Zombi: Dawn of the Dead (1978)
George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead is both a career high for the director and one of the most influential horror films ever made. It’s often forgotten, however, that it more or less owes its existence to another genre luminary, the Italian giallo director Dario Argento. Argento had made a name for himself throughout the 70s as both a producer and a director, through stylish slashers such as Profondo Rosso and Suspiria. Argento agreed to finance a sequel to Romero’s seminal Night of the Living Dead, inviting him to his house in Rome to write the script - and in return, Argento would be allowed to produce his own cut of the movie for release in Europe. Under the title Zombi: Dawn of the Dead (or simply “Zombies” in the UK), the film was a massive success in Europe and kick-started the Italian zombie cycle that led to a slew of unofficial sequels cashing in on the ‘Zombi’ title - most notably Lucio Fulci’s Zombi 2. Whilst its influence was immediate, Argento’s version was superceded internationally by Romero’s US cut, and has only recently been exhumed (in the US) on DVD. Read more
The Driller Killer (1979)
With a title like Driller Killer it’s hardly surprising that Abel Ferrara’s directorial debut quickly found itself thrust into the centre of the ‘video nasty’ debate. To be fair to the Mary Whitehouses of the world, the promotional posters that accompanied the movie did more to inflame passions than to assuage them, and even now it’s difficult to find some of the more ‘graphic’ offerings on the internet. As is often the case with these ultra-nasties, the media attention is probably something of a mixed blessing. True, the stigma of being a tabloid outcast tends to end any dreams of commercial success that budding directors might once have harboured. Theirs is a future of horror convention walk-ons and the occasional appearance on documentaries exploring whether films are responsible for violence amongst teenagers. On the other hand, being branded a ‘nasty’ provides in its turn a measure of sinful credibility. No matter how rubbish a film is, if it was once banned then surely there must be something to it? Why else would it have provoked such a moral panic? Read more
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931)
![Doctor Jekyll And Mr Hyde [1932]](http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B0001EYSWQ.02._SCTHUMBZZZ_.jpg)
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde slipped easily into the cultural consciousness, to the extent that even people who are unfamiliar with the book will have a sketchy idea of its central theme. Much of this can probably be laid at the door of lazy newsreaders, who are adept at finding a neighbour of the latest serial killer who is willing to say that really they were actually quite nice to chat to over the garden fence and that they can’t believe they tortured cats as a child. Of course, this is precisely the kind of phenomenon that prompted Stevenson to write the book in the first place, and it’s perhaps not surprising that with such a meaty philosophical question to ponder we still haven’t found the answers some 120 years later. It also helps explain why the book lends itself so well to screen adaptations (if you can overlook the cameo in Van Helsing) as Stevenson raises the key question but can never really answer it; just what would happen if you could release your ‘bad’ self?
Rouben Mamoulin has a damned good stab at exploring the theme in this, the first sound version of the book. Like the vast majority of adaptations, the perspective of the work is shifted entirely from the narration of Utterson (who is entirely excluded here) to following Jekyll himself. Though this removes the mystery elements of the original story (where Jekyll and Hyde were presented as separate figures initially) I think it’s to the advantage of the film. Almost nobody now would sit down and watch a Jekyll and Hyde film without knowing that they were the same person, though my apologies if you would have and I’ve ruined it for you. You only have to endure Keanu Reeve’s grinding and distracting narration in “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” to know that an overly literal devotion to the original text is not always advisable for a film treatment. By focusing the story entirely on Jekyll’s downfall we’re not only forced to confront the horror of what is happening to this eminently likable man but must also try and decide who exactly is to blame for it.
I say this because from the start Jekyll himself is a complex character. The initial sugar-lumps of him lovingly tending to his patients in the charity hospital, charming his delectable fiancé, and mesmerising his audience with his scientific knowledge point to a man confident in himself and happy with the world around him. Mamoulin’s great success though is recognising that beneath this veneer things are not all that they seem. The first time we see Jekyll with Muriel Carew for example, we’d be forgiven for thinking that he is utterly devoted to her and wants nothing more than to spend the rest of his life with her (I lost count of the number of ‘I love you darling’s that were bandied around). What Mamoulin does excellently is show that this dependence is not necessarily a good thing and raises the possibility that Jekyll is almost too in love to the extent that it is a force of harm in his life rather than good. The subtlety in Stevenson’s story-brought out beautifully in this film-is that Jekyll experimented with the twin sides of his personality not because he was a virtuous and curious man of science but because he was a flawed man.
All too often adaptations paint the relationship between Jekyll and Hyde as an elemental struggle between the good and evil, with the latter, when released from its shackles, finally overpowering the former. What makes this film work so well is that it recognises that things are a lot more blurred than this. It’s a little underplayed in relation to Hyde, with his malevolence quickly anchored on sexual depravity rather than primeval brutality. He is quickly-too quickly perhaps-confined to scowling at people until towards the end of the film when things really get going. It’s difficult to resent Hyde because, unlike Jekyll, he is at least honest in his actions. It’s fascinating to see the duel between the ‘two’ intensify to the point where Hyde finally reveals the secret and curses the man he ‘hates most in the world’. It’s also instructive to note that this contrasts with Jekyll, who only seeks to stop Hyde once the killing starts and who even then never brings himself to express hatred for him. Once again the question of who is the more moral is not an easy one to answer. You can never quite tell whether Jekyll resents Hyde’s presence or whether he secretly longs to be overpowered by him and revels in seeing his long-supressed desires fulfilled. I suspect that it is the latter. Hyde is not a ‘bad’ Jekyll so much as Jekyll is a cowardly Hyde.
This is to say nothing of the superb job Mamoulin did in presenting the film. Frederic March is irreplaceable as Jekyll/Hyde, and gives a performance which has few rivals from the 1930s. The make-up on Hyde will be familiar to any viewer of Red Dwarf but March is flawless in using it to full effect. The first transformation is utterly mesmerizing and gives the Invisible Man a run for its money in the special effects department. I can’t praise this effort highly enough. Everything about it works, from the effective dissection of a moral minefield through to the way that it’s beautifully packaged. Though Hyde’s repugnance does eventually lead to the viewer losing their initial sympathy with him I am still unsure whether Dr. Jekyll was ever likeable at all. I think that this was the point all along and I’ll wager that I’d still be unsure after another 120 years.
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