The Screengrab : stuck

Remembering Amicus, the Other British Horror Movie Factory

Phil Nugent — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 18:00:00 GMT

Anyone with an interest in horror movies probably knows something about "Hammer horror", the strain of movies put out by the English production house for some twenty years beginning in the 1950s, which produced its own versions of the classic Universal monster films and made cult stars of such actors as Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. Hammer had its own wayward, dark cousin--the films made in the 1960s and 1970s by Amicus Studios, which might easily have been mistaken for Hammer product by twitchy-eyed buffs on a misspent matinee weekend, or later, by kids parked in front of the TV on a Saturday. As Will Hodgkinson recalls, Amicus was the result of a handshake deal between "a socially inept scriptwriter called Milton Subotsky and a fast-talking hustler called Max J Rosenberg". Subotsky was the hands-on, on-set presence during the company's salad days. Everyone who met him seems to remember him as a very sweet man and a bit of a social misfit and oddball--which kind of figures, very sweet men being in short supply in film production circles. Ironically, he is also remembered as a true horror buff, in contrast the the bosses at Hammer, who happened to find a commercial niche and beat it into an assembly line. "Had it dealt in garbage disposal," the director Freddie Francis once said, "it would have been just as successful." And Subotsky, Hodgkinson writes, was "driven by a deep-rooted hatred for Hammer. In 1956, Hammer had rejected a script he wrote called Frankenstein and the Monster, only to go on and have huge success with a similarly themed film called The Curse of Frankenstein. To Rosenberg, this proved there was money in British horror movies. To Subotsky, the gauntlet had been thrown down." It must have pleased him considerably to feel that he was eating into Hammer's market share, making films pitched to Hammer's audience that sometimes featured actors who were identified with Hammer, such as Cushing and Lee, while telling interviewers that his own stuff was better.

While Subotsky wrote scripts and hung out on sets overseeing the filming and driving the directors crazy, Rosenberg stayed in America, cutting distribution deals and shoveling money across the Atlantic. Not that he shoveled in great quantities; Amicus gave their movies a top-grade look while pinching pennies by hiring actors, ranging from horror stalwarts such as Cushing, Lee, and Vincent Price to the likes of Jack Palance, Burgess Meredith, Denholm Elliott, Terry-Thomas, and Joan Collins, by hiring them for only a few days at a time. Their first real production, the 1965 Dr. Terror's House of Horrors (directed by Francis and written by Subotsky), was an anthology film, with five short stories contained in a wraparound framework with Cushing telling the fortunes of a group of men in a train car. (Subotsky claimed the idea was an homage to the 1945 omnibus film Dead of Night, Ealing Studio's classic fling with the horror genre.) Amicus would later turn out a string of horror-anthology movies, including three with scripts that Robert Bloch adapted from his own stories--Torture Garden (1967), The House That Dripped Blood (1970), and Asylum (1972)--as well as one, 1973's From Beyond the Grave (1973), that was derived from the ghost stories of R. Chetwynd-Hayes, and two, Tales from the Crypt (1972), with Ralph Richardson as the Crypt Keeper, and The Vault of Horror (1973), based on classic EC horror comics. (Comics freaks might almost think of Amicus as the movie equivalent of Warren Publishing to Hammer's EC.) The company almost made one or two unsuccessful stabs at penetrating the art house market, hiring William Friedkin to film the Harold Pinter play The Birthday Party. But Subotsky also had his pragmatic, philistine-studio-boss side; he wrote an ambitious version of the Jekyll-and-Hyde story called I, Monster and demanded that the director, Stephen Weeks, make it in 3-D, despite the fact that "the sets had been built the wrong way round. The script called for the action to go from left to right, but the building lines went the other way." But when the money ran out with the picture unfinished, Subotsky "simply told Weeks to cut whatever scenes he had filmed into something resembling a finished movie. The film was released to terrible reviews - but, like most Amicus films, it made a profit."

According to Hodkinson, Subotsky ended up walking away from the company "for reasons that remain unclear", just when it was branching out into adventure fantasies based on the works of Tarzan's creator. "In 1975, the studio released an adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs' lost-world adventure The Land That Time Forgot. It had proved a difficult film to shoot: its star, Doug McClure, was drinking heavily after the collapse of his marriage, while Subotsky was rumoured to be spending more time at Hamleys buying toys than running the studio. His only real involvement with the production was to turn up at a screening with his four-year-old-son, announce that the boy could tell there were men inside the dinosaur suits, and leave." Amicus produced a sequel called The People That Time Forgot (1977) as well as At the Earth's Core (1976), which is best remembered by some of us eternal adolescents for the way that the leading lady, Caroline Munro, really filled out her me-Jane costume, but by then Subotsky was long gone. After working as a producer on one more horror omnibus, 1977's The Uncanny (a linked series of story with the common theme that cats secretly run the world--I didn't know it was supposed to be a secret), the 1980 TV miniseries The Martian Chronicles, and a number of Stephen King-based properties (including King's sole directing job, Maximum Overdrive), he died in 1991. Rosenberg died in 2004. Two years ago, the company name was revived by producer Robert Katz; the first movie from the new Amicus Entertainment was last year's Stuck from director Stuart Gordon.

2008 in Review: Paul Clark's Favorite Movie Moments

Paul Clark — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Starting tomorrow, the writers of Screengrab will be unveiling their lists of the top 10 films of 2008. But before that begins, I’d like to post a different sort of list of highlights from the past year. For those of you who’ve only started reading recently, I used to write a bi-weekly column called “The Movie Moment,” in which I’d explore in depth some of my favorite scenes from movies both old and new. This past spring, I had to put the column on indefinite hiatus for various reasons, but I wanted to bring it back for this week only so I could celebrate some of my favorite Movie Moments of 2008. However, I had such a devil of time trying to narrow down my list that I’ve decided to simply list all of the moments that made me laugh out loud, cry like a baby, bite my nails uncontrollably, or which otherwise rocked my world this past year. This list is by no means meant to be taken as comprehensive, but merely were the moments which readily sprang to mind while I was writing the piece. So without further ado, I give you…

2008: The Year in Movie Moments:

(in no particular order)

The little boy’s confession notes- In Bruges

“No-no-no. I kill the bus driver.” - The Dark Knight

The security guard makes his rounds - Man on Wire

Sidney’s musical vows - Rachel Getting Married

The kiss that launched a thousand lens flares - Silent Light (only one of several transcendent moments in the film- the swimming-hole scene or the epic rainstorm might just as easily have qualified)

Mike’s late-night visit (or really, anytime Merle Haggard’s “Mama Tried” is played) - The Strangers

Peekaboo nudity - The Romance of Astrea and Celadon

Harry unveils the machine - Burn After Reading (honestly, who could possibly enjoy THAT?)

Madame Gaudens’ confession - A Girl Cut in Two

Incident at the race track - My Winnipeg

Most hilarious random line of the year: “When it comes to women, you’re Michael Jordan. I’m… Bill Laimbeer.” - Baghead

The new army suits up for battle - Role Models

Alex takes a shower - Paranoid Park

Brandi forgets her cell phone - Stuck

Black Kold Medina puts on a show - Trouble the Water

Runaway penguin - Encounters at the End of the World

Jung-rae Kim diagrams his neuroses - Woman on the Beach

Alex’s sex surprise, both inevitable and strangely erotic - XXY

The director’s big exit - Tropic Thunder

Most unlikely tearjerking moment of the year: Fred Knittle sings “Fix You”, Young@Heart

Three-way fist fight: Seth Rogen vs. James Franco vs. Danny McBride - Pineapple Express

The Richard McGuire segment - Fear(s) of the Dark

Ninjas! - In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (yes, really)

And finally, my five favorite openings and finales of the year:

Perfect openings: “Put on Your Sunday Clothes”, WALL*E; Sunrise, Silent Light; The piano, The Silence Before Bach; The Jean-Claude Van Damme Stunt Spectacular, JCVD; The Legend of Po, Kung Fu Panda

Great final scenes (no spoilers): Synecdoche, New York, The Duchess of Langeais, Shine a Light, The Visitor, Burn After Reading

I would invite all of you to share some of your favorites in the comments section. After all, I’m surely missing at least a couple of really good ones.

DVD Digest for October 7, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 14:00:00 GMT

It’s a massive week for classic films, and a surprisingly good one for new releases too, once you get past the big Hollywood titles…

DVD of the Week: There was no small amount of competition for this spot, not merely because of the jaw-dropping number of classic titles being release but also due to one of TV’s best sitcoms seeing its most recent season bow on DVD store shelves. But with all the great stuff that’s hitting stores this week, to my eyes there was only one logical choice- Universal’s Touch of Evil 50th Anniversary Edition. It would be one thing if this DVD was simply a cash-in, a new pressing of the previously released 1998 cut of the film. But joining the “restored” version of the film are both the original theatrical cut and an additional “preview version”, both of which are being released on DVD for the first time. In addition, there are plenty of extras both old and new, including commentary tracks to correspond with each of the three available versions of the movie. What more could a Touch of Evil fan ask for? How about a reproduction of the legendary Orson Welles memo that led to the 1998 restoration? Yep, that’s in here too. I don’t normally double-dip my DVDs, but I’m definitely going to make the upgrade this time.

But wait, there’s more! Disney is releasing a 2-disc “Platinum Edition” of their 1959 classic Sleeping Beauty, packed with plenty of extras for both family audiences and animation buffs. Criterion is releasing two more films from the French master of crime dramas, Jean-Pierre Melville- Le Doulos (starring Jean-Paul Belmondo) and Le Deuxieme Souffle (with Lino Ventura). There are new 2-disc special editions of three of Hitchcock’s most iconic classics- Psycho, Rear Window, and Vertigo (all Universal). And Ray Harryhausen is representin’ here too, with a new DVD of The 7th Voyage of Sinbad 50th Anniversary Edition (Sony, also Blu-Ray), plus the Ray Harryhausen Giftset (Sony, also Blu-Ray), which includes previously-released editions of 20 Million Miles to Earth, It Came From Beneath the Sea, and Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, plus collectible Ymir figurine.

Also, like musicals? Then pick up Fox’s The Alice Faye Collection Volume 2, which contains Hollywood Cavalcade, The Great American Broadcast, Four Jills in a Jeep, Rose of Washington Square, and Hello, Frisco, Hello (also available separately). And with the winter months coming sooner than you’d think, you can start traveling in the comfort of your own home with The Michael Palin Collection (Warner), which collects the amiable Python’s adventures Around the World in 80 Days, Pole to Pole, Full Circle, Hemingway Adventure, Great Railways Journeys, Sahara and Himalaya into one handy box set. Finally, Warner is releasing two very different classic titles, The Picture of Dorian Gray and the Watership Down Deluxe Edition. So yeah, something for everyone.

But wait, there’s more! Two of my favorite films from the first half of 2008 are hitting the streets today- Gus Van Sant’s Paranoid Park (Genius Productions) and Stuart Gordon’s Stuck (Image Entertainment). And two other acclaimed indies are getting released as well, The Visitor (Anchor Bay, also Blu-Ray) starring Screengrab fave Richard Jenkins, and Boy A (Genius Productions). And, oh yeah… The Happening (Fox, also Blu-Ray) and You Don’t Mess With the Zohan (Sony, also Blu-Ray). Although I’m not sure I want to know anybody who’d buy these instead of any of the aforementioned classics.

This week’s TV on DVD release is 30 Rock Season 2 (Universal), which finds Liz, Jack, Tracy, Kenneth the Page, and the rest of the TGS gang taking a trip to MILF Island, among other misadventures. Also this week: Brotherhood Season 2 (Paramount), How I Met Your Mother Season 3 (Fox), and The Simpsons Season 11 (Fox).

Finally, this week’s Halloween-heavy Blu-Ray only releases include: The Amityville Horror (MGM), Beetlejuice 20th Anniversary Deluxe Edition (Warner), Body Heat (Warner), Young Frankenstein (Fox), Carrie (MGM), and Otis (Warner). No word on whether Carré Otis is somehow involved.

Half Measures: Paul Clark's Favorites of the First Half of '08

Paul Clark — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 19:00:00 GMT

Last week, Screengrab’s Andrew Osborne shared with you his favorite movies from the second quarter of 2008, so I figured that I might as well get in on the act as well. Unlike Andrew, I’ll be writing about my favorite releases dating back to the beginning of the year, mostly because I didn’t write one of these back in April. But I’d like to concur with Andrew’s statement that the moviegoing year, like so many others, started slowly but quickly improved in quality as it continued, with both big-budget blockbusters and limited-release arthouse fare making strong showings thusfar.

My top five:

1. The Duchess of Langeais- had Jacques Rivette not made a film called L’Amour Fou forty years ago, he very well might have given his most recent film that title. Based on a novel by Balzac, Duchess often plays like a mirror image of The Age of Innocence- only this time, the knowledge (and flouting) of propriety only serves to drive an emotional wedge between the two lovers. The Duchess (Jeanne Balibar) and her officer (Guillaume Depardieu) must play games with each other in lieu of an actual relationship, and almost imperceptibly their innocent courtship spirals out of their control. All the while, Rivette’s formal boldness remains intact, resulting in his best film in over a decade- no mean feat for a master of Rivette’s standing.

2. WALL*E- speaking of masters, was anyone really surprised that Pixar’s latest turned out as wonderful as it did? In perhaps their most experimental gambit to date, much of WALL *E is practically dialogue-free, as director Andrew Stanton and his team make most of their points visually. And what visuals! So beautifully-rendered is the dusty Earth future of the film’s first half that the more traditionally eye-popping second half (with its interstellar mega-mall) looks almost chintzy by comparison, like all the life and heart was drained from it. Which is of course the point, as WALL*E’s message isn’t so much anti-corporate as anti-complacency, celebrating the industriousness and determination of its robotic protagonist while despairing of those who would content themselves with having their decisions made and lives lived for them.

3. Stuck- like The Duchess of Langeais, Stuart Gordon’s latest film tells the story of a man and a woman locked in a tragic, fateful duet. The difference is that this one is about a guy who gets stuck in a windshield. There’s nothing pretty about Stuck, from Gordon’s grimy visuals and grayish color palette to the behavior his film portrays, as the film’s anti-heroine (played by Mena Suvari) hides the accident victim (Stephen Rea) in her garage rather than risk jeopardizing the insignificant promotion she supposedly has coming to her. Stuck is a film born of its working-class setting, in which the poor fight over the scraps the rich give them, with little regard for the lives of those who get in their way. It’s ugly, harrowing stuff, but it’s also thrilling like the best exploitation films are, and Stuck is one of the best movies of this kind to come along in ages.

4. Paranoid Park- for years, Gus Van Sant has specialized in films about outsiders, but this is the closest he’s come thusfar to seeing the world through an outsider’s eyes. Much of the credit goes to the subjectivity inherent in Van Sant’s favored style, which he perfects with this film, as he follows a marginalized teenager (newcomer Gabe Nevins) who views his world- his parents, his peers, his girlfriend- from a distance, even before the killing he may or may not have been responsible for causes him to sever emotional ties from them altogether. He would sooner escape into his own mind as find a place for himself in this world, a point Van Sant makes most vivid in the scene where the protagonist takes a shower as the soundtrack becomes overrun with rainforest sounds. Simultaneously nightmarish and poetic, Paranoid Park is a major work by a filmmaker who remains as experimental as ever.

5. Speed Racer- yes, really. I sort of wonder if the overwhelming critical drubbing that was afforded the Wachowski Brothers’ adaptation of the animated series was due to the directors’ key inspirations- comic books, video games, Saturday morning cartoons- not being part of the critics’ pasts. Granted, I too was skeptical about the film going in, but it didn’t take long for it to win me over. I’ll be damned if I can find a subtext, but with its dazzling array of eye-popping colors, deliberately unrealistic effects, and snazzy edits (Ang Lee could take a lesson in the latter from the Wachowskis), that scarcely matters. The racetrack scenes alone gave me that rush that all big summer movies promise but which few deliver, playing like the Day-glo daydream of a Pixie Stick-fueled kid racing and smashing up Matchbox cars. Plus there are ninjas, and as any young boy can tell you, ninjas make every movie better.

Trailer Review: Stuck

Paul Clark — Fri, 30 May 2008 16:00:00 GMT

I saw a number of excellent films at Toronto last year, but the week’s best surprise was easily Stuart Gordon’s new film Stuck. Unfortunately, this trailer doesn’t really do it justice. On the one hand, I like that the ad campaign for the film (such as it is) doesn’t shy away from the true-life story behind the movie. On the other, Stuck is hardly the sensationalistic exploitation film this trailer (with its wacky music and editing) makes it out to be. In truth, the film is a brutal, nasty piece of work, finding surprising cinematic possibilities in the story of a man whose body is stuck in a young woman’s windshield. Of course, the film’s gritty, true-to-life brand of horror (to say nothing of its working-class setting) doesn’t exactly translate into a sexy trailer, so leave it to the marketing geniuses to make it all look fun and disposable. But take it from me, folks- Stuck is miles better than its trailer, and easily Gordon’s best film since Re-Animator.