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.