Regular Columns

A few years ago, I had the pleasure of reviewing Larry Fessenden’s Wendigo for this site. Recently out on DVD is his much belated follow-up, The Last Winter (not to be confused with the Canadian coming-of-age tale of the same name). I’m happy to report that the skill Fessenden showed in Wendigo is very much on display in his new feature.

Ron Perlman headlines as Ed Pollack, the company man whose job it is to make an oil-drilling project in northern Alaska a reality. His potential nemesis at the camp is James Hoffman (James LeGros), an environmental activist the company hired in an obvious stab at green credibility. Hoffman is concerned not just with what the drilling is likely to do to the pristine landscape, but also with issues already happening. The permafrost is melting and it’s raining in the Arctic in February, for instance. These are all serious problems, but then it appears that the melting land has unleashed something evil, and the team at the camp begin to die one by one.

Last week, as I was writing about lost films, I was musing about the many films I had read about in my youth but had never seen. Many of those from the early decades of film history are, I assumed, lost forever. I was thinking particularly of the really early stuff, and particularly of the films of Georges Méliès. While many of his films are still extant (and I have extolled the previous Kino release previously), many of those I had wished to see were those Denis Gifford describes in his Pictorial History of Horror Movies. A prime example would be The Merry Frolics of Satan (1906). The single still in the book – of carriage drawn by a skeletal horse with an accordion-like torso – has always fascinated me. So I was going to mention this film as an example of the lost but lamented. Just to be on the safe side, though, I did a quick search, and discovered, to my delight, that it is NOT lost. To my further delight, I found it on a collection which can best be described as mind-blowing.

There have been a number of Méliès collections to date, but not one, I feel safe in stating, has come close to what is on offer in Georges Méliès: First Wizard of Cinema (1896-1913). Five discs. 782 minutes. 173 films. These are, it seems, all the known surviving films, arranged in chronological order, boasting new scores, and, where possible, narrations following the original English text written by Méliès. Those narrations underline just one of the charming, fascinating aspects of these films. They are very clearly documents of cinema aborning, and the language of visual storytelling is only just being created. Méliès was a man of the theatre, and that way of thinking and visualizing carries through in his films. For all that he created the special effects extravaganza, his films are also redolent of filmed theatre: static camera, everything in medium long shot (as if we were in a good seat at the theatre), entire scenes played out in what is in effect (if not reality) a single continuous shot. The spoken narrations are thus often necessary for the audience to make sense of what is happening on the screen. For instance, because of the lack of close-ups and the like, the meeting of the astronomers at the beginning of A Trip to the Moon (1902) is nothing more than wildly gesticulating chaos, and no clear narrative is possible to discern without the narrator telling us where to look. As Méliès’ career was winding down, D.W. Griffith was busy pushing cinematic storytelling to full maturity, taking visual storytelling to a level of sophistication that is still what we are most familiar with today. But this very shortcoming in Méliès’ technique is part of the his work’s appeal: when we watch these films, we become conscious of seeing a new art-form in mid-formation.

So the news this week was very exciting for fans of vintage films, and especially for those whose dreams are haunted by thoughts of lost films rediscovered. Hot on the heels of Kino's announcement of a new DVD release of Fritz Lang's Metropolis, due next year and apparently a further improvement on their previous (superb) release, came word that a completely uncut version of the film had been found in Argentina. That, friends and neighbours, is BIG. The full three-hour-plus version of the film hasn't been seen since the original release, and not everywhere at that. In recent years, we've seen some pretty fine editions of the film, but all of them have had to make do with extensive summaries and mouth-watering stills to fill in the gaps. Certain characters that barely show up, if at all, in what has been seen to date, actually have quite substantial roles in the full version. And now it has been found. True, it's in pretty rough shape, but it exists, and no doubt a full restoration effort is underway. Kino has apparently said that the found footage might well be added to the forthcoming DVD.

So let's savour the thought for a moment. An uncut Metropolis. Who would have thought that we would ever see the day. I know I didn't. One can't but think that just about every lost film that might be found, has been found, and then this happens. One begins to hope again. Maybe other mythical beasts will turn up after all.

We’re all familiar with the zombie movie, most particularly the post-1968 zombie flick. That was the year George Romero permanently transformed the zombie into a flesh-eating ghoul – perhaps the only instance of a long-standing monster having its rules of behaviour altered almost beyond recognition, and to the point that there have been virtually no NON-flesh-eating zombies on film since Night of the Living Dead. But that’s a topic for another time. Co-existing with the neo-zombie movie, and sometimes fusing with it (as in 28 Days Later and its sequel), is the tale of mass psychosis. A recent example is the 2007 film The Signal, directed by David Bruckner, Jacob Gentry and Dan Bush.

In the nondescript city of Terminus (no doubt twinned with Racoon City), a strange signal is broadcast across all media. It has the effect of turning anyone who watches it into a murderous loon. Chaos descends quickly as one might imagine. The film is structured as three semi-distinct but overlapping stories (not entirely unlike Pulp Fiction, as has been pointed out elsewhere, though The Signal is far more linear than Tarantino’s movie). In the first, Anessa Ramsey leaves the home of her lover (Justin Welborn) to find her husband (A.J. Bowen) descending into the signal’s embrace. In the maelstrom of violence that erupts, she ultimately flees the apartment, unable to trust anyone. The second story is Bowen’s, as he tries to find his wife, and falls in with two other people in various stages of signal-mesmerism. This segment, often blackly funny, shows us the behaviour of the psychotics from their own perspective, and drives home the fact that they believe their actions to be entirely rational. In the third story, we track Welborn’s struggle with Bowen as he tries to find and rescue Ramsey.

Well, I’m back, with apologies for a couple of weeks’ absence, and with some more facile musings. I’ve dumped all over M. Night Shyamalan in this space before, and it would be tempting to do it again, but I haven’t actually seen The Happening yet, so I won’t officially trash it right this minute. However, the vox populi has spoken, and the movie is officially a bomb, which makes three in a row for our boy, following up the atrocities of The Village and Lady in the Water. Which means it might, perhaps be time for a re-evaluation of the auteur, perhaps even time for a different branch of fandom to claim him for their own.

Let’s put Shyamalan side by side with Edward D. Wood, Jr. Now Wood is the Supreme Deity of Badfilm. There are pretenders to the throne (most notably Doris Wishman), but Wood still rules over all. There are other filmmakers who are arguably just as incompetent, but, as has been argued before, what distinguishes Wood from his peers in badness is the fact that his films are earnestly meant. He wasn’t just pumping out hackwork. He was attempting, in his own charmingly misbegotten fashion, to create art. He had messages. He had things to say, even if no one else understood a blessed word.