The ALIEN Vault

Alien is one of those movies where I couldn’t possibly say how many times I’ve seen it. I’ve owned it in four formats now—taped off a late night CTV airing, store-bought VHS, DVD (twice—as a single disc and again as part of the Alien Quadrilogy box set), and now finally again in the Alien Anthology Blu-Ray box set. Fans can endlessly debate the dubious merits of the third and fourth films in the series, and the Alien Vs. Predator franchise is probably best ignored altogether, but we can pretty much all agree on one thing—the first two installments are an unbeatable combo of outer space terror. However, my first love will always be Ridley Scott’s 1979 original, a beautiful and terrifying fusion of down & dirty sci-fi and Lovecraftian horror. It hasn’t aged a day, and I suspect it never will. So for a fan like myself, Ian Nathan’s new book from Voyageur Press, The Alien Vault, offers an indispensable peek behind the curtain of a classic.

The Alien Vault details the making of the film in all its lurid detail, all the way from Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett’s script (originally titled Starbeast) to the scribes’ battles with producers Walter Hill and David Giler, and all the way on into the torturous production that saw director Ridley Scott fighting tooth and nail with the studio over budget excesses and design elements, right on up until the early test screenings that reportedly had audience members running to the restrooms to vomit. Nathan seems to have had unprecedented access to archival materials—the book contains scores of fascinating photos from the set as well enough production art and creature design illustrations (including some pretty goofy early attempts to envision the monster as a sort of fleshy, bipedal space lobster) to fill a derelict space cruiser. These production illustrations underscore one of the most fascinating elements of the Alien experience—how the filmmakers charged two separate designers with creating the warring aesthetics of the movie. The visions of H.R. Giger (responsible for the alien creature’s life cycle, as well as the mysterious Space Jockey and his shipwrecked craft) and Ron Cobb (the artist behind the movie’s human elements, like the Nostromo and all the technology within) gave Alien an indelible originality, highlighting the gulf of difference between the film’s vision of spacefaring humanity and the interstellar horrors it encounters. Nathan was also able to interview nearly everyone involved in Alien, unearthing some choice bits of set gossip along the way (Yaphet Kotto got so into character as the abrasive Parker that, when it came time to film his death scene, he got up in the director’s face, insisting that his character was going to survive his alien encounter, despite what the script said).

The coolest thing about The Alien Vault, though, are the many “enclosures” found within—envelopes containing reproductions of design schematics, foreign one-sheet designs, Ridley Scott’s original storyboards (or “Ridleygrams”), script pages with handwritten revisions in the margins, and even a Nostromo crew patch in the form of a sticker. If you’ve seen The Marvel Vault or The DC Vault from Running Press, or the more recent Transformers Vault from Harry N. Abrams, then you’re familiar with this “Museum-In-A-Book” approach. It’s sort of like being allowed to hang out on the production lot of 20th Century Fox Studios after hours, sifting through the most exciting film memorabilia imaginable. More appropriately, it’s like landing on a strange, exotic planet and finding the wrecked hulk of a starship filled with fascinating artifacts of genre film history rather than hostile xenomorph eggs.

Conspiracy Of The Planet Of The Apes

Between this summer’s excellent cinematic reboot (and surprise smash hit) Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes and Boom! Studios’ solidly entertaining Planet Of The Apes ongoing comic series (and its recently-announced spinoff miniseries, Betrayal Of The Planet Of The Apes, co-written and illustrated by Hulk & Atlas artist Gabriel Hardman), it’s a good time to be an Apes fan. It’s hard to detect where this sudden new surge of interest in the property is coming from—when most of these projects were being planned, the box office outlook for the new film was looking pretty grim—but I’m personally happy to reap the rewards, such as the intriguing new illustrated novel from Archaia Entertainment, Conspiracy Of The Planet Of The Apes.





Written by Andrew E.C. Gaska and sporting an absolutely dynamite cover painting by comics legend Jim Steranko, Conspiracy takes place in and around the events of the original 1968 Planet Of The Apes film. The plot diverges from marooned astronaut Taylor’s plight and instead centers on his colleague, Landon, following the events that resulted in his eventual lobotomy courtesy of Dr. Zaius. Gaska spins a suspenseful parallel adventure to the more familiar storyline of the original film, one that features flashbacks to an earlier space mission gone awry (which makes surprising use of simian imagery to slyly suggest that the whole adventure on the ape planet might all take place in Landon’s mind during cryosleep), while folding in elements from assorted Apes sequels, like the psychic mutants from Beneath The Planet Of The Apes and sympathetic chimp scientist Doctor Milo from Escape From The Planet Of The Apes. Gaska’s plot helps set up elements from the sequels, laying the groundwork for the war between the mutants and the apes in Beneath, while showing how Milo learned of, and eventually retrieved, Taylor’s sunken spacecraft so he could use it to flee his doomed world in Escape.



It’s not easy to maintain suspense when you know the story’s outcome courtesy of a 43-year old film, but that’s not really what Gaska is up to with Conspiracy Of The Planet Of The Apes. Aimed squarely at diehard Apes fans, who know not only the first film intimately but are familiar with the mythology of the sequels as well, Gaska is more interested in unifying the various strands of plot into more of a companion piece to the overall Apes experience. I can’t imagine it’ll be of much interest or use to the casual fan, but having just revisited the entire film series over the summer (check out my series overview at The Coast’s website), I definitely admired the scope of the project and was able to appreciate his knowledge of Apes lore. Gaska’s gritty prose thankfully doesn’t update the Cold War roots of the original movie (Taylor, Landon, Dodge, and Stewart still left Earth in 1972, hoping to conquer deep space before the Communists). A subplot about chimp surgeon Galen and his unfaithful wife doesn’t really go anywhere, and a last-act revelation about the fate of Ape City’s political dissidents is potentially interesting, but the book ends before we can learn more about it (maybe a sequel is in the works?). Archaia has put together a sharp package here, with some beautiful, occasionally nightmarish, paintings by Chris Moeller, Erik Gist, Joe Jusko, Barron Storrey, punctuated by Struzan-esque character illustrations by Matt Busch, although some proofreading was definitely needed before this book went to press (horse instead of hoarse, faired instead of fared, it’s instead of its). Still, as companion pieces to film projects go, Conspiracy Of The Planet Of The Apes takes a surprisingly old-school approach to fleshing out a familiar storyline and melding it with a larger established tapestry, one that Apes devotees would do well to explore.

Attack The Block

This October, I’m planning to watch 31 horror movies throughout the month for the second year in a row. I did it last year and it was a blast—check out my reports on it at my friend Carsten Knox’s movie blog, The Flaw In The Iris. As I’ve been stockpiling movie ideas for this month-long blowout, I’ve been trying to avoid watching any horror films…which, unfortunately, makes it a bit tough to maintain a blog largely dedicated to horror films. I am, however, always on the lookout for loopholes in the sketchily-defined boundaries of this blog, and since the new UK release Attack The Block contains a lot of elements of other genres—sci-fi, action, and comedy, specifically—I feel justified that, in watching it, I wasn’t draining a movie away from my October stockpile. It does contain enough elements of a horror movie that I think I can get away with writing about it.

Attack The Block comes from across the pond via writer/director Joe Cornish (one of the scribes of the upcoming Tintin feature) and producer Nira Park (pretty much everything Edgar Wright has ever been involved in). It concerns a group of underage South London street toughs—along with the off-duty nurse they rob early on in the film—who do battle with a swarm of toothy, furry monstrosities from space that descend on the city during a meteor shower. There’s not really a whole lot else to the plot other than that; within the ninety-minute running time, the kids and their mugging victim have to join forces against both the beasties and a pissed-off drug dealer, mostly within the confines of an apartment complex called Wyndham Towers (presumably named after British SF giant John Wyndham, author of The Chrysalids and Day Of The Triffids).

The tone of Attack The Block is decidedly in the gosh-wow vein of a 1980s Amblin Entertainment flick, but with a darker edge—most of its protagonists are, after all, teenaged criminals, and some of them meet with bloody demises before the credits roll. Describing the movie as Goonies Vs. Critters wouldn’t be far off. It’s also a bit like the kids from Season Four of The Wire fighting for their lives against toothsome alien yetis, only in South London instead of West Baltimore. The young cast, led by a charismatic and believably tough John Boyega as Moses, is superb. It seems at first that it might be hard to rally behind a group of unrepentant criminals as the film’s heroes, but as the movie progresses, the kids gain more dimension and, with it, more sympathy. The design of the monsters is a refreshing change-of-page from the usual CGI ghoulies; the pitch-black, furry “gorilla wolf motherfuckers” with neon green fangs look to have been achieved through a mix of guys-in-suits and rotoscope animation. It’s a refreshingly low-tech solution that gives the beasts real presence and weight on film. Not everything works—the subplot about the murderous drug dealer Hi-Hatz feels a bit extraneous, born out of some misguided need for a human villain, and an awful lot of the film’s climax hinges on an extremely well-placed nature program playing on TV early on that provides a vital clue about the creatures’ behaviour. There isn’t ever much of an explanation as to why these alien nasties settled on South London for their rampage, but then again, Tremors never bothered to explain why the Graboids decided to suddenly spring up around the town of Perfection either, and it never impeded my enjoyment. Attack The Block races through its running time with loads of style and wit, buoyed by a strong cast and a cool new kind of monster. See it before the inevitable American remake.

Swamp Thing #1, Animal Man #1

Apologies up front—my updates here at the House Of Haunts have been pretty scarce lately, mostly due to the run-up and recovery from this year’s Fan Expo convention in Toronto (where I was off selling copies of my Eighties Pro Wrestling comic, Slam-A-Rama). I failed to score autographs from Robert Englund, Lance Henriksen, Michael Biehn, and Tom Savini—the lineups were too damn long—but I did snag an original 1979 poster for Prophecy: The Monster Movie for a measly twenty bucks, so there’s that. Anyway…

It’s old news to comics fans by now that DC is relaunching their entire line all September with 52 brand new number one issues, spanning a wide variety of genres—okay, mostly capes-and-tights stuff, but classic non-superhero titles like All-Star Western and Men Of War are getting a spit-and-polish too. Of course, DC has a proud tradition of publishing titles that straddle the line between superheroes and horror; it’s from out of this tradition that the venerable Vertigo label was born in the early Nineties, as titles like Sandman and Doom Patrol graduated from the DC Universe to deluxe format, mature readers-labelled books. So naturally, two of the most fondly-remembered comics from the Vertigo inaugural class—Swamp Thing and Animal Man—are once again part of the DC Universe, kicking off a horror-edged sub-imprint of the so-called “New 52”. Both of these titles have an intimidating legacy to live up to—after all, they did kick off the American comics careers of Alan Moore and Grant Morrison, respectively, ushering in a new era of “Sophisticated Suspense” (this tagline adorned Moore’s Saga Of The Swamp Thing for much of its run) and selling strongly in collected editions for years, even to this day. With such a frankly terrifying precedent, how do these new interpretations hold up?



Quite well, as it turns out, thanks to each book’s energetic creative teams and a surprising mix of both new and old ideas. Animal Man, written by Canadian superstar Jeff Lemire (Essex County), works as either an entirely new series, or as a continuation of the character’s previous incarnation, depending on your level of familiarity. The title hero, known publicly to be former stuntman-turned-superhero Buddy Baker, is a mostly-retired crimefighter when the story begins—he’s more interested in acting (he plays—what else?—a washed-up superhero in a gritty indie drama) and spending time with his wife Ellen and their two kids, Cliff and Maxine. Still, he occasionally pulls on the tights to help when needed, like when a grieving father takes a bunch of kids in a cancer ward hostage. During this crisis, Buddy’s powers—which involve siphoning animal abilities from the “Life Web”—start acting strangely, causing him to bleed from his eyes. Things get weirder still Cliff wakes from a horrific nightmare about Maxine and some monstrous apparitions called the Hunters Three, only to find Maxine playing in the backyard with some creepy new four-legged friends. Lemire’s homespun approach to the fantastical, honed to perfection in the Vertigo monthly Sweet Tooth, fits nicely with the balance of the domestic and the horrible established in Morrison’s Animal Man. The art by Travel Foreman (The Immortal Iron Fist) is startling and nightmarish, in the mold of New Mutants-era Bill Sienkiewicz. His work really comes alive in the more outlandish set pieces, such as his depiction of how Buddy’s powers work (and their strange new consequences), the gray-and-red dream sequence, and on the super-weird last page cliffhanger.



While new readers can come to Animal Man pretty much cold—there’s a passing reference to the Justice League, but that’s about it for acknowledging the larger DCU—the relaunched Swamp Thing may prove a bit more intimidating as a first issue. That doesn’t mean that new readers who only know the character from the 1982 Wes Craven film or its soggy sequel should be put off, even if they haven’t read Brightest Day or The Search For Swamp Thing. I haven’t, and I still was taken with/thoroughly creeped out by this new take on the classic muck-monster. A mysterious rash of animal deaths catches the attention of various Justice League members, causing Superman to seek out Alec Holland, formerly known as the Earth Elemental called Swamp Thing (well, sort of—it’s a bit complicated). Recently returned from the dead, the scientific genius is now a humble construction worker who knows nothing about any supernatural mysteries of either the dead animal kind or the one where a strange twister carried a mastodon skeleton out of an archaeological dig a few pages earlier. Where his swampy alter ego was a living avatar of the plant world, Holland now believes that Swamp Thing’s precious “Green” is a place of violent nature run amok, and he wants no part of it. Of course, The Green isn’t quite done with him yet. Writer Scott Snyder (American Vampire, Detective Comics) gets off to a shaky start with all those superhero cameos and references to previous series and crossover events, but when the horror stuff kicks in, Swamp Thing takes off. A group of archaeologists, discovering that their mastodon fossil is missing, are attacked by something pretty awful; whatever it is, it involves flies and backwards-turned-heads, both of which are callbacks to Alan Moore’s legendary run on Saga Of The Swamp Thing. However, you don’t need to get the reference to be seriously unnerved by this sequence. Yanick Paquette (another Canadian!) wouldn’t have been my first choice to draw this book, as his work has been previously…er, rooted in more realistic depictions of the human form; it also usually involved a fair bit of T & A. However, the more realistic elements of his art style provide a striking and effective counterpart to the supernatural craziness of whatever the hell the book’s antagonist is (Paquette brings a bit of classic Bissette-and-Totleben to his rendering of it), and his Swamp Thing, unseen until the final page, has just the right mix of noble and monstrous. I’m still not totally sold on the “New 52”, but the creepier corners of the DC relaunch are most definitely off to a solid start.

Fright Night (2011)

Might as well get used to it—remakes, like CGI effects, Photoshopped movie posters, and Michael Bay movies, are here to stay. Original ideas are obviously preferred, but in the meantime, you can always bet that some studio or other is in the process of reimagining Your Cherished Childhood Favourite Movie this very minute. Once you’ve accepted that fact, it makes it a lot easier to dole out praise when a remake is done right, like Craig Gillespie’s slick, witty Fright Night. The 2011 model retains the basic setup and tongue-in-cheek flavour of Tom Holland’s 1985 original (see my review here), while adding enough of its own flourishes to justify its existence.



This time out, Charley Brewster (Anton Yelchin) lives in a prefab suburb of Las Vegas, where he begins to suspect that his buff douche of a neighbour, Jerry Dandridge (Colin Farrell) is a bloodsucker. At first, Charley’s too busy having a girlfriend (Imogen Poots—think Scarlett Johansson’s little sister) for the first time in his life to listen to the theories of his cast-aside nerd pal Evil Ed (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) when a surprising number of neighbours and classmates start disappearing. However, it’s not long before Charley is convinced that Jerry is a vampire, and his only recourse is to try and recruit Vegas-based occult stage performer Peter Vincent (former Doctor Who David Tennant) to help him slay his quite literal neighbour from hell.



Written by Buffy The Vampire Slayer’s Marti Noxon, the new Fright Night is most definitely a post-Buffy vamp spin, with lots of rapid banter and modern flair. Setting the film just outside Las Vegas is an inspired touch—Jerry has his pick of a mostly-transient population that sleeps all day and is looking to party after sundown. Changing the character of Peter Vincent from a late-night horror host to a Vegas entertainer seemed like an awkward fit at first, but David Tennant sells it well, crossbreeding Criss Angel with Russell Brand for a refreshingly foulmouthed performance. Tennant’s Vincent is largely absent from much of the film’s advertising, but that’s a good thing—it’s better to discover the unexpected layers of this character within the movie rather than in a trailer. Anton Yelchin is a solid fit as Charley, bringing a lot more depth and personality to a character that was pretty one-dimensional in the 1985 original (sorry, William Ragsdale—not your fault, but the original Charley was a bit under-written). The real star of the show, though, is Colin Farrell, who, like Chris Sarandon before him, looks to be having the time of his life playing Jerry Dandridge. Farrell’s vamp is just as much at home lounging in an easy chair, drinking a beer and watching one of the Real Housewives spinoffs, as he is when he’s tearing the throat out of a stripper. He and Yelchin have a great antagonistic chemistry too—one highlight is an early scene where Jerry hovers, uninvited, outside the door to Charley’s kitchen, trying to tease out an invite that is not forthcoming any time soon. Craig Gillespie’s sure-footed direction maintains the suspense—especially in a claustrophobic night attack on the Brewster family minivan that recalls both Children Of Men and Spielberg’s War Of The Worlds—while maintaining the just-shy-of-comedic tone that this new Fright Night shares with its predecessor. And, even though the whole 3D gimmick is beyond tired, the effect works quite well in a number of scenes, especially when vampires explode in a shower of cindery sparks. If all remakes were pulled off this effectively…well, I’m sure I’d still complain about it (the trailer for the 2011 redo of The Thing had me gnashing my teeth before the movie started), but maybe a bit less so. In any event, though, Fright Night is that rare horror remake that may not be necessarily better than the original, but it still definitely doesn’t suck.

Fright Night (1985)

The 1985 Fright Night is the kind of movie that was perfect for repeat cable viewing and multiple VHS rentals in the mid-Eighties. It appears to have been aimed squarely and expertly at the kids of the day (speaking from experience, it hit the target pretty much dead on). It’s scary, it’s funny, it’s gross, it’s titillating but not too titillating--I think there’s maybe one topless shot--and there’s exactly one f-bomb. It wants to scare you and make you laugh. Largely, this vamped-up riff on Rear Window succeeds at doing both.



Charlie Brewster (William Ragsdale) is an average suburban kid who suspects that his new neighbour, the inoffensively named Jerry Dandridge, might be a vampire. Charlie is so average, in fact, that he appears to have almost no personality whatsoever--his only motivations in life appear to be a) finally getting to home base with his girlfriend Amy (Amanda Bearse, best known from Married With Children), and b) exposing Jerry for the bloodsucker he is. Shortly after Jerry and his “live-in carpenter” Billy Cole (Jonathan Stark) move in to the neighbourhood, reports of dead prostitutes start popping up in the nightly news—dead prostitutes last seen alive making out with a fanged Jerry across the way. An increasingly desperate Charlie recruits his weirdo pal Evil Ed (Stephen Geoffreys) and faded horror movie star and late night shriek-show host Peter Vincent (Roddy MacDowall) to help him slay the vamp. Vincent is obviously skeptical at first, but when he realizes Jerry doesn’t cast a reflection in the mirror, he has to put his Hollywood vampire-killing skills to the test for real.



Fright Night was written and directed by Tom Holland, screenwriter of Psycho II and writer/director of Child’s Play, and it’s the best showcase for his particular mix of humour and horror. Holland layers in a bit of suburban homosexual dread—Billy is obviously Renfield to Jerry’s Dracula, but it’s strongly hinted that they might also be lovers. Certainly in the buttoned-down, Reagan-era suburbia of the film, the possibility that the new neighbours might be gay could be just as terrifying to Charlie as the possibility that they might be vampires. The effects by Richard Edlund (Raiders Of The Lost Ark) are delightfully gooey—the high points are Billy’s green-slime meltdown on the stairs, Vampire Amy’s freakishly toothsome maw, and Evil Ed’s transformation back from wolf to man. The latter is a surprisingly startling and unnerving sequence, in no small part due to the inspired sound design that mixes human and animal noises to squirmy effect. Chris Sarandon plays Jerry as a sinister, immortal dandy, and he appears to be having a blast with the role. Roddy MacDowall shines as Peter Vincent, alternately embittered and terrified (his movie-within-a-movie scenes are a treat too—watch as his onscreen alter ego brazenly wields a wooden stake with the pointy end facing the wrong way). However, it’s Stephen Geoffreys as Evil Ed who steals the show. He’s like a jittery, screechy-voiced, baby Jack Nicholson, all nervous laughter and twitchy tics. Fright Night is by no means a classic—the pacing near the conclusion is especially creaky, consisting of a lot of Charlie and Peter having to first run up, then down, then back up the stairs of Jerry’s house—but it’s a fun snapshot of the crest of the horror boom in the 1980s, right before endless slasher sequels starting sucking the fun out of the genre.

The Finalest Destination

My buddy Mark Palermo was trying the other day to convince me that I should watch and review all of the movies in the Final Destination series, in preparation for the release of the newest installment, Final Destination 5, this weekend. He further tried to win me over by sending me this montage of all the death scenes from the series so far. Nice try, Mark, but I don't think I can go through with it. However, I do recommend following the above link if you want to see some context-free, mostly computer-generated, extreme brutality. You'd be surprised at how quickly you become desensitized to it.

I've only actually seen the first Final Destination, and I wasn't a big fan. I was sort of going with it for the first three-quarters of the movie or so, but by the end I was all out of love. I think my problem with the movie, and by extension, the franchise, is that the supposed villain of the series has no literal or figurative presence--it's the abstract concept of Death Itself, who really hates being thwarted and makes up for it with a series of increasingly unlikely and elaborate deathtraps. Sure, there may be a fun geekshow aspect to seeing just how the cast of characters meet their bloody demises, but it's not really scary--after all, how scary is it being chased around by an abstract concept, one only occasionally given voice by Tony Todd's perennially whispery undertaker character? It's sort of like David Cross's stand-up bit about how silly it is to wage a War on Terror; he maintains that you might as well wage a War on Jealousy. Similarly, it seems to me that the idea of being chased around by Death is about as scary, or likely, as being chased around by Jealousy.

Now I've done it. I've gone and hurt Death's feelings. If Final Destination taught me anything, it's that He/She is surprisingly sensitive. I may have just signed my own death warrant. But hey, if it makes Him/Her feel better, the movie does have a pretty cool teaser poster: