It’s that time of year again isn’t it? Yep, Halloween is nearly upon us. This has encroached into my consciousness not because I have seen the cheapo vinyl masks and acid-coloured sugarstuffs in the local Co-Op, but because I am particularly sensitive to be being bombarded by ads for horror films. Ah yes the Halloween ‘event’ (bleurgh!): the perfect opportunity for a courting couple to share the thrills and spills of a good horror; the pleasure and the pain, the shrieks and nervous giggles, the popcorn in the air moment, the squeezing of hands, that communal, cathartic scream…
This year, there is an unbelievable assortment of horrors to choose from, one for almost every marketing team’s intricately sculpted audience micro-profile. It’s almost as if the different distributors have got together round a steaming cauldron to choose who gets what – ‘Ah, rat’s tail – that’s the lower social grade teens for you… Eye of newt! That’s the middle class middle- management consultants for you.’
In the way that Sam Raimi’s Drag Me to Hell (pictured) kept the jump quota oscillating somewhere between zoikes Shaggy! and SHITTHEBED! type levels whilst interspersing some supremely good laughs, we have Zombieland. We have the latest utterly dreary dearth of ideas which is the Saw franchise primed for adolescents to try and out-do each other in the gore endurance stakes. There is metaphysical horror in two forms for the intelligentsia – the openly sophisticated Park Chan-wook’s Thirst (that incidentally might make a nice double bill with Tony Scott’s The Hunger) and the rather cunningly disguised sophistication of Pontypool, an absurdist tract on the latent viral properties of language in the guise of a zombie movie to which even Alfred Jarry might doff his chapeau.
Elsewhere for younger audiences there’s Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant (not more vampires surely, for crying out loud?! Back to this in a minute…), or Coffin Rock for the elder teens. For the horror nostalgics among us there’s An American Werewolf in London; for the fanboys there’s Colin, that 45 quid effort (sadly not a zombie version of Mr Brittas’ gangrenous old janitor, although apparently not far off) and there’s even a horror for the eco-hippies in the form of The Cove (only joking on that last one – that one’s pretty bloody serious, actually – best make that bloody and serious; it needs watching).
It begs the question – what’s the collective noun for a group of horror movies? A slash? A gash, maybe? Making up the lion’s share of this current crop of horrors are films about vampires. I think we can safely say that we have reached saturation point on vampire films or television shows.
The only good thing (or bad, depending on your view) is that vampires provide an unbelievable amount of punning potential for reviewers, bloggers and critics to sink their teeth into. Och – see how easy it is? In fact, it’s virtually impossible to write about vampire-related activity without falling into the pun trap. If it’s a bad film it’s more than likely going ‘to suck,’ or ‘drive you batty.’ If it’s good it has either ‘got bite’ or will ‘go for the jugular.’ If it’s middling it needs more ‘flesh on the bones,’ if it’s boring its probably going to be ‘draining’ and, yes, the critic is really going to be ‘putting his/her neck out’ in rating this film.
Of course, True Blood is currently setting new standards in vampire-punning in its commentary on neo-con provincial America – ‘God Hates Fangs!’ screams a sign near one establishment and one character claims to have transgressed by indulging in a ‘fang-bang’ to prove her sexual credentials. Is there no end to this rich vein gumbo of punning possibility?
