The Woman In Black

One of the UK poster images for The Woman In Black (2012)

I never thought I'd say this, but I'm actually looking forward to The Woman In Black.  Over the last decade, we have been treated to an array of ghost stories such as El Orfanato which, despite good press and good box office, did little to excite me.  Yet Hammer's return to a period-set Yorkshire is surely enough to get anyone's juices flowing.

Admittedly, my prejudice against ghost stories has no real grounding, although my love of 1980s schlock and prosthetic effects probably has something to do with it.  But, for The Woman in Black, we have the seasoned James Watkins in the director's chair, and I am very curious to see if he can transfer the wonderful job he did with the decidedly nasty Eden Lake, to a period-set chiller.

It has been suggested that The Woman In Black marks the 'true' return of Hammer films: a statement that has preceded almost every Hammer production since the company was re-established proper in 2007.  In fact, it is interesting to go back through newspaper articles/reviews which consider Hammer's other recent films Beyond the Rave, Let Me In, The Resident and Wake Wood, to see how journalists in some (but not in all, it must be said) cases herald each film separately as Hammer returning to their 'roots': often over-looking the other films, or, as was often the case with Let Me In, failing to identify it as a Hammer production at all (Stephen King, most famously, stated that Let Me In was :"the best American horror film in the last 20 years": a statement that surely works against Hammer's once profoundly 'British' branding). [Nb. By the same token, Let Me In was also heralded by some as the 'true' return of Hammer in some press coverage, with the web-serial Beyond the Rave being ignored completely.]

British quad for Hammer's Brides of Dracula (1960)

It is no coincidence that The Woman in Black has made a $20m killing at the US box-office in its opening weekend.  It wouldn't be unreasonable to suggest, however, that this has little to do with Hammer's involvement, but more to do with the casting of Daniel Radcliffe in his first post-Harry Potter role (in what arguably appears to be a similarly Gothic milieu to the Potter films), alongside Ciaran Hinds from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 (which grossed $1.33b world-wide; the highest grossing film in the HP series).  After all, the teens-twenties audience who will be flocking to see this film, will likely be the twelve and thirteen year-olds who have been with Radcliffe since The Philosopher's Stone, who have now come of age, and want to see Harry in more threatening situations (the Harry Potter films did get considerably darker towards the end of the series, right?).  Furthermore, in the posters that I have seen (from the UK at least), there doesn't seem to be much evidence of Hammer at all, but rather, as the image that accompanies this blog suggests, a LOT of Daniel Radcliffe.

In terms of box office success, The Woman In Black could indeed be the 'true' return of Hammer as a producer of commercial films for the youth market: in short, as it once was.  However, whether or not this means there will be a sustained popular Gothic revival, or another Hammer film in a vein similar to this, remains to be seen.  I await with bated breath!

A Lost (Lust) Continent

At the moment, I am psychologically residing in that liminal space all PhD students encounter: 'inbetween chapters'.  Since the beginning of this academic year I decided that, rather than work on chapters sporadically, chipping away at them gradually, I should focus on a specific chapter and write it ('JUST WRITE IT!'), with the intention of returning to it to iron out the creases before submission this October. This happened a few months ago with my chapter that considers the impact of digital technology on British horror cinema.  Most recently, I have completed a working draft of a chapter which considers, first, 'laddism' within British horror comedies, and second, horror-themed hardcore pornography.

The chapter in question is based upon two research papers that I've delivered in the last couple of years: one on Lesbian Vampire Killers in 2010, and the other on British horror-themed hard-core pornography in 2011.  British hard-core is of particular interest to me, insofar as that, whilst American hard-core seems to be increasingly integrated within the 'history' of American 'cinema', British production still remains anomalous: a 'lost continent' (Petley 1986). 

Perhaps this oversight is due—despite the horror film’s own continuing disrepute—to notions of taste, whereby, even in appraising horror cinema, “labelling a practice pornographic reflects a decision to regard it as bad” (Sinfield cited in Jones 2009: 4).  What is more, as Laurence O’Toole suggests,

Watching porn like you’re watching mainstream cinema won’t much help you tune in to what porn is truly about, and will probably leave you thinking that porn is cheap, lowbrow, not very good art, and all the other put-downs that have launched a thousand mainstream magazine articles on the subject (O’Toole 1999: 85).

Since “the term ‘taste’ is most often [invoked] to designate the excesses we wish to exclude” (Williams 1999b: 266), British porn—even in the porn industry—is traditionally considered less ‘glamorous’ than the $57 Billion US industry, which has arguably become the mainstream, ahead of Hollywood (Simpson 2004: 635). British porn, by comparison, is more so recognised for its cheap, ‘realist’ aesthetic (Craig 2000), that is indebted both to the success of American gonzo porn such as John Stagliano’s Buttman series (O’Toole 2002) and the illegality of hard-core in the UK in the 1990s, which encouraged then-amateurs like Simon Lindsay Honey (aka Ben Dover) to establish cottage industries, and sell their home-made films either via mail order, or from the boot of their car.

The soft version of Cathula II: Vampires of Sex (2004)

It is more productive, then, to not watch British porn as ‘mainstream cinema’ at all, but as a visual practice decidedly un-mainstream, and to consider how British hard-core’s ‘lowbrow’ status need not be perceived as a ‘put-down’ in all circles beyond that of the active porn seeker. Something that is considered ‘not very good art’ by most, may, in fact, be read as a means of validation/authentication by a spectator of cult genres such as horror, as horror’s lowbrow status and trash associations have unquestionably impacted on its appeal in fan communities and the academy (see, for instance, Sconce 1995; Hawkins 2000; Jancovich 2000).  As Jeffery Sconce notes, such trash cinema or ‘paracinema’, “seeks to promote an alternative vision of cinematic art, aggressively attacking the established canon of quality cinema and questioning the legitimacy of reigning aesthete discourses on movie art” (1995: 374).  The appeal of Britporn horrors, thus, can partially be perceived as resting upon an acknowledgement of the boundaries being transgressed (textually and bodily) and political correctness being ignored (a la the new lad), as the stylistic ventures into horror territory can be appreciated more so for their bawdiness, stylisation, special effects and cult sensibilities, as they can for their relatively standardised sex scenes.  Of course, any pornography can possess these transgressive and hypertextual qualities, as porn is rarely considered to be part of film history proper (although, there have been more efforts to rectify this from a ‘Hollywood’ perspective than a British one. See Williams 1999 and Simpson 2004]).   The ultimate irony here, is that, whereas US porn shares a similar history to the establishment of the Hollywood studio system (Simpson 2004), British porn subverts traditional taste practices within British film criticism that have historically evidenced a “particular allegiance to a realist aesthetic” (Higson in Petley 1986: 98).  To this end, select (some might say ‘cult’) online porn communities have been shown to lament the dominant ‘realist’ gonzo stereotype of British porn (Anon. 2001),[1] and herald gothic horror fantasies such as Cathula II: Vampires of Sex (Phil Barry, 2004) for “Great sets, lighting, sfx, makeup, sound, and original music.”[2]

Nevertheless, this film, and other films that are like it, remain largely undiscussed.

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[1] http://www.bgafd.co.uk/films/details.php/id/c00322

[2] http://www.bgafd.co.uk/films/details.php/id/c00551

Bibliography

Craig, T. (2000) 'Ben Dover in Cyberspace: British pornographic films on the Internet', the Journal of Popular British Cinema 3.

O’Toole, L. (1999) Pornocopia: Porn, Sex, Technology and Desire, Chatham: Serpent’s Tail.

O’Toole, L. (2002) ‘Who’s Buttman?’, Headpress (24), 4-39.

Petley, J. (1986) ‘The lost continent’, in Barr, C. (ed.) All our yesterdays: 90 years of British cinema, London: BFI, 98-119.
Sconce, J. (1995) '"Trashing" the Academy: Taste, Excess, and an Emerging Politics of Cinematic Style', Screen 36:4, 371–393.

Simpson, N. (2004) ‘Coming attractions: A comparative history of the Hollywood studio system and the porn business’, The Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 24: 4.
Williams, L. (1999) Hard Core: Power, Pleasure and the ‘Frenzy of the Visible’, California: University of California press.

Contemporary British Horror and Self-distribution

In my PhD dissertation, I consider how the ‘digital revolution’ has impacted upon independent UK horror film production.  This ranges from discussions of direct-to-video (DTV) Britsploitation companies such as Black & Blue Films, DVD labels/series such as Brain Damage and The Dead of Night Collection, Hammer Film’s re-launch through Myspace.com, amateur/semi-professional horror films, and finally (and what this blog addresses), the notion of ‘self-distribution’.

The following blog aims to clarify what I mean by self-distribution, before going on to briefly consider some examples of films that have been released via what I call Amazon.com's 'DVD-R on demand' scheme.

Self-distributing British horror

There are arguably four main approaches to self-distributing.  First, there is the cottage industry, semi-professional DVD approach, whereby a production ‘company’—which, effectively, might be the director and his friends—pay for their film to be glass-mastered and replicated at a professional pressing plant, after having submitted their film to the BBFC for certification.  These releases are few and far between however, Andrew Wield's Hacked Off (2005) being the most notable: the DVD was produced professionally, limited to only 1000 copies, and readily available from high-street stores (as well as online).^[1] Second, there is the self-produced VHS/VCD/DVD-R, which is typically duplicated in-house (usually the director’s or producer’s) and sold through the film’s official website or at film fairs and similar events. Films utilising this approach can also be sold through websites such as Amazon.com, which, in association with the company Create Space, reproduce DVD-Rs ‘on demand’.  These films include Simon Cox’s Written in Blood (1998/2002), Darren Johnson’s Stalker (1998-2004) series, Neil Jones’ The Lost (2006), Robbie Moffat’s Cycle (2005), and Matt M.J. Stone’s Ouija Board (2009).  Third, and finally, the films might be released straight onto the internet, to participatory culture video forums such as YouTube or Vimeo, or simply streamed from the film’s official website, or an affiliated website (such as Dread Central’s recent streaming of Adam Mason’s Pig).[2]

Self-distribution can mean of number of things, and provides the filmmaker with several possible advantages over those films distributed more ‘conventionally’.[3]  Primarily, it means that British horror films can be distributed all over the world, quickly and affordably, with the filmmaker retaining full control of the artwork, the content, how the DVD appears, what para-textual features it contains, and the final cut of the film, without having to deal with the expense and time-consuming efforts surrounding the securing of ‘legitimate’ distribution and film classification. Often, these films are not intended masterpieces, or even completed coherent works, but experiments and ideas: moments easily snatched thanks to the accessibility of domestic video technology. They can often also be vanity projects—yet this is not to negate how interesting or ambitious some of them are.   The creative control that self-distribution allows permits the filmmaker to ascribe worth and value to their product, to convey their own sense of faith and belief into their project, without the fear of it being remarketed, or, as shown with the British horrors The Evolved: Part One (2006) The Summer of the Massacre (2001/2005) and The Turning (2011), shaped to fit the image, ‘brand’, or capitalist prospects of another company. [4] 

The Turning aka Zombie Lover (2011)

 As Matt M.J. Stone, director of Ouija Board, argues,

I've loved every aspect of making the film, designing the DVD cover, the DVD menus, the website, editing and shooting myself, coming up with the idea and building it up to a full script with only myself to please. (Stone Interview 18 November 2011)

Ouija Board (2009)

The free-reign generated from not having anyone else overseeing the project, or having any one to adhere to or to ‘please’, is often down to an issue of money; or rather, a filmmaker’s lack of it. Ouija Board’s release through Amazon.com’s DVD-R ‘on demand’ scheme illustrates this, as the scheme abstains any film from having to be submitted to increasingly expensive censorship (or ‘classification’) boards for a ‘legitimate’ certificate.  Due to Amazon.com being a website based in the US that sells predominantly Region 1 DVDs to the US market, the British films which take advantage of this, can, under US law, bypass the BBFC and the MPAA (the latter which only require certificates for theatrical distribution), and remain ‘unrated’. Were The Lost—a film shot for £3,000 in 48 hours—and the micro-budgeted Ouija Board to be submitted to the BBFC for certification, they would cost the filmmakers £608.40 and £691.20 respectively (including 20% VAT which is not automatically generated by the BBFC’s ‘fees calculator’) due to current guidelines stating that DVD certification in the UK costs a “handling fee of £75 per submission plus £6.00 per minute for full length of work”.  These figures are generated before the artwork and extra-textual aspects such as the DVD menus and extra features pass through the classification process too; high figures for films that were made for a pittance between them, higher still for films like Jason Impey’s Sick Bastard, which was shot for only £200 (Impey November 2011 interview).   Of course, were the films to be released more 'conventionally' (even by low-budget distro companies such as Maxim Media, SRS and WWMM), these costs could also be avoided.  What self-distribution allows for, however, is for films such The Lost and Ouija Board to ascertain a longevity that remains in the control of the filmmaker/producer, not a third-party distributer’s (as with The Evolved, The Summer of the Massacre and The Turning). It can also allow for the retaining of the films’ grass roots impetus, whilst also making them readily available to a (potentially, at least) global spectator.

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[1] Director Andrew Wield discusses the process in an interview available at: http://www.horror-asylum.com/interview/andrewweild/interview.asp

[2] See: http://www.dreadcentral.com/news/36724/adam-masons-pig-world-premiere-free-right-here-dread-central, accessed April 16 2010.

[3] I am loosely referring here to films that are distributed commercially, by a distribution company (such as Kaleidoscope or Studio Canal), to be made purchasable in high-street stores.

[4] The Evolved is currently unavailable in the UK, but is distributed by Troma in the US; the trailer proclaims that such a film is "from TROMA of course".  The Summer of the Massacre has been packaged as part of a series of cult films named The Dead of Night Collection.  The Turning has been renamed Zombie Lover to capitalise on the unwaning popularity of the zombie film.