#I can’t imagine living through the events of a slasher film then having to do an odd 6 months of school | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ojcobsessed · 3 years

Photo

oliver jackson-cohen for flaunt magazine, by jessica romoff, july 2019

***

The first horror movie I ever saw was The Exorcist on my grandmother’s RCA console TV, midnight on Christmas Eve. My grandmother is a Catholic Portuguese woman who was devout to cross stitching and Jesus Christ, resulting in crucifixes nailed into every wall of the living room. So, as every flash and jolt from the TV screen would animate the tortured figurines with chilling white light, I prepared in panic and thrill for each one to flip upside down.

Not only did this movie ignite my passionate love for horror, but actor Oliver Jackson Cohen’s passion as well. Mine lead me to accumulating random 70’s slasher movie memorabilia and sporadic nightmares, while Cohen’s lead him to eventually being the star of hit Netflix horror miniseries The Haunting of Hill House as his character Luke Crain, with a few nightmares as well. The 10 episode show is a modern reimagining of Shirley Jackson’s novel “Hill House” and follows the Crain family during the summer they lived in the haunted home, and flashes forward on their lives decades after the tragic events.

During a phone interview with him, I learned Cohen is much more than just a dedicated actor with a jawline that can cut glass; Cohen is a whirlpool of empathy, an artist who gushes his heart into everything he does, and demands that his character Luke, and those battling with similar struggles, are portrayed more than just their addiction.

With your role in last season, I was really impressed by how you portrayed a character with drug addiction, and how you refrained from making him a stereotypical, one dimensional person - and I was wondering how you avoided leaning on this cliche when approaching Luke?

Thank you, number one, I think we all have seen drug addicts portrayed in movies and tv shows before. Most of the time, they are always portrayed as their addiction, and I don’t think that’s very true for anyone who knows anyone who has substance abuse problems; there is actually a fucking person there. So it was very clear from the get-go that I had a responsibility to present a fully formed human being, and they actually brought in a specific writer to write Luke’s character- who was a heroin addict in recovery. I said to Mike, the director and creator of the show - before we even started that it’s very important that Luke is the sum of all his parts and is not just his addiction. So I think that the way I approached it, is that when I first began doing all the research and the pre-work before we started filming, I started looking at documentaries, because I had never done heroin before, so I thought, Oh I’ll start looking at documentaries - but then I realized quite early on that that was putting a judgement on him. And I don’t think it’s fair - because behind anyone who has fallen into this trap is someone who is deeply struggling. And I felt it - I felt a huge amount of, not pressure, but a need to show the person behind the addiction and show the person who is actually struggling, and why he had become an addict. So I focused on that - so I spent no time whatsoever seeing Lucas as a drug addict; I saw him as someone who was struggling to come to terms with everything that he had experienced and happened in his life. And so I focused on anyone who is trying to numb themselves, that know they’re running away from something. So I built up the terror of that, instead of focusing on “I need my fix.”

Was there something that happened in your own life, that was out of your control and not your fault, but regardless someone judged you because of that - perhaps driving your connection to Luke’s character?

Oh 100 percent, and that’s what is so interesting, because I don’t have a substance abuse problem - but I think that out of all the characters I have ever played in the past 10 years, there’s the most of me in Luke. Like, all of that stuff of just trying to function, and the vulnerability, and just trying to be normal, and being so ashamed - all of that is my own shit, and so [laughs] I didn’t need to be a heroin addict to understand the pain that he was going through, so, so much. I think it’s incredible getting to play someone like that because, in a weird way it felt like therapy - I was able to go to work everyday and just be all the parts of myself. I think it’s interesting as well for men, there’s this whole thing about having to be a certain way, having to always be strong, and I think inherently a lot of people do feel incredibly fragile. So all of that stuff of Luke is me, and my stuff, and I didn’t have to pretend - I just got to go to work and be as vulnerable as I feel. You know we all have incredibly complicated lives and incredibly complicated upbringings, and I used all of my stuff: I was diagnosed with PTSD a couple of years ago so all of that is in there with Luke - and it felt incredibly cathartic to be able to kind of put it all out there and be there.

When your work is something that is so emotionally rigorous, and strenuous, it must be very draining dedicating yourself to a character who is really struggling his whole life - How do you unwind and decompress from this intensity?

[Laughs] I….you know what, I’m not very good at it. I feel like I’m one of those people, I’m sort of with the school of thought that you either go to work and you fucking do it - and you do it for real, or go home. I’m not into this whole I’ll just pretend! thing, so it’s probably not the healthiest way of working. But I feel it’s necessary, and then I don’t know how to handle it. There were a couple of days on set where specifically we were filming all of Luke’s episodes or the stuff where he’s sort of roaming the streets - that got way too intense. We would rap at 6 am and I would go back to my house and sleep for a bit, and then wake up and just be so out of sorts: I would have to call people at home to reassure me that everything was okay.

I imagine the intensity can be overwhelming

Yeah, I mean, it sounds really wonky - but I think that when you’re messing around with stuff like that, and you’re tricking your brain into thinking something is real, and then on top of that you’re drawing from your own personal well of shit that probably should be kept untouched - it’s gonna be messy at times. So yeah, it gets… it did get a little hairy. But again I felt that it was important - and I think all of us across the board in the cast felt that it was so important to do that - to give Luke a voice. And what’s been so interesting when the show came out, it was so overwhelming, the response, specifically from people that have struggled with addiction. And it was so warming to hear these stories from people, so I think it was necessary for all of us as actors to go to those dark parts of ourselves, and put that out on screen.

Is there something that you wish you knew before you began acting in a horror TV series? Or about a TV series with intense family drama with horror influence?

Hm..I don’t know. Just… it’s all good. [laughs] it’s gonna be all good.

Honestly, that’s pretty solid universal advice. And I was wondering, are you a fan of horror in general?

Yes! Huge

And is this a genre that you want to continue with?

Yes, I had never done anything horror before, so this was a dream. I remember I watched The Exorcist when I was like eight or something, and it completely terrified me - and I still to this day have nightmares about it. I think what’s so clever about horror, and I think specifically with what Mike has done on our show, it becomes a metaphor for something else. So specifically with Hill House, if you take away the house and all the ghosts and all the horror elements, it’s about childhood trauma. So you can swap out what all those kids went through, the horror they experienced, can be swaped out for sexual abuse, or physical abuse, or anything like that. So you manage to kind of navigate all of these horrific things we kind of don’t want to look at, in the veil of ghosts, so it becomes palatable for an audience. I never knew this, Netflix told me this, that horror is the most watched genre in the whole world.

Really!?

Across the board, yeah! I thought it would be comedy. But that’s why Netflix made the show. Because they realized that actually there was such a massive market for horror. So yeah, a really long winded answer to your short question - yes I was a fan of horror, I always have been.

Me too! I’ve never thought about how horror can be a metaphor for trauma. That’s so fascinating. Just one last question - I know that you can’t say too much about the second season… right? Or they’ll shoot you.

Right [laughs]

So, see if you can answer this: if Season 1 and Season 2 were mythical creatures, what would they be?

[Laughs] What would they be… ahhh...I genuinely don’t know how to answer that question. They’re both just beasts from the darkest corners of our minds. Season 1…. Uh… what I can say - is that season 1 I believe was amazing, and with what they’re doing with season 2 is even…. More incredible.

#oliver jackson cohen #oliver jackson-cohen #peter quint #luke crain #haunting of bly manor #haunting of hill house #2019 #tw: childhood trauma #ptsd

98 notes · View notes

imaginedmelody · 4 years

Text

I just watched both “IT” movies this week and I have some Feelings.

I know, I’m 2 years and 4 months late to this fandom, respectively- but I spent the last few weeks trying to convince myself that I like horror generally (and Stephen King, specifically) enough to watch these movies, and now I have and I can’t get them out of my head. I already screamed about this on twitter, but I need to do it in more detail here, too. In short, my response was this:

It is very rare that a movie is exactly what you hoped it would be.

These two movies were.

(Spoilers under the break)

I’ve started coming to terms with the fact that I really like horror as a genre, in the last couple of years. It’s not something that I typically associate with myself, partially because I do have some limits in terms of things that disturb me too much to watch, and partially because the horror of the thing itself is not what makes me interested in the genre. I don’t want the primary emotion I feel when watching a horror movie to be dread, ironic as that sounds. I need it to have humanity and heart. But I had sworn off the genre in my mind because I believed those things were rarities in the horror canon.

Of course, that’s not true. It may mean that I’m never gonna be a fan of super-bloody slasher movies, and that I can rule out some horror whose only real purpose is to scare you and make you jump...but there’s a wealth of great stuff out there that doesn’t fit that description. And Stephen King is one of the best at it. I’ve liked his TV and film work since I was in my early teens- not just classics like The Shining, but less iconic work like Rose Red (which I still own on DVD), Storm of the Century, and that short-lived Kingdom Hospital TV series. And I had heard amazing things about the novel of IT, although I don’t think I’m going to have time to read a 1000+ page book like that anytime soon. So I should have known I would like it, even though I had studiously convinced myself that I wouldn’t until fandom exposure piqued my interest enough to push me through that door.

I did ultimately like the first movie better, but not by much. The first movie definitely feels like a flash in the pan gem of horror, but even when it’s brutal and scary, it still feels lighter because of the kids, and both the hope and the humor they bring to the film. (A 7-person friend group that incessantly bickers with one another is probably the most accurate depiction of childhood I can imagine.) The second movie is longer, and sadder too- more bittersweet and melancholy. But I think it has to be. It makes sense for a movie about people returning as adults to confront an evil they thought they’d vanquished as kids to be heavier and sadder. Though I enjoyed it a bit less, I thought it was exactly the movie it needed to be to convey the second part of this story. I don’t think I would have wanted it to feel any different.

I think what’s clever about the way the story of IT is told is that, while Derry has an outbreak of brutality and evil every 27 years, the curse of the town pervades during the in-between time as well. It poisons the people of the town even when it’s not actively killing children. That darkness simmers in them and makes them cruel. We see that in the adults the kids encounter, who are often ugly people even when a monster isn’t lurking in the shadows- Bev’s dad abuses her, Eddie’s mom gaslights him into thinking he’s sick to keep him reliant on her, Stan’s dad shames him for not being the perfect rabbi’s son when he struggles preparing for his bar mitzvah. Even Bill’s dad seems distant and critical of his son (although that may be partially due to grief over Georgie’s disappearance).

We see that impulse beginning in the other kids in town, too. Bowers is obviously most affected by It’s provocations toward gruesome violence, but the non-Losers that we meet are mostly all bullies too, and we don’t get the sense this is a new pattern of behavior. The darkness of the town is already working on them. They’re starting to become the monsters that many of the adults already are. Now, I’m not saying that these same sorts of behaviors don’t exist outside of Derry, but I’d argue that what makes the Losers so well equipped to defeat It is not just that they left the town and were therefore free from It’s influence. It’s that the other adults let the evil corrupt them. But the Losers made a promise not to look the other way.

This is why Mike is able to remain uncorrupted even though he stays in Derry. The childhood innocence of the Losers is what allows them to defeat Pennywise the first time- but it’s their grown-up selves refusing to allow evil to persist, vowing to come back and defeat it and then keeping that promise, that takes It down for good.

If they hadn’t made that blood pact as kids, they might have continued to forget the events of 1989 forever. The evil might never have been defeated. But as Bev says, it would have eventually killed all of them. They all die, and die alone, if they don’t come back to fight. Because that’s what evil does, if we don’t look it in the face and promise to stop it.

Anyway, as you might have guessed, I loved the movies. They had exactly the kind of emotional resonance, beyond just depicting brutality and scares, that I wanted so badly. This series scratched an itch I didn’t even know I had. I definitely want to go back and watch them a second time, and I welcome anyone who wants to come by and chat about them.

(Also, I’m glad I was exposed to some spoilers via checking sites like DoesTheDogDie for triggers, and for spoilery gifsets and fanvideos for getting me interested- because it meant that I knew which two characters get killed off, and I was able to yell “FUCK YOU!!!” loudly at the screen every time either movie foreshadowed their deaths. Which was QUITE A FEW TIMES. At the end of the first movie, when Stan and Eddie are the first two we see leaving the circle after the blood pact? I SCREAMED.)

#it movie #it (2017)#it chapter two #it (2019)#it chapter two spoilers #imaginedmelody writes meta #as if i needed another fandom right now lol

2 notes · View notes

analogscum · 6 years

Text

BLOODY MOON (1981, d. Jess Franco)

You can lobby a lot of criticisms at Jess Franco, and I say that as a fan of his films. Detractors have labeled him a pornographer, a misogynist, a con man, and the devil incarnate. However, when you consider the man behind the work, I can’t help but admire his integrity. Franco could’ve easily coasted his entire career, doing the sort of weirdo Hammer knock-offs that he first made his name with. But he left it all behind, moving to France to escape the censorship of his native Spain, while also foregoing the cushy budgets and box office grosses that he had enjoyed. Yes, he gave this all up to make twisted tales of bondage nuns and lesbian vampires full of gratuitous nudity and S&M, often inspired by his obsession with the works of the Marquis de Sade, which may not strike you as all that noble. But Franco’s dedication to his craft above all else embodies what I love about cult cinema: as I discussed in the Hard Rock Zombies entry, these movies were made by people who stuck to their artistic guns, no matter how noncommercial they were. Above all else, Jess Franco cared about making Jess Franco films. At least for awhile.

Even without knowing the behind the scenes story of today’s film, 1981’s Bloody Moon, you can probably tell just by watching it that this was a money for hire job. Enticed by Wolf Hartwig and Erich Tomek, a pair of German producers with some lofty promises and bucketloads of cash — which were probably very enticing at the time, given the fact that he and his first wife, Nicole Guettard, had just divorced — Franco gave in to the zeitgeist, signing on to craft an American-style teen slasher film for the German marketplace, if you can imagine such a thing. However, it didn’t quite work out that way. To watch Bloody Moon is to watch an idiosyncratic auteur thumb his nose at a genre that he obviously sees as hopelessly formulaic, while also injecting a heaping dose of breathy Eurosleaze into the proceedings, almost as if he can’t help it. In other words, Franco gonna Franco.

We open on, what else, a disco dancing party. Miguel, a Klaus Kinski-looking creepoid with a huge facial scar that resembles fried chicken, is looking at his sister all weird. His sister, Manuela, is like, yo don’t look at me like that, I’m your sister, so yeah, the movie goes THERE immediately. Bummed out over being rejected by his sister, Miguel steals a Mickey Mouse mask and starts to mack on a lady who’s not a blood relative. She invites him back to her bungalow for some horizontal bedroom dancing, but when she takes off his Mickey Mouse mask, she’s, shall we say, less than enthused about Miguel’s fried chicken face. Oh, and she thought that he was her boyfriend, so this is basically how that gag (with like twelve quotation marks around the word gag) from Revenge of the Nerds would turn out in real life. Miguel is also, shall we say, less than enthused by this young lady’s screaming, so he stabs her a bunch of times with a pair of scissors. Glad to see we’ve come so far in terms of dealing with toxic masculinity!

Cut to: five years later. A doctor, played by Jess Franco himself, is like, hey Manuela, your brother is way less murder crazy now, so I’m going to release him into your care, just make sure he’s spared from any sort of excitement, like the constant temptation of having nubile young co-eds around to murder, anyway, byeeeee! Well, oopsies, because as it turns out, Miguel and Manuela live with their invalid billionaire aunt, who leases her land out to an organization called the International Youth Club Boarding School for Languages (you graduate when you’re able to say the name of the school without getting tripped up), which is crawling with gorgeous buh-buh-buh-baaaaaabes who are always dancing sexily and lounging topless around the pool when they’re not learning Spanish for like 5 minutes a day. Great. Things nearly go to hell immediately when, on the train home, Miguel becomes fixated on a young lady named Angela, and when Manuela sees a silk scarf stuck in the window, she somehow thinks that Miguel pushed her out of the train while her back was turned for two seconds. But then Angela gets up, and explains, to these two total strangers, that she had just dropped something on the floor and was bending down to pick it up. This is going somewhere. Cue the next paragraph!

Easily the biggest problem with this movie is the dialogue. This is the rare movie that manages to both show AND tell at the same time, as if we the audience were complete dummies. Characters are constantly talking about their relationships to one another, or narrating events that just happened seconds ago. And the dubbing in this movie…good gravy. Every character talks almost nonstop, no matter what the situation, whether they’re together or alone, in these breathless, dramatically overwrought monologues, delivered at a furious clip, full of the most flowery language. It sounds as though the movie was dubbed by some alien computer technology whose language database consisted of nothing but quotes from John Waters movies.

So as it turns out, Angela is heading to the language school to join her friends in sexy hijinks, but whoops, she has to live in the bungalow where Miguel went all scissor-happy back in the day. And gosh, wouldn’t you know it, but as soon as Miguel makes the scene at this school again, people start turning up dead. Good news, though: this movie delivers on the kills. We get to see the mean old invalid aunt get burned alive in her bed, one of Angela’s friends gets stabbed in the back and the knife pokes out through her nipple, another friend is choked by some sort of like bear trap thing, and then there’s the coup de grace, when yet another friend is beheaded by a giant circular saw. Hell yeah. On the other hand, there’s a really cruel, unnecessary scene in which a snake is beheaded by a pair of garden shears. Leave the critters alone!

For whatever reason, no one believes Angela when she’s like yo all of my friends are being murdered, because she, uh, is reading a murder mystery novel, so it must be all in her imagination? It makes no sense, but then again Angela doesn’t exactly endear herself to us by running around all over creation having a nervous breakdown. I know they can’t all be Ellen Ripley, but cheese and crackers, cut the damsel in distress act, woman! Along the way, we hit all of the major slasher plot moments: the killer POV shots, the jumping cat fakeout scare, the last girl stumbling upon the intricately posed corpses of her friends, etc. You can practically feel Franco smirking each time a scene like this happens. This leads to a final act straight out of a giallo movie, full of crazy twists and double crosses and escalating violence.

And then there is the soundtrack. One lofty promise made by Hartwig & Tomek to Franco was that Pink Floyd were slated to provide the film’s soundtrack. Yes, THAT Pink Floyd. Why Franco would believe that these German snake oil salesmen had corralled the biggest rock band in the world at the time to do a soundtrack for their no-budget horror flick I honestly don’t know. The music was eventually done by an Austrian gentleman named Gerhard Heinz, and Franco has gone on record saying it is his least favorite part of the film. However, I quite enjoy it. There is a great variety of motifs and sounds, from lounge exotica to demonic strings to Stockhausen style bleeps and bloops. And then of course, there is the film’s main theme, which does indeed sound like something that could’ve conceivably been an outtake from the Wish You Were Here sessions.

To wrap up my take on Bloody Moon, I wanna cede the floor to the master himself. Click here to watch an excellent, highly entertaining interview with Franco, shot in his home for Severin’s DVD release of the film from 2007. Beginning in charming fashion with second wife and collaborative muse Lina Romay grabbing her purse and leaving for the afternoon, Franco chain smokes about a thousand cigarettes and regals us with many an entertaining anecdote from behind the scenes of Bloody Moon, including the one promise the producers did keep to him (casting Olivia Pascal as Angela), the true identity of mysterious screenwriter “Rayo Casablanca” (co-producer Erich Tomek), the fact that he indeed did treat the film as more of a tongue-in-cheek venture (much to the producers’ chagrin), and the horrifying and inaccurate title the film was saddled with for its release in Spain (get ready for it…Raped College Girls. Yikes!) It’s sad to watch the interview knowing that Franco would only be with us for another five years. But that’s the thing with artists as prolific and driven as he was: it will take a lifetime to digest the twisted feast that is his body of work. We may have covered an outlier today, but perhaps it’s enough to get you started on exploring the sumptuous, problematic, bizarre, and wonderful world of Jess Franco.

youtube

5 notes · View notes