Movie review: "Creature" has usual chumps, chomps in horrid horror flick

MOVIE REVIEW

Usual chumps, chomps in horrid horror flick

* [one star]

CREATURE 

 Directed by: Fred M. Andrews

Starring: Mehcad Brooks, Serinda Swan, Sid Haig, Daniel Bernhardt

Running time: 93 minutes

Rated: R (cliched gore, nudity)

Deep in the swampy hearts and minds of some filmmakers, embarrassing stereotypes still fester, gathering moss and slime.

According to “Creature,’’ rural Louisianans - Cajuns, in particular - are inbred, brown-toothed, and filthy. They live at the bayou’s edge in creaky wooden shacks. They speak about “the Loooord’s will.’’ And, in the cliched horror world of newbie director Fred M. Andrews, they adhere to backwoods, backward rituals that involve blood rites, incest, and a goofy lizard man.

You see, once upon a time, a hick named Grimley lost his loved ones (including his pregnant bride/sister) to a giant white alligator. Overcome with rage, he killed the reptile with his bare hands, ate it, and “became one with the gator.’’ As generations passed, the Bigfoot-like legend of Lockjaw grew.

Naturally, the bumpkins must sacrifice a woman every so often to keep the creature happy, and keep the ancient bloodline pumping, or some such moonshine. So we’ll need the hackneyed trope of outsiders rolling into town: 20-somethings Mehcad Brooks (TV’s “True Blood’’), Serinda Swan (TV’s “Breakout Kings’’) and other hot young things - six in total, three babes and three hunks - road tripping to N’awlins. So our fresh meat has a fighting chance, two of the guys are ex-Marines.

Taking a pit stop, our protagonists meet said yokels who tell them about the alligator man. Curious, they decide to camp on the bayou near the old Grimley shack. Cue the campfire, the pot smoking, even a woman-on-woman sex scene (this is 2011, after all). Off camera, the scaly beast snarls. One by one (except for two survivors) the nobodies go down. Creature: 4, Originality: 0.

All this would be gator-jerky-chomping, tongue-in-cheek fun, if the writers had any clue where their cheeks were located. But the dialogue is written, and played, straight. Our monster is about as convincing as a “Creature From the Black Lagoon’’ man in a rubber suit. Heck, within the first 30 seconds, in a “Jaws’’ rip-off, some woman disrobes, swims, and is promptly gnawed in half.

A more interesting angle might have been to explore the creature’s sorrow, from its point of view. But aside from a brief flashback showing how Grimley’s grief led him to become, like Gollum, more and more mad and reptile-like, it’s hunt and chase and supper time.

Y’all come back, now, y’hear?

Ethan Gilsdorf can be reached at www.ethangilsdorf.com.

[this review originally appeared in the Boston Globe]

Guillermo Del Toro: The Interview, Part II

[this originally appeared on wired.com's Geek Dad]

Here’s Part II of my conversation with Guillermo del Toro, director of Cronos, The Devil’s Backbone, Mimic, Pan’s Labyrinth, Blade II, and the two Hellboy films. [Read Part I of the interview here.]

Del Toro, a former special effects makeup designer, has his own aesthetic: melding of the man-made past — the handcrafted technology of wood, leather, brass, iron — and the organic world of slugs, bugs, and tentacles. He has a fascination with mechanical gadgets, the colors amber and steel blue, and body parts embalmed in jars. You might say he’s invented his own genre: not the clockwork and piston of “steampunk,”’ but more gut-and-gears, something I call “steam-gunk.” (For a peek into del Toro’s sketchbooks, see this previous wired.com link to a fascinating video).

His latest film is one he didn’t direct, but he did co-write and produce: Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, a throwback to old fashioned haunted house films, starring Guy Pearce, Katie Holmes and Bailee Madison. The family moves into an old mansion and the daughter discovers an ancient evil inhabiting the basement’s ash pit. Scary stuff ensues.

When not prepping for his next stint behind the camera (the giant robot battle film Pacific Rim), Del Toro told me that he’s preparing for the rapidly-approaching age of “transmedia” and “multi-platform world creation,” when audiences will read books, play games, watch movies and webisodes, all set in the same world. To that end, he’s been working in fiction (The Strain is his post-apocalyptic, vampires-in-NYC trilogy) and a Lovecraftian horror video game.

But whatever the media, del Toro’s goal, it seems to me, is never to gratuitously freak us out. Rather, he just wants to touch us. Or as he puts it, “to make beautiful and moving images, and beautiful and moving stories within the genre.”

One of the homunculi from "Don't Be Afraid of the Dark"Ethan Gilsdorf: To me, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark was interesting because typically in a film set in a haunted house, the horror that has happened in the past gets reflected in ghosts, or in things that are more spiritual. In this movie, these little creatures, the homunculi, are really a different kind of manifestation of that curse.

Guillermo Del Toro: The idea in the movie is that these creatures presented predate even the time when the land was colonized. There is a small reference in the movie about how in the colonies they built a mill and it sank into the caves. So the caves in that area have lodged these creatures which are very old. They predate man setting foot in there.

EG: Do you have a sense of why horror movies, especially those with supernatural elements, remain critically underappreciated? I suspect it’s related to the same way that other kinds of genre movies are received, but in some way horror has had less of a critical reevaluation, unlike science fiction or fantasy which seem to be genres people don’t pass judgment on as quickly as they used to. With horror or movies of the supernatural, there is still a stigma in the critical community. Any thoughts on why that is the case?

GDT: The movies that depend on an emotional reaction — being comedy, melodrama, horror — because precisely they are trying to elicit an emotion from the audience, they become almost a challenge to audiences and critics. It’s very hard for the critical audience to admit they got emotional in a movie. It’s sort of admitting defeat. A movie that tries to provoke on a purely intellectual level is always going to be met [more favorably] … Those who claim [they are] stimulated intellectually by that movie almost by proxy are defining themselves as intelligent. They are defining themselves as affected on a higher level. Movies that depend on an emotional reaction are oftentimes almost a dual situation: you go to a comedy as a critic or an audience member, almost saying, “Come on, do your worst. Make me laugh.”

And the same in horror movies. Being scared is often regarded as a childish or immature emotion. It’s very hard to establish that you are affected by [this kind of] movie without admitting that you love stuff that is more challenging.

Historically, science fiction requires more production value than horror. And other genres like comedy or melodrama don’t depend on the budget. There’s never been a categorization like a “B-[movie] melodrama” or whatever. Horror movies [are] a very quick and cheap entryway into the mainstream, in a way. They are very numerous and very visually objectionable, if you will, and very visually low budget and industry-defying. They are qualified as cheap products to cash in. That is true of many of the movies of the genre. But not all of the movies of the genre.

EG: What are some of the movies that you’ve seen that have affected you? I know the original version of this movie, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, you said was one of the scariest pieces of television that you’ve seen. What are some of the films, either recently or ones that go back decades, that you would say have frightened or disturbed you the most?

GDT: The list is the usual. The Shining, Alien, The Innocents, The Haunting, Jaws, The Uninvited with Ray Milland, The Dead of Night (the British movie), The Curse of the Demon … But recently I was very affected by a Korean movie that is very, very extreme called I Saw the Devil. I was very, very affected by it. It’s a very in your face, a broad, brutal, movie, but highly effective.

EG: How do you see your own work having grown or evolved over the years since you first got started as a filmmaker? How do you think you’ve changed?

GDT: Well, I think that technically I’ve become more proficient at certain things, but in terms of artistic intention, I think from he get-go, from Cronos on, I’ve always tried very hard in my own way to make beautiful and moving images, and beautiful and moving stories within the genre. That has been basically unwavering in my intention in creating things. Even in the more commercial movies like the two Hellboys, I tried very hard to fabricate beautiful images, and beautiful moments. Even in a movie as hardcore as Blade II I tried very hard  [to make] a beautiful image here and there.

EG: Do you ever long to do something that’s fairly conventional, in terms of just a straight up drama or straight up comedy or something that doesn’t necessary include these more fantastical, supernatural or pulpy elements?

GDT: Not really. [Laughs.] I don’t think it’s in my DNA. I really think I was born to exist in the genre. I adore it. I embrace it. I enshrine it. I don’t look upon it or frown upon it in a way that a lot of directors do. A lot of directors make a horror movie as a steppingstone. For me, it’s not a steppingstone, it’s a cathedral.

EG: Do you feel like you have a particular lesson that you would like a young filmmaker or a beginning filmmaker, or for that matter a beginning writer, to take away from your work? Is there something that you hope an astute student would be able to appreciate of what you’re doing?

"Don't Be Afraid of the Dark": Dinner at the haunted manor, with Guy Pearce, Katie Holmes and Bailee Madison (Courtesy of FilmDistrict Distribution) GDT: No, I’m not trying to teach anyone anything. I think that’s a waste of time. I do hope that people who like [one of my movies] like it for the right reason. That they like it because they see how many of the moments in the movies run counter to what they are just supposed to do. The Devil’s Backbone’s ghost, I tried to make him more moving than scary. I tried to make him pitiful and beautiful. I tried to make the vampire sympathetic in Cronos. I tried to make the real world far more brutal in a way than the world of horrors that the girl experiences in Pan’s Labyrinth. And so forth. But they are not lessons by any means. They are just strands of my work that I hope that the people who like it notice.

EG: Are you at liberty to talk about The Hobbit and share any thoughts about what is going on? Are you in touch with Peter Jackson and what’s going on down there in New Zealand?

GDT: We stay in touch. I said what I had to say. I really love having had the experience. Now it’s in Peter’s hands and I’m actually waiting for it to come out and I’ll be the first in line. Other than what I had to say, that there’s nothing else to add.

EG: Give me some thoughts on your field and the direction you think filmmaking is going to be headed. Whether this relates to the kinds of stories we’re going to be absorbing, the kinds of narratives, like filmmakers collaborating with game designers, or other changes.

GDT: I’m a firm believer that the narrative form, the storytelling form, for big genre stories, will very rapidly invade into transmedia, in multi-platform world creation, in the next ten years, when we’re going to have the movies, the video games, the storyline, the TV series or webisodes and this and that, all coming at us consecutively if not simultaneously to give the audience a real sense of a world creation. I’m not talking about [every film] — there will be all kinds of films always — just in the genre filmmaking I expect it will be changing. I’m very interested and very actively training myself by designing and directing a video game. I’ve been working on it for the last year and I still have three more years to go to develop the video game. … So by the end of the four years I will have had a bit of a tenure in video game making.

EG: Is that game going to be related to a film you are working on, or is it independent?

GDT: No, this is just my apprenticeship into the gaming world. And my experience has been a very beautiful and productive one. It’s with a company called THQ and it’s game called “inSANE.’’

EG: I see that we are out of time.

GDT: I want to thank you again for this.

EG: Thank you very much. Guillermo, it’s been a pleasure speaking with you.

Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark opens Friday, August 26.

[Note: Portions of this interview originally appeared in a different form in an article for the Boston Sunday Globe]

Guillermo Del Toro: The Interview, Part I

[This posting originally appeared on wired.com's Geek Dad]

Guillermo del Toro and star Bailee Madison, on the set of "Don't Be Afraid of the Dark" (Courtesy of FilmDistrict Distribution)Guillermo Del Toro, the director behind personal, vision-driven films like Cronos, The Devil’s Backbone, and Pan’s Labyrinth, plus commercial blockbuster action vehicles like Blade II and two Hellboy films, has been involved in more than his share of film projects over the past few years. But he hasn’t personally helmed a picture since 2008’s Hellboy II: The Golden Army. So fans of del Toro the film director – not the screenwriter, producer, executive producer, video game designer, novelist, and creative consultant – will have to keep waiting.

Perhaps he has simply been the victim of bad luck.

Originally recruited to co-write and direct The Hobbit, del Toro even relocated his family to New Zealand. But after interminable production delays, he backed out, and now Peter Jackson is directing. Del Toro’s next project was to be an effects-laden, 3D adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s novella At the Mountains of Madness. Yet studios balked at the $150-million price tag (even with Tom Cruise attached). It turns out del Toro’s next directorial effort will be a Japanese-style monsters versus robots film called Pacific Rim, with a slated release date of 2013.

In the meantime, fans will have to sate themselves with a new project heavy with the del Toro imprint but not officially part of his directorial oeuvre: Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, a throwback to old-timey haunted house films. Though he only co-wrote and produced the film — the director is newcomer Troy Nixey — Don’t Be Afraid (opening Friday) contains many familiar del Toro themes: a flashback prologue; mysterious and maleficent creatures, and a hidden world of fantasy revealed by a child protagonist.

The original Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark was a 1973 ABC made-for-TV movie about a young couple in an abusive relationship who inherit an old mansion. Del Toro has claimed that, for his generation (he was 9 at the time), this was “the scariest TV movie we ever saw.” Del Toro began co-writing his version with Matthew Robbins in 1998, but the production had its own delays. Switching the focus to the couple’s daughter, he realized the plot was too similar to Pan’s Labyrinth, so he put the project on hold. He kept pursuing it over the past dozen years, finally beginning production two years ago when he felt the time was right.

Shot in Australia, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark is set in present day Rhode Island. An architect (Guy Pearce) and his interior-designer girlfriend (Katie Holmes) renovate and move into a lavish mansion. The architect’s introverted daughter, Sally (Bailee Madison from Bridge to Terabithia), reluctantly joins them. The de rigueur prologue concerns the previous owner of Blackwood Manor, a Victorian-era, Audubon-like illustrator and naturalist who became enslaved to an ancient evil inhabiting the basement’s ash pit.

I had a chance to speak with Guillermo del Toro, via telephone from New York City. We had met in person last year, when del Toro was in Boston promoting The Fall, the second book in his horror novel trilogy The Strain, co-authored with Massachusetts resident Chuck Hogan. (The final volume The Night Eternal comes out October 25.)

Ethan Gilsdorf: Hello, Mr. del Toro. It’s a pleasure to speak with you again. We met about a year ago in Boston when you were promoting The Fall. I was the guy who wrote that book Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks. We traded books, I seem to recall.

Guillermo del Toro: I remember that, yes. You went to New Zealand for Lord of the Rings.

EG: I’m glad you remembered! Yes, I was that crazy nut who traveled there to see as many of the Lord of the Rings filming locations as I could in three weeks.

GDT: [Laughs]

EG: Yeah, it’s all in my book. So, I should probably get right to the questions since I know you have a limited amount of time. I saw Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark last night and I very much enjoyed it. Can you talk your decision in this case to co-write and producer rather than direct this film yourself?

Blackwood Manor, home to nasty and evil forces. (Courtesy of FilmDistrict Distribution)GDT: I co-wrote the movie with Matthew Robbins in 1998. And in the interim, I did Pan’s Labyrinth. I thought anecdotally and superficially the two movies shared certain traits. A young girl arriving at a foreign place, to an old mansion, discovering creatures underground. I thought about it and I thought, although it was very different, I thought it was superficially, professionally, too much in common. I didn’t want to repeat. I thought, however, I would be very, very involved in the making of the movie.

EG: Troy Nixey, the director you chose, comes from comic books. He illustrated for the Batman franchise and Neil Gaiman’s Only the End of the World Again, among other things. But Nixey had made just one short film, Latchkey’s Lament. Why did you pick him?

GDT: Yes, [Nixey was] a first time feature filmmaker. He had done a wonderful short called Latchkey’s Lament, and I saw that short. It’s really, really quite beautiful. It’s available to see on YouTube. You can just type “Latchkey’s Lament” and you can see why he got the job. [See the film here]

EG: For someone like Nixey, who has gone from a short film to a pretty major production, with some major actors and obviously a lot of special effects work and so on, I wonder if that required any special attention on your part? Were you there on the set quite often to oversee things, or did he get to run with things on his own?

GDT: Yes, this is the movie I have produced where I have been the most involved in every facet of it. It’s the only movie I have produced where I have been, almost 90 percent of the time on the set, every day, because it was a big job to go from a short film as I say to something that intricate and that complicated. Also, we did it for a budget and a very tight schedule. Ultimately, we delivered the movie under budget and under schedule. Which was great, but to do so was a very complicated process.

This is a haunted house movie. Better bring your flashlight. (Courtesy of FilmDistrict Distribution)EG: There have been so many movies made over the years that try to scare people or try to disturb them, or try to effect them emotionally. I was wondering when you are selecting your projects, whether you are directing or want to direct, or just to be attached to, how do you think outside of the box? Particularly with horror movies, it does seem like they are a dime a dozen at this point. How do you be original?

GDT: I think that the case of the genre of horror movies, they are a way to make a quick buck. There are very few filmmakers both on the producing and directing side who actually approach [horror] with the desire to create something either of substance or something beautiful or powerful. Most of the people just try to get a [big opening] weekend and DVD sales.

The first thing is, I don’t get attached, or I rarely get attached, to something I’m not generating from the get go. Don’t Be Afraid is no exception. I started working on this project actively about 16 years ago now. We wrote it in 1998 which was about 13 years ago. And I have not stopped pursuing it actively. So I really just try to get involved in things I feel truly passionate about, and if I happen to be able to control the rights or hold the rights, I don’t let them go. I just hold onto the project until it gets made. If I don’t control the rights, that’s a different matter.

EG: You grew up in one culture, Mexico, and largely work in another, by which I mean the American film system. Obviously your audiences are world-wide, but a good chunk of them are American. Do you find there is a universal thread that connects audience sfrom one culture to another, in terms of what disturbs them or what haunts them? Are there specific kinds of themes that always work?

GDT: I think that no matter what culture you come from [you] are afraid of the   darkness, and what lurks in it is an absolutely common fear. I think that Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark is tapping into the most primal, almost universal, childhood fears. That’s what attracted me from the get-go to the idea of making this remake, a complete re-telling of this story. The movie from 1973 was about a very specific, abusive relationship between a husband and wife, and it was very much a product of its time. … I decided to turn it into a sort of a very dark fairy tale. Precisely, as I say, that taps into universal fears — the invasion of the more intimate spaces, the home, the bedroom, the bed — and little by little we show that these creatures can be anywhere at any time, watching from the dark.

And that’s the end of Part I. Tune in tomorrow for Part II, when the conversation with Guillermo del Toro continues. Among other topics, we discuss why the horror genre is underappreciated, how he sees his own evolution as a filmmaker, his relationship with Peter Jackson, his new video game project, and — of course — what scares him.

[Note: Portions of this interview originally appeared in a different form in an article for the Boston Sunday Globe]

Horror story: With “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark,” Guillermo del Toro keeps infusing horror with “beautiful and moving images”

by Ethan Gilsdorf

[originally appeared in the Boston Globe, Sunday Aug 21, 2011]

scene from del Toro's "Pan's Labyrinth" 

In director Guillermo del Toro’s estimation, most horror movies are cheap products to cash in, a quick and dirty way for studios to make a buck. Originality and artistry are discouraged.

“Few filmmakers,’’ del Toro said, “approach horror with the desire to create something either of substance or something beautiful or powerful. Most of the people just try to get a [big opening] weekend and DVD sales.’’

Del Toro, the man behind personal, vision-driven projects like “Cronos,’’ “The Devil’s Backbone,’’ and “Pan’s Labyrinth,’’ as well as the commercial successes “Blade II,’’ and two “Hellboy’’ films, has never seen horror as a temporary career move.

“I really think I was born to exist in the genre,’’ the quick-witted, outspoken Mexican filmmaker said in a telephone interview from New York City. “I adore it. I embrace it. I enshrine it. I don’t look upon it or frown upon it in a way that a lot of directors do. For me, it’s not a stepping stone, it’s a cathedral.’’

To make other kinds of film - comedy, drama - well . . . “I don’t think it’s in my DNA.’’

The latest spawn from del Toro’s imaginarium is “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark,’’ a throwback to haunted house films of yore. Though he only co-wrote and produced the film - the director is newcomer Troy Nixey - “Don’t Be Afraid’’ (opening Friday) is still glazed with many familiar del Toro tropes: a dark prologue; the weight of ancient, historical forces; subterranean dungeons and mazes; and a hidden world of fantasy.

The original production was a 1973 ABC made-for-TV movie about a young couple in an abusive relationship who inherit an old mansion. Del Toro has claimed that, for his generation (he was 9 at the time), “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark’’ was “the scariest TV movie we ever saw.’’

In 1998, del Toro began co-writing his version with Matthew Robbins, switching the focus to the couple’s daughter. Realizing the plot was too similar to “Pan’s Labyrinth,’’ he put the project on hold. “A young girl arriving at a foreign place, to an old mansion, discovering creatures underground,’’ del Toro said. “I didn’t want to repeat.’’

The film remained on the back burner of del Toro’s mind for more than a decade, but he kept pursuing it, finally beginning production two years ago. Shot in Australia, “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark’’ is set in present day Rhode Island. We assume it’s Newport, given the lavish mansion an architect (Guy Pearce) and his interior-designer girlfriend (Katie Holmes) have renovated and moved into. The architect’s introverted daughter, Sally (Bailee Madison from “Bridge to Terabithia’’), reluctantly joins them.

The film traffics in another frequent del Toro theme: fantasy as escape from conflict. In “Pan’s Labyrinth,’’ against the backdrop of Fascist-era Spain, a girl suffers under a totalitarian father. While “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark’’ isn’t set during wartime, Sally feels besieged by her parents’ divorce. Ignored by the adult world, she hears whispers from the basement. Her parents don’t believe the mischievous, rat-like homunculi that pour from the house’s innards truly exist. This is another classic del Toro thread: It’s the lonely, abandoned child who finds the secret doorway to the spirit and fairy world.

“I decided to turn it into a sort of very dark fairy tale,’’ del Toro said, “that taps into universal fears, the invasion of the most intimate spaces, the home, the bedroom, the bed. Little by little we show that these creatures can be anywhere at any time watching from the dark.’’

The de rigueur prologue concerns the previous owner of Blackwood Manor, a Victorian-era, Audubon-like illustrator and naturalist who became enslaved to an ancient evil inhabiting the basement’s ash pit. This opening back story (told in flashback) infuses the present with the horrifying past, but del Toro keeps his modern day protagonists in the dark. The gap between what the audience and the characters know is meant to provide the story’s urgency and tension.

“I think that no matter what culture you come from,’’ del Toro said, “the darkness and what lurks in it is an absolutely common fear. I think that ‘Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark’ taps into the most primal, almost universal, childhood fears. That’s what attracted me from the get-go to the idea of making this remake a complete re-telling of this story.’’

The former special effects makeup designer has his own aesthetic: a melding of the man-made past - the handcrafted technology of wood, leather, brass, iron - and the organic world of slugs, bugs, and tentacles. He has a fascination with mechanical gadgets, the colors amber and steel blue, and body parts embalmed in jars. You might say he’s invented his own genre: not the clockwork and piston of “steampunk,’’ but gut-and-gears “steam-gunk.’’

The goal is never to gratuitously freak us out. Rather, he aims to touch us. Of the boy ghost in “The Devil’s Backbone,’’ del Toro said he made him more “pitiful and beautiful’’ than scary. In “Cronos,’’ he depicted a sympathetic vampire. Even the crowd-pleasing action movies “Hellboy’’ and “Hellboy II’’ fit the del Toro ethos of flawed hero-outcasts; the protagonist, an orphaned demon rescued from Nazis, grows into a pathos-filled, cigar-chomping wiseacre, acutely aware of his oddball nature and still compelled to save the day. In “Pan’s Labyrinth,’’ del Toro created a “real world far more brutal . . . than the world of horrors that the girl experiences.’’ He has been unwavering, he insisted, in his intention “to make beautiful and moving images and beautiful and moving stories within the genre.’’

This time around, to realize those images and stories, he handpicked Nixey, a 39-year-old Canadian comic book illustrator for the Batman franchise and Neil Gaiman’s “Only the End of the World Again,’’ among other things. Nixey had made just one short film, “Latchkey’s Lament.’’ It captured del Toro’s attention.

“I saw that short. It’s really, really quite beautiful.’’ Watch it on YouTube, he said, “and you can see why he got the job.’’

Nixey still can’t believe that’s how he came to direct “Don’t Be Afraid,’’ but he was always clear that making his short would help cement his talent for filmmaking. “When I set out to make ‘Latchkey’s’ it was with the intention of proving that yes, OK, I can do this. I can think in terms of a movie,’’ said Nixey, a 17-year-veteran of the comics industry, speaking via telephone from New York. “But my first love had always been movies. This was me seeing if this was in fact what I was supposed to do.’’

Because “Don’t Be Afraid’’ was Nixey’s first feature film, del Toro was “very, very involved’’ in the production. “It’s the only movie I have produced where I have been almost 90 percent of the time on the set, every day,’’ del Toro said. “It was a big job to go from a short film . . . to something that intricate and that complicated.’’

Nixey agreed it was “a big leap’’ to direct a star-studded, multimillion-dollar film, but having what he called “my favorite filmmaker’’ and “a creative genius’’ nearby helped. “He [del Toro] said at the beginning, ‘I’m here when you need me and I’m not when you don’t.’ But I’m no dummy. He’s this amazingly talented, successful filmmaker with an imagination that I’ve never seen before. So, yeah, why wouldn’t I want to pick his brain when I had questions?’’

To see this Nixey-del Toro collaboration, audiences have had to be patient: The film was actually finished in 2010, but the protracted sale of Miramax delayed its release by months. Not only that, but del Toro fans have been wondering when their beloved master will direct again; he’s served as producer on this film and consultant or producer on more than a dozen other recent projects, but he hasn’t helmed a picture since 2008’s “Hellboy II: The Golden Army.’’

Del Toro has been bedeviled by bad luck and bad timing. He relocated to New Zealand to co-write and direct “The Hobbit,’’ but when that production repeatedly stalled, he backed out. Currently, Peter Jackson is filming the two-part adaptation of Tolkien’s fantasy book.

“We stay in touch,’’ del Toro said about his relationship with Jackson. “I said what I had to say. I really love having had the experience. Now it’s in Peter’s hands and I’m actually waiting for it to come out and I’ll be the first in line.’’

After “The Hobbit,’’ a $150-million, 3-D adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s novella “At the Mountains of Madness’’ was announced as del Toro’s next project, but studios balked at the price tag. It turns out del Toro’s next directorial effort will be a Japanese-style monsters versus robots film called “Pacific Rim,’’ which at this year’s Comic-Con he boasted would feature “the finest [expletive] monsters ever committed to screen.’’ Convinced that video games will continue to intersect with film and TV in “multi-platform world creation,’’ del Toro is also midway through “apprenticeship into the gaming world,’’ a multi-year project designing a Lovecraftian horror game called “inSANE.’’ He's also releasing book three in his horror novel trilogy "The Strain" (co-authored with Chuck Hogan); the final volume "The Night Eternal" comes out October 25, 2011.

Whatever the medium, del Toro keeps pushing the boundaries of this horror genre, which he said continues to be stigmatized because it depends on a visceral, not intellectual reaction.

“Being scared is often regarded as a childish or immature emotion,’’ del Toro said. “It’s very hard for the critical audience to admit they got emotional in a movie. It’s sort of admitting defeat.’’

If that’s the case, then may del Toro keep conquering us.

When is shock just schlock?

The re-release of William Lustig’s “Maniac’’ (1980), the notorious film in which a serial killer scalps women, is a chance to reevaluate shock value, or the value of shock, or schlock. 

Ever since Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí’s 1929 “Un Chien Andalou’’ reinvented squeamish by showing a razor slicing open an eyeball, filmmakers have tested the limits of good taste. Whether in the service of high art or plain shock, films make us face what we’d rather not even imagine.

Each year ups the ante in some way. With gore galore, Tobe Hooper’s “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’’ (1974) reveled in being censored. William Lustig’s “Maniac’’ (1980) gave us a serial killer who scalps women. Peter Jackson’s “Meet the Feebles’’ (1989) depicted the lives of Muppet-like puppets not on Sesame Street but Skid Row. More gentle but no less revolting, the Farrelly brothers’ “There’s Something About Mary’’ (1998) suggested a new way to style Cameron Diaz’s hair. And so on.

Yet just because filmmakers can depict such depravities, should they? And how far can our envelopes be pushed before we, as an audience, feel ripped apart?

Lustig has been appearing at theaters nationwide this winter to introduce a fresh, 30th-anniversary print of his notorious slasher film, and possibly address these and other questions. If nothing else, the re-release of “Maniac’’ lets us reevaluate shock value, or the value of shock, or schlock. [Upcoming dates include: February 18-19, Brookline, MA; March 11-12,Omaha Nebraska; March 26 & 27, Kansas City, Mo.; April 16th,
Richmond, VA; May 6, Phoenixville, PA; May 12, Stamford, CT; More info: http://www.grindhousereleasing.com/maniac.html]

In its day, Lustig’s film gained notoriety as among the most disturbing of its genre, not only because of the graphic violence — in one scene, a man’s head is shown blowing apart in slow motion — but because “Maniac’’ focuses on the killer, played by character actor Joe Spinell (“The Godfather,’’ “Taxi Driver,’’ “Rocky’’). Other horror movies like “Halloween’’ (1978) and “Friday the 13th’’ (1980) followed the victims. “You find yourself feeling empathy for someone committing despicable acts,’’ says Lustig in a phone interview from Los Angeles.

“Maniac’’ and its ilk helped usher in a new over-the-top horror category that attracted its share of controversy. Feminists protested the unrated “Maniac,’’ and “Sneak Previews’’ critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert incited audiences to boycott. “If ‘Maniac’ doesn’t deserve to be rated X for violence,’’ Siskel wrote, “no film does.’’ As for the rape-revenge flick “I Spit On Your Grave,’’ another poster-child slasher film, Ebert said “attending it was one of the most depressing experiences of my life.’’

Clearly, the moviegoer “finds pleasure in movies meant to challenge, disturb, shock and even sicken,’’ Newsweek critic David Ansen wrote. “But at what point does the challenging become the unbearable?’’ What inspired Ansen’s inquiry was the notorious 2002 French film “Irreversible,’’ which includes a 10-minute scene of Monica Bellucci being raped while her head gets pummeled against a cement wall.

If the point is to “push taboos,’’ says Lustig, a film like “Irreversible’’ succeeds. “There’s a liberation of ideas [in these films], a willingness to push the envelope, something that’s taboo.’’ Of course, gross-out stunts like drag queen Divine eating dog excrement in John Waters’s “Pink Flamingos’’ (1972) seem aimed only to induce a gag reflex. Other films, like Hitchcock’s “Psycho’’ (what Lustig calls “the granddaddy of them all’’), tapped into something more psychologically primal.

That we want and even need to have the bejesus scared out of us is clear; works by everyone from the Brothers Grimm to Stephen King have taught us that. If watching an action hero injects us with a shot of adrenaline, feeling disgusted by gore or repelled by torture reminds us of the limits — of morals, of pain, of our own bodies — we must not exceed.

Lustig never intended to sate any highfalutin cultural or psychic craving. “I made ‘Maniac’ as a horror film fan. I didn’t intellectualize it,’’ he says. “It wasn’t what I said, ‘to push the envelope.’ We just went on instinct. We were making the film for ourselves.’’ Lustig now heads Blue Underground, a DVD company that stokes our nostalgia for gore of yore, distributing lost classics about “psychopaths, cops, robbers, zombies, cannibals, madmen, strange women and more,’’ its website declares.

Undoubtedly, what it takes to shock us has changed since the Surrealist Twenties, the Comics Code Authority crackdown of the Fifties, and the Dungeons & Dragons/heavy metal parental freakout endured in the 1980s. Movies reset our boundaries, then we become habituated, then unimpressed.

“Years ago when we were younger, we craved some form of radical stimulation, and early horror/slasher films filled in the gap,’’ wrote Carl Cephas, president of Washington, D.C.’s Psychotronic Film Society, in a recent e-mail. But as visual stimulation “went into overkill,’’ the audience reached over-saturation. The films left nothing to the imagination. A new wave of film history twisted that border till it bled again.

Looking back, 1972 was a banner year for limit-pushing. Among other things it gave us “Pink Flamingos,’’ “Deliverance,’’ “The Last House on the Left,’’ and “Last Tango in Paris.’’ But even then, some suspected its alarming effect would prove ephemeral. Reviewing Bernardo Bertolucci’s “Last Tango,’’ Vincent Canby wrote, “It’s so Now, in fact, that you better see it quickly. I suspect that its ideas, as well as its ability to shock or, apparently, to arouse, will age quickly.’’

Or take 1975’s “Salò,’’ based on the Marquis de Sade’s book “120 Days of Sodom’’ but re-envisioned in Fascist Italy. Banned in its day, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s film was available only as a bootleg until two years ago when it was finally released on DVD. But the long wait disappointed. “[People] were expecting gore, and they were bored,’’ says Brian “Horrorwitz’’ Horowitz, who runs a movie and collectibles business called Trash Palace out of Frederick, Md. We’d moved on.

Horowitz’s list of top audacious titles includes “Cannibal Holocaust’’ (1980), infamous because the director (Ruggero Deodato) was accused of making a snuff film; Sam Peckinpah’s 1971 “Straw Dogs,’’ known for its groundbreaking violence; and “A Clockwork Orange’’ (also 1971), which Stanley Kubrick pulled from theaters when it was accused of inciting gang violence. After each of these, more “more’’ became acceptable.

So what daring subject matter is left to colonize? And is it harder to make a more disturbing film these days when most boundaries have been explored, if not by mainstream movies then by video games and pornography? The answer might be the “torture porn’’ trend of the “Saw’’ series, or “The Human Centipede,’’ with its diabolical premise of a surgeon joining the digestive systems of three unfortunate tourists. Both are shocking, but also readable as responses to Abu Ghraib and our obsession with plastic surgery.

Meanwhile, recent remakes of “Last House,’’ “Texas Chainsaw,’’ and “I Spit on Your Grave’’ suggest the industry won’t take big risks. It wants to bank on the safety of familiar franchises, while soaking that cutting edge of what Canby called “Now’’ in as much blood as the ratings board can stomach. According to Cephas, it’s a game of “gore-upsmanship and the bucket is already full.’’

At least we’re beginning to look back on controversial films with rosier glasses. David Lynch’s 1977 “Eraserhead’’ was deemed by Variety a “sickening bad-taste exercise.’’ Now it’s a beloved cult film preserved by both the Library of Congress and National Film Registry. Same with “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,’’ now added to the permanent collection of New York City’s Museum of Modern Art.

As for Lustig, he went on to direct a few more films — “Vigilante’’ and the “Maniac Cop’’ series — but none attracted much controversy, or notice. Even though a “Maniac’’ remake is in the works, the slasher veteran seems jaded by the genre he helped to create. For him, better computer effects, more gallons of blood, is actually less. It’s what’s suggested in the mind, not splashed on the screen, that can disturb the most.

“I always thought that Steven Spielberg’s best film was ‘Jaws,’ ’’ Lustig says. “You have the shark that pops out of the water when Roy Scheider is chumming. But what sells it is the expression on Roy Scheider’s face. You see his veins popping out and see that fear. That’s what it’s all about.’’

When literary authors slum in genre

There’s a curious phenomenon happening out there in LiteraryLand: The territory of genre fiction is being invaded by the literary camp.

While it could be argued that literary writers have always borrowed from fantasy, science fiction and horror, even stolen genre's best ideas, I think there's a new and significant shift happening in the past few years.

Take Justin Cronin, writer of respectable stories, who recently leaped the chasm to the dystopian, undead-ridden realm of Twilight.  With The Passage, his post-apocalyptic, doorstopper of a saga, the author enters a new universe, seemingly snubbing his former life writing “serious books” like Mary and O’Neil and The Summer Guest, which won prizes like Pen/Hemingway Award, the Whiting Writer’s Award and the Stephen Crane Prize. Both books of fiction situate themselves solidly in the camp of literary fiction. They’re set on the planet Earth we know and love. Not so with The Passage, in which mutant vampire-like creatures ravage a post-apocalyptic U.S. of A. Think Cormac McCarthy’s The Road crossed with the movie The Road Warrior, with the psychological tonnage of John Fowles’ The Magus and the “huh?” ofThe Matrix.

Now comes Ricky Moody, whose ironic novels like The Ice Storm andPurple America were solidly in the literary camp, telling us about life in a more-or-less recognizable world. His latest novel, The Four Fingers of Death, is a big departure, blending a B-movie classic with a dark future world. The plot: A doomed U.S. space mission to Mars and a subsequent accidental release of deadly bacteria picked up on the Red Planet results in that astronaut’s severed arm surviving re-entry to earth, and reanimating to embark on a wanton rampage of strangulation.

And there’s probably other examples I’m forgetting at the moment.

So what’s all this forsaking of one’s literary pedigree about?

It began with the flipside of this equation. It used to be that genre writers had to claw their way up the ivory tower in order to be recognized by the literary tastemakers. Clearly, that’s shifted, as more and more fantasy, science fiction, and horror writers have been accepted by the mainstream and given their overdue lit cred. It’s been a hard row to hoe. J.R.R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Philip Pullman and others helped blaze the trail to acceptance. Now these authors have been largely accepted into the canon. You can take university courses on fantasy literature and write dissertations on the homoerotic subtext simmering between Frodo and Sam. A whole generation, now of age and in college, grew up reading (or having read to them) the entire oeuvre of Harry Potter. That’s a sea change in the way fantasy will be seen in the future—not as some freaky subculture, but as widespread mass culture.

Yes, Margaret Atwood and Doris Lessing have delved into genre, although their works (A Handmaid's Tale, for example) was always taken as highbrow. Perhaps a better example: Stephen King, considered a hack horror writer for years who began publishing in the New Yorker in 1990. One wonders why the New Yorker finally caved and let him in the doors --- is this an implicit acknowledgement of his popularity? Or had King's writing gotten better. In any case, it's was a shocker when he began racking up impressive literary kudos, like in 2003 when the National Book Awards handed over its annual medal for distinguished contribution to American letters to King. Recently in May, the Los Angeles Public Library gave its Literary Award for his monstrous contribution to literature.

Now, as muggles and Mordor have entered the popular lexicon, the glitterati of literary fiction find themselves “slumming” in the darker, fouler waters of genre. (One reason: It’s probably more fun to write.) But in the end, I think it’s all about call and response. Readers want richer, more complex and more imaginative and immersive stories. Writers want an audience, and that audience increasingly reads genre. Each side—literary and genre—leeches off the other. The two camps have more or less met in the middle.

One wonders who’s going to delve into the dark waters next—Philip Roth? Salman Rushdie? Toni Morrison? Actually, it turns they already (sort of) have --- Roth explores alternative history in The Plot Against America; 
Rushdie's "Magical Realism," of Midnight's Children, in which children have superpowers. You might even argue that Morrison's Beloved is a ghost story.

[thanks to readers at Tor.com, where this post originally appeared, for catching some errors and helping me revise this into a better essay]

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Ethan Gilsdorf is the author of Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms, which comes out in paperback in September. Contact him through his website,www.ethangilsdorf.com

Not dead yet: Zombie movies are unalive and well

Not dead yet: Zombie movies are unalive and well

George Romero and Ethan GilsdorfGeorge Romero thinks the zombie genre is here to stay.

“I don’t think it will ever die,’’ said Romero, director of six zombie-themed films, including his latest, “Survival of the Dead,’’ which opens Friday. He was in Boston earlier this month to promote the film.

Of course, Romero is more than a little biased. Over the past 40-plus years, the director has brought us the landmark “Night of the Living Dead’’ (1968), “Dawn of the Dead’’ (1978), and “Day of the Dead’’ (1985), as well as “Creepshow’’ (1982). But ask the man why re-animated, flesh-starved corpses are stumbling and lumbering back into pop culture, hungry for our brains, and he draws a blank.

“Why zombie movies? In Budapest, 3,000 people dress up as zombies. What is that about? I don’t know,’’ said the gangly, avuncular, 70-year-old filmmaker who wears a gray ponytail and white beard. “I half expect a zombie to show up and hang out with the Count on ‘Sesame Street.’ ’’

Like other horror categories — vampire, werewolf, psycho-killer, demon — the zombie film once lay dormant in its grave. But the genre has made a significant comeback, and the uptick of zombie mania has benefited a host of filmmakers, authors, comic book artists, and video-game developers. Romero, who had to wait 20 years between making “Day’’ and 2005’s “Land of the Dead,’’ has churned out three zombie films in five years. (“Diary of the Dead’’ came out in 2007.)

Among the spate of zombie-themed books, there’s The New York Times bestseller “Zombie Survival Guide’’ and “World War Z,’’ and the recent “U.S. Army Zombie Combat Skills,’’ which teaches the techniques needed to take on armies of the undead. Naturally, the Jane Austen-zombie mash-up novel “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies’’ also helped drive the resurgence, as have impromptu flash-mob zombie walks, and hit video games like Resident Evil (“Zombies are good targets for first-person shooters,’’ Romero noted).

Last year’s “Zombieland’’ was a hit. With “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies’’ now in development as an A-list movie starring Natalie Portman, and with “E’gad, Zombies!,’’ a film short about 19th-century zombies premiering at Cannes this year (starring Ian McKellen, with plans to expand to feature length), perhaps the genre has finally come of age and gained mass respectability — albeit a tongue-through-cheek one. There’s even a new Ford Fiesta ad touting how the vehicle’s keyless door opener and push-button starter enable a hasty getaway from a zombie attack.

Romero finds the fascination both “ridiculous’’ and “unbelievable.’’ Too many zombies, even for Romero? Perhaps there’s a tinge of jealousy in his voice. After all, it was Romero who toiled for years in the indie movie trenches, struggled to get his projects financed, and more or less single-handedly reinvented the genre. He also tolerated remakes of his movies, like 2004’s “Dawn of the Dead,’’ which was made without his participation.

Romero deserves respect. After all, he codified the rules of the game. Namely, that to kill zombies, “You have to deactivate the brain: shoot it, stab it, stomp it, whatever you got — in the head,’’ said Romero’s working partner and “Survival of the Dead’’ producer Peter Grunwald. It was also Romero who rescued the undead from their quainter origins in such classics as 1932’s “White Zombie,’’ considered to be the first zombie movie. Bela Lugosi plays a voodoo priest who transforms a young woman into a zombie.

In those days, zombies were more like hypnotized puppets than flesh-eating ghouls. “The zombie was born out of Haitian zombie lore,’’ said Glenn Kay, author of “Zombie Movies: The Ultimate Guide,’’ in a telephone interview. “There was a huge element in the early movies of all these potions and powders, with a zombie master. It’s not so magical any more.’’

Later, in movies like “Plan 9 From Outer Space’’ (1959), zombies served as “muscle for the aliens,’’ Kay said; in “Invisible Invaders’’ (also released in 1959), they were alien occupiers of bodies of the recently deceased. But they had no personalities. “It was hard for filmmakers to figure out what to do with them.’’

That all changed in 1968 — a year of social upheaval on many fronts — with the black-and-white, bargain-basement “Night of the Living Dead.’’ Here radioactive contamination reanimates corpses, and Romero remade zombies — no longer mind-controlled dummies, but autonomous beings with a motivation to feast on flesh. That upped the genre’s dramatic ante. Since Romero, various filmmakers have offered zombie-like plots. “Re-Animator’’ (1985) is more like Frankenstein than Romero, but still features the walking dead. In “28 Days Later’’ (2002), a virus fills people with murderous rage. Fancy a zombie apocalypse comedy? See 2004’s “Shaun of the Dead.’’

The premise of “Survival of the Dead,’’ like all of Romero’s zombie films, pits a band of survivors against the undead. This time around, Sarge (Alan Van Sprang) and his small platoon (we first meet them in “Diary of the Dead’’) head to an island to escape the zombies, where they stumble into clan warfare between two Irish-American families (and more zombies). One, headed by O’Flynn (Kenneth Welsh), thinks the only good zombie is a dead zombie. The other, under Muldoon (Richard Fitzpatrick), hopes his zombie beloved might be cured, so he keeps them alive and chained up. Guess which is the better idea?

This wholesale rise of zombies suggests a metaphorical interpretation. Do they represent our fear of death and disease, or work as a way to accept death (minus the flesh-eating parts)? Are the undead actually proxies for illegal immigrants or terrorists? Or are the undead making fun of our mindless, consumerist, sheep-like tendencies?

Perhaps we identify with zombies because they’re the monsters we most resemble. “We can imagine ourselves as them,’’ said Grunwald. “They’re not giant CG [computer-generated] beasts. They’re like us, like our family, or loved ones.’’ They are us.

As Sarge narrates early on in “Survival,’’ “They were easy enough to kill, except when they were your buddies.’’

Romero refuses to analyze. Actually, he insists his films aren’t about zombies. They’re about the chaos zombies create. In “Survival’’ you will find disgustingly cool new ways to kill a zombie, i.e., fill its head with fire-extinguisher foam, or shoot it with a flare gun then cavalierly light your cigarette off its flaming body. But the subtext of biting social commentary that Romero fans have come to expect is buried not far below the surface.

“All six of them have always been about people, how they screw up,’’ he said. “How they can’t pull together to address the problem. Or they address the problem stupidly. Or they attack the symptom rather than the disease.’’

“Lousy times make lousy people,’’ says the teenage protagonist of “Survival.’’ With its “Lord of the Flies’’ scenario, “Survival’’ is really a disaster movie about human nature and another chapter in Romero’s bleak — yet paradoxically goofy — worldview. It’s not for everyone.

“I think they [his movies] really are an acquired taste,’’ Romero said. “If you have the stamina to acquire the taste.’’

Or the stomach. Take Romero’s iPhone “App of the Dead,’’ launching later this month. You’ll be able to add zombie makeup to snapshots of your friends, then shoot them in the head.

“It’s anchovies, baby.’’

Ethan Gilsdorf is the author of “Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms.’’ He can be reached at ethan@ethangilsdorf.com.