Shit Holidays

I’ve had a little wander around the world and come to the conclusion that a) holidays are expensive and b) most people suck wherever you go. I guess this makes me a grump, but I don’t believe I’m any different to you in that I’ve sometimes returned from a ‘relaxing’ vacation, glanced at my decreased savings and newly acquired frown lines and thought: Why the hell did I do that?

Take my five-month backpacking trip to Vietnam. I chose it over Thailand because I’d seen a lot of Nam flicks and fancied getting a firsthand flavour. Now Nam was cheap, hilariously cheap, but proved the most goddamn annoying spot on God’s fair Earth. The food routinely made me sick coz no one had the sense to wash their hands. Train stations and the like were crawling with the most infuriatingly persistent touts and hawkers. I have never seen so many rats in my life, one of which left droppings on my pillow. Towns and cities were sometimes overrun by 25cc mosquitoes (otherwise known as mopeds) that made it near-impossible to do something as straightforward as cross the road. And pretty much everyone was a scammer, thief or rip-off artist, the worst example being a bus driver getting loudly abusive after I rejected his attempt to charge seventeen times what the natives were paying.

Now I understand Nam is one of the world’s poorest countries and I did try to grasp the oft-grinding poverty, but that didn’t give the locals the right to treat me like a walking wallet they could dip into anytime they pleased. They were a bunch of racist bastards, happy to cheat ‘rich’ whitey whenever possible. Generally speaking, you don’t go on holiday to get into fights but I had two, including one that put me in hospital. Here I was given a happy shot, instructed to lie on some cardboard on the pube-ridden floor, and had to watch in bemusement as a doctor wedged his foot in my armpit and pulled on my limb to fix a dislocated shoulder as thirty-odd locals (who’d apparently wandered in off the street) encircled me, pointed and laughed.

The end result of my vacation? I still watch a lot of Nam flicks, although these days I can’t help smiling whenever a beautiful cloud of Agent Orange is released or a village put to the sword.

Saying all that, and although I will bag Vietnam until the day I die, it’s clear lots of movie folk endure a far worse time on holiday than lickle ol’ me. There but for the grace of God…

The Hills Have Eyes (1977)

The Christian, slightly dumb Carter family is on a road trip to L.A., partly to celebrate the parents’ silver wedding anniversary. Their pretty blonde daughter might be hoping for ‘fancy cars and movie stars’, but first they’re going off the beaten track to find a silver mine. And as we all know, detours are never a good idea in horror movies. Cue local old coot at a service station warning: “Don’t take your family in there. Silver’s been gone forty years now… You folks stay on the main road, y’hear?”

Instead they head for a spot that appears to be bordered by a nuclear testing site, an aircraft gunnery range, and nowhere. In other words, a perfect place for baby-stealing, dog-eating mutants to hide out. Craven keeps ‘the pack’ off-screen for quite a while, although we hear them murmuring about ‘easy pickings’ once the Carters split up to seek help after wrecking their station wagon and trailer.

The influential Hills doesn’t pull most of its punches, but is hampered by mediocre acting and patches of weak writing. The family’s head is a former detective by the name of Big Bob (Russ Grieve). A wannabe Tough Cop, he’s got twenty-five years’ experience “in the worst goddamn precinct in Cleveland” but quickly disintegrates into a Silly Girly while his son Bobby (Robert Houston) mysteriously delays telling the others about the not-inconsequential matter of their dog being slaughtered. Neither does Bobby think it wise to post a guard outside the caravan when he knows hostile forces are nearby. “Something weird’s going on around here,” is about the best he can manage. Perhaps those tight shorts he favours have interfered with the blood flow to his brain. No matter, for at least the Carters’ surviving Alsatian behaves in an intelligent and proactive manner as it strives to become head of the rapidly dwindling family.

Wes Craven’s sophomore effort is probably his second-best flick and a distinct improvement over Last House on the Left in terms of professionalism and artistic quality. Both share the same focus – rape, torture, the destruction of life by a merciless, non-supernatural force and an equally savage revenge – but his latter Texas Chain Saw-tinged effort manages to build tension and hold the interest.

The Slayer (1982)

Despite landing on the arse-end of the video nasty list, The Slayer is not your average, mindless slasher. It’s an atmospheric, slow-burn horror pic with appealing cinematography and some dollops of gore.

Kay (Sarah Kendall) is a painter, but her newfound success is not bringing any peace of mind. Since childhood, she’s been plagued by nightmares, convinced someone or something occasionally emerges from them and does bad things. She, of course, gets the blame. A vacation with her hubby, brother and his missus on a small island off the coast of Georgia beckons. Surely one week in all that fresh air amid the lovely scenery will do the trick?

The pill-popping Kay is my kind of movie chick in that she’s neurotic, repressed and fragile. Upon stepping foot upon the phone-free, otherwise uninhabited island, she’s cryptically told by the aeroplane pilot: “This island is the kind of place people dream about.” Such a remark doesn’t settle her nerves, especially as she feels she’s already visited. Her déjà vu intensifies when she sees a long-abandoned theatre, convinced she’s not long painted it. Soon she’s dreaming about waking up next to hubby’s severed head. Her response is to adopt an expression of impending doom and try to stay awake as a storm closes in on their holiday hideaway…

The eerie, pre-Krueger Slayer might feature some slasher clichés, such as characters idiotically wandering around in the dark on their tod, but it does boast one outstanding, pitchfork-based kill that bears the hallmarks of Tom Savini’s best work. It also possesses a fair degree of intelligence and is open to interpretation, making me suspect that the island’s house represents her psyche. However, its groovy titular monster gets short-changed even worse than Mr. Barlow in Salem’s Lot.

Race with the Devil (1975)

Plausibility always helps underpin a movie’s enjoyment, but sometimes it strangely doesn’t matter. The events depicted in Race’s nightmare vacation are daft in the extreme yet I’d have to give it the ol’ thumbs up.

Roger and Frank (Peter Fonda and Warren Oates) own a successful Texan motorcycle business but have been working themselves into the ground. They decide it’s time to take off with their wives in their impressive mobile home for a much-needed Aspen ski trip. “Here’s to the best damn vacation we may ever have in our lives,” Frank says while raising a glass of wine to his travel companions in an isolated spot they’ve just parked at. Two minutes later they disturb some nocturnal chanting Satanists dancing around a fire who happen to be sacrificing a virgin. They manage to get away, but the chase is well and truly on…

Given its lack of explicit nastiness, Race often feels like a TV movie. It takes its cue from Rosemary’s Baby, but extends the conspiracy of devil worshippers to what seems like an entire state. We learn nothing about these one-note crazy cats, except they don’t like being spied upon. Their actions are also illogical, often pretending to be friendly and then nasty, a pattern of behaviour that loses them the chance to effectively strike. Race, however, makes up for its deficiencies by being nicely paced and containing the odd gripping scene, such as a rattler attack. It also decides late on to become a full-on action flick during a prolonged sequence that must have provided George Miller at least some of the inspiration for Mad Max 2.

Castaway (1986)

Would you fancy being stuck on an uninhabited tropical island for a year with a burly, middle-aged and distinctly horny Ollie Reed? For that’s the situation the voluptuous Amanda Donohoe finds herself in during this upside-down version of The Blue Lagoon.

She sees his magazine ad for a companion at the beginning of 1981 and perhaps bored of working in the tax office and mindful of the UK’s sometimes appalling crime, she decides to apply.

Brave girl.

For she’s about to go on what she calls “the ultimate blind date.” Not that it involves any nookie. Once on the island she shuts up shop, sending the blue-balled Ollie mad with frustration, especially as he’s confronted by the tantalising sight of her unclad curves day after sun-drenched day. The poor sod can’t even seek solace in the pub.

Ollie is twice her age, but Amanda appears more repulsed by his laziness. “Useless! Hopeless! Thoughtless!” she screams at him during one of their many squabbles. Well, she does have a point. After six-odd months he hasn’t even managed to build a proper shelter, preferring to smoke, recite bawdy limericks and wander off by himself. It’s clear he’s the immature one, happy to lie around all day. When she asks what he thinks about, he replies: “My brain is like my prick. It goes up and down of its own accord and sometimes it explodes with excitement. And when you see it lying there doing nothing at all, you’d be surprised at what it’s capable of thinking.” All he wants is a “screw and a cold beer”, believing he’d be able to found a new religion on the island if he got them. Instead, he’s left scraping unappetising winkles off rocks for food and watching his infected, sore-ridden legs continue to deteriorate.

Director Nicolas Roeg peaked in the early seventies with the one-two of Walkabout and Don’t Look Now before enduring a fairly miserable 1980s. The overlong Castaway is a mood piece lacking in narrative drive that wasn’t particularly well received, although it attracted a lot of tabloid attention. However, it contains Roeg’s standard quirks and surreal touches, such as Ollie sporting blue eye shadow at one point and a shark tearing at some bait as he forcibly kisses his maddeningly unobtainable companion. And as you’d expect, there’s lovely cinematography. I see Castaway as a spiritual successor to the superior Walkabout, but just as I wouldn’t fancy being stranded in the Outback I’d also pass on the chance of sharing a tropical island with malnutrition, the odd bout of poisoning, and an independently-minded prick tease.

Who can Kill a Child? (1976)

Tom and Evelyn (Lewis Flander & Prunella Ransome) are a happy, likeable English couple on holiday in Spain, but the heaving streets and packed-out hotels force them to seek a more sedate locale. After all, Evelyn is pregnant with their third child. “If you’re looking for quietness, here is where you’ll find it,” a tourist guide tells them while pointing to the tiny island of Almanzora on a map. It’s a no-brainer to flee the teeming mainland, especially as a murdered woman has just floated ashore. And so they hire a little boat to undertake the four-hour journey. Once there, it’s pretty much deserted.

Or to be more accurate, apparently devoid of adults…

In 1980’s barmy The Children a bunch of kids turned into zombified, black fingernailed killers after coming into contact with nuclear waste. Four years later the achingly dull Children of the Corn pinned the blame for the sudden slaughter of adults on a newfound religion, but this Spanish shocker conjures up the daftest explanation of all. Its opening titles are laid over a lengthy montage of real-life horror that takes in everything from emaciated victims of Nazism being bulldozed into a pit and that naked, napalm-burned Vietnamese girl running along the road to starving, fly-ridden kids in Nigeria and maimed, pre-pubescent Korean War survivors. Adults, you see, have been fucking over kids in ever greater numbers since day one. It’s time for a bit of well-deserved payback.

This grainy intro is both wildly misjudged and boldly memorable, especially as it’s intercut with bursts of children giggling and lackadaisically singing. To be fair, director Narciso Ibanez Serrador does attempt to build on it by including footage of Thailand’s 1976 violent collapse being shown on a shopkeeper’s TV. “As always,” the merchant says to Tom and Evelyn, “the most affected by the conflict are the children.” This take on things doesn’t make much sense. Children might not grasp what’s going on when violent conflict arrives, but I’m pretty sure adults get shot, starved and blown up just as easily and in far greater numbers. And why would a collective sense of juvenile injustice at the way those beastly grownups run the world spring up on a tranquil, isolated Spanish island? What’s more, why target Tom and Evelyn? They sure as hell aren’t the bloody problem.

No matter, for Who Can Kill a Child? works. It has a leisurely build-up, taking almost half an hour to plonk Tom and Evelyn on the barely populated island. Once there it turns into a well-directed exercise in piecing the puzzle together. The horror is subtly indicated, such as Tom getting supplies from a supermarket unaware of a corpse on the floor in the next aisle. Eventually, they find a traumatised survivor, only to be told: “It was as if all the children on the island had awakened… And they entered the houses as if it were a party… And soon you could hear the screams.”

In common with the 1970 British horror flick And Soon the Darkness almost everything on Almanzora takes place in bright sunshine. The children neither have a leader nor are consistently aggressive; most of the time they run away or stare stony-faced. Tom can only surmise about the nonsensical situation he’s up against as an ‘evolutionary development’, but plausibility is not this movie’s strength, especially as he’s so hopeless he struggles to even arm himself. Instead it’s better to enjoy the unsettling ambience, such as a bunch of boys curiously pulling the clothes off a recently murdered Dutch woman, the suggestion that the kids’ affliction can be telepathically passed on, and the tremendous descent into grim, uncompromising madness. You won’t find a better example of a movie holding its nerve.

Wolf Lake (1979) aka Honor Guard

(Two versions of this uncompromising flick exist. Avoid the one with the flash-forwards).

It’s amazing how many American films are haunted by the spectre of Nam. The well-directed Wolf Lake adds to the tally as a bunch of World War Two veterans take umbrage when they discover the caretaker of the Canadian wilderness cabins they’ve just rented is a Vietnam deserter. The chief dissenter is Charlie (Rod Steiger), a boorish, opinionated prick that calls David (David Huffman) a ‘bearded lady’ even before he finds out about his shady past. Upon meeting the man’s defensive, slightly unbalanced girlfriend she slaps his face, prompting him to smack her back and add: “You’re a real bitch, aren’t you?”

Things never recover. Sycophantic Wilbur (Jerry Hardin), who has remained under the domineering Charlie’s thumb since their Marine days, warns the stubborn, none-too-bright David to leave. “I know him,” he says of Charlie, “and there’s no telling what he’ll do.”

Wolf Lake generates a quietly simmering menace through its effective score, good performances, biting dialogue and the use of its isolated location. The nasty events are built on a solid script as it examines a wide variety of meaty topics including the generational clash, machismo, friendship, the adolescent nature of men, the link between alcohol and violence, patriotism, trauma and the cancerous nature of deeply imbedded grief.

And to think the guys’ vacation started so well. They land on the titular body of water in a seaplane and can’t wait to unpack and get on with their duck hunting. “When I come up here,” Charlie says, looking around at the beautiful countryside, “I forget all my problems. This is God’s country.”

But that’s how holidays tend to start, isn’t it? There’s always the promise.

DAVE FRANKLIN

This excerpt is from Dave Franklin’s very rude Ice Dog Movie Guide.

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