Cult Cinema #18: The Atrocity Tour, Part 2

The Sacrament (2013)

I hated this film. I hated it so much that I went back and watched it a second time because I wanted to be sure I didn't have it wrong, to check that it really was as horrible as I thought it was, and that it actually deserved my loathing. And also, I suppose, to figure out why I hated it, what it was about this movie that upset me so much. I mean, The Sacrament is viscerally and graphically unpleasant, but it is the business of a certain sort of horror movie to be viscerally and graphically unpleasant. But that's not it. It's how the visceral and graphic unpleasantness is anchored, how it's framed.

I hated this film. I will spoil it, but what is there to spoil? Its story has already been public domain for a long time.

Cult Cinema #17: The Atrocity Tour, part 1

When cults enter the conversation, it becomes inevitable that the great Cult Atrocity Stories get mentioned. They are black holes of narrative, irresistible gravitational forces. They are the stories about the occasions where belief has turned so toxic it has become lethal. You probably know about some of them. I’m talking about the Jonestown massacre, the siege of the Branch Davidians, the mass suicide of the Heaven's Gate cult, the Tokyo subway attacks perpetrated by the Aum Shikiryo sect. And of course there’s what the Manson Family did. They are the reason we are afraid of cults, the reason we're terrified our kids will be brainwashed, the reason that we assume that fringe sects are always malevolent.

A lot of the films I've been looking at depend on these stories already, as underlying assumptions, the things that we know and expect about cults. The Passion of Darkly Noon depends upon you knowing what happened at Waco. The unease of Martha Marcy May Marlene is partly borne from the resemblance Patrick's MO bears to Charles Manson's. The Endless expects you to have, at least unconsciously, some idea about Heaven's Gate. The Invitation is perhaps a little more oblique, but Jim Jones's shadow falls across it.

In a sense, at least half of the films in this project deal with the Grand Atrocities. But some deal with them directly, either by dramatising them, approaching their consequences, or retelling them. In this part of Cult Cinema, I'm going to look at a film about Manson, a film about Jonestown and a film about Waco. This is our Atrocity Tour.

Portuguese Short Films at MotelX

(That's me at the closing ceremony with Raquel Freire.)

In September 2019, I was asked to represent Kier-La Janisse and the Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies at the 13th MotelX Horror Film Festival. There, I met a load of great people, and got to interview Hereditary/Midsommar director Ari Aster about folk horror on the big stage at Lisbon's Cinema São Jorge. I was also asked to take on the responsibility of being part of the jury for this year's short horror film competition. MotelX is part of the European Fantastic Film Festivals Federation, and each year awards two Méliès d'Argent prizes, named for Europe's father of fantastic film, George Méliès. One is for short Portuguese film, one for features. Aside from a cash prize and a trophy, the winner gets to compete for the Méliès d'Or, alongside the winners of other festivals across Europe. It's a big deal, and it was a highlight of my career so far to be part of the team entrusted with the decision.

The Question in Bodies #27: This Hellbound Heart

The Hellbound Heart (Clive Barker, 1986);
Hellraiser (1987);
Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988);
Hellraiser: Hellseeker (2002);
Clive Barker's Hellraiser (Boom! Studios, 2011, ongoing)

(Pictured: The most important character in the Hellraiser franchise.
Also pictured: Pinhead.)

Some franchises are worth more attention than others. For instance, I might well return to Godzilla. Maybe watching thirty-five of them might be a step too far, although I've watched an even dozen of them, so never underestimate my capacity for obsession. And I do fully intend to return to Planet of the Apes, I promise, I promise, honest. But I've never before felt the need to go into all ten of the Hellraiser films.

Years ago I watched the first three of them back to back, and I felt that the first one, the only one written and directed by creator Clive Barker, was good for what it was (and if that sounds a little bit like I'm damning it with faint praise, that's because I am), and that the curse of diminishing returns set in quickly, not so much a drop of quality as a vertiginous plummet, somewhere around the onset of Hellbound's stupid, hokey final third. As for Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (1992), you know you're on to a loser when you've already lost sight of who your iconic monster is and what he does. The point is, the nine Hellraiser sequels, most of which do not have the participation of Clive Barker, are generally so bad – and bad in a specific way, the worst possible way for a horror film, because they’re just pedestrian – that the value of sitting through all of them is negligible. Hellraiser: Revelations (Hellraiser IX) was reportedly only made so that Dimension films wouldn’t lose the rights to the franchise, and it was so lazily done that they couldn’t even get Doug “damned to be Pinhead forever” Bradley to do it. So why then would I decide to do not just Hellraiser and Hellbound (to be fair, most fans sort of like this one) but Hellseeker (or, to you, Hellraiser VI)? Why should I care about the Boom! Studios comics and and not the late 80s/early 90s Epic comics (which were actually really good, as opposed to the recent ones, which aren’t)? Why this particular selection of media?

Easy: they’re the parts of the franchise which share a protagonist. They all feature the most important character in the Hellraiser series. Not Pinhead – he’s barely even a character. No, mate, I’m talking about Kirsty Cotton. The access point to all of this is Kirsty.

Spoilers for books, comics and films abound. But no tears, please. It’s such a waste of good suffering.