It shoUldn’t haPPen to a Film joUrnalist
Acting features ed Jamie graham lifts the lid on film journalism.
Watching 65 horror films in two weeks. It’s a tough job…
By the time you read this, I will be locked up in prison or rocking in a padded cell. Or maybe, if I’m not yet caught, cleaning my 12-inch blade in the spotlight of the bloated moon (the blood on my naked torso appears so very black in the waxen light), as I buzz like a chainsaw from my latest kill-spree.
Well, that’s what we were told would happen, when I was growing up in the ’80s, if we watched too many horror movies. And I don’t mean told by fretful parents (mine never found out I watched Friday The 13th Part 2 when I was eight) – I mean by rabid social activist Mary Whitehouse, by prime minister Margaret Thatcher and her Tory government, and by thenpresident of the BBFC James Ferman, as evidenced by his vigorous cutting and outright banning of movies for fear they would instigate societal sickness.
FEEDING FRENZY
Many, of course, still believe such a thing. I know this because every August, when I tell friends, family and colleagues that I’m this month viewing 60 to 70 horror movies to ensure I tick off every title showing at the UK’s premiere genre event, FrightFest, I’m met with looks of… well, horror. This from rational folks who would rather catch one of Cronenberg’s icky diseases than touch a copy of the Daily Mail, so you can be sure there are many out there who must think I’m a serial killer in the making. (Or, as I put it, in chrysalis – I will emerge radiant and potent, deserving of your awe.)
Well, I’m not about to trot out the standard counter-arguments. All I want to say is how August is for me, as I train my bloodshot eyes on a tidal wave of vampires, ghosts, zombies, werewolves, cannibals, aliens, slashers, doppelgängers, disease, mental breakdown, torture, Satanism, devil dolls, and, in the case of Attack Of The Adult Babies, a group of middle-aged men indulging in perverse whims while dressed only in nappies. It is, in short, bloody wonderful.
FrightFest runs over five days and five screens, with six movies on each screen per day. So, to avoid overlap, I spend the two weeks prior to the festival watching online screeners for 40-odd films. Curtains shut, lights off, volume up – the slaughter begins. By the time the festival kicks off, I arrive in Leicester Square as lank-haired and twitchy as any Japanese ghost-girl, ready to feed on the frisson of fear with my bloodlusting brethren. Five days and 30 more movies later, I emerge blinking into mundane reality, my eyeballs feeling like they’ve been punctured by Lucio Fulci in one of his signature assaults.
WHO WILL SURVIVE?
But here’s the thing: I also feel calm and content having confronted humankind’s deepest, darkest fears at a safe distance. A glut of gore and a surplus of suspense provides, to use that dreaded word, catharsis. And here’s another thing: while certain sub-genres and tropes pop up as surely as the body of the ‘dead’ killer at the end of a slasher movie, I never fail to be amazed by the creativity, diversity and deep vein of quality contained within this one genre, just as I’m always saddened that so many intriguing, innovative titles on display never gain a theatrical release, while no-brain, no-heart remakes and sequels get to consistently menace multiplexes.
One last thing: watching 65 horror movies in a month doesn’t satiate the hunger; it only sharpens the cravings. Come September, I return to my usual diet with a clenched gut and a heavy heart. A week, maybe two, and my taste buds will re-adapt, but those first few days without five horror movies a day to gorge on seem positively anaemic.
‘as TWiTchy as any Japanese ghosT-girl, i’m ready To feed on The frisson of fear’