BY KIT POWER

My Life In Horror
 
Every month, I will write about a film, album, book or event that I consider horror, and that had a warping effect on my young mind. You will discover my definition of what constitutes horror is both eclectic and elastic. Don’t write in. Also, of necessity, much of this will be bullshit – as in, my best recollection of things that happened anywhere from 15 – 30 years ago. Sometimes I will revisit the source material contemporaneously, further compounding the potential bullshit factor. Finally, intimate familiarity with the text is assumed – to put it bluntly, here be gigantic and comprehensive spoilers. Though in the vast majority of cases, I’d recommend doing yourself a favour and checking out the original material first anyway.
 
This is not history. This is not journalism. This is not a review.
 
This is my life in horror.
 
Whadaya Gonna Do?

 
It’s not like I don’t make plans. That wouldn’t be a fair observation at all.
 
It’s more just that life keeps happening.
 
Example: I have a list. My Life In Horror has a distinct shelf life, with a very definite end game, and a final essay I’ll almost certainly chicken out of writing, when the time comes. By the time I’m done, there will be 60 articles (and eventually, two books, is the plan), and we’re already over the halfway mark.
 
So, there’s a list. And, sure, it fluctuates. Things get added and, due to the finite nature of the project, that means other things have to come off. It’s a useful process, in a lot of ways - it forces me to focus a little, in a project that could otherwise become utterly and unforgivably indulgent - I have to keep asking myself, what are The Big Ones? Those moments, in childhood, as a teenager, in my twenties, that really got me where I lived, made me think, made me feel?
 
And this movie has been on and off the list from the very start.
 
There’s a lot to not recommend it for the project. It’s certainly not a horror movie, for starters (though regular readers will probably be chuckling at that - and no, you’re right, that’s never stopped me before). More seriously, the standard opening spiel just won’t fit. I can’t tell you how old I was, when and where, any of that. Truth to tell, though I’ve seen the movie a fair few times (being married to a woman who loves gangster movies has it’s perks), I really don’t have a clear picture in my head of much of the piece as a whole, if I’m honest. Though I know it’s not true, it feels quite a lot like a film I’ve only ever seen from the middle, tuned into halfway through and then been unable to tune away.
 
That said, there’s a reason I feel that way. There’s a gravitational pull about the back half of this one - a black hole of awfulness that seems to eat light and crush mass. Which I suppose explains how it stuck around as long as it did, and why it flickered so often, on and off, on and off, as other ideas jockeyed for attention.
 
Still, it had recently come off the list. I thought for good.
 
And then Frank Vincent died.
 
I was surprised by how upset I was. And then, not long after, suprised by my suprise. After all, he’d peopled some of my favourite art of… well, shit, my life, really. Raging Bull, Goodfellas…. And, of course, a show-stealing turn in the final couple of series of one of my Top 5 TV shows of all time, The Sopranos.
 
Sure, he was a character actor, and sure, the roles all had certain elements in common. That didn’t change the fact that he was there, and not only did he not let the side down, he was an amazing asset to whatever story he was a part of. He had everything you’d want - charm, ruthlessness, intelligence, pride, even arrogance, and an aura of power and menace. He may never had had the lead role, but he was always a powerful addition to any crew, always someone you felt you had to watch.
 
So, yeah, I was sad. And as I thought more about why, I thought about him telling Pesci to go home and get his fuckin shine box, and I thought about how he explained to Tony Soprano about how he’d ‘compromised’, the chilling fury juuuuuust under the surface. The look on his face when he finally cornered Vito in the hotel room.
 
Most of all, though, I thought about this movie.
 
I thought about Casino.
 
Now, if you’d taken a look at the list of things I was going to write about for this column, and you’d seen Casino, I’m betting that you’d nod and say to yourself ‘the vice scene’. Like Reservoir Dogs and the ear, it’s the kind of totemic cinema moment that was whispered about on the playground - ‘Oh my God, did you see the bit where he…?’
 
And I’m not going to deny how fucking horrible that scene is. Nor am I going to deny how utterly gruesome the emotional car wreck of Rothstein's marriage to Ginger is, Sharon Stone and De Niro knocking it out of the park with their merciless, unflinching portrayal of a poisoned, poisonous relationship.
 
As you’ll know, if you’ve seen the film, there’s all of that and more - brutality upon brutality, and misery feeding misery.
 
It’s all true, but none of that is why this movie sat on my list for so long, or why we’re talking about it now.
 
We’re talking about this fucking movie because of the climax in the wheatfield, and the execution of Nicky Santoro and his brother.
 
Nicky - played by Pesci - has been pretty much vileness personified the entire movie. He’s cheated and murdered and murdered and tortured his way all across Nevada and back. The head-in-a-vice scene? Nicky was the one cranking the handle.
 
Nicky is unrepentant. Nicky is irredeemable. Nicky is self destruction in an expensive yet still tasteless suit. Which would be sort-of fine, if he wasn’t also such a voracious, malevolent cancer for everyone who comes into contact with him.
 
By the closing of the movie, even he realises he’s going to be persona non grata in Vegas for the rest of his life. Too many hits, too many missing people, just too fucking much. He understands this. In voiceover, he accepts it. And as the scene opens, he’s driving up a dirt track in a corn field. The corn is tall - eight, ten feet maybe. The track leads to a clearing at the end. There’s a few cars, maybe a dozen mobsters waiting. Nicky’s crew.
 
With them, Nicky’s right hand man - the man who's been by his side throughout his decades of carnage. The man who lied to the big bosses about Nicky’s transgressions - covered for him when he was fucking his best friends wife.
 
The man’s name is Frank Marino. Played by Frank Vincent.
 
As they drive up, Nicky explains the score to us, in voiceover, in that same arrogant, hectoring voice he’s used throughout the movie. Sure, Vegas is too hot for him, so he’s here with his brother, to hand over the reins. He’s going to introduce him around, make sure the gang - his gang, Nicky’s people - know what’s what. As he and his brother get out of the car, and the group starts to huddle around them, he says, to us, ‘what’s right is right…’
 
And then, mid sentence, there’s a dull clunk, and he says ‘Oww!’.
 
He drops to his knees, clutching his head, a look of stunned confusion on his face.
 
My stomach drops right with him. An express elevator, going all the way down.
 
Two of them grab Nicky’s arms, hold him down on his knees. They grab his brother, drag him away. His brother is yelling, furious, scared, ‘You rat bastards!’.
 
They force Nicky’s head up. Nicky looks.
 
He looks at his brother. Maybe the only other human being on the planet Nicky has any genuine feelings for. Helpless. Trapped. Yelling.
 
He looks up, eyes following the baseball bat, up to the impassive face of Frank.
 
His friend. His right hand man.
 
Frank looks back at him. And his face…his face is a mask.
 
Nicky - this sociopath, this monster, this vile brutal killer, hardened by a lifetime of unchecked fury and sadism…  Nicky starts to beg.
 
Frank nods, once. Then he swings the bat.
 
The bat falls again and again. Others join in. The sound is relentless - metal colliding with meat. Nicky sobs. He tries to look away. They won’t let him.
 
By the time they stop, his brother is unrecognisable - his face a mask of blood, his body shattered. Nicky, sobbing, keeps begging. ‘Please, he’s strong, he’s still breathing, leave him…’ Begging Frank. Frank looks at him. ‘Yeah?!?’ He brings down the bat once more on Nicky’s brother's skull.
 
He walks over to Nicky, now just begging, the same word ‘please’, over and over, a broken machine. Frank shows him his brother’s ragged, still breathing form once more. Then he swings the bat at Nicky’s head.
 
The cuts start to fracture now, as the attacks rain down on Nicky. Freeze framing, then cutting forward - as though we’re sharing the concussive effects of the blows with our former narrator. Finally, De Niro comes in on voice over, telling us what we already know - that Nicky had taken it too far, and that an example was made.
 
As the bodies are stripped, torsos blue and purple from their battering, as the two no-longer-men are thrown into a hole in the ground, there’s a final, gut twisting moment. As a shovel of dirt falls over the blood basked faces, a puff of breath from one of the broken jaws disturbs the soil, sending it out in a plume.
 
“They buried them alive”, De Niro intones, just in case your mind is somehow refusing the information your eyes are sending it.
 
And sure, it’s horrific on a number of levels. The sadism of it reaches levels even Nicky couldn’t - yes, he trapped a man’s head in a vice to get information from him, and he murdered lots of people… but battering a loved one beyond repair in front of someone, forcing them to watch, in the knowledge that they are next - and, crucially, that there is nothing they can do to stop it, escape it, even hasten the outcome? Even for a sick fuck like Nicky, that is some next level brutality.
 
And let’s not forget the extra/meta-textual fuckery that Scorcese pulls, here. Every time I think about that voiceover being interrupted by the thunk of a bat, and the surprised ow that follows, the hairs on my arm stand up - and not in a good way. It’s a rule of cinema so iron clad, so ingrained, we think of it not at all, never examine or question it. And then he oh-so casually violates it, in a moment absolutely calculated to deliver maximum shock. It’s a bold, punk, brutal, unfair moment of unbridled cinema genius, and I cannot immediately think of a better example of understanding just when, and how, and how hard you can break the rules, providing that you are doing so with a purpose. It’s also a trick that can probably only be done once - but fuck me, what a moment.
 
So there’s that. And there’s also the fact that it plays on the mind, long after it’s done. Because, dig it: It’s a lesson for who, exactly? Nicky? His brother? They are going in the ground and they ain’t coming back. If the lesson is for them, a bullet would do the job.
 
No, this horror show is to send a message. But to who? The men who did this would have to be very fucking careful who they talked to about it. Orders came from on high, sure, but still, loose lips sink ships. They will talk, of course - worse than a sewing circle, as a future moll will memorably put it, in a movie that may or may not make a future column, as the list shifts and the last 30 move inexorably to the last 20 and I need to make some very tough evaluations about what, exactly, fucked me up the most - still, it’s not something you’d exactly feel good bragging about, I don’t think.
 
No, the real horror is this: the message is for each other. For Nicky’s whole crew.
 
And the message is: fuck up like your friend did, and this is what your friends will do to you.
 
Which brings us back to Frank. Nicky’s right hand man, who has protected and enabled and shielded and covered, again and again.
 
Frank Marino. Played by Frank VIncent. His face a mask, as he meets Nicky’s eyes. Telling him everything he needs to know about what the rest of his short life will consist of. There’s little emotion - either regret or rage, sorrow or anger.
 
But there is something. Something glittering, deep down in those eyes. Something dark and strong and real.
 
It’s a look I will never, ever forget. It’s a look that will haunt me, as long as I draw breath.
 
Here’s to you, Frank Vincent.
 
Here’s to you.
 
KP
15/9/17 

My Life In Horror
 
Every month, I will write about a film, album, book or event that I consider horror, and that had a warping effect on my young mind. You will discover my definition of what constitutes horror is both eclectic and elastic. Don’t write in. Also, of necessity, much of this will be bullshit – as in, my best recollection of things that happened anywhere from 15 – 30 years ago. Sometimes I will revisit the source material contemporaneously, further compounding the potential bullshit factor. Finally, intimate familiarity with the text is assumed – to put it bluntly, here be gigantic and comprehensive spoilers. Though in the vast majority of cases, I’d recommend doing yourself a favour and checking out the original material first anyway.
 
This is not history. This is not journalism. This is not a review.
 
This is my life in horror.
 
There’s No Real Magic, Ever
 
The following was, in part, informed by a far longer and more wide ranging conversation I had with the excellent Daniel Harper, as part of the recent Wrong With Authority footnote podcast. For (much) more, including discussion of other movies by the same director, see here: 
 
Because here’s the deal: the second your kid has a TV in their room - or, shit, a PC/iPad - any device that can connect to broadcast medium, the war is over. You waved the white flag. They can pour literally anything into their brains, now. Whatever human horror you can conceive, they can watch, in 1080 resolution. And almost certainly in porn parody form. All you can do is hope that whatever you’ve given them to that point, whatever you’ve nurtured inside them, will be enough for them to tell right from wrong, know their own limits, to survive whatever cultural assault they’re about to self inflict.
 
Truly, hope. That’s all you’ve got.
 
Do you know it, as a parent? Sure you do. As long as you remember being a kid, how could you not?
 
No internet in the bedroom for this kid. Back when I were a boy, dinosaurs roamed the earth, and the internet only existed to tell a computer scientist in some posh university that the kettle in the other room had boiled.
 
All I had was a black and white portable TV (with, crucially, a headphone socket) in my room that I’d bought from a neighbour for the princely sum of £25, and the 4 terrestrial channels it could pick up.
 
Turns out, that was plenty.
 
I’m pretty sure I can trace back my lifelong issues with maintaining a sleep pattern, and in particular my seemingly chronic inability to get to sleep on a Friday night prior to 2am even now, at 39, back to that giant heavy lump of plastic, wire and glass.
 
There was this program called Raw Power, see. On at 3am, it was the only broadcast show in the UK dedicated to rock and metal. Every week, it sat there in the listings, a mortal challenge to my tired pre-teen arse - you want the life source? Gotta stay up late.
 
And more often than not, I did.
 
But we’re not here to talk about Raw Power (or the replacement show Noisy Mothers). Nope, this is about what I’d sometimes end up watching while completing my lonely vigil to the hallowed hour of 3am.
 
This is about Channel 4 running a series of previously banned or censored films, and the night I’d catch one that would cut me deep enough that, even on a recent rewatch, I’d still find myself stunned by it’s power, it’s darkness.
 
We need to talk about Martin.
 
The film opens with a woman getting on a train. She’s beautiful. She’s being followed by a strange looking young man. He’s… not ugly, but odd. My 11/12/13 year old mind latches onto him instinctively. I talk a bit about this on the podcast above, and also, obliquely, here: To rehearse the argument, I, like I suspect 95% of the rest of the population, was an awkward kid. I knew I liked girls - even at 11, I knew that. But I was, as is normal, not equipped emotionally or biologically to really know what that meant, or to do anything about it.
 
And yet, I yearned.
 
I was drawn to girls I perceived to be pretty or beautiful. I wanted to be someone’s boyfriend, without knowing that meant or could mean any more than holding hands, (or maybe, in a fever dream, a kiss on the lips). I guess that innocence is something to be grateful for - I wonder how many post-internet children get to stay that innocent, that long.
 
Still, I felt... Something. And I couldn’t understand it or explain it, but thanks to pop culture, I knew what it was called: love.
 
So I loved. A lot. From a distance, after a couple of utterly crushing instant rejections. I loved, and I yearned to be loved, and I didn’t have a fucking clue what any of it meant.
 
So then there’s this boy. And the title card helpfully tells us he’s called Martin. And he looks at the pretty girl, just like I look at pretty girls, knowing they do not, will not, look back.
 
He finds out where she’s sleeping - it’s a sleeper train, which I know all about, on account of being a male child in Britain in the 80’s and this chap called James Bond.
 
Then he goes into a bathroom. Opens a wash kit, which contains razor blades, syringes, and drugs. He fills a syringe with fluid. And between Bond and Casualty, I know what’s going on here - he’s going to drug the girl, knock her out. It’s what the baddies do in Bond films, like, a LOT.
 
Only he’s Martin. He’s not a baddie - almost can’t be, he’s practically still a kid, very childlike, and there are not bad kids in movies, ever.
 
Until now.
 
Because, of course, Martin goes to her carriage, and after a brief black and white shot (which even at the time I read to be his imagining what was happening behind the door, the pretty girl in a nightgown calling his name), he breaks in and attacks her, drugs her, struggles with her until she passes out, then strips her naked, has sex with her, and for an encore takes a razor to her wrist and drinks her blood.
 
We’ve yet to pass the ten minute mark.
 
The assault is horrific, by the way. It’s a scene that would have to make most women’s top 3 worst nightmares, I’d have thought. She physically fights him off, he wrestles her to the ground. She panics as the drug starts to take effect, pleading to be told what it is, and he gives gentle calm assurances that he’s ‘careful’, that she’ll just fall asleep and then wake up again.
 
And the worst part is, you believe him.
 
No. the worst part is; I believed him.
 
And sure, it’s an amazing performance. John Amplas is all big eyes, sad vulnerability. Even when he’s telling her not to scream, it comes out as pleading - as though he’s more concerned about her inner panic than the chance of getting caught. That apparent empathy for his victim is so sincerely delivered that, first time around, I was half convinced he meant it, that this was all some kind of misunderstanding.
 
This is where we must pause, and admire the horror of the moment. Because as a young woman is drugged, raped and murdered, my 11 year old boy brain is centered, not on her and her terror, pain, and violation, but on the apparent ‘sensitivity’ of her attacker.
 
 
Because fucking hell, George Romero, man.
 
And look, sure - this is not a movie for 11 year olds. Emphatically not. But just take a look at some of the cultural criticism made of this movie, and you’ll see variations of this theme, again and again - however much the male critics know what’s going on is sick, wrong, evil… there’s this massive sympathy, bordering on identification, with Martin.
 
Do we see more of Martin? Sure we do. A lot more, The movie is, in a sense, his life story. We get to see the different sides to him, his struggle to fit in, his possibly-crazed family situation.The performance opens up like a flower, and the rest of the cast is superb, and there’s a home invasion sequence which, I agree with Daniel Harper, should be taught in film school, as an example of what you can achieve on a low budget with enough skill, vision, and editing skills.
 
Still, though, the film starts with a basically contextless assault, sex crime, and murder.
 
And it was Martin my mind went to.
 
I’ve mentioned before here that I was raised feminist, and some of what that meant. Like I said up top - parents do their best, then set you loose and hope. And between you and me, I think mum did a pretty fucking good job.
 
But Martin happened. And at the time, I thought it was a brilliant movie, but also at the time I didn’t have the tools necessary to realise just what a monstrous, incredible feat of filmmaking it represented.
 
There’s this saying that I absolutely hate, that goes like this; porn tells lies about women and the truth about men. Well, fuck that gender essentialist bullshit, and fuck you if you believe it.
 
But. And. Also.
 
I think no matter how well we are raised, there’s a wider culture. And while it’s vibrant and messy and complex and multifaceted and self contradictory and even often in argument with itself, there are a metric shit-ton of untested assumptions that underpin a lot of it, about gender and what being a man means and what being a woman means. And as much as I recoil in horror from the notion of objectification, the idea that we can see another human being not as a funhouse mirror of ourselves, but instead as a thing to be enjoyed or consumed…
 
Well, there’s 11 year old me. Watching Martin. Watching Martin rape and murder a girl, and thinking only about Martin.
 
Martin was George Romero’s favourite of his own movies, according to the always-reliable wikipedia entry on the subject. I have no idea if it’s true or not, but I believe it. Certainly of all his works, it’s by far and away my favourite.
 
Not - to be crystal clear- because Romero was any kind of misogynist or rape apologist or objectifier of women. That’s the very opposite of what I believe.
 
No, because he knew how to make a movie that would force us - us men - to examine that part of ourselves that is capable of objectification. He did it in the way that’s true genius - they way that makes you slap your forehead and say ‘well, of COURSE!’
 
He makes the protagonist like you. Like virtually any male that’s ever lived. A child, yearning. Reaching for something he cannot understand, but craves. Desire, without understanding. ‘Love’ without awareness.
 
Hunger with only a facsimile of compassion.
 
I love the Dead movies, and The Crazies. And I know that, with Night..., Romero damn near invented a genre of horror fiction that is, at this point, probably a billion dollar entertainment industry. And honestly, as much as I love good zombie fiction, for my money nobody has ever beaten the source for sheer visceral impact. He was a monumental talent, a world class storyteller, and by all accounts, a lovely man in person, too.
 
But for my money, if the only movie he’d ever made was Martin, he’d still deserve the mantle of genius.
 
It’s that fucking good.
 
 And so was he.
 
KP
1/9/17