Kick Ass Ironically
A newsletter from the shed of
Now then,
I have returned! What have you been upto? Since we last spoke, I've been to Amy's wedding in Glasgow, been on holiday to Sicily, and started back work on a book.
Although, what has been different this past few weeks, is that I've actually felt the desire to watch some horror films. There's something about the end of July to September - in short, the school holidays - when it's (relatively for England) warm and everything slows down, and I want to be outside in the sun, reading, stretched out, soaking in the rays like an unfurled cat.
I find it very hard to motivate myself to sit inside in the dark, with the blinds down, and watch films or telly, even. It's the same every year.
But this year, with England actually experiencing heatwaves, heatwaves that this normally damp, green, cold island is totally unequipped to deal with, even I have had to admit defeat and stay inside a bit (it's also one of the rare times that having a crumbling Victorian house built in Yorkshire stone with very little insulation and permanent draughts and thus always freezing has come in handy for temperature control).
So this means I have some films to talk to you about! Hurrah! I'll do these first for a change.
***
You might remember last newsletter, that I've been taken by this mood recently, where I want to watch something brainless but good, something contemporary, something slick, unchallenging but entertaining? Last time I chose Old, and we all now how that went.
That mood returned again this week, so I decided to go with The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (2021, Sky), in which wife and husband team, Lorraine and Ed Warren, investigate a case that may be linked to demonic posession. I love the original The Conjuring (2013), which is one of the rare contemporary horror films that absolutely terrified me, but I was really underwhelmed by The Conjuring 2 (2016) which I watched during lockdown.
In The Conjuring 3: The Devil... the 1981 setting was great, and I found a deep sense of nostalgia in the production design, score and costume design. They totally nailed the early 1980s, in that, it kind of starts to look like the 1980s (the giant hifi, and speakers, for starters) but there are also so many hangovers from the 1970s, in the colours, the fabrics, the textures. It gave me instant flashbacks to my childhood.
I also loved the early nods to shots from The Exorcist.
But.
It was boring. Really boring.
Paul came home from work halfway through me watching it and started talking to me about what to have for tea and I didn't even pause the film which is not a good sign.
Here's where I think the problem is.
In The Conjuring films, there are always two storylines. There is the storyline of the haunting (films 1 and 2) and the demonic possession (3). Then there is the storyline of Ed and Lorraine, and their lives together. Because these two storylines run alongside each other, you tend not to have one central character to focus on throughout - the Conjuring films are, in essence, ensemble pieces.
Despite this, Ed and Lorraine are the consistent characters at the heart of these films, so they are the people that we cue into the most.
But the Ed and Lorraine storyline for every single film is:
one of them becomes (physically or emotionally) ill as a result of their work
the other one worries deeply about them, because of their Great Love For Each Other (the painstakingly cued moment of positivity in this franchise, literally cued with colour grading and score at the end of every film)
this causes the worrier to do something really rash and endanger their own life
the ill one rescues them (literally or figuratively)
and then its OK because the ill one gets better and their Great Love Endures
And they go home to their nice house (bar that one weird room with the Annabelle doll)
That's pretty much it. Every time. Ed and Lorraine just take turns at being the endangered one. But it is always OK in the end. Seriously, if there are any more Conjuring fims, Lorraine better go off and have an affair, Ed moves out to a crappy little flat, you know, some actual DRAMA. ffs.
I also watched Prey (2022, Disney +) which has been getting a ton of positive noise online. It is an interesting take on a prequel to Predator: the origin story of the Predator in the world of the Comanche Nation 300 years ago. Naru, a skilled warrior, fights to protect her tribe against one of the first highly-evolved Predators to land on Earth.
This definitely was in my wheelhouse. Predator - YES, girl lead - YES, less than 1 hour 40 - YES.
The cinematography, editing and score on this film are gorgeous. Since I got into editing, I've got a lot more appreciative about this kind of thing. The story structure is also bob-on as well, in terms of the writers clearly understand classical story structure and pacing and turning points, and they keep the pace up up up.
It's completely beautiful and completely brainless, which was just what I wanted last friday night when my brain was dribbling out of my ears.
What is slightly more irksome, in retrospect though, is its femninism. It's led by Naru, played by Amber Midthunder, who is great, and the film is avowedly feminist. But its feminism written by blokes. So all of Naru's interactions are reduced to - look aren't men shit thinking that Naru can't do everything they can do; hey the guys underestimate Naru; hey the guys want her to stay in the camp and look after them; BAD MEN. And then of course Naru proves them all wrong because she's KICK ASS (I'm using this expression ironically people).
It's a man's imagination that has created this world, so blatantly, that it's a bit painful to watch.
I can't help thinking it might have been a bit more 'feminist' to hey, you know, hire a woman director?
Or a woman screenwriter?
Or make at least one of the three credited writers women?
Or hire a woman cinematographer?
For more on this film, Celia Mattison nails it in "The Girlbossification of Predator: What Prey gets wrong about the final girl", in her newsletter Deeper into Movies. Amber T gave Prey 6/10 in her , which is probably about right.
My final watch and film of the newsletter is The House on Sorority Row (1982), pictured above, at the top of the newsletter. In this film, after a seemingly innocent prank goes horribly wrong, a group of sorority sisters are stalked and murdered one by one in their sorority house while throwing a party to celebrate their graduation.
This slasher film is a BANGER. Everyone in the world knows this is a brilliant cult film and everyone in the world has seen it apart from me. I just had never got round to it.
But then, I was in a meeting with Alexandra Heller Nicholas (goddess of horror film writing) and she mentioned it, all casual, and was, "of course it is brilliant", and I was like "yes of course" nodding over Zoom and thinking "shit".
I didn't really need to pretend to Alex that I had seen it, because she is 100% not one of those annoying film twats who are "oh my god I can't believe you haven't seen X, Y, Z", but it did really make me think I needed to crack on and watch it.
I watched it and now I see why. It's all about women, it's about bad things happening to women when they have done something terrible and it becomes about retribution for their crime (i.e. they have 3D lives!), it's great on female friendship, it's funny, the costumes are briliant (I would wear a lot of the dresses), the production design is themed in this deep pink and lime green combo, it homages Les Diaboliques and Black Christmas extensively (two of my all time favourite films), as well as Jaws and Psycho, there is a random Bad Clown in the Attic, and there is just generally a sense of good work and money gone into every aspect of this film.
It feel slick, smart and full. I highly recommend.
(I am also now seriously toying with a chapter of Her Chainsaw Heart on reading feminism in 1980s and early 1990s slasher films - I'm pretty sure I've got an angle that hasn't been done before. I was thinking obvs the Slumber Party Massacre franchise but v interested in writing about The House on Sorority Row and Popcorn - what do you think - would you be interested in reading that?)
***
Next, news / work stuff.
First - news that is not my news but still good news to know (if you are in the UK).
On Wednesday 24th August, at the Castle Cinema in Hackney, London, two of my favourite film collectives are collaborating for an evening of woman-made, SF-horror short film screenings. Zodiac Film Club and The Final Girls Berlin Film Festival have got together to programme the event, which includes a Q&A with director Faye Jackson. If you are in the vicinity, you can find out more about it here.
And, on the 20th September, programming initiative Lost Vampires UK is screening The Wisdom of the Crocodiles (1998) at the Etcetera Theatre Club in Camden, London. I heard about this event via the Weekly Film Bulletin newsletter, and almost kept reading on - the film title did not ring any bells - but then I read:
a) vampires (not as good as werewolves but still worth pausing for)
b) 1990s (yes)
c) part horror, romantic melodrama and police procedural (WHAT)
d) STARRING JUDE LAW AND TIMOTHY SPALL (even more wtf)
and d) British (why don't I know about this film???)
I'm not going to be able to get down to this screening, but I am determined to find a copy of this film to watch nonetheless.
Any ideas where to start, anyone?!
Next, Three Ways to Dine Well has been selected for Spook Screen Film Festival in Ireland and Dead Northern in York. I think I am going to go to Dead Northern - I used to work as a lecturer in playwriting and screenwriting at the University of York, and know the city quite well, and the festival is being held at a beautiful cinema on the riverside. Are any of you planning to go to Dead Northern? It is quite a big festival. If so, let me know and maybe I'll see you there.
Knit One Stab Two is now being soundtracked by Paul. Huzzah! I'm hoping he'll be done in the next week so I can get back to it for the final pass. I'm itching to get it finished and sent out to festivals, there are a couple I have my eye on in particular (Hannah and Eli you know I am looking at you right).
My reference points for Paul were Goldfrapp and Lonelady, with a filthy disco vibe, which he rolled his eyes at, no pressure (he's used to me), and got on with it, but then yesterday I announced I was listening to Perfume Genius again and was obsessed with the first minute of 'Queen', and Paul just said, wearily, "but it's like less than half the speed of everything else I've just made you argh".
(I also told him that for my next video essay - the one I mentioned in the last newsletter, Make Up in the Mirror in the Moments of Madness, all about women putting on make up in hororr films - I wanted a thrash metal soundtrack and he paled and said "you aren't planning to.... sing are you?")
(I cannot sing)
But I am a joy to work with.
I'm currently trying to finish a book. No - not Her Chainsaw Heart (sorry) but another book I don't think I've talked to you all about before. Over the past four (five?) years I've been writing a monograph (single authored full length book) on the side, all about British television drama.
I know, it seems a bit random, doesn't it? I do write about telly from time to time, but usually only chapters for edited book collections (my first ever academic publication, back in 2007, was on Charmed, ha) or for academic journals.
This book started out as a journal article on the British horror television series Bedlam (2011-2012, Sky Living / BBC America) but it spiralled into a massive project where I ended up interviewing not just the writer-creators, but also the top executives involved in its commissioning and production - people who have now gone on to be VP of content for Netflix UK, Head of Drama for Channel 4 etc.
At the same time I was doing all these interviews, I was getting increasingly frustrated that I couldn't find any models in Television Studies to help me structure and organise the fascinating material I was finding out about how horror television series are first imagined, then pitched, then commissioned, then written, and rewritten (and rewritten and rewritten) and made. So the already massive project then went up another notch as I started to write a new model for doing television studies (because, I mean, why not make life easy for yourself).
Anyway, I'm on draft 7 of this 85,000 word project and I have decided enough is enough. At the end of this month, this book is going to Rutgers University Press (who published Women Make Horror) as my editor there has recently taken over commissiong television studies, as well as film, and is interested.
End of August is completely arbitrary for the redraft deadline, I have no sense whether this is do-able or not. I'm entirely motivated by being pig-sick of having the project hanging around my neck, and being desperate to get back to working on Her Chainsaw Heart.
(And I also have to write the book proposal once I've finished redrafting but I'm hoping I can knock that out in a day or two?? hmm).
***
Finally, in reading recs, my head is full of academic books on television studies which I can't imagine you are interested in.
So, instead, here is the rather random list of all the (non-academic) books I have finished reading since we last spoke, most of which were read in Sicily:
Donna Tartt, The Secret History (1992), I guess it is a thriller? Regardless of classification it is BRILLIANT. I put off reading for years because it looked too "literary" but given I've recently spent several weeks at a private liberal arts college in Vermont it felt like time. Because I am a complete nerd I keep a list in my diary of everything I read throughout the year, and I also rate each book out of 5, and this is one of the very few that gets the full 5 so far this year.
Lucy Foley, The Paris Apartment (2022): crime, pretty much locked room murder mystery but contemporary very easy
Patricia Highsmith, A Suspension of Mercy (1965): crime / thriller, for the darkest, sickest psychology, and obsession with murder, she is the queen
Octavia Butler, Adulthood Rites (1988), SF, not just queen of SF, queen of all fiction writing - sharing the throne with Highsmith for me, and the Lilith's Brood series - this is book 2 - is insanely good, her words put worlds in my brain. Obviously Octavia gets 5 / 5 as well.
Andre Bjerke, The Lake of the Dead (1942): horror, first Norwegian horror novel, kind of The Woman in Black meets And Then There Were None but with a casual misogynist old dude narrator that makes you glad you are not a woman living in Norway in the 1940s - but don't let this put you off, still worth a read
Joan Didion, Where I was From (2003): her first memoir, not great, not her most enthralling, more like her Miami book, but she's still brilliant
Kathleen Glasgow and Liz Lawson, The Agathas (2022): YA Teen High School Cosy Crime, billed Veronica Mars does Agatha Christie. Picked up via a recommendation on the brilliant newsletter. Very easy, fast paced, ideal for when you have lost your mind writing a book all day and need entertaining without engaging in any depth.
I am currently reading Victor LaValle's horror novella The Ballad of Black Tom (2017) which is as fantastic as I have come to expect from his work (his 2013 novel The Devil in Silver was one of my favourite books of last year) and on audiobook I am listening to Project Hail Mary, a SF novel by Andy Weir. I can't quite remember what made me pick this - I watched the film adaption of one of his novels, The Martian, and was totally unimpressed saying to Paul 'we're literally just watching Matt Damon grow a potato' - but I have to admit this audiobook is stellar and I am completely hooked.
***
That's it from me today. I hope you have a nice Sunday. I am planning to watch The Slumber Party Massacre II. This is obviously a self-soothing mechanism as I lose my mind in the final stages of book submission. Wish me luck!
take care, and keep in touch,
Alison
The Losers' Club is a newsletter by Alison Peirse, associate professor of film and
author / editor of Women Make Horror; After Dracula and Korean Horror Cinema.