Beyond the Beyond

Growing up in Anchorage, there was a distinct lack of arthouse theatres. We weren't lacking for theatres in general, as I can recall 5 within a reasonable distance from where I lived growing up. That may not sound like a lot, but it was more than sufficient for a population the size of Anchorage. But these theatres were multiplexes, albeit smaller than the 16 or 18 screen behemoths that would come later. As a budding cinephile, I was confined to whatever titles became big enough to play in these cinemas (and whatever I could convince my mom to let me see), or I had to wait- sometimes years- for a sought after title to make it to video. This could be a sort of hell for a young man developing an interest in moving beyond the mainstream, into the deeper, murkier waters on the fringe.

My discovery of the Capri Cinema in my Junior year of high school (which would have been 1995) came as a great boon. The Capri is one of the things I miss most about my teen years, despite the fact that I only saw a handful of movies there, and discovered the place just 5 years before it eventually closed down. It's no secret why it took me so long to find the place; the Capri was a single screen theatre, with a maximum occcupancy of less than 100 people, located in a strip mall near the edge of town, a place I never had a reason to visit unless I was heading north out of Anchorage. It also, for the 70s and 80s, showed porn films on the weekends, which probably kept it off my family's radar when it came time to find a movie to see. By the time I discovered the place it had transitioned to almost entirely foreign or arthouse films, with some retrospective screenings thrown in, though these were also usually cult or indie films.

The screen was small, even for what you might be expecting, and the seats were often threadbare. There was a small cafe attached to the screening room, where you could purchase your snacks, peruse lobby cards for various old movies, or play a game of chess by the shopfront window. The place was modest and empty, is what I'm trying to say. But before I give the impression that this was a quaint, old-fashioned movie house, I should confess that there was an air of dinginess about the place. A residual seediness left behind, possibly, from the Capri's former life as a porn theatre. The place was small and had that clean-but-dirty feel, and the bathrooms were located inside the actual screening room, down a short hallway right next to the middle row of seats.

The Capri, circa 1995 or so.

The first film I saw there was The Incredibly True Adventures of Two Girls In Love, a coming-out and coming-of-age micro-budgeted comedy that a friend invited me to. While I remember enjoying its modest charms, I have a more distinct memory of feeling slightly uncomfortable at being the only man in the almost sold out theatre. That isn't incredibly bizarre, though, considering how small the occupancy of the place was. At least the men's room was empty. The final film I saw there was probably the deeply odd John Holmes film Disco Dolls in 3D, and yes, it was in actual 3D. Faded and faulty at over 2 decades old, but still in 3D. I did not check on the status of the men's room that night. There were a few more pictures in between, including the life changing weeklong run of Lost Highway, but the one I want to write about today is The Beyond, the 1981 magnum opus of Italian schlockmeister Lucio Fulci.

The Beyond was originally released in 1981, but garnered a re-release in 1998 through Quentin Tarantino's Rolling Thunder distribution company. At the time Tarantino was honoring the exploitation films that had inspired him, while also distributing a pair of current films from directors he loved(Sonatine and Chungking Express). It was clearly a labor of love, not money, and after only 3 years and a mere 6 films Rolling Thunder shut down in 1998, At the time I was in my first of college, and a diehard zombie fan, seeking out any and all zombie films regardless of quality, and loving them all. If you were to tell that 20 year old man that within a decade he would be sick to his bones of zombies, he would have laughed in utter disbelief. Hard to imagine, but yes, we have reached saturation point for zombie entertainment. Back then, though, zombie movies were still largely the purview of the hardcore horror hounds. Zombies were definitely not the cool monster of the moment, which meant that a bad zombie movie pre-2000 was made, typically, by people with a love for the genre. A lack of resources and talent, maybe, but still a genuine love, which made even the worst films somewhat enjoyable to watch. And so 20 year old me was happily devouring the classics, like Dawn of the Dead, while also gleefully digesting the schlock, like Redneck Zombies. Seeing in the Anchorage Press that the Capri would be playing an infamously gory Italian zombie film from the genre's earlier renaisscance was an opportunity I couldn't pass up. The Beyond is bad, make no mistake about it, but it's also incredibly distinct and hauntingly bizarre. A real good-bad movie.

The plot of The Beyond is a bit difficult to summarize, not so much because the plot is complex, but because the manner in which it all hangs together is not very well conveyed to the audience. I've seen the film well over a dozen times, and I'm still struggling with how to piece it all together in a way that makes sense. What I can say with some certainty is that the film concerns a rundown hotel in New Orleans that is situated over one of the seven doors to hell (there is a similar door to hell in Fulci's earlier film, City of the Living Dead, which is otherwise not connected at all to this film). When a young woman, Liza (played by Catherine McColl) inherits the hotel and decides to renovate and reopen, she inadvertently wakes the ghost of a painter who had been killed in the basement by an angry mob. The ghost begins opening the door to hell, causing a small but bloody zombie infestation, along with several other odd incidents which may or may not be supernatural.

Lucio Fulci was never a subtle filmmaker, and he never allowed budgetary restrictions to keep him from committing to film whatever crazy, ambitious special effects shot that came to mind. In the film Don't Torture a Duckling a man falls off a cliff, and lands face first on every sharp, gravelly, rocky outcrop on the way down. If that sounds gruesome, imagine that instead of a realistic fake corpse, he's filming what is clearly a department store mannequin with blood packs on its head. The budget is larger in The Beyond, but that level of effects work remains, and it appears that the extra money went into quantity not quality. And to top it off, Fulci shoots all of this in direct, bright light. Where another director would try to use shadows to mask some of the shoddiness of the effects, Fulci constantly puts them front and center.The effects are fake, but go so over the top and are so in your face that they attain a strange level of fascination and disgust.

When I first watched The Beyond at the Capri, my friends and I had the entire place to ourselves, save for one lone movie lover in the front row. We sat in the back and had an uproarious good time, laughing hysterically at much of what was onscreen. The other patron, I found out later from Rand, the Capri's owner/projectionist/ticket taker/concession-stand operator had left the movie at one point to complain about the noise we were making. I was grateful to Rand for not giving us a talking-to at the time, but age and wisdom have led me to sympathize more and more with that guy, out alone for a fine time at the movies, only to have his evening ruined by a quartet of loud know-nothing college kids. At the time, however, it seemed like a completely justifiable response to a film where a character researching at a library falls off a step ladder hard enough that he is paralyzed and unable to fend off a dozen or so tarantulas that look too cheap for dollar store Halloween sales. When these fake spiders begin clicking and squealing as they chew on a cheap foam head, what is the appropriate response, if not laughter?

As soon as The Beyond was announced on a DVD release, I snatched up the limited edition collector's tin from Anchor Bay, and invited every friend I had over for a night that turned out to be just as raucous and enjoyable as the theatrical experience, only now with pizza. The next night I invited over friends again, and had another screening for those that couldn't make the initial viewing, or who just wanted to hang out again. The night after that, as soon as I got home from work, I made some dinner and popped in The Beyond as I ate, and I watched most of the film before falling asleep on the couch. At the time I lived alone, and this became my routine for about a week. I would self-hypnotize myself by putting on The Beyond and just drifting off to sleep with the film's odd, dreamlike rhythms and bizarre Danny Elfman goes Prog Rock soundtrack. The music may be what really dragged me under the film's spell, as I also found myself listening to the CD while on my daily commute to work. A gradual shift began to happen in my attitude towards the film. At first I was simply trying to recreate that original fun-filled atmosphere, but increasingly I began to fall under the film's sway.

The defining moment where I realized the film had won me over from ironic enjoyment to authentic love was on the 3rd night watching it alone, when something in the movie legitimately chilled me. The moment comes when mysterious blind woman Emily, who has been warning Liza to stay away from the hotel, actually comes to the hotel to explain some of the plot to her. They speak of Schweik, the artist/warlock who had been murdered in the hotel. Emily touches one of his paintings, a grey, mist-filled landscape full of low rock formations that look like bodies trapped in the ground, and her hands begin to bleed. She screams in terror, and runs from the hotel. The scene sounds eerie on its own, but the way it's edited together is inexplicably bizarre. First we see Emily run out the door, then we get the shot again in slow motion, with all sound taken out of the film. The film repeats closeups of Emily's feet running across the carpet, still in slow motion and without sound effects, but intersperses them with shots of a man's feet running towards the camera at regular speed and with heightened sound effects. The final shot is a slow motion shot of Emily running away followed, finally, by her seeing eye dog (who has not been in any of the preceding shots). For some reason on this night, after seeing the film a half dozen times, I was finally seeing how bizarre this scene was. I found it completely inexplicable and utterly nightmarish, and that feeling never went away.

[For those curious, I now believe the scene described above is implying that Emily's seeing eye dog has been possessed by Schweick's spirit, as much later in the film Emily is mauled to death by the dog while surrounded by the other resurrected corpses and spirits from the film. But this is also after a strange speech where she says she doesn't 'want to go back' and that they cant take her back. We can assume 'back' means 'back to hell', but there's nothing else in the film that addresses this, so it's still a bit mysterious.]

At their best, Fulci's films push their excesses into the level of sublime, dreamlike unreality. He's not the most artful director, and many of his films can be a chore to get through, but when he's firing on all cylinders his work succeeds almost in spite of itself. In The Beyond, many scenes appear unrelated to anything going on before or after, and though there is nominally a plot, the main characters seems strangely unaware of it. Liza knows creepy stuff is happening in her hotel, but doesn't seem to be aware of the body count or the supernatural nature of many of these deaths. David Warbeck, playing a local doctor who falls in with Liza, is closely connected to the zombie plotline, but even he remains blissfully unaware of the deaths occurring among his coworkers until almost the very end.

When I first encountered The Beyond I felt like this randomness and lack of connective tissue was accidental, the sign of amateurish filmmaking. Certainly the rest of Fulci's filmography did little to dissuade me of that belief, as things like plot and reality often take a backseat to mood and shocking gore. But as I watched the film repeatedly, I began to sense a certain intent behind the surrealism, a sinister dreamlike logic where scenes seemed to lead into each other even if the script didn't wholly support that idea. Researching the film today for this piece, I find that my assumptions were entirely correct, as the film began as an homage to Fulci's idol Antonin Artaud, the French playwright and sometimes surrealist. The movie was originally going to be a haunted house film where the carnage within the hotel was the only strand linking the narrative digressions. The German backers of the film wanted a zombie film, as zombies were considered the hot property of the time, so Fulci rewrote the script and made it more linear, though clearly some of that surrealism stayed in. Towards the end the film starts to go all in on the surrealism, as things like time and space begin to fall apart. Characters leave rooms only to end up in locations on the other side of town, and things finally end with Liza and her doctor friend trapped in hell, blindly returning to the same location no matter which way they run. It's amazing that I found this stuff funny when I first saw it.

After a week of constant viewing, my desire to watch The Beyond cooled, and my pace slowed to once every couple years, more often if I have a friend interested in watching it. The soundtrack remains in semi-regular rotation, jumping up in the charts every Halloween season. Today the film remains a cherished part of my own personal cinematic pantheon. Though it may not get the attention or respect that others in that company receive, it's still a strong and important reminder that every film is worth a deeper look, and that even the crappiest looking schlock can have it's strengths and secrets to tell. You've just go to be ready to listen.

Countdown Day 15: Methadone Television

What's this, you ask? Why am I only on day 15 of my countdown when it's clearly the 17th? Well, honestly, I've just been too busy to find the time and energy to post something for the last couple days. It clearly isn't taking me long to write these entries, and I barely even proofread them before posting, but I've had precious little time not at work the last week, and I don't always want to spend that time on the laptop. I guess that defeats the purpose of a marathon, but I'm not getting paid for this so I'm cutting myself some slack.

What day are we on, Sunday? Well, Sunday was another day without movies. I started watching The Innocents, but something came up and when I stopped the playback I also accidentally deleted it from my DVR. So, to at least meet my daily requirements for some supernatural entertainment, I watched the first a few episodes of Eerie, Indiana. The show was a childhood favorite of mine, and features the perfect mix of creepiness and humor while also being completely accessible for my own daughter.We're big fans of the new Disney show Gravity Falls in my house, and that show is a clear descendant of Eerie, Indiana. My daughter immediately caught on to the similarities as soon as the opening credits began, and wanted to keep watching, but I had to get to work after the first 3 episodes. For years the only Eerie, Indiana release was a 'best of' that consisted of those first three episodes, so I've actually seen them quite a few times. Still, it's fun watching old favorites next to someone who's unfamiliar with them, because it allows you to experience it in a fresh light.

That night, after work, I watched the third season premiere of The Walking Dead. I have some major problems with the show, as I've said, but I thought the premiere was a great hour of television. It felt more like the first half of a two-hour episode, because it lacked a beginning-middle-end storyline, but it seemed like an indication that the writers had smoothed over some of the problems with characterization and interpersonal drama. I came to the show not really liking many of the characters, but I didn't hate any of them in this episode. Not even Lori or Andrea(although Andrea didn't have much to do, so we'll see what happens later when she's more active). The show did a pretty good job of stating a maximum of story with minimal dialogue, getting us up to speed on the past 7 or 8 months in one wordless opening sequence.

I'm expecting some of the zombie action to die down over the next few episodes, if only because they seem to have gone all out with gore for this opening hour and might need to dial it back a bit to keep that stuff interesting. And, of course, we've got the long middle stretch of the season where it may turn out that those interpersonal conflicts are just as groan-inducing as always. But, we also have Michonne, who I'm very excited to see in the coming weeks.

Countdown the 13th: The Living Dead

The new season of The Walking Dead premieres tomorrow night, and despite my serious misgivings with the entire show, I'm fairly excited. The show can always be counted on to get off to a terrific start, and even at it's worst it could craft some pretty tense and exciting zombie action. The problem is everything in between. The show has never quite figured out how to make the character interactions interesting over the long haul, and the characters are always doing stupid things, merely as a shortcut to get to a conclusion the writers need to get to. None of them consistently act like people, and their actions rarely feel like something real people would do in a zombie apocalypse. Have you ever noticed how the characters all seem to forget about zombies(or Walkers, in the show's vernacular) whenever there aren't any on screen? They crash around in the woods talking at the top of their voices, and then get surprised by a zombie and remember that maybe they should be quiet when in unfamiliar territory. How many weeks were they at the farm before they decided to put up a fence and board the windows?

But enough about my problems with the show. Last season, for all it's aimlessness, ended on a very exciting note, and I'm genuinely excited about this new season. If nothing else, the show excels at exciting, visceral zombie thrills. So, in the spirit of my excitement, I thought I'd list, in no particular order, a few of my favorite zombie films that you may not have heard of. But, this being the Internet and you probably being a friend of mine, you've most likely seen all of these. This is by no means complete, and others may be added later. For obvious reasons I've decided not to go over the classics for the umpteenth time.

Pontypool: This film is more clever than scary, but it's one of my top two-or-three favorite horror films of the last few years. It's also not technically a zombie film in the same way you might be familiar with. Taking place entirely in a radio station as morning talk-radio host Grant Mazzy(Stephen McHattie in a bravura performance) finds himself at the center of an outbreak with symptoms familiar to most horror fans. Though it's set in one location, and features very little zombie action(it's a rebuke to the 'show, don't tell' rule of filmmaking), it moves at an incredibly brisk pace. It's funny and creepy in just the right measures. Make sure you stick through the credits, as well.

Bio Zombie: Drawing inspiration, as most modern zombie films do, from George Romero's Dawn of the Dead, Bio Zombie adds a distinctly Chinese take on the zombies-in-a-mall motif. It's silly, and scattershot, and moves at a seizure-inducing pace, but it's a nonstop fun ride. It's pretty much style over substance, but the style is entertaining.

The Beyond: Lucio Fulci resides in the personal pantheon of many an adventurous horror fan. Though he's worked in pretty much every genre imaginable, his horror films and liberal use of gore are what people remember. The Beyond would probably be his Citizen Kane; the culmination of every technique he'd tried up to that point. I first saw this film at The Capri here in Anchorage, in a theater that contained only me, my two friends, and one lone guy in the front row. It was a jolly good time, as we laughed uproariously at the horrible dubbed dialogue, the inept direction, the oddball music, and the ridiculously silly gore(to call it unrealistic would be an understatement). I bought it immediately when Anchor Bay released a special edition, and it entered nearly continuous rotation at my house. For over a week I played this movie every night before bed, and sometime during this time period something strange happened. I laughed at it for the first few viewings, but somewhere around number 4 or 5, I started to get creeped out. It's still a ridiculous movie, but it's also oddly hypnotic. It's now become a form of comfort food, something I can put on and then just drift away.

Hell of the Living Dead: Speaking of Italian zombie films. Hell of the Living Dead is described in it's own liner notes as 'the worst zombie movie ever made,' but nothing this much fun could be truly bad. Same thing with Plan 9 From Outer Space always topping those worst movies of all time lists. That film is endlessly entertaining. The worst movie ever made would be dull, not silly. Hell of the Living Dead features everything you'd expect from an Italian zombie movie; ugly, pockmarked makeup for zombies, gratuitous nudity, and unexpected gore in such quantities that it bursts through the limits of reality. In all honesty, it is a pretty bad movie, but it's also compulsively watchable if you have a group of like-minded movie buffs with you.

Dead Heat: Featuring the comic stylings of Treat Williams and Joe Piscopo at the height of his lunkhead bodybuilder phase, Dead Heat is an oddball buddy cop film with zombies. It's ridiculous, it's stupid, it's corny, and Vincent Price seems to be reading his lines through a NyQuil induced haze, but those are actually some of it's strengths. That, and the makeup and practical effects are actually quite impressive, especially one setpiece set in a Chinatown butcher's shop where all of the animals on display for purchase begin to attack our heroes.

Night of the Living Dead(1990): I mention this one only because I think people judge this film too harshly, or at least don't assume it could be any good. A remake of one of the most influential horror films ever made? A film that most people consider to be perfect as it is? Blasphemous. But, in reality, the NOTLD remake is a solid film in it's own right. George Romero scripted and produced this version, partially as an attempt to get money out of a movie that made a lot of other people rich, but never earned him a dime. Very little is changed in the plot of the film, but the characterizations are slightly different. Ben(this time played by Tony Todd) is still the capable, even-headed hero; Harry(Tom Towles) is still the abrasive asshole everyone should have listened to in the beginning(he's clearly the villain, but if everyone had hidden in the basement like he suggested, they would have all lived). The biggest change is Barbara(Patricia Tallman), who Romero altered as a corrective to the hysterical, useless character she was in the original. This Barbara goes through her hysteria, but comes out tougher and more capable. The remake doesn't have the same political bite that the original did, but it's simply an effective, well made zombie film.

  

Our Untitled Zombie Film: Update 10/19/10

I've already mentioned, briefly, the currently in progress zombie project I'm working on with my pal Eric. It's a film I technically wrote back in our UAA days, and I've been steadily refining it over the past decade. I've finally reached the point where I'm sick of waiting for the perfect moment to film, or for everyone to be in one place(most of the friends I wrote parts for aren't in the same state these days), and I've decided to just go out there and do it. Whatever "it" is. At this point our method is to head outside and film a few key scenes, leaving plenty of room for improvisation if something suddenly inspires us. Our goal is to have enough footage at the end to put together a probably very amateurish but hopefully also kinda cool trailer. Right now I'm viewing this as a practice run for filming something larger next summer, so I'm not sweating it if not everything comes off perfectly.

We haven't had any large zombie gatherings since the last post, as most of our outings have consisted primarily of location scouting and brainstorming, with some on-the-fly filming of whatever strikes us cool, or possible with only the two of us. Here's a few more shots from our latest outing earlier today.



Filming out at Turnagain Pass. The basic subject was Eric's character traversing the wilderness. We gathered a lot of footage for what will probably amount to less than 5 seconds of film time.


Yes, our film will feature zombies, samurai swords, shotguns, and a bit of kung fu. It will be exceedingly nerdy, and possibly only amusing to us.



Eric, striking a pose as he prepares to face the coming onslaught.



Goofy old me, of course.

Our Untitled Zombie Film

About 10 years ago, hanging out with a bunch of friends I met at college, I began working on a zombie film. The film was to be a collaboration, written and starring my friends and I as characters very obviously based on ourselves. The script that I wrote came out of several late night conversations about what we would do if zombies rose to devour the living. Over the next decade I would return to the script and rewrite or revise it here and there. Friends moved, or lost touch, and the movie never got made. Until now. We're not really filming the entire movie, but I've decided I'm sick of waiting and not doing anything, and so I've gotten together those still in town and those interested and we're putting together a short trailer as a test run of the film. Today was day one of shooting, and it was a blast. Here's a few pics from the set(or, rather, my backyard). Enjoy this little teaser for the finished product, which should be completed over the next month or so.



Amber applying makeup.



Testing out a makeshift camera dolly. We eventually had to scrap the idea because the ground wasn't even enough.

My sister's friend Matthew doing one of our few actual stunts during a practice run.


A few of our featured zombies. Nathan, for one, seems to be enjoying his unlife.



Eric and I coordinating our "big action set piece" of the day.



And that's a wrap. For the day. There's lots more to do, and we'll be filming throughout the fall and into winter, so I'll be sure to keep updating as we go.