An acerbic entry in the post-Halloween slasher craze that like the aforementioned film subverts a culturally-entrenched and beloved public holiday. Uniquely for its time, the mythos of its (assumed) villain engenders sympathy and makes commentary on the precarious conditions of the mining proletariat of the time (who lived at the mercy of apathetic and inhumane bosses). Its mark on the genre hits deeper than the chillingly-realised pickaxe slayings in the film, inspiring later foreign entries such as Amsterdamned (1988).
Reviews
4 Reviews
The Strangers
(2008)
Nothing Behind The Mask(s)
22 June 2022
In the post-Halloween world, dilettantes everywhere took it upon themselves to produce their own very own slasher movies (many of them misunderstanding the genius of Hitchcock, Hooper, and Carpenter, even lacking the ability to channel early Craven, Jess Franco or Herschell Gordon Lewis). The Strangers is part of the post-Scream wave of people who thought they'd take inspiration from the dilettantes themselves.
The film is technically competent and the acting is passable, but it's sad to watch a film and be made yearn for the paper thin plots of Friday The 13th or any of the infamous B-movie drive-in trash of the same period. The only symbolism I could discern in this film is that the two female antagonists' masks are astute metaphors for the film itself; a mass-produced copy of a copy of a copy, plastic and uninspired with nothing behind it. The only fear I felt was the uncanny horror of feeling your life flutter away at the expense of inferior cinema.
The film is technically competent and the acting is passable, but it's sad to watch a film and be made yearn for the paper thin plots of Friday The 13th or any of the infamous B-movie drive-in trash of the same period. The only symbolism I could discern in this film is that the two female antagonists' masks are astute metaphors for the film itself; a mass-produced copy of a copy of a copy, plastic and uninspired with nothing behind it. The only fear I felt was the uncanny horror of feeling your life flutter away at the expense of inferior cinema.
Silent Night, Deadly Night
(1984)
A Different Kind Of Christmas Carol
19 June 2022
The twofold cultural sacrilege committed by this picture earn my respect for their iconoclastic intentions if nothing else, attacking both an entrenched cultural staple of capitalism as well as the institution of the Catholic church. In the post-Halloween world where slasher villains increasingly ran amok on the big screen, it is refreshing to have one break the Michael Myers mould - for the audience's fear to derive not from the mere idea of the killer (which in this instance borders on unintentionally funny during his actual spree), but to derive it from his disturbing and uncanny origins.
The eponymous deadly night itself is, as previously mentioned, not the highlight of this picture - if anything, it is a slasher movie where the slashing is almost to the detriment of the film due to its gratuity and overexposure. Conversely, the silence is what is so deafening - a culture's refusal to recognise its own culpability in creating the mindset of a killer, both in the film and as felt in the real life backlash the film faced from the haughty 'moral majority' in the United States and beyond.
Billy, both the protagonist and the villain, is born not just of the tragedy that befell his family at the hands of a larger-than-life Santa Claus costume-donning maniac, but of the very real and rigid regime enforced upon him via the nunnery-helmed orphanage. The punishment-oriented didacticism which they preach mirrors that of the Santa Claus mythology, of gifts being selected for a chosen moral few while those who fail to meet the criteria of 'nice' are shunned and get their just desserts. Naturally, the monster that Billy becomes is crystalised by this, his damaged psyche instilled with a cruel and inhumane code that is shared by dogmatic Christian theology as much as the invented consumer tradition that is Christmas.
In the vein of films like Maniac, then, this film, while lacking perhaps the requisite production values to elevate it to being high cinema, does not hesitate to unveil and expose the insidious, sadomasochistic ideology underlying both traditional Christianity and its illegitimate child (Christmas as we know it).
The eponymous deadly night itself is, as previously mentioned, not the highlight of this picture - if anything, it is a slasher movie where the slashing is almost to the detriment of the film due to its gratuity and overexposure. Conversely, the silence is what is so deafening - a culture's refusal to recognise its own culpability in creating the mindset of a killer, both in the film and as felt in the real life backlash the film faced from the haughty 'moral majority' in the United States and beyond.
Billy, both the protagonist and the villain, is born not just of the tragedy that befell his family at the hands of a larger-than-life Santa Claus costume-donning maniac, but of the very real and rigid regime enforced upon him via the nunnery-helmed orphanage. The punishment-oriented didacticism which they preach mirrors that of the Santa Claus mythology, of gifts being selected for a chosen moral few while those who fail to meet the criteria of 'nice' are shunned and get their just desserts. Naturally, the monster that Billy becomes is crystalised by this, his damaged psyche instilled with a cruel and inhumane code that is shared by dogmatic Christian theology as much as the invented consumer tradition that is Christmas.
In the vein of films like Maniac, then, this film, while lacking perhaps the requisite production values to elevate it to being high cinema, does not hesitate to unveil and expose the insidious, sadomasochistic ideology underlying both traditional Christianity and its illegitimate child (Christmas as we know it).
Beyond Football
27 May 2022
Warning: Spoilers
Alan Clarke's deservedly-renowned and masterful eye for biting social commentary, as evidenced from "Scum" (1979) to "Made In Britain" (1982), is cemented in his parting swan song "The Firm" (1989). What superficially seems to be a film straightforwardly indicting the 'English disease' of football hooliganism as well its sensationalised media coverage in fact cleverly uses said hooligan culture as a microcosm of far more grandiose and complex phenomena, from institutions to nation-states.
The finale, in which the overzealous pack leader of the Inter City Crew, Bexy, is shot and then martyred is both poignant and cerebral. Bexy (played without flaw by Gary Oldman in a breakthrough role) and his increasing taste for ultraviolence, and how his jingoistic attitude in this regard brings him into conflict with more levelheaded ICC members, is to the audience both disturbing and abhorrent. Upon being shot by the rival firm's leader after a bloody skirmish, all doubt and hesitance of those aforementioned levelheaded members is washed away and Bexy is both canonised and lionised by his former underlings and peers. Such a theme is applicable far beyond football, to the nature of contemporary nationalism and statehood, how martyrs are made of gung-ho soldiers and subsequently violence is sanctioned in their name.
The prank played by Bexy upon a new recruit, wherein they concoct a false narrative regarding an initiation ritual in order to coax him into ritual scarification, is equally pertinent beyond the world of hooliganism. The performative nature of such rituals, whether they be rites of passage in subcultures or mandatory requirements for nations, is thus highlighted, in ironic contrast to the prior scene showing media commentators discussing with haughty anthropological dispassion the supposed majesty and nobility of hooligan subcultures.
Clarke's target is not those with an interest in small spheres designed for recreational sport, but with an interest in the vast sphere we all live upon.
The finale, in which the overzealous pack leader of the Inter City Crew, Bexy, is shot and then martyred is both poignant and cerebral. Bexy (played without flaw by Gary Oldman in a breakthrough role) and his increasing taste for ultraviolence, and how his jingoistic attitude in this regard brings him into conflict with more levelheaded ICC members, is to the audience both disturbing and abhorrent. Upon being shot by the rival firm's leader after a bloody skirmish, all doubt and hesitance of those aforementioned levelheaded members is washed away and Bexy is both canonised and lionised by his former underlings and peers. Such a theme is applicable far beyond football, to the nature of contemporary nationalism and statehood, how martyrs are made of gung-ho soldiers and subsequently violence is sanctioned in their name.
The prank played by Bexy upon a new recruit, wherein they concoct a false narrative regarding an initiation ritual in order to coax him into ritual scarification, is equally pertinent beyond the world of hooliganism. The performative nature of such rituals, whether they be rites of passage in subcultures or mandatory requirements for nations, is thus highlighted, in ironic contrast to the prior scene showing media commentators discussing with haughty anthropological dispassion the supposed majesty and nobility of hooligan subcultures.
Clarke's target is not those with an interest in small spheres designed for recreational sport, but with an interest in the vast sphere we all live upon.
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