Well, Halloween is over, it's 'Splodey Night tonight in the UK, guess it's time to put away scary st-hmm, what's that BFI? A horror season lasting a quarter of the year? Oh, you know how to treat me properly!
Yes, the BFI are having a massive campaign celebrating horror films, in London at the BFI Southbank, online via the BFI Player service, and nationwide in various other events. Now this season is taking a fascinating direction unlike several previous such events. The films are grouped less by subgenre or such, but specifically the horror film archetypes the film is about, namely the figure of The Beast, The Ghost, The Witch, The Vampire, and The Zombie, and specifically looking at how different filmmakers from various backgrounds, cultures and subcultures have taken them in different directions. It's a fun, different approach to this sort of thing, it's running to the end of the year, so what I thought I'd do here is have a look at some of the more obscure films this is highlighting. Even if you don't see these at this event, they are all ones well worth tracking down. Not going to say too much about each, as I want you to discover their joys for yourself, here are my picks in rough alphabetical order...
A Dark Song
More people need to see this one; it's one of the most accurate and interesting takes on ritual magic on film, a solid two-hander of a drama, a powerful meditation on grief, and with some truly terrifying moments. The final scene of this is one of the most haunting, powerful, and emotional I have ever seen in a horror film, I won't even begin to hint at what happens.
Black Sunday
There were horror films made in Italy before of course, but for me this is where the golden age of Eurohorror began, under the direction of Il Maestro Mario Bava. Using Hammer's recent gothic revival as a jumping-off point this vampire/witch tale made Barbara Steele a star, broke new grounds in screen gore (which it was able to mostly get away with in being in black & white), and would be an inspiration to many for years to come, a perfect introduction to Eurohorror.
Good Manners
This season is very much about showing how many different voices have used the tropes of these films, and this is a perfect example of that. A reflection of Brazilian class struggles, unapologetically queer, taking a very feminine view on a classic monster, this is one that I'm going to see myself as I missed its original big screen showings a few London Film Festivals ago, and I've been kicking myself for that ever since.
Inferno
Dario Argento's follow-up to Suspiria, and for me at least, at moments it does almost eclipse that classic. Its plotting is anything but airtight, however that's no problem at all as it features a variety of images that will burn themselves into your brain long after viewing. Even in its no explicitly violent or supernatural moments, just one scene of a character being watched whilst they're at a lecture has a primal, inexplicable power to it.
Kuroneko
A samurai-era ghost story that takes a very critical view of the strict societal class structure of that era, especially of the samurai themselves. The cat spirits in this are an avenging force, almost an avatar for all women and others oppressed and violated by the men in that position, fighting back. Made just as black & white cinema had almost completely fallen out of fashion, this is a gorgeous, eerie watch, with a lot of the feel of a classic folk tale.
Ouija: Origin of Evil
The original Ouija is not a very good film at all, but for this prequel Mike Flanagan (yes, the mind behind Netflix's The Haunting of Hill House, Midnight Mass, Doctor Sleep...) took a very smart approach; pretend that Ouija was the many years later unsatisfying sequel to an earlier film, and imagine what that one would be like. The end result is a fantastic ghost story, where you really don't need to have seen the original to enjoy it (I actually recommend you don't, as it would spoil the surprises otherwise). It shows that even something made as a tie-in to a Hasbro product (seriously, it is!) can, with the right imagination, be something truly special.
Pontypool
This might be the only film I can think of that was simultaneously (as in, whilst they were literally filming the scenes) made into a radio drama. Now there's a rule in fiction of "Show, don't tell", and a lot of the time, that works very well indeed, it's fine advice. But if you're very clever about it, sometimes telling can be more effective, if you put the audience in the same position as the characters trying to figure out what the hell is going on. This single-location take on an outbreak horror is a perfect example of that, there are some truly hair-raising scenes that come from just the characters reacting to what they are hearing.
Society
The rich really are a different breed to the rest of us in this satire from Brian Yuzna. The first two acts are all a strange, paranoid build up, highlighting how different the world of the upper classes is to the lower. For the climax though, it's one of the wildest displays of 80s gore and transformation effects ever, made by professional Screaming Mad George (yes, really!), and partially inspired by the works of Salvador Dali. In fact, I'd say this film gets more relevant with age; there were special charity screenings of it the day The Cheeto entered the Oval Office.
Under the Shadow
In 2016 this was put forward for Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, and if you ask me it's a damn shame it never got a nomination. This very well done Iranian ghost story uses a lot of classic tropes (including making one old ghost trope that's almost a joke by this point into something genuinely terrifying), and gives them new weight by setting this in the Iran-Iraq war. What's worse than being haunted? How about when said haunted home is your one sanctuary from a terrible, oppressive regime, who would happily throw you in prison if they found out you once watched a Jane Fonda workout tape? And that last point is not an exaggeration!
Viy
If I said "The best horror film made in the Soviet Union", that really would sound like I'm damning this with faint praise. However, this is a genuinely great little film, not least for some truly wild imagery, including a huge selection of monsters and creatures at the climax, who enter the story thanks to some truly imaginative effects. Being based on a story by Nikolai Gogol, this is a great example of the way filmmakers would get away with stuff the censors would never allow, by just going "It's being true to classic literature!". Why do you think Cecil B. DeMille kept doing lurid Bible adaptations?
And that's just a fraction of the films and events that are part of this; just this morning, I've seen images of an immersive screening of John Carpenter's The Fog which look great, and probably way better value than Secret Cinema these days (YEAH I WENT THERE!). So have a look, see what's playing near you, and let's have a truly chilling (but in a fun way) winter!
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