Forthcoming Publications

The Directory of World Cinema: Britain will be published June 2012. Edited by Emma Bell and Neil Mitchell and published by Intellect Books, I contributed a historic account of the emergence and development of the British horror film alongside a series of reviews of various horror films, including The Haunted Curiosity Shop (Walter R. Booth, 1901), The Dead of Night (Various Directors, 1945) and Hellraiser (Clive Barker, 1987).

Bringing to mind rockers and royals, Buckingham Palace and the Scottish Highlands, Britain holds a special interest for international audiences who have flocked in recent years to quality British exports like Fish Tank, Trainspotting and The King’s Speech. A series of essays and articles exploring the definitive films of Great Britain, this addition to Intellect’s Directory of World Cinema series turns the focus on England together with Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales.

The Book can be preordered from either Intellect Books or Amazon.

Notebook Extract

Candyman

For sociology research student Helen the academic world is clearly dominated by men, a situation which her thesis seeks to undermine by proving the invalidity of existing texts concerning urban legends – all seemingly authored by men. This male domination extends into both her family life (her husband is a university professor) and into the illusionary world created by the supernatural element of the Candyman: the Gothic ‘other’ world created by his hypnotic presence lulls Helen into a hallucinatory state and so makes her an instrument of his murderous desires. She becomes, quite literally, an extension and/or physical embodiment of the antagonist’s desire for violent and murderous actions. In this respect Helen’s submission to the threatening male could be interpreted at a much more complex level, with the narrative itself potentially being in conflict: the male presence of the Candyman can be seen as means of repressing the Female Gothic narrative trajectory by forcing the female protagonist into a typical male narrative, making her a character driven not by emotion and understanding but by base instinct which results in externally aggressive actions.

Regardless of how this interpretation is perceived, at a basic narrative level Helen is forever trapped in a male dominated world, be that in the tangible world of the university or the hallucinatory one created by the Candyman. This oppression culminates into total domination and control, with Helen being simultaneously attracted to and repulsed by the two men in her life. Although she loves her husband, Helen not only suspects him of having an affair with an undergraduate student but is also, unconsciously, jealous of his academic success. As she struggles to deal with these conflicting emotions, her (possible) hallucinations of the Candyman represent a projected externalisation of these anxieties: handsome, well spoken and rich, the Candyman offers Helen immortality if she will be his victim. With his calm voice and promises of power and dominion, Candyman is essential a seducer, a tempter whose own dominance is reinstated by the death of each of his victims.

Unable to distinguish between what is real and what is not, Helen seemingly slips into a state of madness and fully enters into the delusion world the supernatural element may or may not have created. As the film reaches its climax, Helen attempts to save the baby Candyman requires as a final sacrifice. Although she rescues the baby and kills the Candyman, Helen herself dies. But, given the Gothic intensity of the film, death is never the end and in the narrative's final twist, Helen returns from death and using her husband’s lover as Candyman used her, murders him.

Recently Viewed

The Midnight Meat Train (Ryuhei Kitamura, 2008)

The involvement of Clive Barker in any project – be that a novel, film, art work or console game – is often a sure sign of quality. Regardless of format, Barker’s distinctive vision of the world of the real, of fantasy and of horror consistently emerges and confirms him as one of the greatest creative minds of the genre. Imagine then the potential of a film adaptation of one of his ground breaking short stories from The Books of Blood – The Midnight Meat Train.

The title alone is enough to get the genre fanatic salivating. The imagery it conjures up – the dark, cold, and rickety corridors of a train slick with blood and littered with meat – is ideal material for an era of horror cinema preoccupied with Painography. Yet, even though the film has a reasonably small body count, the gore content of Midnight Meat Train is quite obtrusive: fast and bloody, the violence perpetrated by Mahogany seems strangely at odds with the rest of the narrative. Although the explicit nature of these events will slake the thirst of the average gore hound – as fingers are mashed, bodies butchered, limbs carved and brains are tenderised all in sickening close up – these scenes actually detract from the tension the film is trying so hard to generate. The potential horror of Mahogany lies in his menacing presence, the contradiction between his normal appearance and Everyman quality with his brooding nature and seemingly endless repressed rage. Watching him act out his fury in a frenzy of explicit violence only manages to dissipate whatever fear that surrounds him.

This is no Hellraiser nor was it ever intended to be but the shadow that film has cast is long and deep, making it difficult not to measure any film that is Barker related against it. Where the film does succeed is in its depiction of the contemporary city as a space of concealed horrors, the anonymous nature of city life and the immense claustrophobia of the tube trains. All are admirably constructed by director Kitamura and provide an interesting foil to the gouts of blood that are freely spilled. Yet, for all this, the film feels way too long and stretches Barker’s original material to the limit before the concluding payoff. Die hard Barker fans will not be overly disappointed given earlier filmic treatments of his work (Underworld and Rawhead Rex) nor will those who like blood and brains sprayed and splattered across the screen. But for those looking for the melancholy in Barkers work and manifestations of his immense imagination may be disappointed.