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AND NOW FOR something completely different (which used to be a lifeline phrase for column-writers until Monty Python turned it into a comic cliché). After all, how else do you justify the switch from something serious to something entirely ludicrous. Which, come to think of it, is pretty much what happened here: let me explain.
Rod Zombie (just possibly not his real name) is a cult figure on MTV and the ‘new metal’ circuit - a singer/songwriter/composer, formerly lead-singer with White Zombie but solo since 1998, who doesn’t take the underlying violence of head-banging music too seriously. Long linked indirectly to the movie business, thanks to the songs he has written for, among other films, M:1-2 and End of Days, Zombie came up, a couple of years back, with a movie pitch. It must have seemed a great idea: with horror franchises mopping up at the box office and splatter being a post-modern requisite (which means you show it but pretend it’s a joke), a film from someone who had built his career on just such a premise was irresistible.
Nor did Universal resist it: they commissioned Zombie to write and direct House of 1000 Corpses, whose title would make it clear to moviegoers just what they were going to get, and whose maker could be relied on to produce a taste-free blast of just the kind of stuff to appeal to the age-group which turns out for opening weekends.
Problem is, Zombie did his job too well. House first showed up on Universal’s summer 2001 release schedule towards the end of 2000, by which time it had been trimmed of some of its more outrageous footage and had an ‘R’ rating. Then it disappeared. What happens, it seems, is that Universal chairperson Stacey Snider got a look at a rough cut and, while making all the right noises about creative freedom, declared even the ‘R’ version too “visceral” and “intense” for the studio’s summer (or any other season’s) programme. She offered Zombie the chance to buy the movie back, which he did (prices were not disclosed).
MONSTERS, INC: Karen Black (with screen ‘daughter’ Sheri Moon) in Zombie’s House of 1000 Corpses, which is finally to get a release. |
The film then apparently attracted the interest of MGM, which began talking to its new owner in June about a release deal, with the end of this year in mind. Zombie, who was making ends meet by hosting the MTV programme ‘Movie House’, told his then interviewee Ben Affleck about this development, and left viewers in no doubt as to what the film was going to be like. Result: MGM took fright and also decided against handling it.
But fear not: House of 1000 Corpses has finally been brought back from the dead by fearless indie Lions Gate, which will open the film early next year. The story is scarcely original: young couple on a trip; car breaks down near strange town full of weird and dangerous people…
But the local maniacs are led by Karen Black in classic, over-the-top form and, while the unrated version will be available in the US only on video and DVD, the rest of us can look forward to seeing it theatrically in all its glory.
The only problem is that, outside the US, not a lot of people have heard of Rod Zombie. Still, that’s nothing that a few carefully chosen talk-show appearances shouldn’t be able to solve.
MONSTERS, INC: Freddy and Jason get to share the bill in Ronny Yu’s new movie, with Destiny’s Child Kelly Rowland (below left) making her acting debut. |
WHILE WE’RE ON the subject of horror movies, New Line has decided to go for broke and stick its two most enduring fear franchises into a single movie. Freddy Krueger (seven previous outings on Elm Street) and Jason Vorhees (10 Friday-night innings, most recently in outer space) are currently battling it out on the streets of Vancouver.
Since production began on September 9, Freddy vs Jason will definitely have shot through a Friday the thirteenth, may still be rolling when Halloween comes around and will, in all probability,
encounter Vancouver’s Elm Street. Freddy will be played, as always, by Robert Englund, a very nice, gentle man who enjoys macrobiotic cooking. Jason, who has always wreaked his havoc from behind a hockey mask, has been able to go through a number of performers, with Jason Ritter doing the honours this time (it was Kane Hodder who got to go into space in Jason X).
As befitting such a titanic pairing, New Line has entrusted the direction of Freddy vs Jason to Hong Kong action and horror master Ronny Yu, who memorably updated another franchise a few years back with Bride of Chucky. And, following the impressive screen debut of Beyoncé Knowles in Austin Powers in Goldmember, fellow Destiny’s Child-member Kelly Rowland will be among the victims… er, other cast members.
PAN’S PEOPLE: Sagnier (right, with Catherine Deneuve) plays Tinkerbell, while Isaac (below left) is Hook. |
A YEAR OR so ago, François Ozon was the essence of art-house: a maker of French films with a considerable following but firmly in the auteur tradition. All that changed with 8 femmes, a nostalgia fest which powered to the top of the charts in its home territory and has been doing just as well in several neighbouring countries, too.
Based on a clunky old stage play by Robert Thomas which had been a commercial success in Paris in  the seventies, 8 femmes is a country-house crime thriller with musical numbers. But that wasn’t what made it a hit. It topped the French charts because it brought together in one film six of France’s best-known actresses - one from the fifties (Danielle Darrieux) and five from the present day: Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle
Huppert, Emmanuelle Béart, Fanny Ardant and Virginie Ledoyen. Encouraged by Ozon to play larger than life, they all chewed scenery with irresistible abandon.
But for a non-French viewer, the real revelation was one of the other two - a young actress in only her ninth film: Ludivine Sagnier, who played the teenage daughter of the house. Sagnier has been in Ozon’s earlier Gouttes d’eau sur pierres brûlantes and can also currently be seen in Yvan Attal’s Ma femme est une actrice.
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