A View From Corona #8

Jeremy Lassen | July 2nd 2002 at 12:10 pm

“The solitary, steep hill called Corona Heights was black as pitch and very silent, like the heart of the unknown. It looked steadily downward and northeast away at the nervous, bright lights of Downtown San Francisco as if it were a great predatory beast of night surveying its territory in patient search of prey.”

- Fritz Leiber, Our Lady Of Darkness

Whenever I think about how “bad” the state of horror fiction is, all I have to do to cheer myself up is consider how much worse cinematic horror is. Have you BEEN to the theater lately? Have you seen how bad most of the horror movies are that Hollywood is jamming down our throats? The state of horror fiction looks positively rosy compared to its cinematic cousin.

With notable exceptions, the last two years have been a travesty. We are reaping the inevitable Hollywood rehash of the horror blockbusters of years past. Everyone is trying to crank out a Sixth Sense or Blair Witch clone (or god help us, another Scream), and little-to-no original horror films are finding a place in the multiplexes. Two of the best horror movies of the year last year - Session 9 and Ginger Snaps - received theatrical releases that can only be described as abortions. I haven’t seen such hatchet-jobs masquerading as theatrical distribution since October films butchered the releases of Michele Soavi’s classic Cemetery Man six or seven years ago.

I live in San Francisco, which is one of the few remaining cities in the United States that has a thriving independent/art house/repertory theater scene. San Francisco is the perfect market for quality, intelligent horror movies… and yet… both Session 9 and Ginger Snaps played for a SINGLE day in a single theater in San Francisco. This wasn’t because local theaters aren’t willing to run indie horror films. It’s because the distributor of these films had so little faith in the movies (after they apparently didn’t generate the right kind of enthusiasm from their teeny-bopper test audiences) that they dumped them onto the market… booking just enough screenings to meet their contractual obligations.

If I was one of the creators of these films, I would be livid. As a fan of horror, the fact that major movie distributors in this country have no faith in intelligent cinematic horror pisses me off. Unfortunately, Hollywood is blind to see the truth that there is a market for intelligent, well done horror movies. Blinded by their own bullshit. For example: I was talking with an author (who will remain nameless), and he was describing a meeting with a studio executive last year just after The Others (the exception that proves the rule…) hit big at the box office. This author was pitching one of his ideas: “I’ve got this idea for a supernatural horror story…” But the exec interrupts him, saying “No… horror’s out right now. We can’t do horror…. we need suspense… you know like The Others.”

To his credit, the author didn’t scream at this mindless Hollywood idiot that The Others was supernatural horror, and that the Scream imitations that Hollywood has been churning out and calling horror are actually just gory crime/suspense movies. Instead, he said “oh… suspense huh? Suspense? like The Others? Okay. I’ve got a couple of stories like that…” and then proceeded to pitch the same “horror” story that he had originally intended to pitch.

The problem goes beyond semantics, and what the difference between “horror” and “suspense” is. The problem is that Hollywood is a bloated, lazy, backward looking beast that only manages to make money and successfully reach an audience because they are essentially the only game in town. When everything is shit, the competent seems to be a work of genius. And the truly successful and cutting edge material doesn’t get done at all, or if it does get done, it is never given a chance to find its audience.

Hollywood’s backwards looking myopia can most clearly be seen in their reaction to the unsuspected success, The Sixth Sense. Hollywood gave us What Lies Beneath. Featuring extremely safe Hollywood icon Harrison Ford. Directed by extremely safe Hollywood hack, Robert Zemeckis (who’s spent the last couple of years producing competent but essentially soulless remakes of classic William Castle horror films… can’t wait for his latest remake, Ghost Ship to hit the multiplexes - yawn), with a script that of course, can be easily summed up (and dismissed) as a classic Hollywood “High Concept” - Fatal Attraction meets The Sixth Sense.

Another example of the pitiful state of mainstream horror cinema is Guillermo Del Toro. Last year saw the release of two Del Toro films. But the only reason the better of the two films was released at all (to a small, art house theatrical run) was because his backward looking, rather pedestrian (but competent) installment in the Blade franchise was released. His other film, The Devil’s Backbone was superior in every way. But it couldn’t even get distributed in this country until it could “piggy back” on some lame Hollywood sequel.

Unfortunately, things don’t seem to be getting any better. Once again, the best horror film of the year this year disappeared after a one week run in the theaters. Frailty, directed by long time character actor Bill Paxton, was a truly creepy, thrilling and insightful horror movie that deserves to be seen by every self respecting horror fan. It got crushed between giant multi-million dollar blockbuster openings, and most horror fans probably never got a chance to hear about it, much less see it during the week that it played. The sad truth is the latest installment in the tired Halloween franchise (expected this summer) will probably be seen by more people.

I have hopes that M. Shyamalan Night’s latest lastest opus, Signs will live up to the hype, and prove to be this summer’s The Others - an intelligent horror movie that actually gets promoted and finds an audience. The latest previews managed to be genuinely creepy.

And don’t even get me started on the fact that a brilliant film like Japan’s The Ring STILL hasn’t been released in the US, because Disney is sitting on the rights, waiting until they get around to a Hollywood remake of it. Shit, even US copy-cat versions of The Ring are hitting the theaters this summer, ala fear dot com, and there is STILL no US home video release of The Ring.

Anyway, I’ll stop bitching about Hollywood, and I probably won’t spend many more column inches writing about movies because when it comes down to it, EVERYBODY talks about movies… There’s an army of film critics out there, on the web and in the real world who yammer on endlessly about the minutia of Hollywood, movies, and horror flicks both crappy and brilliant, while utterly brilliant horror fiction comes and goes with nary a comment. So after this, it’s back to the stuff that deserves more attention…

Like the new Bentley Little collection (titled… what else, The Collection) that snuck into stores as a mass market paperback from Signet last month. Now THERE’s the exception that proves the rule. When was the last time YOU saw an original mass market paperback horror collection published by a major New York publisher? Like I said. Things aren’t all bad. But they’d be a hell of a lot better if you all went out and rented (or preferably bought) a copy of Session 9, Ginger Snaps, and Frailty. If distributors actually do well with intelligent horror films, we might see more of them. Consider the $20 cost of a DVD as a sacrifice to the horror gods to ensure a plentiful horror harvest in the years to come (Sorry, just watched the re-released Wicker Man on DVD…).

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