Next week Rob Zombie’s remake of Halloween II will hit British screens and if it’s anything like his remake of the first Halloween movie, it’ll be pretty bad. However, column inches will be minimal as few people with a sensible definition of quality would claim he is desecrating a classic. Yet I’ll consider seeing it.
This is because I love bloody bad horror films. To fill those long, impecunious weekends at university I rifled through the Woolworths bargain bin to find something to topple Ed Wood’s Plan 9 From Outer Space from its egregious throne. My loot ranged from bad B-movies, complete with creaky sets and creakier dialogue (The Wasp Woman, The House that Dripped Blood), to films that made you consider how comparatively good that last Michael Bay film was (2001’s Skeletons in the Closet, with Linda Hamilton).
Generally, bad movies are palette cleansers and help to leave fallow the quality control field in your brain. A terrible movie lets people appreciate cinematic art as much as masterpieces do. Terrible films allow audiences a feeling of superiority, leaving their watchers with an impression of how they would have made the experience more satisfactory.
However, few enjoy watching bad movies; in most genres it is something to actively avoid. It is said that a sense of humour is the most attractive thing in a prospective partner; so, to sit through a truly bad comedy is like going on a terrible date, it’s mortifying. People who do not understand the human condition make a bad romance; it’s depressing. You know a drama is bad when you don’t care about the characters, it’s dull. I could go on.
With horror however, low quality can be enjoyable; mostly because of good horror constitutes. The genre is grounded in fear, it appeals to the basest instinct in human nature – the will to survive. There is the marriage between subversion and catharsis; the feel of release when a tense scene is over, or when another body drops. The genre can be culturally telling: revealing a nation’s neuroses (AIDS, in The Fly). Or it can be what directors think a nation fears (communism, in Invasion of the Body Snatchers), or what scares the filmmaker, such as birth (Rosemary’s Baby, Alien), puberty (The Exorcist, Ginger Snaps) or wasp women.
The genre performs numerous functions because it is based on extremes, requiring an audience to teeter on the edge. Aside from being ‘well made’ (which applies to any genre; quality acting, direction etc), good horror must be aware of boundaries. There are thin lines: between good and evil; portentousness and fear; the disturbing and the ridiculous. Therefore, there is a lot to judge badly. To minimise risk, the film must be simple, effective, and aware of these contrasting factors.
Paradoxically, it takes a filmmaker aware of all this to make a truly bad scary movie. In any horror, if plot cannot be explained in fewer than twenty-five words, it’s not worth watching. It needs to tap into primal fear, a good example is The Exorcist (pubescent girl possessed by evil, an exorcist is called), a bad example is A Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell (which does what is says on the tin) because it’s trying too hard. However, one suspects it would be enjoyable as its determinacy to remain memorably high concept requires respect.
Moviemakers sometimes mistake the liminal for the extreme. In good movies, this precariousness might be teetering on the edge of sanity (The Shining) or of comedy and horror (The Evil Dead). When this is mistaken, a prerequisite for awfulness is usually an eighteen certificate. Some kind of puff from a critic proclaiming the film to be the most violent release in years, or warning it will corrupt children (the more obscure the publication the better; Gaylene’s Shockorama Quarterly, Mormon Mothers of America or similar) also should be plastered over the artwork. An example of this type of awful film is The Nostril Picker.
Judging by The Devil’s Rejects, Zombie’s Halloween II will be decently shot. However, like his other efforts it might be lacking in the understanding of the horror genre’s use of boundaries to be particularly effective, mistaking gore for the liminal. Also, by remaking something, it’s harder to tap into the zeitgeist (which, as already discussed, could make the flick effective) and ultimately, films like his remake of Halloween are neither technically incompetent enough (such as the aforementioned Linda Hamilton film), cheerfully high-concept enough (like A Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell) or perversely extreme enough (such as The Nostril Picker) to be successfully bad.
Indeed, it does take a special film to attempt everything (be technically accomplished or innovative, aim for simplicity and to dance successful with liminality) and fail completely. Likewise, it takes unusual talent to make something horrible. An awful horror film makes bad cinema an enjoyable experience, due to the nature of its failure. It is celluloid to be savoured.
