had finally paid off. Thanks to good timing and
marketing, his $300,000 video game comedy JOY- STICKS (1983) hit #1 at the box office, but bad luck struck again when corrupt distributor Jensen- Farley went bankrupt under suspicious circum- stances, depriving Clark of over a million dollars in money owed. He also found out the hard way that
years of making exploitation fare like BLACK SHAM- POO (1976) and WITHOUT WARNING (1980) left him all-but-unemployable by the major studios. Luckily, Clark did have one associate he could fully trust: his wife, Jackie, who did everything from act- ing in his pictures to allowing their home to be re- peatedly mortgaged during a 20 year cycle of taking the available profits from one movie to launch the next one. However, as the video market shrank in the late 1980s, Clark’s budgets got smaller and smaller. The fall of the Iron Curtain briefly made Russia a desirable location for penny-pinching di- rectors in the early ’90s but, by the time he had to
try and craft the children’s sci-fi adventure film STAR GAMES (1998) for a measly $50,000 (with 3/5th of the budget going to star Tony Curtis, and his wife and two sons playing lead parts), even Clark decided it was time to throw in the towel.
Clark imparts in detail his ongoing challenges of finding suitable locations and dependable ac- tors, and the experience of working with crews in foreign lands. He also employed a number of people on their way up in the industry, such as ace cin-
ematographers Dean Cundey (SATAN’S CHEER- LEADERS) and Janusz Kaminski (MAD DOG COLL), and delivers engaging recollections of the many
veteran performers who graced his cast lists, offering some particularly good anecdotes about Jack Palance, Jan-Michael Vincent (already in the downward spiral of drugs and alcohol that destroyed his career) and Raymond Burr. One is left with a real feel for the era and the people in the business, as well as an appre- ciation of how tough it was in the analog era to shoot a film in 18 days and get a final edit locked down less than a week later. Clark provides far less information about his pictures in the various DVD commentar- ies he has done to date, so those interested would be better off skipping them and sticking with what are apparently the full facts, as presented here. As is often the case with Clark’s movies, the manuscript has a hastily-edited feel and there is some occasional sloppiness in the layout, as well as other minor gaffes. Only a single page of pic- tures is provided for each movie—a shame, as there are many memorable images and a great deal of ad art in circulation that would have enhanced the book’s appeal. That noted, fans of on-the-fly fare like FINAL JUSTICE (1985) and UNINVITED (1988)
are probably used to the seams showing and won’t
find this too much of an impediment. ON THE CHEAP can be ordered from the director’s website and other outlets. It is also available in a Kindle edition for $10.25.
SUBVERSIVE HORROR CINEMA COUNTERCULTURAL MESSAGES OF FILMS FROM FRANKENSTEIN TO THE PRESENT
By Jon Towlson
2014, McFarland & Company
www.mcfarlandpub.com Box 611, Jefferson NC 28640 246 pp., Softcover, $45.00 Reviewed by John-Paul Checkett
Horror has always been simultaneously the most conservative yet most disreputable of mainstream cinematic genres. Although traditionally considered a low subcultural form capable of exerting an un- healthy and corrupting influence on its viewers, the horror film tends, in fact, to promulgate an unre- lentingly reactionary subtext, privileging the famil- iar over the alien, caution over curiosity, and, most of all, normative procreative heterosexuality over its varied alternatives. In this sociocultural overview of the genre, British film journalist Jon Towlson main- tains that, despite horror’s conservative underpin- nings, there has always been a small subset of filmmakers who employ the horror film to challenge the status quo during times of cultural crisis. This “subversive school of horror,” he asserts, can be recognized by its antiauthoritarian stance (specifi- cally with regard to traditional patriarchal struc- tures), its sympathy for outcasts and outsiders, its unwillingness to reaffirm normative values, and its use of graphic, shocking material to jolt viewers into a reassessment of their fundamental beliefs. Over the course of ten chapters spanning eight decades, Towlson explores how filmmakers like Tod Browning, Michael Reeves, and the Soska sisters have intentionally and systematically challenged the cultural and political hegemony on issues as dis- parate as the eugenics movement of the 1930s, the Vietnam War, Reaganomics, and the “abstinence- only” sex-education mandate of the early 21st cen- tury. Readers intrigued by this provocative premise, however, will be disappointed to find that very few of the films discussed meet all of the author’s de- fining criteria, while those that do often evidence contradictions in tone that make them difficult to characterize as unwaveringly progressive, let alone subversive (a point that, in fairness, Towlson con- cedes). Thus, despite his determination to depict a cohesive cinematic movement with the power to alter
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