chiller blog

Posted Jul 27, 09 02:31 PM

Going in Style

(Warning: The following blog contains spoilers. Just letting everrrrryone know so I don't get hate mail. The junk posts from the pharmaceutical companies and the disgruntled viewers who think I'm the CHILLER Complaint Desk are enough)
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There seems to be a perverse, often disturbing trend in horror. It's kickback from the slasher sensibility that often lowers genre credibility: a preoccupation with finding inventive new ways to kill people. Hey, I really respected the fleshed-out reboot of The Last House on the Left. But the head-in-the-microwave finale almost seemed as if studio brass forcibly escorted it in from another movie.

This cycle seemed to have started around the mid-'80s, when fresh teen casts were as cyclical as they were expendable. Machetes and axes no longer cut it. Jason Vorhees started shoving flares in people's mouths while Freddy Krueger's finger knives got traded for five digit hypodermic needles.

Yeah, I should talk, huh? When I was writing the Final Desination comic book spin-off, Zenescope Entertainment VP Ralph Tedesco got on the phone with me twice. To add MORE violence.

Mercury poisoning from a cracked thermometer was out. A fatal “embrace” with an exam room skeleton was in (Within forty five minutes of our call, I had also suggested a brain being fried from a cat scan gone wrong and an X-ray machine whose lens lowered right through someone's face. “You sick bastard,” Ralph intoned). A neck snap shattering the viewing panel of a glass bottom boat was modified. This time, the poor scuba diver went through the glass, getting a shard right down his throat. Hey, there's no shying away from the “what” of the content. But to see the "how" - the panel layouts, literary pretensions of narrative, and the class-it-up touches - is to realize how creative sweat can render palatable any material.

I've written numerous spec scripts that have led to great meetings, even a couple of writing assignments that I can't wait to share with you, down the road, from development to...fingers crossed...production (Love the sound of that). Although I insist on a grounded, dramatic approach - even within the fantastic - once in a while I get the perfectly normal question of how many characters I've killed.

Hmm. Let me think. Oodles.

Good sport/good friend Maggie Mogil says each of my spec scripts leaves her with a death image that she can't erase from her mind; I'm especially flattered by the body pulled like an inverted C into an oversized drain. I wonder how she feels about the drowning under a pool cover, the roman candle in the mouth, and the unfortunate shmo blendered by helicopter blades inverted at a ninety-degree angle.

Keith Dinielli, creative exec with Matt (City By the Sea, The Replacement Killers) Baer Films, calls me "Spooky Mike." My manager, John Broker of Gravel Road Entertainment, was talking to a client when he used my name as an adjective for creepy tone.

...Ah...thank you?

But I assure all of the above parties. And reassure. And then re-reassure. I'm quite fine.

Look, the indelible DNA of horror convention is fear, and that first push-able primal button will always be the fear of death. There's no escaping the threat of violence, be it physical or psychological. Aestheticism separates effective restraint from queasy gratuity, satisfying expectation while not shattering the audience's trust. Style is the solution.

Style redirects ugly detail into, yes, potentially stunning art. There's a world of difference between the Psycho shower scene and Leprechaun 2's death-by-cappuccino machine, between the squeamishly thrilling elevator murder in Dressed to Kill and electrocution-by-car-battery in Silent Night, Deadly Night II. Style, as Brian (Carrie) DePalma will attest, employs the language of film, constantly seeking reinvention. Artists don't want to repeat themselves, much less anyone else. Reinvention doesn't repeat.

It's the difference between us having a conversation now about David Warner's character experiencing a rather bloodless plate glass decapitation in The Omen (1976) vs. David Warner's character getting club sandwiched by a truck. Actors know a great entrance. They also know a great exit. Naturally, the other names brought up with that shocking bookmark underscore the remarkable handling of easily exploitable material: Director Richard Donner, writer David Seltzer, costar Gregory Peck, composer Jerry Goldsmith, editor Stuart Baird, DP Gilbert Taylor (Just IMDB and see the caliber of their work).

But, ultimately, it comes down to not just clear talent, but also tone. Having a sense of humor is crucial when working within such grim subject matter. The key is not to crack a smile in front of the cameras or on the page. Unless you're Sam Raimi or Peter Jackson, horror-comedy is a brutal sell as horror and a tricky tightrope with no net below. Fall and your film's destined for Puppetmaster corner at Blockbuster.

There's nothing funny about Paris Hilton getting car-speared in House of Wax (2005). Which is a shame, because there's nothing even remotely scary about it, either. So what are we watching? Make up your own jokes here.