What Scares Us Makes Us Stronger
Cameron Crowe's Vanilla Sky (2001) and Gore Verbinski's The
Ring (2002) were each American remakes of non-American horror films,
hailing from Spain and Japan, respectively. Given the remarkable box office
appeal of each remake, it appears that non-American horror films are on the
verge of being mainstreamed into the English-speaking world. One need only
consider the Oxide Pang Chun and Danny Pang Thai film The Eye (2002)
and then realize that no less a celebrity than Tom Cruise is currently slated to
remake that film.
Yet there is more to Steven Jay Schneider's new book than a simple appraisal
of cinematic traditions beyond American and British models like Universal
Studios or Hammer films. The book grapples with one main point throughout: How can
virtually unknown but highly entertaining horror films be promoted beyond a small circle
of aficionados to reach all moviegoers?
As a partial answer, Fear Without Frontiers offers two dozen articles, many
black-and-white stills, and a center panel of color images to excite the
reader. Divided into four sections, the book first focuses on individual
personalities before moving on to film cycles and genre histories and then
concluding with a case study of contemporary Japanese horror cinema.
Interspersed among scholarly histories are interviews with the horror
auteurs Jorge Molina and Nonzee Nimibutr, as well as close analyses
of such films as Alejandro Jodorowky's El Topo (1970) and Michael
Haneke's Funny Games (1997). But it's the ambitious scope of the
book that lingers and boomerangs back to Schneider's underlying thesis.
The very notion of foreignness, of frightening difference, is arguably what
drives every horror movie. Whether those differences are embodied by space invaders,
blood borne disease, pagan gods or technology run amuck, horror movies
celebrate the collapse of civilization, often through the destruction of
individuals. This idea clearly forms the heart of Fear Without
Frontiers since non-Anglo, local horror traditions reflect cultural fears that are as
terrifying as anything churned out in the better-known model of Hollywood.
In exploring culturally specific horrors like the Indonesian pontianaks (the
spirit of a stillborn child whose mother also died in childbirth) or the
Italian zombie (the embodiment of Catholic fervor surrounding redemption and
ascension to heaven), rather than concentrating on a more general human fear
of dying, Fear Without Frontiers investigates how non-Hollywood
films expand our understanding of what terrifies us, both generally and very
specifically. Of course any attempt to examine movie traditions from countries as diverse
as Brazil, Mexico, Cuba, Thailand, the Philippines, Spain, South Korea,
Germany, Austria, Poland, India, and France, among others, tends to wander
due to the sheer breadth of consideration. Even so, Schneider's shotgun
blast is fiercely instructive. His book is more than a curio for
cinephiles nursing affection for obscure titles.
Put simply, there is more at issue in Fear Without Frontiers than
providing another coaster for overburdened coffee tables. By providing a
glimpse into the great expanses of non-mainstream, non-Hollywood filmmaking,
Schneider serves as a kind of horror film curator, or at least volunteer
docent, prompting us to look beyond our own carefully inscribed
entertainment borders to find out what makes us scream.
At its best, Schneider's efforts will pique the interest of those who
are presumably in the "know" about horror movies. An exploration
of ignored areas in cinema history is well worth the read, albeit if
only to fatten a "must see" list of motion pictures. Here, I'm thinking
especially of Gary D. Rhodes and his chapter "Fantasmas del cine Mexicano:
the 1930s horror film cycles of Mexico."
To the uninitiated, the shock of learning what appears on non-Anglo movie
screens will also be great. Illustrative is Travis Crawford's chapter "The
urban techno-alienation of Sion Sono's Suicide Club," which discusses
the eponymous film's premise of school-aged girls committing suicide by
subway train. Gruesome stuff, but also quite provocative in terms of its
reflection of Japanese society, as well as how filmmaking technology can
simultaneously excite and disgust audiences. Perhaps there's even a strain of
cross-cultural fetishism in Schneider's book. To fans of certain unheralded filmmakers
like Jose Mojica Marins, or to die-hard nationalists anxious to see their tradition
treated seriously, this undercurrent is no doubt welcome.
As is often the case in collected works, however, the editorial and
conceptual strengths of the volume are offset by weaknesses among individual
contributors. While I've singled out Rhodes and Crawford for praise, it's
equally troubling to see a list-turned-chapter like Todd Tjersland's "Cinema
of the doomed: the tragic horror of Paul Naschy," which reads badly and
doesn't encourage further interest in Naschy's multi-faceted career. This
unevenness is no doubt due to the need for a certain page count.
Nonetheless, it reflects poorly on a book that so earnestly tries to entice
readers into viewing the many notable movies mentioned between its covers.
— 19 November 2003
