REVIEW: THE FIELDS

In 1969, America was glued to their televisions as news of Charles Manson and his murderous family hit the airwaves: Manson’s maniacal followers had slaughtered the very pregnant Sharon Tate (actress and wife of famed director Roman Polanski) amongst others in her own home. Following this crime, never was the generational gap between flower children and baby boomers more insurmountable. Americans just didn’t know what to do with this. How could this happen? In America? This kind of thing simply didn’t happen here. 

And ever since then, Charles Manson has been a pop-culture phenomenon. Idolized by shock rockers Rob Zombie and the name-stealing Marilyn Manson, the man’s face can be found on t-shirts, posters, bongs, and other paraphernalia sported by awesome, mall-dwelling teens. Even Manson’s music (Charles, not Marilyn) received a very underground release. (He was a musician, did you know that? And a shitty one, at that.) 

More than forty years later we have The Fields, a very unique and brooding film from directors Tom Mattera and David Mazzoni. A combination of Zodiac, The Strangers, and steeped in America’s shock and mourning over the Sharon Tate murders, The Fields is very much a different beast from your usual serial killer movie fare. Because this is not a serial killer movie. Yes, Charles Manson and his family play a large part in the events of this film, but this isn’t a blood-and-guts affair. It’s very much an examination of small-town life in 1973, and the effect that news of Manson’s possibly imminent parole has on its citizens. 

Steven, a young, curly-haired kid, is shipped off to the isolated farm owned by his grandparents (Tom McCarthy and Cloris Leachman) after a very ugly domestic dispute goes down between his parents (Faust Checho and Tara Reid). The parents need to sort out their issues, and both agree Steven should not be around to witness it. The Fields is told through his eyes, and his fear of Charles Manson being released from prison begins to take hold of him. Very strange and suspicious characters are scattered throughout the film, including Eugene, a farm hand with not too much going on upstairs. His first appearance is very unsettling, and with Manson-like floating arms and lilting voice, your immediate first thought is that young Steven’s fears have come true – that Manson has been paroled after all, and has come for him. 

But this isn’t that kind of movie. It’s much smarter than that. It’s very much about the duplication of evil in our world. It suggests that evil is cyclical, and that it’s born at home, in basements right beneath our feet. It is Steven’s fear of Charles Manson that drives the film, and because he is your narrator, you immediately question the things he is seeing – like the demented carnival he discovers after crossing through his grandparents’ cornfield, or the body of the young girl in this same field so very close to their front door… 

Cloris Leachman plays an absolutely wonderful part, embracing her role as Gladys and infusing it with equal parts Bad Santa and Barbara Bush. She brings a lot of heart to the film, and people less familiar with her dramatic side (I’m one of them) will find themselves very surprised. While tabloid/human mess Tara Reid delivers a typical Tara Reid performance, her screen time is limited, so her so-so performance is lost in a sea of great ones and does not up-end the film (though her awful wig threatens to). 

The film was produced by Tommy Lee Wallace, known to most horror fans as the director of Stephen King's IT miniseries, as well as having worked side-by-side with John Carpenter on some of his earlier films, most notably Halloween and The Fog.

As for the events of the film experienced through Steven’s eyes, you might find yourself asking: What’s real? What’s not? Unlike other films of its ilk, The Fields does answer those questions. And because of this, the audience might find their reaction to the film divided. Some like to have things spelled out for them (even if they don’t like the chosen path) while others like to use their own imaginations to determine what they have just witnessed. This may be The Fields’ only shortcoming, depending on what camp in which you tend to find yourself. Then again, this isn’t so much a shortcoming on behalf of the film as it is of the audience and their inability to allow themselves to go where the movie takes them. It’s certainly not for everyone; it has an established pace and it takes its time telling you just enough to wonder what the hell you’re being told in the first place. Despite this, it’s never a frustrating view, and for me was a pleasant surprise. 

Fans looking for something grislier should look elsewhere, but those looking for a meditative slow burn should seriously consider a trip to The Fields.

WOULDN'T HARM A FLY

"12 cabins. 12 vacancies."

If we don't, remember me.

UNSUNG HORRORS: GHOSTWATCH

Every once in a while, a genuinely great horror movie—one that would rightfully be considered a classic, had it gotten more exposure and love at the box office—makes an appearance. It comes, no one notices, and it goes. But movies like this are important. They need to be treasured and remembered. If intelligent, original horror is supported, then that's what we'll begin to receive, in droves. We need to make these movies a part of the legendary genre we hold so dear. Because these are the unsung horrors. These are the movies that should have been successful, but were instead ignored. They should be rightfully praised for the freshness and intelligence and craft that they have contributed to our genre. 

So, better late than never, we’re going to celebrate them now… one at a time. 

Dir. Lesley Manning

1992

BBC

United Kingdom

"This is Orson Welles, ladies and gentlemen, out of character, to assure you that War of the Worlds has no further significance than as the holiday offering it was intended to be; The Mercury Theatre's own radio version of dressing up in a sheet and jumping out of a bush and saying "Boo!" Starting now, we couldn't soap all your windows and steal all your garden gates by tomorrow night, so we did the next best thing: we annihilated the world before your very ears and utterly destroyed the CBS. You will be relieved, I hope, to learn that we didn't mean it, and that both institutions are still open for business. So goodbye everybody, and remember please for the next day or so the terrible lesson you learned tonight. That grinning, glowing, globular invader of your living room is an inhabitant of the pumpkin patch, and if your doorbell rings and nobody's there, that was no Martian; it's Halloween."

- Orson Welles' on-air apology following

 his War of the Worlds broadcast; 

October 30, 1938

Running BBC's 1992 Ghostwatch program for this entry of Unsung Horrors is kind of a cheat for several reasons. First, while I try to feature films reasonably recent, Ghostwatch will turn twenty years old this coming Halloween. Second, its notoriously hard to find. If you've got a region-free DVD  player and deep pockets, then you should be able to order the DVD from Amazon UK fairly easily. Finally, Ghostwatch isn't very unsung. Considering its extremely limited audience and near impossibility to find, it has a wealth of fans. People who have seen it love it and eagerly share stories of how it left them utterly terrified. It's because of this that I couldn't resist running an appreciation of this incredibly eerie and effective film. 

Shot and edited weeks in advance to its air date, Ghostwatch is presented as a live on-air special that spotlights an alleged haunted house on Foxhill Drive in London. The host of this show is Michael Parkinson, a well known (and quite real) British journalist. Next to him sits Dr. Lin Pascoe, a parapsychologist who fervently believes that the spooky events occurring at Foxhill Drive are genuine signs of a haunting. And in the cursed house live the Early family; mother Pam and daughters Suzanne and Kim. Much like modern ghost-hunting shows of today, a camera crew enters the house to investigate the events the Early family claim to have been dealing with for months. Leading this crew is Sarah Greene, another well-known British personality. Sure enough, the house is haunted for real, and as the investigation unfolds, the events within the house steadily increase into utter chaos.

While the crux of Ghostwatch is built around the events occurring inside the house at Foxhill Drive, the power of the story comes from all the different sources of information used throughout the film. Michael Parkinson and Dr. Pascoe provide much of the exposition and background on the investigation, and because they are on a "live" on-air show, they frequently patch in phone calls from "audience members" who share either their own ghostly encounters, or provide even more information about the Foxhill Drive house previously unknown. What this does is add to the legend of the specter haunting the house, and with each new detail, the events become more and more creepy. Think Blair Witch: The first half of that film is the kids gathering information, and the only spooky goings-on are married to stories told by locals and experts. Ghostwatch operates the same way.

The awful thing causing all this havoc is Pipes the ghost, the name derived by the Early children after the first few times their mother had claimed the weird noises they were hearing were caused by their water pipes banging beneath their walls. Over the course of the last few months, Pipes made his presence quite well known, focusing most of his wrath on young Suzanne. The few scarce sightings we have of Pipes, along with eyewitness accounts of the young children, paint a very chilling image of him in our mind, but it's at the very end when Pipes' true origins are revealed is when the film is at its most frightening. The filmmakers do a great job of teasing you with brief sightings of Pipes, but never long enough to give you a full, detailed glimpse of how he actually appears. Brief images of him are scattered throughout, and while the film today can be paused, or slowed down frame-by-frame, twenty years ago the audience had no such options; they watched it unfolding "live" on their televisions, and the brief sightings of him were made to induce moments of "did I just see that?"

Pipes is described as having a skull-like and bald head, a scratched face, and one bloodied eye. He wears a black dress with large buttons running down the middle (the explanation for which is eventually provided), and sightings of him seem to be accompanied by the shrill howls of cats. The image enough is unnerving on its own, but once we find out the ghost's real name, his origins, and how he possibly might have come to be, it becomes much more so.

Your pranksters.

Ghostwatch plays out in real time, darting back and forth between the live feed in the house and the studio. Every actor handles their part with ease, from those playing different people to those playing versions of themselves; all the performances come across as very genuine. Despite the more lurid attacks young Suzanne endures, or the terror Sarah Greene finds herself facing, it's Michael Parkinson that has the most interesting role; his performance is incredibly realistic, in that it suggests he doesn't take much of what Dr. Pascoe and the Early family are telling him all that seriously, but is willing to go along with it for the sake of journalistic objectivity. Being a real journalist, he knows he cannot let his own prejudices cloud his attempts to tell a story.

Ghostwatch remained unavailable on home video for ten years after its airing for quite an interesting and unfortunate reason: Despite the film running during the same time slot that a popular (and scripted) BBC series called "Screen One" usually ran, despite the program being preceded by a "written by" credit, and despite the call-in number provided during the program stating that the program callers were watching was a work of fiction, certain members of Ghostwatch's viewing audience thought it was real, and it really fucked with their minds; from the revealed origins of Pipes to the in-studio phone calls made by "audience members" experiencing weird occurrences in their own home seemly caused by the events in the program - they bought it all: hook, line, and sinker. 

And while any writer who crafted such a project might say, "Then I've done my job!" he probably didn't count on, hope for, or expect the effect it would have on some lesser-stabled viewers:

18-year-old factory worker Martin Denham, who suffered from learning difficulties and had a mental age of 13, committed suicide five days after the programme aired. The family home had suffered with a faulty central heating system which had caused the pipes to knock; Denham linked this to the activity in the show causing great worry. He left a suicide note reading "if there are ghosts I will be ... with you always as a ghost." His mother and stepfather, April and Percy Denham, blamed the BBC. They claimed that Martin was "hypnotised and obsessed" by the programme. The Broadcasting Standards Commission refused their complaint, along with 34 others, as being outside their remit, but the High Court granted the Denhams permission for a judicial review requiring the BSC to hear their complaint. (Wiki.)

And so, following such controversy, any future broadcasts of the program were pulled, and for ten years it remained unavailable on home video. A ten-year anniversary VHS and DVD were issued but are now out of print.

Part of me wishes I had been a London native while watching Ghostwatch for the first time. I'm sure the power of the film's realism is enforced when seeing the likes of Michael Parkinson, Sarah Greene, Mike Smith, and Craig Charles all dealing with the paranormal activity in very different ways - because they are all real people; very well-known television and media personalities playing victimized and scared versions of themselves. An American equivalent of the cast might have Regis Philbin (but perhaps someone with a bit more esteem) as the host, with any assortment of other well-known personalities filling out the cast of the studio crew. Perhaps Kelly Rippa as Sarah Greene, since I just opened that door. Then again, the familiarity of them might destroy the illusion that what we're seeing is real. Maybe it's best that I had no idea who any of these TV personalities were until after I watched the film and did a bit of research.

I love Ghostwatch for many reasons, but most of all, I love it because it was planned, written, and executed simply to have something fun to play on Halloween night. Normal scripted shows will often incorporate Halloween into one of their plots, much like "The Simpsons" continues to do with their annual Treehouse of Horror episodes; "Ghost Adventures" and "Ghost Hunters" will perform a "live" investigation to honor the dark night. But you hardly ever see a program being created from scratch to pay tribute to October 31st. It feels like a perfect melded concoction of paint-by-numbers television and reality - and all to give viewers something a little spooky to watch as they put to bed another Halloween night. I'd love for a major network to put something like this together - to concoct a Ghostwatch of their own. Found footage has never been more popular than it is right now, and with the format being applied to television with the likes of "The River" and "The Lost Tapes," I'm surprised this program hasn't been snapped up for some kind of Americanization. Is it because we've become jaded towards Halloween? Do American studios instead want to focus on seeing a Halloween-themed episode of "The Kardashians" as each of the spoiled divas dress like a slutty witch and say something inherently racist?

Ghostwatch has become annual and essential Halloween viewing in my home. If you're able to find it, I'm sure it'll become a part of yours, too.

Read a retrospective article on Ghostwatch and its legacy - recollected by the cast and crew.

HEY, KNOW WHAT'S A REAL MOVIE?

HAPPY APRIL 21st

LEVITY

UNMASKED: KANE HODDER

Kane Hodder was the first actor whose career you could say I "followed," this being when I was very young and after I had gotten into the Friday the 13th series. Hodder, who played Jason in Parts 7-X, immediately became my favorite incarnation of the character. For whatever reason, his name became embedded in my brain. I began to keep an eye out for him like someone else would keep an eye out for movies starring George Clooney or Al Pacino. This continued for years, recognizing him in his brief roles in Daredevil and Monster and becoming almost giddy, wanting to poke someone next to me and ask, "Do you know who that is??" Because of my young age, and because I had barely scratched the surface of everything the entertainment world had to offer, Kane Hodder at that time had become my favorite actor. And I don't intend on demeaning him by implying I just didn't know any better or have more knowledge of film. Rather, it's that I was young enough to avoid all the baggage that I would later affiliate with the Friday the 13th series (the critical thrashings; the cynicism of the producers who saw the films only as cash cows; the studio who was embarrassed of the series and its success; that "normal" people looked upon the series as a joke) and just enjoy the films on their own merits...and because whoever this guy was that was playing Jason Voorhees scared the shit out of me. That was enough to get me to pay attention to his career.

In less-informed communities, horror movie actors develop a reputation as being sick, depraved, or completely out of their minds, due in no small part to the roles they play or the films in which they take part. And the exact opposite of this has been stated so much that it's almost become a cliche – that the people who work in the horror genre are among some of the nicest and most down-to-earth people you could ever meet. They have problems, fears, and weaknesses just like everyone else. It could be easy (and maybe simple-minded) to think that the guy who has murdered legions of teenagers in his four performances as Jason Voorhees has no fear or weakness. How wrong you would be to think that.

In Unmasked: The True Story of the World's Most Prolific Cinematic Killer, Hodder lays it all out on the table. He gets into the deepest, most painful experiences of both his life and his career. And you get the mask, the machete, the whole damn thing. The book is very much conversational in tone, thus making it an easy read, but don't take that to mean there isn't an awful lot of content. Unmasked begins with his childhood, ends at Hatchet 2, and includes everything in between. He talks about the burn that ravaged much of his body. He talks about the disappointment of being denied his role in the long-gestating Freddy vs. Jason (which featured a very Frankenstein-like performance from new Jason Ken Kirzinger). He talks about the severe beating he suffered as a child at the hands of a bully, something that remains with him to this day, and how it shaped him into the person he is. He talks about his family, friends, career, Jason Voorhees, and Victor Crowley – he leaves no stone unturned.

It's easy to "get to know" a celebrity by seeing the projects in which they star, reading about them in interviews, and observing them in on-set situations on DVD supplements. And if you're really intrigued by any specific person, there are multitudes of ways to find out even more. Sitting down to read Unmasked, I was curious as to how my view of him would change, if it even would. I'm happy to say that while the book delivered largely what I suspected I already knew about Kane Hodder, the other layers to his personal life didn't so much change my view of him as they did enhance it.

Kane Hodder, the man who has strangled you (and me) at horror conventions, is a human being. "No shit," you say. But no, I mean it. He's a living, breathing, fucking human being. He has his likes and dislikes, his moments of darkness and light, and very real fears and life-changing traumas. This becomes painfully evident when he relives the day of his horrendous burn incident, which occurred early into his career as a stunt man. In Unmasked, he explains that he had lied for years about how that incident came about, blaming it on an on-set incident while shooting a television pilot he had completely made up. In Unmasked, he confesses to his years of lying about the incident and for the first time ever lays down the real story behind what happened. Out of respect, I won't reveal the "real" story here, but I do want to share with you one specific and powerful part from Kane's painful recollection of the incident (which makes up a large bulk of the book's second act):

Though it was less than a second, it was like a giant steaming hot, wet blanket was wrapping around my entire body, pinching and pulling at my skin. The haze from the heat blurred my eyes and forced me to shut them tightly and bring a hand over my face—instinct I guess. The same reason I didn’t do the one thing you are told to do when you are on fire. Stop, drop, and roll is a good theory, and great for kids to know. But I’m sorry; your first and only instinct when you are suddenly on fire around your head is to run. Of course it’s not the correct thing to do, but it’s a reflex. Not a decision. If your body is the only thing on fire, you can have the presence of mind to stop, drop, and roll. When your head and face are on fire, everything is different. You hear your face burning. You hear your hair singeing. You are breathing in the flames. There are no words to describe how terrifying it is.

Kane's play-by-play of his burn is deeply disturbing, unsettling, and graphic. Seeing people catch fire in movies, no matter how graphic it may seem, cannot hold a candle (that's not a pun, believe me) to reading about it in explicit detail. He pulls no punches when he relays the incident, as well as his nightmarish four-month stay in what must have been the most incompetent hospital since the days of Dr. Howard, Dr. Fine, and Dr. Howard. The incident left Kane with some psychological issues, which he again reveals in Unmasked for the first time. All the credit in the world goes to him, as the details he shares about his personal life will definitely give readers pause. What he admits to in this section are things most people would rather bring to their grave than ever utter aloud.

But it's not all doom and gloom. Those reading Unmasked to find out about his Jason-oriented career will not be disappointed. Myself a Friday aficionado, I thought I'd learned everything there was to know from Peter Bracke's Crystal Lake Memories, the His Name is Jason documentary, the deluxe editions of the Friday the 13th DVDs, and Fangoria Magazine. Unmasked will provide you with even more information and anecdotes you have never heard, and pictures you have never seen.

He shares a lot of stories from his non-Friday career, from on-set mishaps to celebrities he enjoyed working with, to ones he did NOT enjoy working with. Additionally, he pulls no punches in presenting himself as an over-masculine "guy." He likes to drink, curse, fight, and piss in your dressing room. But none of this ever comes across as forced. If you've ever had the pleasure of meeting him in person, and feeling his strong hands gripping your throat, you know he's the real deal bad-ass he presents himself as in his book. Lastly, he's pretty damn funny.

One anecdote in particular made me laugh, which occurred a year or so after his burn incident:

...later that night, someone asked me about how they replaced my nipples after I got burned. I didn’t know what they were talking about so I asked them to repeat the question. They said that this guy, who will remain nameless, told them how they had to reconstruct my nipples with skin from my anus. I was shocked and pissed. Where did this guy get off making up these fucking stories about me? Especially crazy ones like that. Everyone at that party thought I had ass nipples!

The book also includes "intermissions," each which detail particular fights Kane found himself in throughout his life. Some he won, some he lost; some were amusing, some were most definitely not. It's an odd choice to include these stories in Unmasked, but I can only imagine it's because he's been asked about them repeatedly over the years.

The book is co-written by Michael Aloisi, who does an admirable job of putting down Kane's words into a chronological and coherent narrative. The year-long project was obviously one driven by passion, and that is reflected in the pages. Not one sentence of Unmasked is ever superfluous or boring. Any person – prior fan of Hodder or not – will find something to like, and most assuredly find Kane's battles especially inspiring.

Lastly, Unmasked has a marvelous forward by Adam Green, director of the retro-slasher Hatchet, in which Hodder plays the killer Victor Crowley. It's a great opening to an even greater book, and while the two men are technically colleagues, what comes across more is that they are friends – and that Green grew up idolizing Kane much in the same way we all did.  

I learned an awful lot about Kane Hodder from reading Unmasked. I've learned that he is passionate, talented, kind of a dick (which he freely admits), incredibly fearless in particular aspects, and as broken and damaged by life as many of us are. But once you read the last page, you'll also feel inspired to go out there and achieve what you always feared was unachievable. Because it's not.

...one day I heard that [Friday the 13th] Part 8 was going to go into production and that they were going to cast a new Jason. Pissed could not explain how angry I was. I had become Jason, he was a part of me, and I wanted to do it again. That night I went home and called Barbara Sachs who had been a producer on Part 7 and worked at Paramount. As calmly as I could, I straight out told her that I wanted to play Jason in Part 8...she responded with a surprised tone. "Really? I had no clue you would want to play him again..." We set up a meeting for me to come in and get the particulars. During that meeting, I was hired to play Jason once again...

There was a major lesson I learned from that phone call. If you want something in life, go after it, go get it, and don’t wait for it to come to you. If I hadn’t made that call, I would not have gotten to play Jason again, and my entire life would have been different. Ever since then, I made sure to not sit around and wait, hoping I would get called back—I went out and made my future.