International Horror Film Directors – Global Fear - Softcover

Shipka, Danny; Beliveau, Ralph

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1783206535 ISBN 13: 9781783206537

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2016

Synopsis

Horror films have for decades commanded major global audiences, tapping into deep-rooted fears that cross national and cultural boundaries in their ability to spark terror. This book brings together a group of scholars to explore the ways that this fear is utilized and played upon by a wide range of filmmakers. Contributors take up such major figures as Guillermo del Toro, Lars Von Trier, and David Cronenberg, and they also offer introductions to lesser-known talents such as Richard Franklin, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Juan López Moctezuma, and Alexandre Aja. Scholars and fans alike dipping into this collection will discover plenty of insight into what chills us.  

About this title

About the Authors

Danny Shipka is assistant professor of mass communication and affiliate member of the School of International Studies at Oklahoma State University.

Ralph Beliveau is an associate professor in the Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication and an affiliate faculty of Film and Media Studies and the Women’s and Gender Studies programs at the University of Oklahoma.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

International Horror Film Directors

By Danny Shipka, Ralph Beliveau

Intellect Ltd

Copyright © 2017 Intellect Ltd.
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-78320-653-7

Contents

Introduction: The Onset of Global Fear Danny Shipka and Ralph Beliveau, 
Chapter 1: A Topology of Guillermo del Toro Ralph Beliveau, 
Chapter 2: Richard Franklin: Ozploitation Auteur, Hitchcock Heir, Cinema Underdog Ben Kooyman, 
Chapter 3: Kiyoshi Kurosawa: J-horror's Master Stylist Leah Larson, 
Chapter 4: Madness and Eroticism: The Films of Juan López Moctezuma Budd Wilkins, 
Chapter 5: The Serious Play of Alexandre Aja Tracy Stephenson Shaffer, 
Chapter 6: The Sapphic, The Sadean, and Jess Franco Will Dodson, 
Chapter 7: Sergio Martino: Master of the Filone Mikel J. Koven, 
Chapter 8: At the Margins of Taste, in the Mouth of Madness: The Case of Lars von Trier Linda Badley, 
Chapter 9: José Mojica Marins and Zé do Caixão: Nightmares of Frankenstein in Brazil's National Horror Story Jerry Metz, 
Chapter 10: Dreaming Revolt: Jean Rollin and the French Fantastique in the Context of May 1968 Mario DeGiglio-Bellemare, 
Chapter 11: Acquiescence, Canadian Style. The Early Cinema of David Cronenberg Danny Shipka, 
Notes on Contributors, 
Index, 

CHAPTER 1

A Topology of Guillermo del Toro Ralph Beliveau

Making meaning of the work of Guillermo del Toro immediately raises complex questions because of the variety of ideas he spawns. It is not so much that he reaches out to other genres, but that his work in horror suggests very different kinds of canvases on which he wants to tell stories. They are horror stories that remain connected to their fantasy roots in fairy tales, but they can spin out in wildly different ways. Some of del Toro's work reflects the comic and graphic novel superhero side of horror fantasy, like his work in Blade II (2002) or Hellboy (2004). Some of it reflects a darker fantasy engagement with the immorality of fascism, as in El espinazo del diablo/The Devil's Backbone (2001) and El laberinto del fauno/Pan's Labyrinth (2006). In both cases, the roots of del Toro's work remain connected to fairy-tale traditions, gothic horror, and the way an individual — between the inside and the outside — are under threat.

This discussion will alternate between these two central lenses to gain a foothold on del Toro's work. First, how do the possibilities of a "fairy tale" present an opportunity to explore fear in the world, especially integrating the perspective of a child into an adult world? Second, how does the boundary between inside and outside, or between body and spirit, become a fertile way to engage with a horror audience, produce fear, and tell tales?

I would like to use the idea of the inside/outside tension as a way to understand del Toro's work and his place in horror in the world. Horror has a persuasive ability to cross national and cultural boundaries; at the same time, horror films usually reflect the traditions and conditions of their place of origin in one way or another. del Toro's work reflects a global notion of horror, a fear-driven cosmopolitanism, especially by demonstrating a consciousness of the cultural variety in the world. He expresses this through the conflicts between inside and outside that are a fundamental part of his stories, and especially his characters. They are often caught in a tension about their identities, the pull between outward appearances or expectations, on the one hand, and their internal compass of identity, morality, and action.

But at the same time, del Toro prizes his identity as a Mexican filmmaker. In conjunction with his two close-friend filmmakers, Alfonso Cuarón and Alejandro González Iñárritu, he has spoken about the need for Mexican cinemas to preserve space for Mexican films, rather than being overwhelmed by the products of popular commercial cinemas from other places, especially from the Hollywood production system (Shaw 2013, 2–3). This extra dimension complicates the picture of del Toro, whose work so far has demonstrated a desire to maintain both a local and a global identity. The argument in this chapter suggests that one way he has worked to maintain a position of contradictory identities is by making films that are about this very issue.

They resonate with the larger concerns expressed by many horror critics. O'Brien (2007) sees this tension built throughout del Toro's first commercial film, Cronos (1993). O'Brien sees in this film a tension between an inner Dracula and an inner Frankenstein, which struggle against each other within Jesús Gris, the main character who has turned through an alchemical combination of living parasite and mechanical technology. The character struggles between the two mutually exclusive monsters within, much like the way del Toro struggles between the local and the global. It would be hard to find a better playing field for these issues than the hybrids of horror, science fiction, and fantasy that viewers find in his work.

Del Toro's authorship in film presents different versions of this tension between inside and outside. His work reflects a broad and deep education in the traditions of horror film, not to mention influences from the world of art (such as Goya's work). His stories recognize that the stakes of horror have changed from the Gothic tradition in both literature and film, as much as they have escaped the lighter side of fairy tales. But del Toro is also interested in maintaining the connection to the gothic tradition and to the children inside of all of our past journeys as we experience his films.

This is reminiscent of the way horror and the Gothic complicate the notions of both identity and identification, both of which are critical concepts in del Toro's films. Carroll argued that:

[...] the notion of character identification, grounded in partial correspondence between the emotive response of protagonists and audience-members, is still dubious. For among other things, if the correspondences are only partial, why call the phenomenon identification at all? If two people are rooting for the same athlete at a sporting event, it would not appear appropriate to say that they are identifying with each other. (italics in original) (1990, 92)

But identification is not the same thing as "identical", which is I would argue the way Carroll characterizes identification. L. Bradley Cooper, on the other hand, argues, "No fiction, horror or otherwise, offers singular, unidirectional models for identification. Identification depends on the shifting and multiple relationships that a reader established with a text" (2010, 13). Identification is more like identity than identical. And in identity, we are observing a phenomenon that is fluid rather than discreet and consistent. In del Toro's work we see the complications of changing identities, of choices, of the way characters and audiences cope with uncontrollable forces both outside and inside.

This gives us a sense of why del Toro is regarded warmly by his fans. He reflects back their fascination with the way identity struggles under horrific circumstances to find or unify itself.

His interest in the Gothic is plain to see from the beginning of the narration in his first feature film, Cronos:

In 1536 [...] fleeing from the Inquisition, the alchemist Uberto Fulcanelli disembarked in Veracruz, Mexico. Appointed official watchmaker to the Viceroy, Fulcanelli was determined to perfect an invention which would provide him with the key to eternal life. He was to name it [...] the Cronos device. 400 years later, one night in 1937, part of the vault in a building collapsed. Among the victims was a man of strange skin, the color of marble in moonlight. His chest mortally pierced, his last words [...] Suo tempore.

We should note that there is a beneficial confusion between "Cronos" and "Chronos". He starts the film with the historical tale of Fulcanelli, an alchemist who fled to New Spain (i.e. Mexico) to escape the inquisition. Although it is not mentioned in the film, 1536 was the very year that the inquisition was established in New Spain/Mexico. Fulcanelli was only escaping one inquisition to find himself in another. Del Toro's use of "Fulcanelli" raises an additional concern of his for the Gothic. An early twentieth-century French Alchemist and author of mystical texts used the name Fulcanelli to publish a book on the Gothic "secrets" of cathedral architecture. But there is still a debate on who this person was. Historical accounts tell how this shadowy person disappeared in the 1920s. Other reports of encounters with him after this disappearance may have led del Toro to use the name. More significantly, however, is how the name is drawn from the name of the Roman god Vulcan, a god of fire that is both a source of destruction and a source of male fertilizing power. In the tale told at the beginning of Cronos, Fulcanelli is killed in a building collapse — in 1937. The police investigating the death find that Fulcanelli was a murderer, and was collecting the blood from one of his victims, though the purpose is initially unclear.

The Cronos device that Fulcanelli had perfected is lost until discovered by Jesús Gris, an elderly antique dealer, during the Christmas season. The glimpses of this present-day world are used to visually connect two different ideas that are central to del Toro. First, this is a world that has a strangely large number of Volkswagen Beetles. This alludes back to Fulcanelli's desk, where earlier we had seen an amalgam of mechanical parts and motionless insects, out of which he was making the Cronos device. It also alludes forward to the statue that Jesús has acquired from an auction of Fulcanelli's possessions. Insects escaping from a hole in the statue bring it to Jesús's attention, where he subsequently discovers the Cronos device hidden inside.

Del Toro also uses these first sequences to establish a theme about boundaries and borders. Fulcanelli is from the old Europe, but not from a specific place; his political power seems connected to Spain's colonization of Mexico, though the historical "Fulcanelli" is thought to be from France, and the name clearly evokes an Italian origin (by way of ancient Rome). This blended Europe is bookended by a blended New World; the contemporary Mexico displays street signage in five different languages. Del Toro's film displays a world where multiple languages, especially English and Spanish exist in the same conversation ... a question in English can be answered in Spanish, etc.

This idea of national identity in Cronos raises compelling complications about authenticity and cosmopolitanism. The film reflects a post-North American Free Trade Agreement world, where the elderly corporate owner suffers from the disease of an American infiltration (Davies 2008), but there is little interest in the portrayal of a specifically Mexican cinematic identity. The boundary is blurred between an international identity and a specifically Mexican context (Stock 1999). The past reflected in Jesús's antique store is a past of Catholic relics, clocks sometimes without numbers, and, as Angel De La Guardia observes, mirrors.

Word about the statue in Jesús's possession gets to Angel, who is supposed to be looking for such statues — of archangels — on orders from his uncle, the elderly boss of De La Guardia Enterprises. The same display of multiple languages can be seen in the De La Guardia Enterprises factory, where English, Spanish, and Russian signs appear together.

The Cronos device itself echoes this world of blends, since it exhibits both mechanical clockwork parts and a living insect within; the device works by virtue of a hybrid of the two. (What, after all, is a Volkswagen Beetle if not a mechanical device with a living thing inside?). When the device latches on to Jesús's arm (puncturing it), his reaction is like a reaction to drugs, combining pain and relief. But the device also immediately begins transforming him, making him thirst for blood, and regains some lost youth and virility. This is the key to Fulcanelli's device, a key to unnaturally long (if not eternal) life.

So is the Cronos device a living thing, or a manufactured machine, or some sort of cyborg? Perhaps the difference between what we classify as naturally occurring aspects of humanity and what we think of as invented technology is less stable than it might appear. Donna Haraway suggests that the manipulation of this difference becomes a location for boundary breakdown, between human and animal, between human/animal and machine, and between the physical and non-physical (Haraway 1991, 151–54). While Haraway posits this thinking in Science-Fiction terms, in horror terms del Toro uses these boundary indeterminacies as ways of disintegrating the person. Jesús is transformed by the device while he is still technically a living human being; after he dies and is resurrected, the transformation becomes a literal shedding of the skin, a metamorphosis, a transformation. Underneath this transformation, through the sweet relationship between Jesús and his granddaughter Aurora ("Dawn"), we experience the comedy and tragedy of death, and the significance of identity beyond a physical life. Aurora, who has been mute (save for some humming) throughout the film, finally speaks, calling him "Grandfather", after Jesús goes through his transformation and rebirth. Rather than fearing his transformation, she cherishes his presence, regardless of the hideousness of his appearance.

Some of these themes return in his next film, Mimic (1997). This Hollywood-financed film had a troubled production history and the theatrical version has gone through a metamorphosis as del Toro revised a later version of the film. However the original version has remained on Netflix for quite some time (it clocks in at 105 minutes). The "Director's Cut", which appeared in 2011, totals 112 minutes. In the revision del Toro removed several second-unit shots which he had originally argued against. Given the ability to make these changes, del Toro now embraces rather than disowns the film.

Mimic is centrally about biology, about the way living things go about living, including processes of ingestion, excretion, sexual reproduction, and survival. As more than one commentator has pointed out, the science that happens in Mimic is not really very scientific (see, for example, the critique at the site "And You Call Yourself A Scientist" (http://www.aycyas.com/mimic_print.htm). However, the accuracy of "science" in Mimic is more akin to the picture of Catholicism in many of his films. His emphasis is on the tale, not on the science or the theology. It is the same experience as listening to a critique of the believability of what happens in a zombie film like Night of the Living Dead (1968) or World War Z (2013); coincidences? We are here talking in a world where the dead are getting up and eating the living, you will recall. Given del Toro's interest in fairy tales, it might be better to think of the film as "mimicking" science.

Del Toro complicates his depiction of the morality of science. Susan Tyler, an etymologist, has genetically modified one insect in order to use it to wipe out another insect that is spreading a disease that infects children from cockroaches. The genetically modified insect is engineered to be sterile and die out in six months, but three years later the modified insects — which Susan had called the Judas Breed — have grown huge and are preying on humans. In one sense it is a feminized Frankenstein tale, where the scientist does something she suspects is mad, and evidences remorse at what she might have done. In a further twist on the gender roles, Susan's success giving "birth" to the Judas Breed was accompanied by her inability to conceive a child, at least until her husband discovers a positive pregnancy test at the same time she is figuring out what the Judas Breed has been up to. The breed has developed the ability to "mimic" the appearance of a long-coated shadowy human figure and face as camouflage. Characters eventually survive by using a gland's excretions to reverse-mimic the insects and escape. Del Toro is drawing on several subgenres: eco-disaster, giant bug movie, the previously mentioned mad science project.

In Cronos, del Toro used Aurora's acceptance of her deceased vampire grandfather as a way of keeping his horror story a child's fairy tale. In Mimic, he has two different uses of children, which are both unique touches. Two kids who have been selling insect specimens to Susan go out on a hunt for an insect egg sac, at Susan's suggestion. At this point she is not aware of the size and danger she has put the kids into, much like she had little knowledge of the consequences of having bred the bug. The two kids find it, but as they try to remove it they are brutally killed by a Judas Breed soldier. Another child in the story is Chuy, a child who displays the social awkwardness of Asperger's syndrome, combined with an ability to mimic the "clicking" communication of the giant insects. When he stumbles into them, his efforts to communicate through mimicking the clicking sounds lead to a rapport between him and the insects. They don't kill him, and he thinks of them as friends. He is wrong about this, though, when he witnesses the insects killing his grandfather.

Del Toro places a couple of interesting reversals between Cronos and Mimic. The Cronos device insect is encased in a mechanical clockwork shell. The Judas Breed in Mimic remains undetected because of the way member of the breed "manufacture" an outward appearance that looks vaguely human. The appearance reality dualism has consequences for the main characters as well. Where the Cronos device changes Jesús in ways he does not understand, Susan Tyler exerts change on the world that she does not understand. In both cases the morality of the decision reaches consequences neither protagonist is able to anticipate, though it places them in the position of making choices to take highly moral actions. Jesús essentially prevents the evil De La Guardia from living eternally; Susan's experiments save the lives of countless children.

(Continues...)

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Edition details

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1783206535
• ISBN 13: 9781783206537
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224