Title: Fear Without Frontiers: Horror Cinema Across the Globe
Editor: Steven Jay Schneider
Publisher: FAB Press
Media: Book
Reviewer: James Marriott
Which would you rather watch: Jeepers Creepers, Wrong Turn and Ghost Ship, or Ichi the Killer, The Devil's Backbone and Dark Water? Horror fans have long since turned to foreign markets (particularly Italy) in search of fear kicks, and as Hollywood churns out increasingly vacuous and derivative genre fare - and not even much of it - mainstream film audiences are following in their footsteps. The massive success of Ring is only part of the story: The Devil's Backbone (Spain), Brotherhood of the Wolf (France) and The Eye (Singapore) all played in subtitled form in local British cinemas to some success, and copies of films such as Uzumaki and Evil Dead Trap are now readily available on DVD in your local HMV, or any one of a number of websites: this is the acceptable face of globalisation.
American film studios seem to recognise that there's something going on, as evidenced by remakes of Ring, Abre Los Ojos/Close Your Eyes (remade as Vanilla Sky) and The Vanishing, notoriously saddled with a risible happy ending in the remake. Stories are bought, ideas rehashed and foreign directors brought into the Hollywood fold, only to lose their dark creative spark in the California sunshine. The occasional bright new American idea - The Blair Witch Project, for instance - is soon swamped in a glut of substandard sequels and remakes all jumping on the ghost train. The one notably atmospheric American haunting that follows - The Others - turns out to be set in Jersey and directed by a Spaniard.
An excellent introduction by Kim Newman sets the scene for this timely book, pointing out that the shock of novelty when faced with a foreign country's genre product soon wears off when the viewer becomes familiar with that country's generic clichés; and that the trash aesthetic often associated with these films comes largely from US involvement, in dubbing or re-cutting, rather than the films themselves. That said, some of the material covered here - particularly the Indian, Filipino and Turkish horror films - looks like it's no stranger to trash. Nothing wrong with that - the Filipino horror films I've seen have had a gleeful delirium rarely found elsewhere - but fans of more serious films will be glad to see that these are balanced out by pieces on more serious fare, from austere Austrian Michael Haneke (Funny Games) to Polish genre directors such as Wojciech Has (The Saragossa Manuscript) and Roman Polanski.
As a general overview of European and world horror, Fear Without Frontiers is not as thorough as the two indispensable Pete Tombs volumes, Immoral Tales and Mondo Macabro, but then nor does it claim to be. It's more of a grab bag of essays, ranging from close looks at key individual films to overviews of countries' genre industries. The book is divided into four sections: Artists, Actors, Auteurs features essays on Jodorowsky, Naschy and Anthony Wong, among others; Films, Series, Cycles covers obscurities such as the 'exotic Pontianaks' and more well-trodden territory in pieces on Italian giallo and zombie films; Genre Histories and Studies features general overviews of genre material from countries ranging from France to South Korea; and the final section is a Case Study on Japanese horror cinema, comprising a feature on and interview with Takashi Miike and features on the Ring cycle and Suicide Club.
The book's catholic range is reflected in the selection of authors, who range from the (relatively) well known - Pete Tombs, Travis Crawford - to a host of writers I've never come across before. This makes for a refreshing mix of styles, and while some pieces are slightly dry, others get the space between slavering fandom and highbrow criticism just right. The best pieces closely relate the genre material covered to the countries that spawned them, making them interesting reading even if you don't intend to explore the areas in question. But you'll probably want to.
One of my only criticisms (and it's more of a request, really) is that I want more. Pieces on directors Jerzy Skolimowski and Joraj Herz (Czech Republic) and Sogo Ishii (Japan) would have been welcome: they're all of interest to genre fans, but I've seen very little written about them, and a book like this is the right place for it. Sequels, please!
Some of the pieces that are here could do with being expanded: Jodorowsky, for instance, deserves a book of his own, and my favourite of these essays, David Galat's Secret History of Gallic Horror Movies, could go on to cover directors such as Gaspar Noe and Philippe Grandrieux, who effectively bridge the horror/arthouse gap Galat mentions. I would also like to have seen more new material at the expense of areas that have already been covered - such as replacing Italian zombie films with a piece on, say, German horror - but the balance between varying levels of obscurity (none of this stuff is 'mainstream') is a difficult one to maintain, and this collection gets it pretty much right.
All in all, then, characteristically great stuff from FAB Press, chock-full with rare stills, ad mats and a blood-soaked colour section, and the attention to detail we've come to expect from these publishers. One final caveat, though: the cover, which looks a bit - er - trashy.
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