Psycho Live - Review

Dominion Theatre, London

*****

Screenplay by Joseph Stefano

Based on the novel Psycho by Robert Bloch

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock

Orchestral score by Bernard Herrmann

Performed live by Cinematic Sinfonia

Conducted by Anthony Gabriele

Janet Leigh takes a shower in Psycho

It’s been a long long time since the opening bars of a movie’s score have made the hairs on the back of my neck prick up. But sat in the Dominion Theatre, as Psycho’s split-text title lines slid across the screen, to listen to Bernard Herrmann’s strings-only orchestration played by the Cinematic Sinfonia orchestra was to truly experience the magic of the movies.

The likes of Netflix and Apple have gone a long way to neuter the majesty of cinema. Imagery that  was once beautifully photographed for the vast expanse of cinemascope is now routinely streamed to our eponymous tiny telephones and tablets and one can fear for a generation currently growing up, who may well consider a trip to a local cinema’s full sized silver screen to be an unnecessary and expensive chore. So whilst this (partly premium-priced) event may well have been one for the fans, it was worth every penny.

Another feature of the evening was in actually seeing and hearing  the film's music played live, giving rise to a strange sense of witnessing the re-creation of what used to be a fundamental component of any movie’s construction. When any original score was recorded, it would have demanded a conductor facing the screen as he conducts his studio orchestra in time with the action – just the scenario that the Dominion audience were privileged to witness for themselves.

It was of course also a treat to re-visit a movie classic and one can forget quite how groundbreaking Psycho's 1960 release was to prove, shaking up many of the movie-industry’s accepted protocols. Intermingling sex with violence and deviancy – even the opening scene of Janet Leigh, bra-clad and in bed with her unmarried lover pushed the envelope of its time. And the dialogue is just so deliciously dated too. When Leigh’s Marion Crane tells Anthony Perkin’s Norman Bates, who has just explained to her the gruesome yet mundane details of his interest in taxidermy, that “a man should have a hobby”, a comment so simple and genteel and so firmly fixed in a time gone by.

Shot in black and white by Hitchcock's TV series camera crew rather than a feature film unit, the production budget was a squeeze. In fact, so tight were the movie’s finances that Herrmann, who resolutely refused to cut his own fee, was forced to trim his orchestra to strings only. Has necessity ever been proved to have been the mother (no pun intended) of such ultimately rich invention? Some years back The Observer published its list of the 50 film scores. Psycho was ranked #2 and the paper wrote:

Hitchcock, who had originally planned to play the shower sequence without accompaniment, later admitted that '33 per cent of the effect of Psycho was due to the music', and doubled the composer's salary as a reward. Herrmann studiously matched the black and white visuals of Hitch's masterpiece by draining the 'colour' from his orchestrations, stripping away all but the stringed instruments to create a monochrome wall of aural unease.

And remarkably for a film that was to achieve iconic status, amongst that season’s major gongs Psycho was to only pick up a Golden Globe for Leigh, winning nothing at the Oscars. But as the years have proven and as modern-day horror director Eli Roth recently commented, “..time is the only critic that matters”.

Hitchcock’s assessment of the music’s contribution was sage. So much of the story’s drama, and in particular its opening chapters, homing in on Marion’s anxiety after she has stolen the cash from her boss, play out with an absolutely excruciating intensity. The performance and the photography are first class, but it is Herrmann’s relentlessly jarring strings with their harsh minor-key harmonics, that seal the woman’s anguish into our watching psyches. And for a feature film that was to give the world the slasher-movie, Herrmann’s jagged chords as Crane is stabbed to death in the most famous shower scene ever, only heighten that moment’s timeless terror.

Conductor Gabriele knows both movie and score intimately, with this having been the fourth occasion that time he has brandished his baton in time with Bates’ bread knife. Gabriele is one of London’s finest stage-conductors, adept at seamlessly linking an orchestra to the ebb and flow of a live production. But there is no scope for fluid flexibility in conductiong in time to a movie. The imagery and dialog are fixed in time and it is Gabriele’s responsibility to ensure that his musicians maintain pinpoint co-ordination with the screen. It is a massive task and it is a mark of Gabriele’s consummate skill that he makes it look so effortless – and a credit too to the Cinematic Sinfonica orchestra for delivering such an immaculately rehearsed sound. 

Gabriele has a passion for film and music, telling me post-Psycho of plans (and dreams) to conduct future movie scores by the likes of John Williams and Hans Zimmer, as well as other Herrmann offerings. Personally, I long for Ennio Morricone’s work for The Mission and Once Upon A Time In America to be given the Gabriele treatment. Maybe one day…

Until then, the sheer musical excellence of Psycho Live, wedded to Hitchcock’s masterclass in film-making will stay with me for a long time. And in a further thoughtful touch, possibly barely noticed by many in the audience, how considerate of the Dominion to screen the movie in the run up to Mother’s Day!

Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates, missing his mother 

To find out about more Cinematic Sinfonia screenings, follow them on Twitter @cinesinfonia

The Green Inferno - Review

****

Written by Eli Roth, Guillermo Amoedo and Nicolás López
Directed by Eli Roth 

Antonieta Pari needs to eat more carrots - a scene from Eli Roth's The Green Inferno 

The Green Inferno is Roth’s first helmed movie in seven years. The emergent king of the horror genre has shifted his lens from the torturous ABC1s of Hostels 1 and 2, who set upon convincing naive young American backpackers that all the Grimm fairy tales they've heard about Europe are true, aiming his lens instead upon that other popular held nightmare, that the jungle is full of voracious man-eaters, to whom white (and as we learn, ideally virginal) flesh is a delicacy.

Introducing The Green Inferno at the Edinburgh Film Festival, Roth spoke of how he wanted to reach just that bit further into the Amazonian rain forest than Herzog managed when the German made Aguirre, Wrath Of God. Roth spoke about his production team’s discovery of the Callanayacu tribe who enjoy a lifestyle that hasn't changed for hundreds of years and who were to form the bulk of his cannibal cast. Off camera these people didn't know electricity, had never seen a movie or television and were delighted to be splashed in red paint as required by Roth's make-up crew. The power-free zone meant that refrigerated (or even un-chilled) soda that the unit brought in with them was another treat, with the director revealing that the biggest problem facing the production during the shoot wasn't mosquitoes or other such natural blights, rather that the tribesfolk would frequently wipe them out of Gatorade. Roth is nothing if not a learned movie craftsman and in a neat mark of respect, The Green Inferno's closing credits acknowledge the predominantly Italian film-makers of the 1970's and 80's cannibal genre, led by Ruggero Deodato who inspired the style, and who was to enjoy a briefly carnivorous inclusion in Hostel 2.

Eli Roth on location with Callanayacu tribes-people

The Green Inferno's preamble lacks the crafted credibility that Roth imbued in his Cabin Fever as well as the first two Hostel tales. It's all just a little too pat how our heroine (in a gorgeously measured performance from Lorenza Izzo) winds up as a guerrilla eco-warrior, on a mission to save the rainforest from the rapacious bulldozers of an evil mining company and armed with nothing more than a cellphone. Of course, the nobly intended plan goes horrifically wrong and following a plane crash (that combines a rather splendid pilot decapitation alongside some disappointing CGI) those environmentalists that survive the landing soon find themselves trapped and put on the menu, as their hungry captors set about supplementing their traditional jungle fayre with an un-healthy portion of North American Greens. 

And this is of course where Roth is in his element. The roasting of flesh, hacking of limbs and removal of eyeballs, are all served with (cinematic) relish and, as can be the hallmark of some of the great horror movies, liberally seasoned with humour too. The plot bears Roth’s hallmark swipe at America’s grandiose dream of bringing good to the world, though he also, early on, includes an informative message about the evils of FGM within his narrative. 

To say any more would be to spoil, but if this description whets your appetite for an alternative (human) churrascaria, then go see the movie soon and catch it on a big screen. Roth can command a serious budget for his projects and Antonio Quercia’s photography, stunning in its capture of the rain forest locations has helicopter shots of Amazonia that are as gloriously giddy-making as the cannibalism is nauseating.

Roth is clearly loving the life Latino and as with his last co-production Aftershock (reviewed here), set in a post-earthquake Chilean beach resort, he aligns himself with South American filmmakers Guillermo Amoedo and Nicolás López to pen the story. Retaining a loyalty to actors he knows and trusts, Roth includes Richard Burgi, the corporate client who ended up as dog-food in Hostel 2, in a cameo as Izzo’s lawyer-father. 

Whilst the story may be a little over-cooked, Roth spends his budget wisely and the photography and effects are spectacular. One of the best date/popcorn horror-flicks in ages, The Green Inferno will surely prove a devilishly hot ticket this autumn.

Aftershock

Certificate 18

****

Written by ElI Roth, Nicolas Lopez and Guillermo Amoedo

Drected by Nicolas Lopez

Eli Roth finds the weight of fallen masonry too much to bear in Aftershock

Aftershock,co-created by Eli Roth with Nicolas Lopez and Guillermo Amoedo is a roller-coaster ride of a 1970s style disaster movie brought up to date to meet a modern adult audience's expectations. As with his two Hostel movies, Roth pitches us into a world that is as frighteningly believable as it's horror is monstrous.

The movie is a Chilean production, set in the resort town of Valparaiso. There is a 30 minute lead in before the action kicks off, which has writing that is not Roth's finest, seeing clever humour mixed with cliched corn. The title is a heavy hint that there's an earthquake brewing and sure enough, following possibly the cheesiest mother/daughter argument ever scripted, the earth moves.

The strength of this tale lies in its portrayal of the devastation of the 'quake and of the ghastly human choices and consequences that can arise from such bloody mayhem. The brutality and the gore is shocking, but in a real moment of mass bloody death and injury, what else would one expect? Years ago, Universal Studios gave us Genevieve Bujold and Charlton Heston enduring an earthquake hitting San Francisco and introducing the world to the (extremely short-lived) Sensurround, a low frequency noise that made our cinema seats resonate. Roth is more direct. In an earthquake and one suspects, in the aftermath of a bomb explosion too, horrible things happen to people. Victims are crushed, decapitated, lose limbs and are impaled. Aftershock's tracking of a weary band of survivors exposes them not only to these horrors, but also to the brutal inhumanity of man against man when the fabric of society literally collapses around them

A prison crumbles leading to a mass escape of marauding convicts. Roth's performance as an injured man tortured by the escapees into revealing where his women companions are and thus condemning them to rape, (filmed tastefully, no nudity) is a brilliant micro-study in the guilt of betrayal. Elsewhere vigilante mothers shoot good people, simply because they cannot know for sure if the good can be trusted. Safer to kill than to take risk.

The film-making is masterful, the sets are convincing, the CGI and special make-up effects are virtually flawless and if occasionally a devastated street has the air of a studio back-lot, the dialog and performances soon serve to ensure that disbelief remains suspended. Chilean actor Ariel Levy heads the cast and in a clever move that adds to the story's authenticity, Roth plays one of a handful of English-speaking gringos, with other key roles spoken in Spanish with English subtitles.

Whilst there is a whiff of predictability about the (magnificently photographed) ending and the story's opening chapters have minor flaws, the filling of this movie's sandwich is magnificent. It is classic horror, brutally and brilliantly filmed, made all the more shocking by its perceptive take on the worst of humanity in the worst of times. Albeit with a master by his side, Lopez has helmed the movie well.

Perhaps Roth could go on to consider turning his creative lens towards a Towering Inferno for the 21st century? Aftershock clearly shows that this wunderkind of horror truly has what it takes to set a scene alight.

Frankenstein's Army

Certificate 18, available on Blu-ray and DVD from September 30th 2013

***

Directed by Richard Raaphorst 

( ALERT: Some of this review may not be for the faint-hearted)

Frankenstein’s Army is the best B Movie in ages. It’s a ridiculous plot, serviced by dodgy dialog with a mad scientist straight out of a 1950’s horror classic.

As WWII is coming to an end, a group of Russian soldiers who are mopping up the last stragglers of the Nazi war machine on the Eastern Front, come across an apparently deserted farm. Local graves have been robbed and electric cables strewn everywhere lead to generators and lightning conductors.

The farm is of course a laboratory cum factory and it is where the evil Dr Frankenstein (son/grandson of Mary Shelley’s original, I didn’t quite work out the family tree) has been stitching together corpses. But wait for it, this Dr F. is replacing limbs with weapons. Drill bits, steel claws, spiked helmets for skulls and even the engine and propellor unit of an aeroplane. Get the picture? Its gruesome but very imaginative and as the story pans out as the current gets switched back on, various Russians come to exceedingly gory ends. In a visionary step towards advancing world peace, Dr Frankenstein opens up the skull of a Communist, removes the left half of his brain (the special effects and prosthetics are wonderful) and replaces it with half of a Nazi's brain. Ridiculous but inspired fun.

Funded in part by the Czech Culture Ministry, Richard Raaphorst’s debut has clearly had a few bob to spend on special effects and it shows. If you are seeking a film that bears a nod to the horror of Eli Roth’s Hostel, the grit of Peckinpah’s Cross of Iron and has clearly been inspired by that TV programme favoured by kids and geeks alike, Robot Wars, then look no further. This movie only lacks Jonathan Pearce as narrator. An unmissable 3 star wonder.

Jenny Gayner - Actress and producer

Jenny Gayner

Regular readers to these pages will know that I have particular soft spots for musical theatre on stage and the horror genre on screen. Since my twitter following has modestly grown over the months, I have come to discover that I am not alone in enjoying this eclectic combination and that there are quite a number of folk out there who can adore a full on jazz-hands routine on a Saturday night yet still find time for some popcorn-fuelled slashery and torture on a Sunday.

Of course, the connection between musical theatre and horror is actually nothing new. One of the longest running musicals Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom Of The Opera is at heart nothing more than a very frightening Gothic horror story set to music, yet many (most?) of those who pack out London’s Her Majesty’s Theatre or those numerous other venues where the show plays around the world, would not dream of buying a ticket for, or downloading, an 18-certificate horror tale. In a slightly different vein(!) musical theatre horror and humour have often gone hand in hand with Menken and Ashman’s Little Shop of Horrors being probably the most well known take on that particular pastiche style, though Drewe and Rowe’s Zombie Prom is another example of composers blending horror, humour and music into a quirky cocktail, whilst the same pair’s The Witches of Eastwick, famed as a musical comedy, has at its core a horrifically satanic fable. Thus the bloody fantasies of horror have a long and macabre association with the far frothier fantasy world of musical theatre’s harmonies and dance routines.  

So it was therefore a delight, on attending the press night of Chris Burgess’ Sleeping Arrangements (reviewed here) at London’s Landor Theatre earlier this year, to learn that accomplished musical theatre trouper Jenny Gayner, was not only starring in the soon to be released horror flick The Addicted, but that she’d actually gone and produced the movie too. It made for a pleasant hour as we chatted about these two very different dark and light aspects of the fantasy spectrum.

Prior to the relatively short Landor run, Gayner had already achieved a fine reputation for her work in Chicago (understudying Roxie Hart), as well as appearances in Spamalot, The Rocky Horror Show and a Manchester based production of A Chorus Line. She knows her musicals and her lengthy association with Chicago, both on its UK tour and in the show’s final London months testify to her talents. But she is also a woman who likes her horror. It may have to be bloody if necessary but above all and as with her musical theatre work, it must be built around a strong story. 

There are some films that Gayner finds too difficult to enjoy. She quotes Eli Roth’s Hostel,(based upon a horrific and true reported story, of wealthy men in the Far East who paid huge sums for the “pleasure” of torturing naive young westerners) as a film that was just too real for her liking and, notwithstanding the story’s strength, she found its reality too unpleasant to watch. For Gayner, a story needs to be credible but also fantastic. She speaks praisingly of the 2009 remake of Last House On The Left, a tale that opens with a harrowing rape and by a turn of events delivers the rapists into the hands of the victim’s parents. It’s a thrilling revenge tale, with scenes that are often graphically portrayed, yet it is also well written fantasy and knowing that the story is pure make-believe and with its heart also very much in the right place (suffice to say the villains meet grisly ends) is horror that works for her.

Gayner (l) on set in The Addicted

The Addicted will soon be available on satellite TV distribution, no mean achievement in itself for a first-time independent feature and Gayner has relished the challenge of producing a full length movie and the challenges that go with the process. Securing funding was an initial hurdle, though with independent horror being famed as a low-budget entry to movie-making, the film’s £10,000 cost was not ridiculously out of reach. Managing the sheer logistics of the movie was of course a task in itself and Gayner chuckles as she recalls frantically managing the project both from home and her Chicago dressing room! As for the film, its a gritty gruesome fantasy set around an abandoned drug rehab clinic. Suffice to say it opens with a scarily high body count but to add any more comment would be to spoil.

Its all happening for Jenny right now. The Addicted is available on satellite from September 1st, whilst the end of the month will see her solo cabaret night at London’s Pheasantry, accompanied by some stellar guests. A stylish embodiment of the classic “triple-threatening” performer, of actress singer and dancer, Gayner is all that a musical theatre professional should be, but now as an emerging producer of horror movies, she is defining herself as an innovator, keen to challenge and to explore new methods of entertaining an audience. A woman who at all times combines the professional attributes of excellence and enthusiasm, who knows… her arrival as a movie producer could yet prove addictive!

Jenny Gayner performs at The Pheasantry on September 28th , for details and tickets, click here.

The Addicted is available via satellite broadcast from September 1st

Feature : Jen and Sylvia Soska - Canada's Twisted Twins




Jen and Sylvia Soska in a cameo appearance from their latest movie American Mary



Meeting Jen and Sylvia Soska (who are the founders and driving force of Twisted Twins Productions) one is quickly struck by their energy and ability to create a rapport. You feel that their directing of a film unit is likely to be as invigorating for their crew members, as watching their movies is for the audience. So it was as I arrived at London's Soho Hotel for my interview with these talented identical twins, in town to promote their newest feature American Mary, which will be released on DVD and Blu-ray from Universal Pictures (UK) on 21st January 2013.

By the time of the interview my advance copy of American Mary had not yet arrived so in that regard I was interviewing blind, however this was not to prove a problem. The twins, together with the movie’s star, Katharine Isabelle who was touring with them, were delighted that my first viewing of the film was to be later that evening on a big screen in central London and so the conversation flowed around the Soskas’ first feature, Dead Hooker In A Trunk, as well as their background and their philosophy in filmmaking.

The twin’s have long shared a passion in horror film and they speak warmly of the influence and guidance of established director Eli Roth, in working with them and mentoring the pair. They shot Dead Hooker on the infinitesimally micro-budget of C$2,500 ( approximately £1,750!) and of this, most was spent on prosthetics. A look down the cast and credits of that picture at movie database IMDb, reveals that nearly all the main performers (as well as the twins themselves who starred in that oeuvre) often had several roles behind the camera, ranging from electrician to stunt-driver. Only once completed was a copy sent to Roth, already then a giant of horror production with Cabin Fever and Hostels 1 & 2 to his credit and who was bowled over by what he saw. With his input and supportive promotion, the picture went on to achieve global recognition and allowed the twins to command a (still tiny) budget of closer to C$1M for American Mary. The sisters refer to Roth as their “favourite Jew since Jesus”. American Mary is dedicated to him and the guidance that he has passed on to the sisters – one of his most helpful notes being that if a movie cannot be pitched in two sentences, don’t shoot it – echoes the mentoring and support that he himself received from Quentin Tarantino who came on board to produce the two Hostel pictures.

Dead Hooker is a quirky, left of field picture that follows a group of young people, (think of a parody of Enid Blyton’s Famous Five), discovering the body of a hooker in their car’s trunk and setting off on a blood spattered mystery, to uncover the truth behind her murder. Their journey takes them on a bizarre tour of the twins’ native Vancouver and the movies denouement, without too much spoiling, hilariously/horrifically touches upon a Jewish guy whose circumcision as a child had gone a little awry. The glee with which the Soskas’ take such recognised urban anxieties and nightmares and project them on screen as brash innovative statements, is a hallmark of their writing. In American Mary they have defined some of their most evil male characters as eminent teaching doctors.

Another common Soska thread is their desire to overturn the historic exploitation of women on screen. Their refreshing and honest empowerment of their heroines has so far given rise to stories and chapters that are often best described as emasculatory, at the very least! It is a mark of the respect that these filmmakers engender from their performers that during the filming of Dead Hooker, when the staged beating of actress Tasha Moth by the movie’s mysoginist bad-guy was being filmed, even under the expert eye of a stunt co-ordinator a baseball bat blow went off target and Moth took a swipe to the kidneys. Such was her devotion to the movie and the twins’ vision that she didn’t complain, even when the next day she was passing blood. Needless to say, the Soskas were mortified on learning of this mishap and happily the actress went on to make a full recovery.

Jen and Sylvia work well together throughout the development process of their stories. They talk of how as one creates, the other plays video games before, in the tradition of all good siblings, they dutifully trash and pull apart the other’s efforts. Yet from this process emerge well-argued storylines and intelligent plots. Music and excellent sound feature heavily in  Twisted Twins productions. They talk of how when they write a script that every camera angle, sound effect and background detail is documented right at the very commencement of the creative process. The baseball battering referred to above is set to the Habanera from Bizet’s Carmen and incredibly the combination of refined beauty in music being juxtaposed against distressing violence ( think of Beethoven in Kubrick’s The Clockwork Orange) is effective. The twins speak warmly of having been immersed in culture from a very young age by their parents and in a novel gesture of appreciation have had their real-life father perform minor comic cameos in each of the movies.

Meeting the Soska sisters (and my review of American Mary can be found here) confirms my perception that these striking, talented young artists represent a distinctive and refreshing take on the horror genre. Their films are graphic and wildly imaginative, but where Mary Shelley once shocked a world with Frankenstein, so are these two women reaching out to leave their mark on Tinseltown as an invigorating and formidable force. They also shoot damn good pictures.


American Mary, which will be released on DVD and Blu-ray from Universal Pictures (UK) on 21st January 2013 and will open at UK cinemas on 11th January 2013 (FrightFest)

Re-Animator The Musical - Review

George Square Theatre, Edinburgh

*****

Music and lyrics by Mark Nutter

Adapted from the stories by H.P. Lovecraft

Book by Dennis Paoli, Stuart Gordon & William J. Norris

Based on the film H.P. Lovecraft’s Re-Animator

Directed by Stuart Gordon

Most shows require the suspension of disbelief, Re-Animator The Musical demands that even your suspended disbelief be strung up as high as you can muster. This is a musical that is as deliciously ( or should that be disgustingly ) ridiculous, as it is professionally and skilfully delivered.

Stuart Gordon has taken his 1980s B-movie feature "H.P. Lovecraft’s Re-Animator" and re-animated it for the stage. We meet students Dan Cain and Herbert West ( Chris L. McKenna and Graham Skipper respectively )  as they are half way through their medical training, where Cain and the Dean's daughter Megan ( Rachel Avery )are lovers. Critical to the plot is West's morbid quest to further his research into bringing the dead back to life using a fluorescent green re-animation potion that he injects into corpses and the efforts of rival teacher,  Dr Hill to thwart his developments. To say anymore would spoil and for the same reason Producer Dean Schramm has not released a list of musical numbers.

All the cast are strong. Skipper in geeky glasses and black suit sings strongly as he embodies a nerd with a ghoulish secret. McKenna ably plays a solid college guy who finds his life overtaken by circumstances as the plot unfolds. Avery's Megan is straight out of the Janet mould from Rocky Horror. She looks a picture, and her acting and vocal work impress. An extra treat in the cast is George Wendt, Norm from TV's Cheers, who delivers a performance to relish as the Dean, whilst Jesse Merlin's Hill is the archetypal bad guy, sung and performed with complete plausibility. Hill's demise in the show is as gruesome as it is hilarious. Also worthy of mention is Marlon Grace whose performance as Mace, a morgue guard with a beautiful baritone voice, is a scream.

Eli Roth has commented that in a good horror movie, the sound effects are as important as the visuals. This show does not disappoint. The sounds of the ( clearly and obviously dummy ) hypodermic injections, and brain sawing add to the riotous fun of the show.

Oh, and the first three rows of the audience are provided with ponchos to shield them from the showers of fake bodily fluids that frequently spatter them from the stage.

Schramm opened the show in Los Angeles where it ran successfully before an off-Broadway run in New York. He has brought the USA original cast to Edinburgh launch the show in Europe. The show deserves a wider UK audience and would be an innovative show to occupy an off-West End stage for a few weeks.

An audience member was overheard saying " this show's got zombies and music. What's not to like?" He was not wrong.


Runs until August 27th