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<TITLE>Re: J-horror Inquirer article</TITLE>
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<BLOCKQUOTE><FONT FACE="Times"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:14.0px'>Continuing the J-Horror discussion from my previous email I want to begin by saying that I agree with Jim that the issue of cultural influences cannot be simplified. I contributed an article, ‘Metal-Morphosis: Post Industrial Crisis and the Tormented Body in the <I>Tetsuo</I> Films' to ‘Japanese Horror Cinema’, (ed.) Jay McRoy, (Edinburgh University Press/ University of Hawai’i Press, 2004) and I quote from Tsukomoto in interview - <BR>
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</SPAN></FONT></BLOCKQUOTE><FONT FACE="Times"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:14.0px'>“like other kids of my generation, I grew up with Toho monsters. They were a big part of my childhood reality”<BR>
“Later my interests broadened to take in everything from Italian futurism to "Metropolis", from Helmut Newton's photos to the cyberpunk sensibility, and all that fed into my Tetsuo movies”.<BR>
<BR>
I would like to respond to Jasper’s email by saying that the origins of horror are too often tied into Gothic literature, when the art works of painters such as Rosa, Fuseli, Blake, Mortimer, Dixon, Goya and later Redon had an immense visual impact. And in considering the history or heritage of projected images of horror, the phantasmagorias of the late 18th century, a period in which the Gothic arts developed, must be a central part of such discussions.<BR>
<BR>
Also I would like to disagree with the emails sent talking about 1930s Universal horror films as these very much neglect the importance of the studio’s productions in the 1920s, and continue the myth that Universal’s style was a result of emigres from Germany and Europe. As I write in my article 'Before Sound: Universal, Silent Cinema, and the Last of the Horror-Spectaculars', in 'The Horror Film' (Ed.) Stephen Prince, (Rutgers University Press, 1994)<BR>
<BR>
“The Horror film was a genre that developed with the early period of sound production, and the studio most associated with such movies was Universal. But, this studio which produced films such as <I>Dracula </I>(1931), <I>Frankenstein</I> (1931), <I>The Mummy</I> (1932), <I>The Black Cat</I> (1934), and <I>The Raven</I> (1935), had also made some of the most impressive American horror movies of the 1920s -- <I>The Hunchback of Notre Dame </I>(1923), <I>The Phantom of the Opera </I>(1925), and <I>The Man Who Laughs</I> (1928). The vast scale of these productions, which I will term horror-spectaculars, sets them aside from Universal's other silent horrors -- <I>The Cat and the Canary</I> (1927), <I>The Chinese Parrot </I>(1927), <I>The Last Performance</I> (1929), and (the part-talkie) <I>The Last Warning</I> (1929) -- yet the shared style, sets, influences, filmmakers and performers also makes them in certain ways inseparable. Before sound, Universal had been a major producer of films, but its financial difficulties both in the late 1920s and the early 1930s led to its diminution. Its survival during the cinema of the 1930s, where it functioned as a studio weakened and in receivership, is notably the period that has gained most attention”.<BR>
“It would be wrong to view horror film production before the introduction of sound as a developed genre; similarly, it is unwise to see such films of this period as unattached to the movies which followed in the 1930s. Film cycles are often easily isolated into decades, or neat social periods, which can rupture any consideration of production continuity or association. <I>The Hunchback of Notre Dame</I> and <I>The Phantom of the Opera</I>, are not essentially forgotten horrors, but they are disadvantaged by discussions of Universal's productions which tend to circumscribe the genre”.<BR>
“It is not the case that European filmmakers suddenly converged on Universal in the early 1930s whereupon it made horror films; Universal had by then a degree of horror heritage spanning almost a decade. And the studio's horror production of the 1930s is not simply explained by the idea that an achieved visual style, which lent itself to the genre, enabled an economic silent to sound transition. A more precise understanding would cross the divide created by the 1928-1930 industry changes and recognize the existence of horror production in the silent film period. In particular, Universal's releases in the late 1920s have to be seen as part of the history of the production of horror movies with synchronized sound. For many of the filmmakers who had been refining their craft working on such silent films, later worked on sound productions.<BR>
</SPAN><FONT SIZE="4"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:18.0px'> </SPAN></FONT><SPAN STYLE='font-size:14.0px'>Charles D. Hall was the art director on the Universal horrors <I>Frankenstein</I>, <I>Murders in the Rue Morgue</I> (1932), <I>The Black Cat</I>, and <I>The Bride of Frankenstein</I> (1935); Jack P. Pierce, another respected technician, devised the make-up effects for such Universal horrors as <I>Frankenstein</I>, <I>The Mummy</I>, <I>The Werewolf of London</I> (1935), and <I>The Tower of London</I> (1939); whilst Lew Landers (Louis Friedlander) directed <I>The Raven</I>. These Americans had worked on the earlier horror <I>The Man Who Laughs</I>, which has been described as "the most relentlessly Germanic film to come out of Hollywood". For this production, Hall, who had previously worked on the set design for <I>The Phantom of the Opera </I>(from illustrations by the French stage designer Ben Carré), and <I>The Cat and the Canary</I>, was art director, Landers was an assistant director, and Pierce, who had been the head of Universal's make-up department since 1926, was responsible for creating the central character's facial mutilation, the hideous permanent grin... <I>The Man Who Laughs </I>could be viewed as "the most relentlessly Germanic film to come out of Hollywood", though care must be taken before attributing this to just filmmakers who had worked in Germany. Leni was a filmmaker of distinction, who had a particular concern for visual detail developed during his period as a set designer on German films; he was also working with a crew capable of technical excellence and for his American films set design was the responsibility of the Universal art department”.<BR>
And in my conclusion “Universal's trilogy of horror-spectaculars -- <I>The Hunchback of Notre Dame</I>, <I>The Phantom of the Opera</I>, and <I>The Man Who Laughs</I> -- were major productions that were part of its planned prestige pictures, and its aim to gain a slice of the exhibition market. <I>The Man Who Laughs</I> is remarkable not just as an example of a horror-spectacular, but as the culmination of Universal's production of the silent epic. It is a film which began pre-production at a time when the emphatic arrival of the talkie could not have been imagined, and was completed at the point where silent cinema, a then highly evolved style of production, gave way to the revolution in sound. It stands at a crucial point in Universal's studio history. As a horror-spectacular in the twilight of Universal's production of silent movies, it was a film that the studio was never to repeat. With the financial constraints that followed, it marks the demise of what Universal termed a "Super-production" or "Super photodramatization", but it also provides a valuable case study of a precursor to the 1930s monster movies.<BR>
<I>The Man Who Laughs</I> is of importance for the continuity of personnel -- such as Charles D. Hall and Jack P. Pierce -- who worked on the production's design and were to perpetuate their craft as technicians central to the development of the horror film in the 1930s. With the coming of sound, Universal drew on the ability of its technicians to construct a Gothic style, and continued with the production of a cinema of the macabre, albeit on a tighter budget. And if key figures of the silent horror film -- such as Paul Leni, Conrad Veidt and Lon Chaney had not been lost -- the relationship between the two periods would have been stronger with Universal stars such as Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff not so exclusively associated with an apparent new genre”.<BR>
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Apologies for quoting from my own work, but it seems the quickest thing to do.<BR>
Ian<BR>
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<BR>
Ian Conrich<BR>
Roehampton University<BR>
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</FONT></SPAN><BLOCKQUOTE><SPAN STYLE='font-size:14.0px'><FONT FACE="Times"><BR>
Japanese horror since the mid-eighties has certainly been increasingly influenced by Western horror, but that covers a multitude of cultural backgrounds with no single identity. But in the best cases this isn't simply a grafting of foreign ideas onto domestic ones, it's considerably more complex than that. You end up with a product that deserves consideration as something new, rather than just playing spot-the-influence.<BR>
<BR>
<BR>
<BR>
As for the first American horror boom, the Universal years, look at the central figures: actors like Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, Lionel Atwill, George Zucco, Claude Rains, Basil Rathbone, directors like Tod Browning, Roy Neill, and James Whale, scriptwriter Curt Siodmak and his director brother Robert Siodmak, even Universal head man Carl Laemle Sr- all the big names, and every one of them European. Only Lon Chaney and the Carradines were American, so even the first great boom was heavily dependant upon European talent.<BR>
<BR>
<BR>
<BR>
Jim.<BR>
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<B><I>"J.sharp" <j.sharp@hpo.net></I></B> wrote:<BR>
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</FONT></SPAN><BLOCKQUOTE><SPAN STYLE='font-size:14.0px'><FONT FACE="Times">I think it is a mistake to analyse this in terms of a basic dichotomy<BR>
between East and West as represented by the two extremes of Japan and<BR>
Hollywood. Horror as a global cinematic genre has over its history received<BR>
inspiration from all sorts of diverse sources, and had a long and<BR>
interesting history long before Hollywood belatedly discovered how<BR>
profitable it could be with its coffee-table horros like Rosemary's Baby and<BR>
The Omen.<BR>
<BR>
<BR>
Firstly, horror is most certainly not an exclusively all-American genre. In<BR>
its most simple model, its literary origins, the writings of Stoker,<BR>
Shelley, Conan Doyle, Le Fanu et al are British or Irish (with the exception<BR>
of Poe). Its cinematic origins, the expressive use of light and shadow and<BR>
camera movement was brought by the Germans in films like Caligari, Faust and<BR>
Nosferatu. These elements were first combined and applied in a commercial<BR>
formula in the Universal films from the 1931 adaptations of Dracula,<BR>
Frankenstein and the Invisible Man onwards. But the first American horror<BR>
boom from Universal was pretty short, barely lasting into the 40s where it<BR>
came to an ignoble end with all those ridiculous House of Frankenstein type<BR>
mad monster conventions, where they'd throw in Dracula, the mummy, the<BR>
wolfman, Frankenstein and the rest of them into one 70-minute film. For the<BR>
50s, Hollywood was more concerned with paranoid "reds under the bed"<BR>
fantasies, with the Russians represented by flying saucers or giant<BR>
radioactive insects crawling around Arizona. Horror was effectively replaced<BR>
by science fiction in America after the war.<BR>
<BR>
But this I think makes the synchronous arrival of the groundbreaking genre<BR>
films of Terence Fisher at Hammer studios and Nobuo Nakagawa at Shintoho<BR>
all the more interesting.<BR>
Why did two countries at opposite sides of the world begin work in a genre<BR>
they had never really touched before (ok, there were British horrors in the<BR>
30s, but it was never a hugely successful market) but which was to become so<BR>
lucrative to their industries (albeit at different points in history). Part<BR>
of the answer is probably due to a relaxation in censorship after the war -<BR>
weren't horror films banned in the UK during the war?<BR>
<BR>
One thing that I have always been unclear on is the question of where Nobuo<BR>
Nakagawa's increasingly bloody Kaidan films like Ghost of Yotsuya were in<BR>
anyway influenced by Hammers films, or in other words, were Hammer films<BR>
ever released in Japan during the late 50s. I don't think they could have<BR>
been, because most of these works were being made at exactly the same time.<BR>
Its just a coincidence.<BR>
<BR>
Anyway, during the 60s horror was pretty much dominated by the Europeans -<BR>
mainly the Italians, Germans and British. America had a few notable<BR>
additions later on in the decade, namely Rosemary's Baby and Night of the<BR>
Living Dead, but for the most part its contributions were either forgotton<BR>
z-grade exploitation films for the drive-in market or in the case of Roger<BR>
Corman's Poe adaptations, emulations of European films.<BR>
<BR>
The Japanese horror film in the 60s boasts one interesting sounding title I<BR>
have never seen, entitled Ghost of the Hunchback / Kaidan Semushi Otoko<BR>
(1965), directed by Hajime Sato for Toei . The Aurum Encyclopedia of Horror<BR>
describes this as belonging to a gothic tradition then very prevalent in<BR>
Italy "with lighting and costumes and modelled on the gothic films of Mario<BR>
Bava and Antonio Margeriti". Could this really be true? Were Bava's films<BR>
released in Japan in the early 60s?<BR>
<BR>
So in other words, rather than looking at J-horror vis-a-vis American horror<BR>
traditions, its necessary to look at the whole picture and ask questions<BR>
like why did Italy start making horror films the same time as Britain and<BR>
Japan. Did these countries continue making horrorf films perhaps because<BR>
they were easy to sell to the American market? Which American, British,<BR>
Italian German or whatever horror films were actually screened in Japan<BR>
around the same time they were released?<BR>
<BR>
Regarding the second point, Nakata has never denied his influence from<BR>
Hollywood films, both in Videodrone, The Haunting, Poltergeist for the first<BR>
Ring, and Exorcist 2 in the second - he always in interviews cites these as<BR>
explicit influences. As the genre's strongest proponent in Japan, Kiyoshi<BR>
Kurosawa has very eclectic viewing habits for example, and I know that he is<BR>
as big a fan of Italian gothic films by the likes of Mario Bava as he is of<BR>
the work of Jean-Luc Godard, and he certainly watches a lot of American<BR>
horror too.<BR>
<BR>
<BR>
This is just my view of the complex picture to counter all these articles<BR>
about J-horror and threads I keep seeing on film websites to the effect of<BR>
"Japan is a new source of inspiration for Hollywood but thats ok because<BR>
they have been stealing ideas from Hollywood for decades".<BR>
<BR>
Any thoughts on this, anyone?<BR>
<BR>
Jasper<BR>
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