SCI-FI-GONE-WRONG

This week sees the release of sci-fi horror SPLICE, starring Oscar winner Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley as two scientists who create a human/animal hybrid against their better judgement. One can only imagine it all goes tits up somewhere down the line. Which seems to be a common theme in cinema, it could almost be a genre of its own, sci-fi-gone-wrong. It doesn’t quite have a ring to it but give it time.

The poster boy for this new found genre would have to be David Cronenberg.

Before the man made proper grown up films (SPIDER, EASTERN PROMISES, A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE) he had an obsession with body horror. From SHIVERS to RABID, VIDEODROME and SCANNERS, always pushing the boundaries as to what could be shown on screen. Cronenberg upped the vom factor in a way all those Italian horror filmmakers could only dream of. They may have loved their exploding heads and cannibals but it was the believability of what Cronenberg always put on screen that made it so effective. And of course, the coup de tat of sci-fi-gone-wrong has to be his remake of the 1958 classic, THE FLY.

Starring Jeff Goldblum as a brilliant scientist who manages to create a teleportation device. I’m sure most of you know where it goes from there, but for those uninitiated amongst you, he tries the device on himself without realising that a fly has taken the journey with him, thus altering his dna as it re-splices itself back together. We then spend the rest of the film watching him gradually turning into the fly with gruesome effect. The special effects are that good they still hold up today.

I can still recall giggling as a child at the site of his penis held in a jar of fluid after it had fallen off, swiftly followed by genuine terror as he began to metamorphose into a human insect. And those bile sequences still remain with me after all these years.

It is surprising in this day and age, particularly with the dearth of creativity in Hollywood, that it hasn’t been remade with a ‘CGI’ Brundle fly. But then nobody does body horror like Cronenberg, so perhaps it is one film best left alone, give it time though.

Much like the work of George Romero and John Carpenter has been pillaged by a new wave of directors, I have no doubt there will be a day when someone will begin to go through Cronenberg’s back catalogue, and what a back catalogue.

Arguably though, all this genetic horror could be put down to one book published way back in 1818, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Essentially an allegory on our fear of science the book still holds up today. The same issues concern us now, only in a more developed form (GM crops, cloning, stem cell research etc). Which is probably why other than Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster has to be the most famous horror icon of the lot. With countless films already made and no doubt a few more penned in for the future, the tale of one scientist’s quest to create life seems to be an endless sponge of potential for upcoming filmmakers.

So what else fits in with this new genre? Of recent efforts the woeful SPECIES springs to mind, this time round an alien message arrives containing instructions on how to improve the human genome, strangely enough creating one seriously angry female. A not unattractive one either. Who was to know that aliens were pretty?!

THE ISLAND OF DR MOREAU is another classic, I refer of course to the Burt Lancaster version not the dreadful Marlkon Brando remake. Then there’s DR JECKYL AND MR HYDE. THE APE MAN stars Bela Legosi as part man part ape and probably has more in common with SPLICE than anything else mentioned on this page. I even found myself sucked into some crappy late night channel a few weeks ago to watch BATS, starring Lou Diamond Phillips and one of the Jamaican Bob Sleigh team from COOL RUNNINGS. This time genetically altered bats head out on the rampage controlled by the warden from THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION. I would recommend avoiding this one at all costs. It seems it doesn’t matter how bad a film is, once I’ve started I must finish. It is a curse.

I’d even include JURASSIC PARK in the list, while more of a family film than a horror, people still died damn it! Did you not see that guy ripped from a toilet seat by a T-Rex? Somehow I don’t think he walked away from that.

The list could go on and on, but of all the films mentioned, none of them have shook me up as much as one television four parter that was aired in the early 90s. Chimera.

The opening episode was set in a lab as a human/ape hybrid breaks loose and goes on a killing spree. The second episode saw the beasty shacking up in a hay barn with a couple of small children as the authorities searched in vein. Episode 3 continued the investigation into it all with the final episode climaxing in the eventual destruction of the beast. I vividly remember watching it at a friends house at about 9 years old. The beasty tearing people limb from limb in the lab and chasing them screaming down corridors. This was probably not helped by the fact my friend lived on a farm. It has obviously stuck with me though as I still get shudder run down my spine just thinking about it. I imagine no one out there remembers it though.

I am just waiting for the day when something comes along that burns itself onto my brain the way some of the aforementioned films have, hopefully SPLICE may well be it.

Happy watching.

Tim Willis – Picturehouse Designer