Who Framed Roger Rabbit?: Lessons in Terror

*Contains spoilers*

Continuing my quest to find the most terrifying and disturbing films from my childhood, let’s   head back to 1988 and “Who Framed Roger Rabbit”. This film combined live action with animation, creating a fictional 1940s world where cartoons had jobs, paid taxes and had disturbing love-lives. It's a great film. Bob Hoskins stars as private detective Eddie Valliant who is hired by zany and mildly annoying “toon” star, Roger Rabbit to clear his name when he is accused of murder. Other features of note include a cigar smoking baby and the appearance of Jessica, Roger’s wife. Voiced by Kathleen Turner this character became the shameful crush of many a young man, thrust into early puberty by her unlikely dimensions. 

But onto the horror and what terrors await us in this movie. Here’s Judge Doom, our villain, pictured just after unceremoniously executing a little squeaky cartoon shoe (one of the most chilling scenes on film) with his evil invention, the only substance that can dissolve a cartoon, “the dip”. 

Now Judge Doom is pretty scary to kick off with, played with aplomb by the venerable Christopher Lloyd. But how scary can it get? I mean, it’s Doc from “Back to the Future”! Oh it can get plenty scary and here’s how I imagine the discussion on the mind-searingly terrifying final scenes went before filming began: 

Director: So, Judge Doom and Eddie have a final face off. How does Eddie finally escape? Remember we want this to be  scary.

Writer: Well, Judge Doom  is run over by a steam roller and is entirely flattened. 

Director: Excellent and everyone lives happily ever after? 

Writer: No, not quite. Judge Doom gets up. 

Director: But he’s flattened?

Writer: Yep, like a pancake but he wobbles over to a nearby air tank and blows himself back up again like a balloon. 

Director: Great!

Writer: You see, Judge Doom is a cartoon and has been all along. But then comes the best part. He turns to reveal himself as the evil “toon” that killed poor Eddie’s brother. 

Director: Fantastic twist! And will there be scary eyes? 

Writer: Oh yes. Definitely scary eyes. In fact I think we should have Doom’s eyes popping out as knives. That would be great. 

Director: So Eddie has to face off with Doom, knowing he’s a Toon and can’t be killed easily. 

Writer: Indeed. I thought we’d have Doom producing a variety of weapons. Maybe starting with an anvil which is just classic cartoon, and moving up to a more sophisticated murder weapon like a giant circular saw which he can wield with a maniacal and dangerous look in his eye before walking slowly towards Eddie. 

Director: More scary eyes? 

Writer: Sure, can't really have enough scary eyes can you?

Director: And then what? 

Writer: Well, obviously Eddie wins the day and manages to turn the dip on Doom and he melts. 

Director: Very “Wizard of Oz”. And the death scene will be pretty good right? 

Writer: Sure, Doom will screech and wail like a banshee whilst slowly melting into a puddle. 

Director: Then happily ever after? 

Writer: Of course. We’re going to get all the cartoons from our childhood - Mickey, Donald, Betty Boop, Bugs, Daffy - a lovely nostalgia trip. And we march them in there to sing a song. 

Director: Nice. But I think we need one last horrific image to see us through. 

Writer: How about they sing the song standing around a mutilated and melted puddle of Doom? 

Director: Great! There won’t be a dry seat in the house. That’s that then. Fancy going down the playground to tell some kids stories about Freddy Krueger? 

Writer: Absolutely!

In fairness, "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" was given a PG certificate so parents had only themselves to blame when they carried their children shivering and crying out of the cinema as the credits rolled. Me? I experienced my now familiar fascination with these final scenes. I loved the fact that the writers gave us a little taste of the dark side. 

Don't have nightmares!

Versatile Blogger Award

I was honoured and a little humbled to receive a nomination from my good friend T for a Versatile Blogger Award.

In the first place, I have been blogging for less than a year. In the second place, T is not only a dear friend, but an awesome blogger and one of my favourite writers so praise from her is praise indeed. I strongly recommend checking out her world by clicking the links to both her blogs here and signing up immediately:

Body of a Geek Goddess Possibly my favourite place in the blogosphere, Body of a Geek Goddess is a loving tribute to all things Sci-Fi. Reviews, news and points to ponder on everything from Star Wars to Game of Thrones with a special place of reverence for the TV series Supernatural. Plus, T was one of the few people who understood my elation at receiving a pair of Dean pants for my birthday...

E is for Envelope So much lovely goodness on this sister blog from T - theatre, film and book reviews, shopping, a lot of stationery, fashion, beauty and the best of London life. Being a big book addict like myself one of her best posts this year has been on National Libraries Day

Since starting my blogging journey I have stumbled across so many great writers but here are a few that are floating my boat at the moment:

Horror stuff:

The B Horror Blog I stumbled across bhorrorblog on Twitter. Written by a Cape Town based guy with a love crap horror and a great sense of humour, this blog is the place to check out before you watch anything on the horror channel post midnight. Bhorrorblog uses a carefully thought out “Level of Awful” rating system that ranges from surprisingly good to requiring a post-film lobotomy as well as a breast-o-meter. I particularly enjoy the “life lessons learned” section for each film which mirrors my own penchant for summarising “what I learned” from films.


Feminist stuff:

Vagenda Magazine This blog has been the hot topic on Twitter for weeks now. Witty, intelligent, thoughtful, relevant and downright funny, this blog is the future of feminism. The recent entry on Grazia Magazine had me in tears of laughter and stuff like this is long overdue. If you are one of the few people who aren't reading this stuff, get on it now.


Publishing stuff:

Byte The Book This is a relatively new site but I can’t wait to see where it goes. Justine writes about books, giving us a heap of reviews but also commenting on the industry’s move to digital which is a subject of great interest for me. Her post on why digital has her sold mirrors my own attitude towards the new publishing technologies.


And one last one...

Half Pound of Tea

M is one of my favourite twitter users. She has a great gaming blog She Kills Monsters but has also started blogging about her life struggling with mental illness. Brave, honest and thought provoking, she has so far raised issues about the taboos surrounding mental illness and the support and treatment from our health professionals. Many of the people I love have their own stories to tell and I believe that if there is one way to burst these taboos it’s by talking and writing about it.

T also nominated some other favourite bloggers of mine and rather than cover that ground again I will just post the links and strongly suggest that you check them out:

The Lemurs are Hungry Beautiful food blog with a focus on Asian cuisine. If this doesn’t make your mouth water there is something wrong with you.

Rose to the Occasion A mutual friend of myself and T, Mrs Rose blogs on beauty, London living and all sorts of other stuff. She and I also have a mutual appreciation for the film “The Slipper and the Rose”. She is very cool.

Postcard of a Painting The lovely Linda is a grammar and spelling fiend but also loves a good horror film. She is also wonderfully funny and a great writer.

I hope you enjoy checking these guys out. Now apparently part of the rules of these nominations is that I must give you, dear reader 7 facts about myself. Here goes:


1: I wrote my first novel at aged eleven. I also illustrated it.

2: I wrote my second novel at aged fourteen. It contains the most unconvincing sex scenes in the history of literature.

3: Both manuscripts still exist and are stashed in my attic. I can assure you that they will never again see the light of day.

4: I talk in my sleep.

5: I dyed my hair blonde for fifteen years and I sometimes find myself at the till with shampoo for blonde hair, forgetting that I am now brunette.

6: I love watching Gardener’s World.

7: One of my most treasured pleasures in life is making people laugh.

Care Bears The Movie: Lessons in Terror

Warning! Contains scenes of peril and weirdness which may terrify for years to come

The “Care Bears Movie” (not to be confused with “Care Bears The Movie II”) was released in 1985. I was seven and at the upper age range of the audience for this film. For those that were living in a box or not even a twinkle in their father's eye during the great decade that was the eighties, the Care Bears were a bunch of pastel coloured, fuzzy bears, a marketing man's dream and the must-have toy for any girl under eight. The Care Bears lived in Care-A-Lot; a sort of pseudo-heaven in the clouds and spent their time sliding around on rainbows, educating kids in the worthiness of friendship and sharing your feelings and riding around in super-cool cars made of clouds called "cloudmobiles". Sporting genius names like Tenderheart Bear, Friends Bear and Bedtime Bear, you could never have too many and what parent could argue with the message? My Care Bear was Funshine Bear. She was yellow and had a sun on her belly.

So what does this have to do with terror? Well, as readers of this blog will already know, I love scary stuff. Give me a gothic castle, a psychopath, a japanese ghost, a haunted house, a possessed doll or a really creepy kid and I am happy. I think that your tastes are shaped when you are young and for me, my education in horror began with some films that, whilst aimed at children, are frankly, utterly weird and terrifying. “Care Bears The Movie” is one of these films and here is why.

Care Bears The Movie starts off innocently enough in our narrator, Mr Cherrywood's orphanage. Whilst in real life Mr Cherrywood would be dealing with a number of psychologically damaged youngsters, this is a cartoon and the lovely bunch of cuties just want a story. So Mr Cherrywood begins his tale of three children and their encounter with the Care Bears. The first two of our children are sullen brother and sister, Kim and Jason who have "lost their parents". How this happens isn't explained, but hey, we have a whole house of orphans so it would be discriminatory to go into detail for just these two. Needless to say, Kim and Jason ain't happy. In fact, so lost in their tragic cynicism are they that even when a couple of Care Bears drop onto the pavement in front of them in fuzzy, bumbly glory, they merely sneer rather than attempt to take them home and keep them in a box. The Care Bears decide to take these kids off to Care-A-Lot, possibly to beat them into being decent human beings.
So far, so unscary.

Meanwhile, across town, Nicholas (a magician’s assistant) is also inexplicably lacking parents and, Mr Cherrywood tells us, is "without a friend in the world". Nicholas lives in a caravan the size of a small hatchback with the Great Fetuccini, a barrel-bellied conjurer and wearer of cuban heels. On his way to help Nicholas, is Tenderheart Bear who is the unofficial leader of the bears. Sending Tenderheart is sort of like sending your best social worker on a job, so the audience knows that Nicholas must be a serious case. But before Tenderheart can reach Nicholas, our villain and one of the most disturbing and genuinely creepy on-screen creatures in the history of film is introduced...

Gargh!

Years before the modern day monster of Facebook, it's a book, with a face in it! A face that haunts my nightmares to this day. Also, what sort of message were the filmmakers going for here? If anything was going to put kids off a life of literature, it is this. From the start, clearly this face is evil. The arch of the eyebrows, the sly smile, all creeped me out to the point of tears as a kid. On top of this she speaks like a woman who smokes a hundred cigarettes a day and eats kittens. Fricking terrifying.

So, the face introduces herself as "a spirit" and begins to lure Nicholas to the dark side by suggesting that he takes over Fetuccini’s magic show. A dastardly plan if ever I heard one. The magic within her pages, she claims, will give him anything he wants. Now anybody will tell you that an offer of anything you want always comes with a price, and usually one that involves first-born children or your soul, but we can forgive Nicholas for being tempted. Especially as just as the Spirit is making her pitch, Tenderheart bounds in and counters "Nicholas, don't! Sharing your feelings is the real magic!"

Pfffft! Even I wouldn't buy that and I am genuinely terrified of this book-face creature.

*shudder*

So Nicholas picks the spirit and Tenderheart gets locked into a little cage. But we’re just getting started with the creepiness.

Nicholas’s first magic show fails, thanks to some sabotage by the Spirit and he is laughed off the stage. Rather than going home to practice some more, Nicholas instead decides to take the Spirit up on an offer of a spell and turns the audience into complete bastards by removing all their love and caring. In my books, this audience was already dodgy as nobody seemed to question the fact that magician had a bloody terrifying head in a book on stage with him! Turns out that the Spirit’s plan isn’t to leave it at that though. Oh no, she wants to rid the whole town of pesky caring feelings and emotions. And so they shack up in the turret of the ghost train at the fairground, get themselves a cauldron and set about turning everyone into giant shits.

Turns out that the lack of caring in the world is making Care-A-Lot fall apart. The Care Bears new invention, a sort of fuzzy version of the transporter from Star Trek that runs on rainbows, screws up thanks to a “bad feeling storm” and two Bears plus Kim and Jason end up in the Forest of Feelings, somewhere between Care-A-Lot and Earth. So presumably floating mid-air somewhere. We’re treated to a few musical numbers and the introduction of a new range of toys... sorry, characters, the Care Bear Cousins, a selection of various animals with cute names like Brightheart Racoon and Braveheart Lion. Awesome. But this is a mere plot device, because the real action is always in the scenes with our evil Spirit who is growing more and more mental. “They must be taught a lesson. A lesson for the children. A lesson for the town. A lesson for everyone!” At this point we could question her motivation, but to be quite frank I am too terrified.

So the denouement sees the Care Bears, their cousins and Kim and Jason roll into the fairground on a boat to face off with Nicholas and the Spirit. By this point the fairground looks a little like Croydon town centre on Sunday morning and is inhabited by snarling youths who run about knocking things over like in ... Croydon town centre on a Sunday morning. Nicholas has donned a cape and now looks like a crazed heroine addict. The only two children in the whole world that still give a crap are Kim and Jason, and Nicholas is out to get them.

Yeah! Get lost MFs!

What ensues is the most terrifying three minute musical number of all time, a little ditty entitled “Look out”, an odd combination of choir and whispered warnings combined, that plays whilst Nicholas chases the children around the funhouse. Turns out that Nicholas’s magic act has improved as he can now fire lasers from his fingers and *gasp* even threatens to fire at lovely, blue, fuzzball, Swiftheart Rabbit. He truly is evil.

Watch here if you dare... 

But the final nightmarish scene in this animated bucket of weirdness is the best. As the Care Bears lament the fact that the Spirits power is “too strong”, Nicholas rises up from the depths of the ghost train on some sort of flying saucer, seemingly caught in the draught of a powerful wind machine, looking utterly mental and clutching the book! On top of that his voice has changed so he now sounds like the Emperor from Star Wars. Christ!

 

What’s worse is that even the Care Bear Stare isn’t working on this guy. So Kim and Jason, like lambs to the slaughter, run in to plead with Nicholas. They want to be his friend. This news thankfully makes the scary face go away and Nicholas starts to wonder if a life in Croydon is really what he wants. He decides not and closes the book. Thank you!

A quick run through the “happily ever afters” and Kim and Jason find some parents, Nicholas becomes Fettucini’s apprentice and presumably finds some mates and the Care Bears have a party in a heart shaped conference room where the Cousins all get their own magical belly-emblems.

Yes, I was bloody terrified at times during this film. But this film also fascinated me. When my baby sisters watched it on an almost daily basis, I was secretly pleased. I liked challenging myself to watch and I think that is part of the joy of watching something that disturbs and frightens you. Watching “Care Bears The Movie” was great preparation for my career in horror. I have since encountered more creepy voices in “The Exorcist”, more evil books in “The Evil Dead” and more psychos than I can count. There have been no more fuzzy bears but hey, you can’t ask for everything in a film.

Watch the trailer

"It's a real horse!": War Horse and suspension of disbelief

Suspension of Disbelief:

The point at which you must abandon all scepticism and accept what goes against your knowledge. To believe the unbelievable.

This last weekend I finally got to see the National Theatre’s production of “War Horse”. This production has been running in London since 2007 and has met with acclaim and rapturous reviews. Playing routinely to sell-out audiences, tickets are like gold-dust but fortunately my good chum J (who has been forgiven for persuading me to read Stephanie Meyer) used her theatre mafia connections and got us some top seats four rows from the front for the matinee on Saturday.

At risk of echoing the rest of the world, “War Horse” is a simply brilliant piece of theatre. The tale of a young boy’s devotion to his horse, Joey against the backdrop of the First World War is based on a children’s book by Michael Morpugo. What could have been a trite and overly-sentimental story becomes something truly beautiful, with amazing stage design, a soundtrack that will rumble around your head for days and an exceptional cast.

But all this has been said before, and far more eloquently than I can manage. What struck me about “War Horse” was my personal emotional reaction to the piece. My eyes welled up a few scenes in and didn’t stop for the rest of the show. The interval felt like an age and not once did my mind drift off to what I might have for dinner afterwards. I spent the rest of the day sporadically bursting with acclamations and weirdly resenting those in the audience for the evening performance. I don’t even like horses. “War Horse” grabbed me by the brain and didn’t let go. Having had a day to muse on this, I can tell you why this is such an amazing piece of theatre and why everyone should see it. “War Horse” masters the audience’s suspension of disbelief.

Suspension of disbelief is crucial to appreciating theatre but I think that as we grow older we are driven to cling to our natural scepticism. We never quite give ourselves over to the story as completely as when we are children. For a child, the lines between reality and fiction blur. Our experiences of watching films or plays are boosted by our innocent wonder. How often have you watched a favourite childhood film or read a book again, and been disappointed by the fact that it just isn’t as good as you remember? It’s because we’re wearing our grown-up glasses. That’s not to say that you won’t enjoy the show, but your emotional investment is limited by what your adult knowledge will allow.

The horses in “War Horse” are the creations of The Handspring Puppet Company, worked by three performers per animal. The stage design offers the perfect environment for the suspension of disbelief needed for “War Horse”. The set is minimalist. The actors stand in at times for fence posts. A sea journey is conveyed by model ships being carried across the sea. A ripped shred of sketch book stretched across the stage is the canvas for a series of drawings that illustrate the scenery of the English countryside or the horrors of warfare. Nothing on stage is portrayed realistically in the world of “War Horse”, which makes it easier to sustain the illusion that the puppets are real animals. This, combined with powerful and genuine performances from the cast make the world of “War Horse” just irresistible and utterly believable.  

This is why “War Horse” is such a powerful piece of theatre. From the moment the tiny foal danced onto the stage I was won over. This was a real horse. This was Joey. Not since I was a child have I recalled giving myself so wholeheartedly over to a story and it’s a wonderful feeling. After the much deserved, standing ovation, we were honoured to be given a backstage tour with long term cast member and friend of J’s, the absolutely charming Danny Dalton. Standing before the static models of the horses, waiting for the evening performance, I was wowed by the technical genius that has gone into these creations and again by my own affection for it.  

Backstage with Joey

This is what is truly outstanding about “War Horse” and about all theatre when it is done well. For the duration, that world is the real world. As you emerge, blinking from the darkness of the auditorium, it will be as if you are waking from a dream. And that dream will stay with you forever. 

Judging by the cover: is a book jacket important in a digital world?

 As I mused in my first post on this blog, the digital age of publishing is changing the way the book cover works. In recent years, especially living in a city like London, even if you weren’t glued to the bestseller lists it was hard not to notice which books were hot. Back in the first half of the last decade, you couldn’t move on the underground without a copy of a Dan Brown novel in your face. More recently the distinctive orange and white design of David Nicholl’s “One Day” was lined up in front of intent faces on the morning commute. Book covers were free advertising and I don’t mind admitting that on occasions I have been moved to purchase a book I have seen in the hands of a stranger.

The old adage, “don’t judge a book by its cover” is valid for most things in life, but for actual books, I would argue that one should pay close attention to the cover. It can communicate many things: the genre, the target audience or the age group this is aimed at, the publisher and sometimes the style of the writing is hinted at. Of course the faithful book blurb will give you more but sometimes you don’t get as far as picking up the copy and looking at this. Often it’s the front cover design that turns you on, or sadly makes you skim over to the next one on the shelf. Publishers spend small fortunes and days of deliberation on book covers. A book cover won’t make a bestseller on it’s own but it sure as hell gives it a shove in the right direction.

But in a world where we can hide our reading material on little faceless devices where can the book cover wield its power? I think you only have to look at the way that eBooks are being marketed to see that covers are still very much a game changer.

The iBookstore shows iBooks on screen displayed on a shelf, face out (the publisher and author’s dream!). The covers are there in full Apple-display beauty. They are the first point of contact between the book and the author with their reader.

Amazon Kindle have a less impressive display, as they market Kindle titles in pretty much the same way as paper books, with a thumbnail image that you can click to enlarge. Kobo follows suit but with a slightly larger file size for the covers. Nonetheless, the first contact a consumer has with a title is clicking on its cover.

If anything publishers have to be smarter with their cover designs. No longer can they rely on spot UV varnish and foil blocking to make a book stand out on the shelf. The touchability of a book is taken away in the digital realm and the impact must be entirely visual. 

I am a Kindle owner and one of my chief disappointments in the device as it stands is the lack of attention paid to covers. It’s not that it is in black and white, it's the fact that my books are listed as titles when I want to see the cover designs. Frequently when I skip to the cover page of a book I am reading I am saddened to see that rather than producing a kindle friendly black and white version of the cover, the publisher has added some sad little placeholder with a title in Times New Roman. This is not what I want. Covers are important to me.

Good covers still stand out. And certainly with the flurry of self-publishers on Kindle, the bad covers stand out even more. It shows that the book is serious, professionally produced (and by this I don’t necessarily by a publisher), that the writer has taken time to polish their product before putting it before us.

So long live the book cover. May it continue to do good work in its new digital world.  

Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2011, I know I am late to the party with this novel. But sometimes a book grabs you by the collar and holds you close until it’s done with you. “Pigeon English” by Stephen Kelman was one of those books. I read it on a recent business trip to Belgium and almost missed my train stop on my journey out to deepest Flanders because I was so engrossed. 

The debut novel from writer Stephen Kelman is the story of eleven year old Harrison Opoku, newly arrived from his home in Ghana to a brave new world in a South London housing estate. Harri is in London with his older sister, Lydia and his mother, leaving his father, grandmother and baby sister Agnes behind in their homeland until the family can afford to be together. Thrown into the confusing and menacing world of the Dell Farm Estate, Harri witnesses the aftermath of a stabbing and the subsequent death of a young man and embarks on his own murder investigation.

Harri is the narrator of his own story and Kelman captures brilliantly, the mixture of wonder and misunderstanding that is a young boy navigating a new world. His concerns are simple; how fast can he run in his charity shop trainers, how he can get closer to the fair Poppy Morgan and whether there will be proper goal posts in heaven. Harri’s innocence is under constant assault from the world around him; from his sister’s sexually aggressive friends and the ever present dark cloud of the Dell Farm Crew, a gang of violent hoodies who are in turn appealing and dangerous for Harri. 

Harri is good, sweet, kind and funny. And as well as maintaining Harri’s distinctive and convincing narrative, Kelman also manages to expertly draw his characters. His friend, Jordan, is a young boy bristling with promised violence and anger. Lydia is a girl on he cusp of womanhood, looking for a way to fit in and protect herself and her family. Even the thuggish characters from the Dell Farm Crew appear as confused young men struggling to assert themselves and gain respect from their peers, making some tragic and horrific mistakes on the way. 

As well as describing Harri’s own Ghanaian and London slang-peppered speech, the title also refers to the odd addition of a pigeon who visits Harri’s high rise flat. Kelman gives voice to the bird who acts as a kind of guardian angel for Harri and a second narrative voice, giving us at times foreboding musings on the nature of human existence. It’s an interesting idea, and certainly anyone who lives in London will recognise the pigeon as the city’s constant companion but it’s clumsily slotted into the novel and makes for the only weak point. 

I read the book, not knowing that it was inspired by the tragedy that befell Damilola Taylor, an eleven year old Nigerian boy who bled to death in a Peckham stairwell in 2000, having been stabbed by two twelve year old boys, but, as a reader you cannot ignore the parallels.  The novel is tender, endearing and at times funny, but also horrific, raising social questions about poverty, drugs, violence and the frustrations of a youth trapped by these things. A brilliant, important and haunting book.