The Black Museum: Lecture Recap

The long and storied history of film marketing and publicity can be summed up in images. On May 16, at the Black Museum's final lecture in its second semester, Andrea Butler discussed the evolution of movie posters in general and horror posters in particular. The purpose of the movie poster hasn't changed much over the years, but how the posters meet that purpose have.

Movie posters evolved primarily from the carnival poster. Although "higher" forms of art and entertainment used posters for advertising, film wasn't regarded on the same level as the theatre therefore its marketing campaigns took after the spectacle associated with more plebeian diversions. The first posters merely advertised the fact that movies were being shown and focused on engaging the audience through spectatorship.

Over time, as film became less of a novelty, the attention shifted away from the audience and toward film content. Early 20th century movie posters used scenes of violence to titillate and attract viewers--it didn't  matter if the movie was violent or not, the lurid images displayed on the film poster brought people to the cinema. Eventually, the violence on display--and the fraudulent use of violent images--caused an uproar and poster art was standardized in 1915.

Around this time, the star system was gaining momentum and that had a huge influence on poster art. Film had gained legitimacy and where before stars were disinclined to have their names and likenesses used for film advertising, there were now the focus of marketing and publicity campaigns. This gave birth to the "disembodied floating head" poster design, which is still used today.

Throughout the 1930s, the decade in which horror really thrived and came into its own in America, horror movie stars became inextricably linked with their characters. Not the heroes, mind you. But the monsters. Here is where the image became the icon. Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff were recognized for their performance as the villains, and their names, faces, and characters were conflated for the purposes of selling the audience on the movies; the bigger the name and face on the poster, the bigger the star. This same decade also introduced the image of the woman in peril.

Poster art changed again in the 1950s. This was the era of the B-movie, when science and technology featured heavily in the story as a force of evil. The star system was in decline and so posters began to shift away from recognizable faces. The monsters themselves became the the focus of poster art, as well as fear. Here, too, advertisers started calling out to the audience through image and text. The only real exception to this rule of monsters was Vincent Price. His face and name appeared on his movie posters, while other actors were simply billed in a cast list.

The mid-century gimmick movies involved the audience directly as participants in the cinematic experience, and these movies' posters were equally engaging. Posters dared the audience to see the film and advertised the kind of experience they would have at the movie theatre.

With the capture of Ed Gein at the end of the 1950s, serial murder entered the American consciousness and made its way onto the silver screen. Horror movies in the 1960s featured human killers and lots of gore, and their posters were similarly lurid. The Hayes code was still in effect for much of the 60s, so the violent images were relatively small, while most of the posters' real estate was held over for text. Playing opposite the gore films was a more emotional and cerebral horror, and their posters showed equal restraint. Appealing to the audience's imagination, these posters hinted at horror and violence instead of displaying it for all to see.

With the 1970s came an end to restraint. Horror movie posters went whole hog with the violence and gore: eviscerated bodies, the insides on the outside, enormous monsters, and women in deadly peril. But the more human the monster became, the more complex his representation in poster art. Whereas in earlier decades, the humanoid monster's face was used as a lure, in the 70s his face was hidden from the public. The implication is that anyone could be a monster in disguise.

Since standards for movie posters had long since disappeared, filmmakers could use any means to advertise to their audience. But still the formulas established in earlier years held sway. Posters still called out to the viewer, still used text to communicate the horror. A few movies did head in new directions, using holiday associations and focusing solely on the victim or the weapons used.

The 1980s saw it all, human and non-human monsters in the city and in the home. Old monsters were re-imagined for a new society and the 80s horror posters ran the gamut from traditional hand-drawn to more modern photographic images. Some posters focused on the victims as in the 70s, while others were more suggestive like in the 60s. A new trend took shape in the representation of the female body in which women's bodies were integrated into images of weapons and other objects.

80s poster art circled back to the 20s in which the monster transformed into an icon. This transformation is seen in the poster art of the franchise films wherein the killer is first obscured or not seen at all, and then becomes the dominant image in the films' advertising campaigns.

Unsurprisingly, the dearth of good movies released in the 1990s resulted in a slew of uninspired movie posters. The early posters of the 21st century weren't much better, and the photographic imaged dominated one-sheets across North America. A couple of notable exceptions include The Rites of Spring and House of Devil, two films whose posters were reminiscent of the art seen in earlier decades.

Today's poster art runs the gamut from bland to inspired. Artists working at the higher end of the sliding scale are mixing mediums, using typography to great effect, or hand-drawing images in their entirety. The advent of commissioned art for screenings is also contributing to the growing pool of fine poster art. Although commissioned art exists for fans, rather than as advertising for upcoming features, these posters prove there is a market for good commercial poster art.

Movie posters are artifacts of popular culture and, to a greater or lesser extend, represent the social and political climate of the films' era. The posters' images changed over time, though the purpose of the movie poster has always remained the same--to persuade the spectator. How exactly movie posters accomplished that goal depended on the dominant culture mores and attitudes of the time. Some posters pushed the enveloped, others simply copied an established format. Regardless of the movie poster's overall success as an artistic medium, they did manage to capture the essence of their films in one image, turning that image into an icon of popular culture.

So You Want to be a Ghost Hunter

Hemlock Grove (season one)

Of all the things to adapt for television, why would anyone choose a debut novel? Indeed, some books debut to fanfare, the authors lauded for their literary skill but Hemlock Grove and its author, Brian McGreevy, don't belong in that camp. McGreevy's publisher, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, have published award-winning authors, but again McGreevy isn't one of them.

I vaguely recall seeing this book at the bookstore and I might have been curious about it. But then I likely dismissed it because I don't like werewolf stories. I'll admit, this does bias me somewhat. And I'm not a fan of Eli Roth, either. So there's that. But I do like mysteries. I was willing to give a werewolf mystery TV show produced by Eli Roth a fair chance.

Truth be told, I did kind of enjoy the first half of the season. It had intrigue: brutal murders; a shady medical research facility; church-sanctioned monster hunters; a gypsy werewolf; a would-be vampire; teen pregnancy. I was curious to see how all the characters' stories would intersect, what the outcome would be. Would the unlikely pair of Roman and Peter identify the crazed werewolf that's eating the townsfolk before Dr. Chasseur finishes her investigation? What is project Ouroburos and is it connected at all to the various dragon references made throughout? And what, exactly is Oliva's role in everything that's taking place?

The answers, when they finally came, ranged from stupid to disappointing. Hemlock Grove, more so than any other horror TV series in recent memory, managed to piss away its potential resulting in what appears to be a hastily-assembled mash of plotlines. Hastily-assembled, and it took nearly thirteen hours to tell the story.

All of Hemlock Grove's story is crammed into the back end, and the final episode is less an end and more of a waypoint, a place to check your progress along a tiresome winding road. This kind of story telling is at best amateur, at worst deceptive. Moreover, there's very little investigation that takes place in what is, ostensibly, a murder mystery. Rather, the show's running time is devoted almost entirely to relationships and feelings, and what little horror there is exists only in terms of premise and special effects.

Gripping werewolf murder mystery or prime-time family drama?

Rich pretty-boy Roman is the only character with any arc, and even he takes a powder halfway through the season. To suggest that Hemlock Grove's twisting plot is what keeps the show interesting only proves that you don't know what a plot twist is. Hemlock Grove holds no surprises, or any real closure for that matter. Character plots don't intersect in any way that make sense and the various stories being told are properly developed to provide the viewer with any sense of forward momentum.

In short, the story goes nowhere and then, as if realizing it took too long, it rushes toward an end that defies logic and undermines expectations. It's disappointing in the extreme and upsetting to think everything that happened was just laying the foundation for a second season. I haven't felt this cheated since Underworld.

Hemlock Grove has all the potential to be a really good mini-series. A shorter format would cut out all the fat, but alas the greedy folks at Netflix had to go whole hog with a whole thirteen episodes of what is mostly filler. But maybe it's not their fault. Maybe that's just what you get when you pick a first-time novelist to write you a TV show.

On Location: Haunted Asylums

When you watch a lot of movies it's just a matter of time before you start to recognize certain locations. Like Griffith Park Observatory, which I'm sure you'll remember from Bowfinger and Charlie's Angels 2: Full Throttle. Or Toronto City Hall, which was first made famous by Yeti, The Giant of the 20th Century and then again in Resident Evil: Apocalypse.

Over the past few months I've seen a lot of haunted asylum movies and just recently saw two films back-to-back that featured oddly similar locations. To be sure, the inside of these places all look pretty much the same but the outsides in these two cases were so alike as to give me pause to wonder if the movies weren't filmed at the same place.

They weren't. But typing "haunted mental hospitals" into Google inspired me to take a closer look at some of the locations used in the haunted asylum sub-subgenre.

Linda Vista Community Hospital
as seen in BOO!, 100 Ghost Street, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer

The Linda Vista Community Hospital is on the US National Register of Historic Places. When the hospital opened in 1904 it was called the Santa Fe Railroad Hospital and was a Moorish-inspired design. The building was razed and rebuilt in 1924 in the Mission Revival style, and this is what survives today.

Initially, the hospital kept cows and chickens, and had a vegetable garden. In the latter part of the 20th century, the hospital fell on hard times and closed its doors in 1991. Since then it has become a popular shooting location for film and television. Beginning this year (2013), the nurses' dormitory building will undergo conversion into apartments.

Riverview Hospital
as seen in Halloween: Resurrection, Grave Encounters, every TV show shot in Vancouver

Listed on the Canadian Register of Historic Places, Riverview Hospital still functions as a mental health care facility, but in a much reduced capacity than when it first opened. In the first part of the 20th century, the hospital's grounds were 1000 acres and included a working farm. Presently, the hospital sits on 240 acres, the rest of the land having been sold off and developed.

Riverview is the most-filmed location in Canada, the Crease Clinic and West Lawn buildings being among the more popular.

Lincoln Heights Jail
as seen in A Nightmare on Elm Street, Room 33

The original jail was built in 1931 in the Art Deco style. In 1949 a second wing was added in Bauhaus Modern, and it's this mish-mash of architectural designs that gives the jail its unique appearance. The jail closed in 1965, and though it was only open for a short while, it still managed to colour its history with corruption and scandal.

On Christmas Day in 1951, LA police officers beat up six prisoners at the jail, believing they had caused grievous injury to a colleague the previous night during an arrest. As many as fifty cops were involved in the beating that lasted over ninety minutes. The beating was covered up, but continued pressure from the Mexican-American community forced the LAPD to investigate. Eight officers were eventually indicted, and five were convicted. A further fifty-four officers were transferred and thirty-nine were suspended without pay. The incident inspired the book LA Confidential.

The jail is a Los Angeles Cultural-Historical Monument, and like all similarly designated buildings is undergoing review for house or mixed-purpose zoning.

Danvers State Hospital
as seen in Session 9

Also known as the Danvers State Insane Asylum, the State Lunatic Hospital at Danvers, The Danvers Lunatic Asylum, the Danvers State Hospital is rumored to be the birthplace of the pre-frontal lobotomy. It's believed that Danvers was the inspiration for the Arkham sanatorium that appears in The Thing on the Doorstep by HP Lovecraft.

Located outside Boston in Danvers, Mass., the hospital was built between 1874 and 1878 and originally consisted the main administration building, called the Kirkbride Building, and four wings. More buildings were added over the years, and all were connected by a series of tunnels.

Although originally conceived as a residential care facility, the hospital's services expanded and the buildings grew overcrowded. Patients where housed all over the place, including the tunnels and eventually reports were issued regarding concern over the use of shock therapies, lobotomies, drugs, and straightjackets. Deinstitutionalization saw a decrease in the patient population and the hospital eventually closed in 1992.

Kirkbride is on the US Register of National Historic Places, but that didn't stop the the hospital buildings from being demolished. Only the Kirkbride facade remains.

Work in Progress: A Proposed Horror Canon

In Paracinema 19, I wrote an article titled “Firing Broadsides: Creating a Horror Canon,” in which I examine the issues surrounding canon-building. When I first proposed a piece on horror canon I thought it would be a fun time researching classic horror titles. I had no idea what I was getting into. Typing “horror canon” into Google didn't return much, and though Google Scholar yielded better results, I soon came to understand that I was getting involved in something much bigger and more complex than a simple list of movies. Canon was just the beginning.

Researching horror canon led me deep into genre history and development. As I learned, canon-building is a lesson in genre: how it grows and develops over time, and how it's studied and analyized. Through my readings, I learned that canon-building can be a divisive topic as the politics of inclusion and exclusion are applied during the process of canon formation. Why this film instead of that one? Why not this other film also? Thornier still is the issue of what's genre and what's not. I recall one author who, when asked the question, “Is it horror or is it thriller?” answered, “That depends on whether you like horror movies.” I'm not here to debate the issue of horror vs thriller, but I have a new appreciation for the difficulties involved in that kind of genre analysis.

What I am here to do is propose a horror canon. Ask any group of horror fans what's canon and no doubt they will each of them draw up similar lists. This would be the “unofficial” horror canon, an agreed-upon list of movies that are, for whatever reasons, important to the genre; classic films, great or award-winning films, cult films—all enjoy canon status within the hearts and minds of the horror-loving public. But what about an “official” canon, the authoritative list of horror movies that must be seen and studied for a proper education in genre film?  

To read the rest of this post, please visit Paracinema. I invite you to leave your comments on either site with your thoughts and recommendations about which movies should be considered for an "official" horror canon.

Trailer Review: The Colony

So I saw a trailer for The Colony when I went to see Olympus Has Fallen. It followed the trailer for After Earth, which made me think about Titan A.E. and how nobody really liked it but I thought it was good and so did my friend DJ but we've never sat down to watch it together which is strange.

While watching the trailer for The Colony, two things came to mind. 

Thing #1: It seems that every sci-fi movie nowadays is about the post-apocalypse. 

Thing #2: People aren't scary.

About that first thing, the fact that a lot of contemporary sci-fi is preoccupied with post-apocalyptic scenarios is rather telling. Future film theorists will theorize that we were afraid for our future (their present or past depending on how long this civilization lasts), a fear probably brought on by a cynical/pessimistic dissatisfaction with the present. Whatever the factors--social, political, climatological, or religious--the current state of affairs can only lead to apocalyptic disaster which more often than not manifests as either natural disaster or zombies (which may or may not be a kind of natural disaster in its own right).

This leads me the second thing, about people being scary. First I need to lay some foundation: I'm bored with zombies, and that boredom clouds my judgement and totally biases me against zombie movies. I'm including not-zombie movies, too. Films like 28 Days Later or Carriers in which people are sick and behave like Zack Snyder zombies (they're fast!) but are not actually dead (or undead).

I'm not so blinded by prejudice that I don't understand the point of the "zombie" film, that it's about the survivors, but how many times am I expected to watch the same plot? Not story. Plot. Plot is what happens, story is how the plot unfolds. Sometimes a movie manages to break the mold, Zombieland and Shaun of the Dead, for instance, are stylistic and funny, and Dead and Breakfast is just ridiculous fun. But most zombie movies, for the most part, are the cinematic manifestation of repetitive stress disorder. Just the same shit over and over again.

And then along comes The Colony, a post-apocalyptic survival movie about not-zombies. From the trailer the villains appear to be hunger-crazed people, who may or may not be possessed with a suite of super powers including speed, aggression, and noisiness. In much the same way that zombies have ceased to be scary through over-exposure, so too have not-zombies. There's nothing scary about a hungry, feral cannibal other than the immediate threat he poses. His motivations are known, his behaviour is predictable; he's all style and no substance, just like all those that came before.

Now if the hungry cannibal wore a mask of civility and behaved as normal person, just doing his best to survive the in the barren wasteland of the future (in this case, a snow-covered one), then he'd inject some substance into the picture. The insidious nature of the danger he poses would have long-lasting repercussions, would threaten the very nature of what it means to be human. He still might no be scary, but what he represents would be terrifying.

Maybe instead of The Colony, we should all just watch Ravenous. It's pretty much the same thing, based on The Colony's trailer, and likely a hundred times better.