Derry, Northern Ireland

Derry, Northern Ireland
A book I'm working on is set in this town.

Saturday, April 27, 2013

Here we go...

Carli's taken over, and Zeke follows like a good puppy. She's dragged in a couple more characters -- college brats involved in the whole mess, and someone to bear witness at the end -- and it's all well and good. Means one more location, but that's it.

I'm finding it very easy to mingle both horror and revenge thriller. It's all just a matter of degrees and how much you care or do not care about the people involved. Maybe I'm starting a new genre -- Film Noir Slasher Suspense. Be interesting to see what happens once I start sending it out.

I'm digging through my whole repertoire of noir and revenge and suspense films, and coming up with some surprising ones for inspiration. Like Ingmar Bergman's "Virgin Spring." It's set in the Middle Ages, and a prosperous landowner's daughter is raped and murdered by some men, who then take refuge in his home from a storm. He slowly comes to realize what they've done, and his revenge is vicious. I think I'll watch it, again; it's been years...hell, decades.

I was heavy into Bergman and French New Wave and Italian Neo-Realism for so long...and still have great respect for it all...almost love. If you want to get a jolt from a classic Neo-Realist movie, watch "Roma, Citta Aperita" ("Rome, Open City"). It has two deaths in it that will send chills throughout your body. The same could be said for a murder-suicide in "La Dolce Vita" and a murder at the end of "Rules of the Game". The only time I've ever been shaken like that by a horror film was the French-Dutch version of "The Vanishing"...which was so real and so cold-blooded, it was too close to what could actually happen. I saw "Silence of the Lambs" a week later and was irritated by the artifice of it.

I guess that's why I don't get off on the horror films that come out of Hollywood or the indies. They're mostly silly setups with obnoxious characters you don't care about, and their sole purpose seems to be to find interesting ways to kill off good-looking kids. Hitchcock did some great ones because he understood the concept of guilt and used it. Compare the original "Psycho" with that ludicrous remake -- Janet Leigh's character is torn about taking the $40,000, all but forces herself to do it; in the remake, the character is all but humming, "We're in the Money".

So...I'll need to be wary of that. I want Carli's actions to be grounded in reality...and guilt...even as things become surreal. And she and I both know what she feels guilty about. And maybe a little crazed. And Zeke's the only one who grounds her over it.

So let's see what you got, bitch. (Just kidding, Carli; don't kill me.)

No comments: