BY TERENCE HANNUM
Initially when I started writing my novella All Internal I had been DJ-ing different horror sci-fi and horror soundtracks like Susan Justin’s for the sci-fi horror film Forbidden World or Andrezj Korzynski’s score for the psychological horror film Possession for my radio show DEAD AIR. This is obviously not a comprehensive list of the genre, but one where I tried to compile some of the influences that guided me on my writing and were films I was familiar with and realized they helped me out or pushed a boundary somewhere.
After the impetus of thinking of these films, the idea for All Internal grew and found a foothold with the mind-body problem in philosophy, so I let it metastasize. In All Internal I wanted to refocus the lens a bit and comment on technology, pornography, and our own, as well as others, minds and bodies. Inseminoid (1981) - When I initially started writing All Internal I had this era of science-fiction on my mind that was post-Alien and kind of low budget, so this film Inseminoid and Forbidden World, whose soundtracks I DJ’d a lot in my sets, as well as the film Xtro. Inseminoid is essentially a more cynical and lower budget Alien (even though the release of Alien was at the end of Inseminoid’s filming) but with a lot more human to xenomorph birth cycle in mind. It’s incredibly sleazy, but contains some interesting surreal flashbacks.
Shivers (1975) - There can’t be a discussion of body-horror without director David Cronenberg and for me Shivers really gets to it, combing a moving parasite that can act as an aphrodisiac to liberate humans to their libidinal desires. It’s gross, weird, and full of all the strange metaphors about high communal living and STDs. What is not so shocking is how controversial it was for Cronenberg’s career in Canada, it was his first film, and cut through much of the middle-class pretension around sex. There’s a great amount of satire here as if Jack Finney’s The Body Snatchers was grafted onto JG Ballard’s High Rise.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) - While I enjoy the book, and really like the first film, this one has the body horror to backup the ideas. The web encrusted bodies, the bathhouse of horror, the mutant dog man, and overall paranoia is just excellent. Obviously, this book and its films tap into a lot of American anxieties about the spread of Communism in the 1950s to the distrust post-Watergate in the 1970s, but to me it always is about changing. I kept thinking about replication, making a double, but I wanted to multiply it further and refocus it on the body, to me this film is a lot about texture and how the pods turned into people really remains my impression of the film.
Teeth (2007) - Vagina dentata, perhaps best known when discussing the appearance of the Sarlacc in The Return of the Jedi (1983) but in Teeth it has a more literal interpretation mashed into a girl’s coming of age film, with references to the suburban family and the fear of nuclear power. It also had a strain of black-comedy running through its view of sex and dismemberment.
From Beyond (1986) - Based off of the H.P. Lovecraft story of the same name, From Beyond takes actually gets to a place that I was interested when writing All Internal but this focus on the pineal gland. Lovecraft uses the stimulation of the pineal gland as a gateway to another reality, this is expanded on from the French Philosopher Rene Descartes belief that the pineal gland is the sea of the soul - while in the film it becomes and external organ.
Possession (1981) - There is nothing quite like Andrezj Zulawski’s Possession, part psychological and part bodyhorror, a bit of a straight drama with a creature that acts as relationship metaphor. Anyway like, The Brood, this is a film steeped in separation as both Zulawski and Cronenberg were going through divorces at that time. For me Possession exhibits this idea of allowing horror to pierce the veneer of human relationships.
The Brood (1979) - This film has always stuck with me, again like Possession using the end of a relationship to examine extreme territory. When I was writing All Internal I thought often of the murderous children and their telepathic connection to Nola, as well as how Nola’s children were born externally.
Xtro (1982) - I have a soft spot for this sci-fi horror film, it’s incredibly gross, weird and contains really disturbing effects. It was a big one for me when kind of conceptualizing this idea of reproduction in All Internal because because in Xtro, within the first 15 or so minutes a woman gets impregnated by an alien, then gives birth to a full grown man.
Excess Flesh (2015) - I got turned onto this film because my pal Jonathan Snipes (of the noise-rap trio Clipping) did the soundtrack, and it’s really good. Aside from that the combination of eating disorder, and almost Repulsion (1965) like focus on the apartment as claustrophobic catalyst really struck me. It’s entirely gross, full of vomiting, insomnia, body torture, and a captivating character arc that has a lot of ideas in it, about body image and sexuality, that I wish more people would watch it.
Repulsion (1965) - I wouldn’t classify this as a body-horror film, but the claustrophobia, the fera of touch and overt psycho-sexual murder have been a huge inspiration for me. Carol is repulsed by human sexuality and the apartment acts as this compression chamber, to me that enhances the psychological terror and makes it more about her internal landscape and less about the body.
Read our review of All Internal by clicking here
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