Is there anything left to say about horror films in cultural
context? I admit that when I
picked up Jon Towlson’s new book Subversive Horror Cinema, I was feeling skeptical – especially since Towlson covers
some of the most-analyzed horror films of all time, including
NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE
and DAWN OF THE DEAD. But as soon
as I started reading, I realized that the author is savvy enough to know
what’s been said before, and insightful enough to contribute something new.
Like many of the genre’s most intelligent critics, Towlson
takes his initial cue from Robin Wood (and, by extension, Adam Simon’s
documentary THE AMERICAN NIGHTMARE).
He examines horror films not as “cultural artifacts” but rather as conscious polemics that “challenge the
status quo during times of ideological crisis,” and so he has selected
particular titles based not on their popularity but on a careful definition of
“subversive.” Subversive
horror films, according to Towlson, are (1) anti-authority, (2) sympathetic to
outcasts and monsters, (3) unwilling to reaffirm the status quo at the end, and
(4) taboo-breaking.
Importantly, his work shows that such films are not
subversive by accident. Sometimes a film will reflect the
zeitgeist in ways that the filmmaker never explicitly intended, but in-depth
critical readings of such tenuous connections can get heavy-handed and
self-important very fast.
Likewise, when a filmmaker is more concerned with politics than
storytelling, the films themselves can get heavy-handed and tiresome. In a study like this, a writer needs choose films that are both intentionally thematic and genuinely entertaining. Thankfully, Towlson has done that.
The structure of the book is chronological, beginning with
Universal horrors (specifically FRANKENSTEIN and FREAKS) and ending with a
chapter on “Post-9/11 Horror.” For
every film under his microscope, Towlson synthesizes previous interviews with the filmmakers and important essays on the subtexts of the films themselves (“a
fusing of personal preoccupation and national trauma”) in support of new ideas. For example, he draws on the
biographies of directors Tod Browning and James Whale to demonstrate their
personal commitments to social criticism, then looks at how their films protest
the idea of a eugenics-based society.
This chapter serves as a stirring reminder that Americans were
relatively open-minded about eugenics until Hitler came along with ideas about
a “master race,” and that realization is bound to have an affect on anyone's
viewing of FRANKENSTEIN and FREAKS.
Towlson does the same thing for Val Lewton’s psychological
horror cycle of the 1940s and Herman Cohen’s teenage monsters cycle of the
1950s. Lewton is a
popular topic of study—but I had never thought of Cohen in the same light, as a
producer-auteur with a unified body of work. Towlson points out that it was Cohen’s idea for AIP to
target a new demographic with I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF, and to repeat the
formula in I WAS A TEENAGE FRANKENSTEIN, BLOOD OF DRACULA, HOW TO MAKE A
MONSTER, HORRORS OF THE BLACK MUSEUM and BLACK ZOO. This jives with the recent work of Justin Humphreys, whose
interviews with the directors of four out of six of these films reveal a
distinct lack of auteurist sensibilities.
(Which is not to say that Cohen should be recognized as the auteur behind these films. He just happened to be the one with a marketable vision.)
Despite the glaring problems of applying the auteur theory
to any film or series of films, I find it rewarding to consider the “teenage
monster” movies in this new (to me) context. Towlson tracks minor adjustments to the basic
formula in order to show how the films changed with the times—and that
illustrates the most exciting possibilities of a critical study like this.
The author continues into relatively uncharted territory
with the next chapter, an examination of the works of British filmmakers
Michael Reeves and Pete Walker (with David McGillivray). David J. Pirie has written brilliantly
about THE SORCERERS, WITCHFINDER GENERAL, HOUSE OF WHIPCORD, FRIGHTMARE and
HOUSE OF MORTAL SIN—situating them all within the context of the British Gothic
literary tradition and British filmmaking in general—but Towlson helpfully
presents these films as lesser-known analogs to modern American horror
classics like PSYCHO and LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, ROSEMARY’S BABY and THE
EXORCIST. He also relates
them to the theories of social psychologist Erich Fromm, producing
sophisticated insights that go well beyond the usual horror film
criticism.
The subsequent two chapters examine the “modern American
horror movie” (NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, THE TEXAS
CHAIN SAW MASSACRE… as well as the more obscure but equally important
DEATHDREAM and Romero’s THE CRAZIES) in relation to war movies and westerns.
In recent years, I have become fascinated by the similarities and
differences among America’s most violent mythologies, so I was thrilled to read
a comparison of LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT to the hyper-violent anti-western
SOLDIER BLUE. I’m pretty sure Wes Craven would appreciate the comparison too. When I interviewed him a few years ago, Craven told me he
had been a big fan of westerns when he was growing up (excepting HIGH NOON,
because the other kids would often tease him about a line from the theme song that
refers to “a coward, a craven coward”), but had become pretty jaded about “the
John Wayne myth” by the time he made LAST HOUSE. Towlson highlights a related theme —that “any
society based on aggressive values is bound to collapse”—in Romero's work.
The highlight of this section on modern American horror is the author’s focus on Jeff
Lieberman’s BLUE SUNSHINE as the connective tissue between David Cronenberg’s
SHIVERS (a philosophically ambiguous story of revolution) and George Romero’s
DAWN OF THE DEAD (the “culmination of 1970s apocalyptic horror"). The quotes from Lieberman are original to Subversive
Horror Cinema, and very welcome.
Chapter 8 is a penetrating analysis of HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A
SERIAL KILLER and AMERICAN PSYCHO as critiques of Reaganomics. This chapter again illustrates the
author’s deft selection of material for study. A more obvious choice would have been John Carpenter’s THEY
LIVE, but that film is a pastiche, painfully obvious in its satire,
and lacking the taboo-breaking quality of a subversive horror film. Instead Towlson compares these
two cutting-edge slashers with the forerunners of the “yuppie nightmare movie”:
SOMETHING WILD, AFTER HOURS, and VAMPIRE’S KISS. And again, his stretch beyond the obvious horror genre
staples is refreshing.
Chapter 9 tackles the work of Brian Yuzna, as well as the films of Peter Jackson and Frank Henenlotter. Towlson sums up Henenlotter’s vision perfectly (“transgression
inevitably brings with it self-destruction”) and he should be praised for shining
a light on Yuzna’s unfairly neglected work. Hopefully this reappraisal will direct
horror fans back to Yuzna’s work in much the way that Jason Zinoman’s Shock Value prompted reassessment of
Dan O’Bannon’s work. I’ve always been a fan of SOCIETY and RETURN OF THE LIVING
DEAD 3, but now I'm inclined to pay serious attention to THE DENTIST. And maybe even THE DENTIST 2!
Subversive Horror Cinema concludes with some insights on 21st
century American horror, including a cycle of “new feminist horror” films
(particularly TEETH and AMERICAN MARY) and a scattershot survey of
transgressive shockers. Towlson's
analyses (STAKE LAND as a post-modern GRAPES OF WRATH!) remain exciting and astute.
The research is thorough. The organization is brilliantly methodical. The writing is precise, almost surgical. This is just my long-winded way of
saying: If you’re a serious horror fan, you need to read this book.
No comments:
Post a Comment