Posts tagged horror
Far Voyages — Lovecraftian Themes in ‘Beyond The Black Rainbow’
212 years ago
by Scott R Jones
in Reviews
Director: Panos Cosmatos
Starring: Eva Allan, Michael Rogers, Scott Hylands
I first heard of Panos Cosmatos’ Beyond the Black Rainbow from someone on my twitter feed. I’m sure this happens a lot, with the exchange proceeding along the following lines…
Person A tweets: “Beyond the Black Rainbow… #WTF did I just watch?” Persons B through L then offer up their various fevered interpretations of a film that, thankfully, resists and confounds interpretations as much as it invites them.
The best response I ever read went a little something like this: “Beyond the Black Rainbow is your standard Boy meets Girl, Boy enters the Void and returns with knowledge that cannot be contained by a human mind, Boy rips Girl’s throat out with his teeth, Boy obsesses over Girl’s telekinetic daughter in a Black-Ops MK Ultra-esque research facility with psychic androids. You know, same old, same old.”
The film is deliberately, even meticulously, styled after the straight-to-VHS shock-horror films of the early 80s that graced the shelves of your local video rental joint. You could call it an homage, except that Cosmatos has gone far beyond that call and entered into a realm of deeply realized hyper-nostalgia, insisting upon fully analog period-compatible production methods in both his visuals and the soundtrack (brilliantly executed by Jeremy Schmidt of Vancouver BC’s Black Mountain). The film recalls and references 2001: A Space Odyssey, Altered States, Scanners, and THX 1138, among many others. It genuinely feels like it was made in the year the film is set in, 1983; made and then lost to obscurity, buried in some failed video distributors back-catalogue, only to be exhumed and made available again nearly thirty years later.
And, surging below the obvious cinematic influences of Kubrick, John Carpenter, and Michael Mann is the nighted existentialism of our man Lovecraft.
Beyond the Black Rainbow is Lovecraftian to the core. If we live on the shores of a black sea of infinity, then this film is a primer for what happens when we piece together dissociated knowledge and voyage far, against all reason and rationality, upon those seas.
Dr Mercurio Arboria (Scott Hylands) is the founder and head of the Arboria Institute, a quasi-mystical therapeutic facility utilizing a New Age-y mish-mash of techniques such as neuro-psychology and “energy sculpting”, hypnosis and “benign pharmacology” to help people attain “happiness, contentment, inner peace.” A tone-perfect promotional video for the Institute opens the film and immediately we can smell the hubris coming off the screen: this man, and anyone associated with him, is clearly about to venture into dangerous territories.
A note about plot: the same old same old summary above is as succinct as anything I could write here, but if I’m going to claim an HPL influence, some details (which will not spoil the film, guaranteed!) will be necessary. Halfway through the film, we are taken in flashback (using an arresting, visually blown-out photography effect that is migraine-like in its intensity) to the traumatic event that is the source of the later horrors: the young Dr Nyle (Michael Rogers) is Dr Arboria’s test pilot for an experimental drug used in conjunction with a thoroughly unsettling-looking sensory-deprivation tank that is, basically, a circular pool of black muck into which he descends. Dr Arboria, assisted by his young wife, urge Nyle to “bring back the mother lode” and the younger doctor does, in spades.
Using macro-photography techniques, analog smoke and water effects, jarring lighting contrasts and a very effective hollow maquette of the actor’s head, we experience Nyle’s takeover by a hostile, nameless force. The scene is reminiscent of some of the more hallucinatory images from Ken Russel’s Altered States. Scored with a droning, oppressive track that features heavy Mellotron use, the possession is claustrophobic, horrifying, and all the more so for what we imagine is occurring to the victim. Every terrible thing possible pours into his head like sentient smoke and we are sickened as much by the unknowable (by us) terror of it as we are by the aftermath. Nyle emerges from the pool and commits a monstrous act…
The good Dr Arboria, by now at least half-way insane if not fully, seeks to mitigate the awfulness of his loss by baptizing his now motherless infant daughter in the very same pool, believing that she will become the first of a new breed of humanity. She does, after a fashion, but grows to become a captive of the Arboria Institute and the new, power-mad Nyle, who has usurped Dr Arboria as Director, addicting the older man to research-grade opiates. Nyle keeps her powers suppressed with the facilities mysterious machines while he performs his malevolent therapies upon her. The rest of the film is largely Elena’s (Eva Allan) attempts at escape from Arboria.
Something I have always found fascinating about Lovecraft’s characters is their essentially pathetic nature. Despite their hard-won and far-reaching knowledge and their claims to a high level of competence and control over themselves and their world, they find themselves fighting a panicked, rear-guard battle against powerful forces of irrationality that arise just as often from within their own chaotic selves as from their contact with outer realms of being. For the Lovecraftian protagonist, Madness is absolutely certain, even if Death is not. And when Death does arrive, it often does so in a completely banal, pathetic manner: think of Wilbur Whateley’s ignominious passing by, of all things, a guard dog attack.
Nyle here fulfills that type well. By the third act, we learn that his transformation was not only of the mind, but of the body as well. We are witness to a physical transition, which, while understated, is made all the more sickening by our understanding of the twisted mind behind those eyes. Nyle is a man exposed to awful truths from Beyond, a man who has warped and mutated over the years from the constant pressure of hosting those truths within him. Within the stark, well-lit corridors of the Arboria Institute, he could maintain a fetishistic illusion of control over Eva, her father, even himself. But once Eva does escape, and Nyle goes on a violent hunt outside the facility for her, all control is lost, if it was ever there at all. Nyle’s death, when it comes, is sudden, laughable, almost ridiculous. Like many a Lovecraftian protagonist before him, his knowledge, and whatever small but horrific measure of power it gave him over others, has made him a victim.
It should be noted that Beyond the Black Rainbow is a glacially paced film. You have not seen “slow” until you’ve clocked its one hour, forty-five minute run time. Thankfully, it is so well-crafted visually, and the skillful intensity of the actors (who are often subjected to very close-up camera work so that we can see every twitch and anguished micro-expression) makes it a psychedelic slow burn that’s quite enjoyable. And, as mentioned previously, it’s a film that leaves a lot open to interpretation, and provides no easy answers, which as far as I’m concerned is another black feather in it’s Lovecraft cap.
Beyond the Black Rainbow is available from the film’s distributors here (trailer is there as well and worth a look even if you’re not planning to see the film) and it’s streaming on Netflix for the foreseeable future.
(This review written by Martian Migraine Press author S R Jones. It originally appeared on the Lovecraft eZine 12 March 2013)
ONE YEAR OF WEIRDNESS: MARTIAN MIGRAINE PRESS CELEBRATES A BIRTHDAY
012 years ago
March 14th will mark the first anniversary of our initial book launch, S R Jones’ subtly disturbing collection of horror shorts SOFT FROM ALL THE BLOOD. In the year since, we’ve released eight more books: the first and second titles in Justine G’s BLACKSTONE Erotica series, as well as a BLACKSTONE Erotica short; her sci-fi gonzo erotica novella ORGY IN THE VALLEY OF THE LUST LARVAE; and her highly experimental steampunk and Victorian erotica mash-up SEAWATER & STARS: The Last Novel of Gideon Stargrave, written in collaboration with S R Jones and Gideon Stargrave (the “fiction suit” of comics writer and all-round Pop Culture uber-sorcerer Grant Morrison). Not to mention the two poetry collections we’ve spawned into the world, namely skawt chonzz’s R’LYEH SUTRA and the eclectic, electrifying ANTHROPOCALYPSE NOW by shayne avec i grec and Johnny Macrae (aka 2 Dope Boys In A Cadillac).
Yes, it’s been a busy year. We’ve sold some books, made some friends, and learned a lot. We’re in a celebratory mood, natch! And passing that mood along to you, the loyal Martian Migraine Press reader, with some nifty and titillating specials!
First off, we’re offering three of our more popular MMP titles FREE FOR FIVE DAYS! Pick up S R Jones’ SOFT FROM ALL THE BLOOD, Justine G’s ORGY IN THE VALLEY OF THE LUST LARVAE, or the disturbing poetic vibrations of skawt chonzz’s R’LYEH SUTRA for absolutely no money at all from Thursday March 14 through to Monday March 18, either from their links on Amazon HERE or from the limited-time links below! Simply click on the covers!
↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ EPUB VERSIONS ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓
↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ PDF VERSIONS ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓
Second, to celebrate our first anniversary as Canada’s weirdest, most niche-market micro-micro e-press, Martian Migraine Press is pleased to present our first GIANT-SIZED ANNUAL, featuring fiction, poetry, and movie and book reviews from our own stable of thoroughly transgressive and intensely interesting authors and a few of their friends besides! Fiction by Kenton Hall, Justine G, S R Jones! Poetry by shayne avec i grec and skawt chonzz! A full MMP Cover Gallery and a passel of insightful book and movie reviews! And yes, the Annual is FREE too, for the same days. After that, it’s only 0.99, which is still a ridiculous steal! Link to its Amazon page HERE for a shockingly instantaneous download to your Kindle or Kindle-enabled device or download other e-reader formats from its MMP page HERE.
And speaking of things that are only 0.99 (hey, it’s like a Macklemore song up in heah!), we’re taking a third, migraine-inducing step towards some kind of celebratory meltdown and dropping every other MMP title to that price not only for the 14th through 18th, but for the rest of March! Madness! But hey, it’s what we’re about. The madness. So, we’re cool. We’re cool with it.
As always, we welcome reviews and stars and any generally awesome behaviour surrounding our authors and their books, so please, don’t be shy! Leave a comment, pepper our publishing firmament with shining stellar matter, and let other readers know what you thought of the MMP reading experience. And again, thanks for reading with Martian Migraine Press!
Martian Migraine Press: the Best Kind of Headache
Kaiju Terror v. Intertextual Reality: James Chambers’ ‘The Engines of Sacrifice’ [review]
013 years ago
The Engines of Sacrifice by James Chambers (2011 Dark Regions Press)
James Chambers’ The Engines of Sacrifice is a collection of four short novellas linked through time, place, and Lovecraft. The stories (Investigation 37, The Ugly Birds, The Hidden Room and the titular Engines) move through the decades gathering nightmare fuel, from Vietnam-era dark psychedelia through to the nuclear hysteria of the 1980s and into a not-too-distant moment in the future when the stars are almost right, and mankind is bowed and broken even before the imminent return of the Great Old Ones.
This is a good collection, with many fun kicks to make the reading experience enjoyable: historical references to the Love Generation New York-based occult scene are bang-on (Investigation 37), and the shout outs to Warren Publishing era weird comics illustrators (The Ugly Birds) help ground the fictions in pop cultural bedrock. With the latter, I kept seeing, in my mind’s eye, the evocative colours of Tatjana Woods during her run on DC’s Swamp Thing.
And, like the best stories of that series, Engines is overtly Lovecraftian in tone and subject matter; Chambers has here assembled a greatest hits package of Mythos references. All the big players make appearances: Keziah Mason and Brown Jenkin in Investigation 37; Shub-Niggurath in The Ugly Birds; Nyarlathotep makes an effective and utterly chilling cameo in The Hidden Room, and Cthulhu itself festers and seethes inside of and between nearly every sentence in the final novella. The book is so Lovecraftian, in fact, that it could read as pastiche, were it not for the subtle meta-critical stance Chambers takes with the narrative, particularly towards the final moments.
It’s this aspect of Engines that I really enjoyed, the way Chambers directly addresses the erroneous “kaiju terror” interpretation of the Mythos that lesser writers seem to be fond of running with: the idea that Cthulhu et al. are, at base, giant scary monsters escaping their submarine, subterranean, or dimensional prisons to engage in a stomp-fest across the planet. Monsters that are, somehow, physically limited to their singular manifestations. In stories of this ilk, Cthulhu is comparable to Godzilla, and therefore reduced in potency, made manageable… and that way lies Plush Cthulhu, friends. Chambers is aware of this Delta Green-washing of the Mythos and doesn’t allow it to happen in Engines, thankfully…
I sensed an ancient horror dwelling deep within the ruined metropolis, its unstoppable corruption edging outward and remaking the city in a new image. R’lyeh was already rising, but it was rising here and in cities all around the world. Whether or not the dream-city emerged from the Pacific didn’t matter. When Cthulhu awoke, every city would become R’lyeh, and Cthulhu would rule them all. The Old One wouldn’t walk out of the sea to crush humanity … he would exist everywhere and nowhere, a nightmare from which there could never be any escape, one that would show no mercy to whatever remained of humanity.
Here, Cthulhu is Madness: a Platonic, universal ideal smeared greasily across all levels of reality, high and low, beneath the waves and down the street and between the stars, and therefore inescapable, inevitable.
A bleak, and therefore genuinely Lovecraftian world-view, and one that informs and feeds the dread hopelessness that characters in the first three tales experience… before taking an inexplicable Lumley-esque turn towards the stalwart hero-narrator in the final story! And it’s this note, coming as it does at the end of the book and sitting cheek-by-jowl with an innovative interpretation of Cthulhu, that sounds a little false for me.
Without giving anything away as far as the plot of Engines is concerned: in an otherwise harrowing climax, the narrator, in the face of actual personal interest from the manifesting Cthulhu (itself a problem, given the narratives previously mentioned conceits vis a vis the Big C’s trans-cosmic Platonic nature), somehow finds the stones to alter what is largely a text-based reality, and, perhaps not surprisingly, opts for a happily-ever-after.
An opting-out that works, in context (a little) and which, I suppose, is entirely up for interpretation: “or does he?” one could reasonably ask. As humans (and specifically as humans with that strain of the language-virus whose side-effects include writing) who of us has not been tempted to leave a light on at the end of the tunnel for our characters/victims? I get it. But as far as my interaction with the text goes, this sudden philosophical U-turn made my neck hurt and caused me to wonder if it didn’t invalidate everything that came before.
There were some other less-than-sweet notes in this book, most of which happened in The Hidden Room: the replacement of Standard Lovecraftian Invocation Boilerplate with common English words strung together (say them quick to break the code!) was fun the first couple of times, but quickly felt forced; and the dropping of one of the Million Names of Nyarlathotep into the regular boilerplate (when it happened) came off as clunky. Random Aklo or what-have-you sprinkled with English will always feel weird to me. But it’s a complaint I have with The Whisperer In Darkness, too, so take that for what it’s worth. References to Azathoth as ‘the Chaos King’, although I suppose technically correct, made It sound like a pro-wrestler or animé character to me. Again, that’s my pop-cultural bias kicking in and really, Lovecraft’s ‘daemon-sultan’ is no worse. Ignore my unfortunate spasm of geek-pride at your leisure.
It should be noted, too, that Chambers removes his characters from the usual Lovecraftian locales, basing most of the action in the fictional Long Island town of Knicksport. I don’t know that this was an effective move: aside from some interesting set pieces (a desolate factory, weird topography), I saw no point in using a fictional town that seemed no different from any number of actual towns. For this reason, I would class Engines with more traditional Lovecraftian fiction, and less with the New Weird school, which prefers settings that utilize complex, real-world environments. Arkham is fine, and Knicksport is okay, but I could have done with more happenings in New York proper.
All this aside, though, I enjoyed The Engines of Sacrifice quite a lot; any negatives here listed were minor indeed, and did nothing to lessen my enjoyment of the book. James Chambers has been extensively anthologized everywhere from Hardboiled Cthulhu to Bad-Ass Faeries and his writing style is polished with just the right amount of grit added (in language and mood) to make the reading fast-paced and pleasantly bumpy, like barreling down a bad road at three in the morning, slightly drunk, with a head full of philosophy. When his shocks come, they arrive at speed from out of the dark with an intention to spin you into the ditch, and that’s just how I like them.
(this review appeared originally in the Lovecraft eZine on August 14 2012)
