Psycho in Taiwan

Now then, 

Welcome back to the Losers' Club, thanks for dropping by.

I want to begin with a big thank you to our brilliant Losers' Club members. In our last newsletter, I asked if anyone had access to the Journal of Popular Film and Television review of my book Women Make Horror: Filmmaking, Feminism, Genre. Thank you so much to Laura, Khazna, Brady, Sheena and Lizzy for sending through copies, and to Hannah for putting me and Lizzy in touch. This request has inadvertently been a great opportunity to meet more Losers' Club members that I hadn't heard from before, definitely an added bonus.

How's your week been? The highlight of my week was Friday night. Paul and I were beached on the sofa watching Top of the Pops 1992 and I was bellowing to Whitney Houston's I Will Always Love You. I turned to Paul and said, "was any of that in tune?" and he grimaced and replied "you have, at best, a very average voice" which is, by some distance, the nicest thing anyone has ever said about my singing so I am taking his comment as a WIN.
 

I've got quite a few work things I wanted to share with you, so I've grouped them into categories: writing, filmmaking, and talks.

First, the writing. 

I submitted my book proposal to Columbia University Press! Argh!

I have decided to start by aiming ridiculously high - to my mind, Columbia is one of the best university presses in the world and they have published some brilliant books on horror film - Rosalind Galt's Alluring Monsters, Rhona J. Berenstein's Attack of the Leading Ladies, and Adam Lowenstein's Shocking Representations, to give just a few examples.

(tbh I really love my UK publishers but I am also thinking about when I apply for promotion to professor, and having this kind of publisher on my CV will really help).

I used to be too scared to submit proposals to the big American academic hitters (yes, even I occasionally get the "but who are you to think you can do this / deserve this"), but now, I'm just having a go.

They can only say no.

And then at least I've tried.

My working title, at this point in time, is now Her Chainsaw Heart: A Feminist History of Women's Horror Film. I still don't think I've nailed the subtitle. I find titles really, really hard. 

Eek.
 

Now, onto filmmaking.

I started the assembly edit on my long-promised essay film on knitters and knitting in horror film, Knit One Stab Two. Many thanks to Losers' Club member Alex for alerting me to the excellent knitting sequence in Ice Cream Man (1995) which I would never have otherwise found. 

I'm aiming to get it into reasonable shape before I go to Vermont, mid-June, and then come back and polish and complete it.

I don't actually have any time or space to do this of course, so I am doing it in odd half hours and hours here and there - when my girls insist on watching Battle Kitty (the WORST), or on an evening if my brain hasn't completely died (very rare).

And because I am so new to Adobe Premiere Pro I am slow.

(So slow).

The shortcut keys for everyday editing activities have not cemented into my brain yet, and I am forever having to look up tutorials on how to do stuff (Premiere Gal is the first source I turn to).

We will see how this self-imposed deadline goes.

Also, this is a plea to my Losers' Club members - if you see any knitters or knitting - or extensive use of yarn or wool - in horror films, please reply to this message and let me know.

Even if a character opens a cupboard and there is a stash of wool in there, that is enough! I watched Petite Maman this week on MUBI and there is a shot where exactly this happens and it is perfect for the film, but with all the will in the world I cannot convince myself that Petite Maman is even horror-adjacent.

So do write to me and let me know. I can always fit more examples in. I've got all the usual or more well known ones - Halloween, Deep Red, Peeping Tom, Baby Jane, Straitjacket, Friday the 13th Part 3, The Company of Wolves, Sightseers, The Village, Rosemary's Baby, The Crazies, Daughters of Darkness, Werewolves Within, What We Do in the Shadows, The Skeleton Key, The Bat, The Woman in Black 2, Wool 100% etc, and I've been right through the IMDB keyword search by genre, but I know full well (as Alex's reference to Ice Cream Man reveals) that IMDB is not omniscient and doesn't list everything. 

So if you see anything, tell me! It is never too late. And if I use your suggestion I will credit you at the end of the film.

Also, this is an additional request to those in the Losers' Club who a) love horror films and b) are actual knitters (and I am delighted to report that I know for a fact a lot of you do fit into this category, yay!). I would love you to do some more detailed spying for me: I've got a small section in this essay film where I talk about hand knit clothes - mostly jumpers, shawls and cardies, inevitably. I've already got The Shining (Danny's jumper all the way, obvs), Raw, Lamb, Jennifer's Body, Relic, Bleed With Me, Schlaf, The VVitch, The Lighthouse, etc. And this week I watched Halloween 2 which was pretty crap BUT had a postmortem guy with the best hand knit cardie ever. If you can spot any definitely hand-knit clothing, please do let me know.
 

To the public talk stuff. 

My big work thing this week involved actually leaving my shed to do some work. I've been down in London, being a Visiting Professor for Ohio State University. Ohio State film students are in London on a British Horror residential, and I was invited down to come talk to them about doing work in film archives. Next week, they are all off to BFI Special Collections to research The Innocents (yes, this is definitely the coolest university trip of all time).

Before I arrived, they read my essays on archival research and The Haunting of Julia (under consideration for a journal at the moment), and on industry script development practices in The Awakening, and then I rocked up to talk about how I did the research and how I wrote the essays. It was a lot of fun, and the students were super engaged and vocal, which made it a breeze. I also got to see Cabaret (for the first time!) at the National Film Theatre and have tea at Lina Stores in Soho (my favourite eatery) so it was a great trip all round.

What have you been watching and listening to? Owt or nowt?

Telly-wise, I have started season six of Better Call Saul and I am in HEAVEN. 

In terms of films, this week I watched three horror films, back to back, that all began and ended by the sea. I did not mean this to happen, but it did.

First, I watched the supernatural feature Atlantics (2019, Netflix), written and directed by Mati Diop (and here my Mailchimp spellchecker keeps changing Mati to Matt what does this say about the world?). French-Senegalese filmmaker Diop became the first Black woman in competition when she screened at Atlantics in Cannes in 2019. At the time, she is reported as being 'moved' but a 'little sad' at this achievement, commenting to the BBC: "I knew it as I obviously don't know any black women who came here before. I knew it but it's always a reminder that so much work needs to be done still."

Then I watched Menarca (2020, MUBI), a short horror from Brazil, co-written and directed by Lillah Halla, all about piranhas and predatory men. It was a perfect accompaniment to Atlantics, both are filmed in a poetic style, lush and languid, which build in power through atmosphere and tone. And the ending of Menarca is the most classically horror of these three films, and in terms of straight retribution, very satisfying.

The final in my unanticipated trio of water horrors was Welcome II the Terrodome (1995, MUBI), directed by Ngozi Onwurah, which was the first film by a Black British woman to get a theatrical release. I've meant to watch Terrordome for ages, but knowing it was more dystopian / bordering SF made it drop down the list. However, it is radical, brutal and political, and moving and devastating and grim in a way that all too readily translates to horror. It is, depressingly, as urgent as ever.

Terrordome's rendition of Afrofuturism also really made me want to return to Wanuri Kahiu's brilliant Kenyan short Pumzi (2009) which is full into the SF category but 100% worth you all watching right now.

And my final viewing choice is the absolutely, totally brilliant, Leng yan sha ji / Exposed to Danger (1982), directed by Yang Chia-yun AKA Karen Yang (image from the film at the top of this newsletter).

I found this Taiwanese horror-thriller streaming for free on the YouTube channel Wu Tang Collection, which specialises in rare Asian genre cinema. This channel is also where I found the Taiwanese Wolf Devil Woman (1982), written and directed by Ling Chang AKA Pearl Cheung Ling, which I used in my keynote on werewolf films last year.

Anyway, I sat down to watch this, without any real expectations of it being great, and then it turned out to be brilliant. it is very much in the Taiwanese Pulp Film category, lowbrow, a score blasting out what emotions we should feel, and endless full on fight scenes (pretty much all of them between women which is amazing, including a classic prison fight scene where they all get hosed down by guards).

But, but, but....

...the reason I really loved it was that Exposed to Danger is, for the most part, an homage to Psycho via a 1980s stalker/slasher film. It isn't Psycho in the narrative, not really, no motels or stuffed birds, or Norman Bates, but YES to playing with audience expectation on the shower scene, YES to discussions with dead mothers, YES to a defiant career woman breaking rules and leading the story, YES to murder based on sexual jealousy, YES to creepy cellars that you absolutely shouldn't go into, and so much stabbing. 

For more on Taiwanese horror, I recommend (again) Birdy Wei-ting Hung's All the Colours of Lady Avengers project. This is where I discovered the 'Taiwanese Pulp Film', understood as a boom in exploitation filmmaking in Taiwan in the 1970s and 1980s. Birdy in turn, develops this idea from Ting-Wu Cho's original definition, which she is developing for her PhD at New York University.

I'm fascinated by these films and this period. My next stop is Yang Chai-yun's Lady Avenger (1981). 
 

I'm going to skip the academic horror books reading recs this time as I feel this newsletter is long, even by my standards, but I promise I will come back to it next time. Instead, I will leave you with three short reading / listening / watching recommendation:

Amber T's HORNBLOODFIRE horror newsletter is going from strength to strength and I recommend you all dive in.

Lindsay, of Woman in Revolt: Feminist Musings on Film & TV, now has a podcast! She's not focussed on horror per se, but her feminist analysis of film and telly is always spot on, smart and funny. Listen to it here.

After I mentioned the WWII-era monster movie Shadow in the Cloud (2020) in the last newsletter, Losers' Club member Mick sent through a recommendation for director Roseanne Liang's earlier short, Do No Harm (2017) which is freely available on Short of the Week, and well worth a look.
 

Finally, **IMPORTANT!!! KLAXONS!!!!***

There will NOT be a newsletter in two weeks time.

In theory, I am going to be in Sorrento when the next newsletter is due.

I say in theory, as it is all booked but I have to get PCR tests for both my kids 72 hours before we fly and I am terrified that they will be positive and we can't go.

But, assuming everything does work out (deep breaths Alison), I will be in Italy in two weeks time and thus, no Losers' Club.

I will return to our usual posting process when I get back though, and no doubt will bore you senseless about Naples or something equally annoying. 

Do your best to manage without me in the interim, and please do feel free to write to me and let me know what you have been watching, reading and listening to in the world of horror. I love knowing what you are all into and it will give me some ideas on what to watch / read / download when I get back.

Take care and speak soon, my lovely horror family,