truly nice and accommodating and welcoming people. If you can’t go to these things, or if there’s none around you. Make one. Get a bedsheet, borrow a projector, start your own club. Do the good stuff, the thing that everyone wants: Gross your friends out and show them a good time.

Thanks VHS Trashfest/Physical Impossibility/Scalarama! Yous are the best

-findlay

Dannys genuine heartbreak caught on camera

The Passion Project: Why I Love Project A-ko

I’ll be brief, as I get uncomfortable writing things like this. I can’t shake the thought of someone bursting in, announcing “Nobody asked for your opinion” and giving me both barrels. As well he should. (Also, Danny and Findlay will be raging that I’m talking about an anime instead of some shitey fuckin’ straight-to-skip horror film sequel. What’s up with those lads, anyway? Geez Louise!)

Project A-ko (1986) was the first anime film I ever saw. Back in the days where every single thing from Japan was called MANGA. Even Japanese cars. (My own father drove a Mitsubishi MANGA.) It is a parody film, and the references to other anime flew over my head. They still do. Despite this, or because of this, it was an ideal introduction to Japanese animation. What I was treated to was a showcase of what to expect from anime: mech battles, high school hijinks, incomprehensibly huge action setpieces, catastrophes wiping out millions of lives in a flash, and underpants.

None of these things are why I really like Project A-ko, though. There’s a strong nostalgic side to it, of course. But the appeal of the film for me is that it was a film that wasn’t written, but arranged on a storyboard. It began production without a script; the film didn’t have a writer. The director allowed everyone to make suggestions – character designers, animators, sound designers – and anything that was met with group approval went straight into the film. Democratic anarchy.

Project A-ko’s producer, Kazufumi Nomura, happy to dismiss convention.

Such reckless abandon shouldn’t result in a film as competent as Project A-ko. During its production, word got around that some young group of rookies were working on a film that was a no-holds-barred spectacle where animators were free to do as they pleased. Many eager young talents signed up to show their stuff. No-one was there for the 9 – 5 anymore, this was a passion project for a group of people wanting to make their mark in an industry they felt had grown stagnant or dull. Many of the Project A-ko staff believed anime had become too dramatic, and were keen to have some fun.

For a long time, if you were an animator with ideas, you put them on hold while working on what you were told to do. Then maybe someday you’d be a director. Even then, your ideas may never see the light of day should a studio decide to pass it up. Today, thanks to readily available digital animation software, this limitation has been bypassed. With YouTube and Vimeo, more and more amazing independent animators are given the opportunity to express themselves to a wide audience. (There was Newgrounds, though that was still a relatively tight-knit community rather than a place to show the world your talents.) Watching Project A-ko, I see the same passion for animation that I see today from young animators making whatever they feel will show what they’re capable of. And to achieve that in the days of cels and paint and cameras and film, it’s nothing short of inspiring.

And as if the visuals weren’t enough, there’s the original soundtrack. Now look, I clearly don’t know how to write about films. So I probably know even less about how to write about music. I won’t embarrass myself by trying. I’ll just tell you that I absolutely love it and provide a photo from the studio it was recorded in.

The good stuff.

I suddenly realise I haven’t said what the film is about. Hope you enjoyed all that READING! Later, losers. (Ha ha, but seriously folks!) It’s not about anything, really. Not being late for school, mostly – then aliens invade. Don’t worry too much about it, the staff sure as hell didn’t. And yet it was a hit. Awards, sequels and merchandise – including manga, (not cars) a tabletop RPG and (gasp) an interactive CD-ROM! I’ll now leave you with the film’s director, Katsuhiko Nishijima:

- Owen 

Holding Out For a Hero

The first time I watched Deadpool I was away with the goaly on marijuana cigarettes and Tennent’s Lager. Maybe my initial criticism of it was a little harsh, after all, a lot of people - whose sweet, hot takes that usually mirror mine - had been tooting its horn. I thought it was time for a re-watch because maybe they were right, maybe my judgement was clouded. It wasn’t.

The dialogue is lifted straight from pre-Instagram era subreddits, when Ryan Reynolds started this passion project, and amidst all the incredibly fun ultra violence and chaos there's a tonally jarring cancer plot. The most frustrating thing about Deadpool, however, was that it persisted in missing the mark when attempting to spoof the tropes of superhero films by simply pointing at them them; all that ends up happening is the film slips into the same pitfalls.

It’s a shame that it didn’t succeed in subverting the superhero genre because I’ve been battered senseless with it and I think it’s time for a change. The MCU blueprint has been photocopied so many times it’s now just a giant black blob; with the majority of films in its ubiquitous property practically indistinguishable from one another. I’m not even getting into DC, who pedal nothing but joyless Nolanised dross.

At least Zack's having a good time

Superhero films should be engaging and fun, but it’s tough to get excited about a pudding when you’ve been given a selection box for dinner. I read a few Marvel comics when I was younger so I have a vested interest, the Civil War comic was a pretty big deal at one point in my life so a live action version is a guaranteed pinger, ay? Sadly, no. When I paired the torrent of MCU mediocrity with Civil War’s running time I was left with an incredibly small and flaccid willy. That running time, Jesus H Christ, proof that sedation is the only thing that makes a long root canal fun.

Anyway, enough of this moaning pish, there are some absolute CORKERS in the
MCU that are worth talking about and learning from. Avengers Assemble, Ant Man, Iron Man 3 and the Big Bhuna, the one that got me thinking about what could rejuvenate the superhero genre – Guardians of the Galaxy.

James Gunn is a very interesting filmmaker with an even more interesting history. His roots are in schlock horror and he cut his teeth at Troma Entertainment. If you don’t know much about Troma I’ll give you a brief introduction. Troma is an independent film studio that was founded by Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz, they operate outside the film industry and ever since the 80’s they filled Roger Corman’s shoes by introducing us to some of the trashiest punkiest films going. They also provided a platform for brilliant talent like Matt Stone & Trey Parker and some stupidly big Hollywood names like JJ Abrams.

James Gunn being A Good Lad

The spirit of Troma was still very much alive in Guardians, with Lloyd Kaufman even making a cameo, so it’s obvious that there’s a broad appeal. Considering Guardians is still the third highest grossing film in the MCU I think it’s time for a little more Troma disruption.

The Toxic Avenger is Troma’s tent pole, and its main star Toxie is their mascot. Toxie, Troma’s poster boy who pureed a villain’s face with weights, was so popular he even spawned a cartoon and a huge toy range, Toxic Crusaders. It was a different time.

A different time.

Toxic Crusaders subverted the superhero genre, sent a positive environmental message and was bright, fun and colourful. Toxie’s the hero we need. That said, it would defy Troma’s anarchic DIY ethos if they made a mainstream film, but a Toxic Crusaders film? Now you’re whistling Dixie.

Reboots, particularly of superhero films, are lucrative but predictable, so the first step of breaking that tradition is choosing something from the leftfield. Get punters talking. Toxic Crusaders is an absolute anomaly, it was a cartoon that stemmed from very grotty, very adult z-movies, it’d be very in keeping with the spirit and origin of Toxic Crusaders to resurrect this aberration as a live action film.

All the lads all lined up.

Toxic Crusaders is about climate change and political corruption, issues that have never been more relevant, so the plot practically writes itself. Toxic Crusaders is deeply rooted in satire, so the script should be handed over to folk familiar with the territory, Matt Stone & Trey Parker would be perfect. It’d also be nice to hand a project of this scale back to Troma veterans, keeping this in the family and perpetuating Troma's self-referential nature. The action needs to be kinetic but the comedy should floor you, the boy behind Mike & Dave Need Wedding Dates (the biggest surprise of the year so far for me) is more than capable of both, and based on that film’s commercial appeal and success, I’m guessing that would keep the suits happy.

A live action Toxic Crusaders would work sooooooo well, all the components are there for it to –at the very least- rise out the black blob and dross and give superhero films the kick up the arse it needs. Besides it’d just be nice to see a hideously deformed creature of superhuman size and strength save the day again.

~ Danny