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Death in the Countryside: The British Pastoral Horrors of The Wicker Man and Witchfinder General

  There is a heavy fog upon the moor as the sun rises -- in the distance, the dark and ominous treeline of the forest looms menacingly, much like a boundary between two worlds: the known and the unknown. Ancient hamlets serve as islands in the vast ocean of agrarian emptiness. And though these communes may serve as bastions of civilization in an otherwise desolate countryside, the insular ways of the townsfolk and the derision with which they leer at outsiders inform us that though these villagers may be Englishmen, there is something, all together, wicked about them.  The “pastoral horror film,” perhaps, bears fewer traits, in common with films such as Psycho (1960) or Halloween (1978) than they do with the picturesque American Westerns of John Ford. “Landscape is absolutely crucial to American genres like the western and the road movie, and even informs fantastical styles such as science-fiction and horror...[b]ut English landscape is too often taken for granted...concerned with fr
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Keating: The Emotional Curve

 Film scholars have traditionally been at odds as to whether story is provided in service of spectacle, or vice-versa. This dichotomy has further delineated into three distinct categories of narrative operation:           Classical , Alternation , and Affective .       However, a separate model (or, perhaps, refining of the Affective model) has since been classified to accomodate for nuance heretofore unacknowledged: the Cooperative model. This cooperative model asserts that spectacle and story work hand-in-hand to create a series of highs, lows, victories and defeats for the protagonist to experience, and the audience to feel, vicariously. This meandering of story, with dramatic ups and downs, are referred to as “emotional curves.”      In traditional film discourse, the Classical model maintains that narrative is the dominant figure in a Hollywood film. Every diegetic moment acts in service of progressing the fabula forward in a standard “cause-and-effect.” The Alternation model, con
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Overtime

  Overtime -- An accountant, Ralph, is forced to work after-hours during his most dangerous time of the month.
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'Boxer in the Wild'

Boxer in the Wild -- An award-winning short-film centered around a turn-of-the-century pugilist, eager to see his training pay off in the ring.
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'Night of the Living Dead' Updated Trailer Project

     The assignment was to recut a classic film to fit a trailer that would be presented to modern audiences.  Using Night Of The Living Dead (1968), the following trailer was cut together using modern trailer techniques such as metric editing.
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Dracula: From Sexual Predator to Romantic Hero

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               As the sun sinks beneath the horizon and night descends upon the world, humanity huddles around the collective light to fend off the threats within the darkness. In ancient times, this was often equated with the fear of predators, red in tooth and claw, but as humans abandoned their caves and huts for more cosmopolitan climes, the dangers began to take on a more familiar appearance. Senseless crimes such as murder would often be attributed to strange, supernatural beings -- after all, in the eyes of early man, no human could possibly do something so heinous to their kin. As such, tales of blood-sucking demons such as the draugr of Scandinavia , vrykolakas of Greece, and vetālas of India began to rise in prominence all over the world. Though the word “vampire” would not be coined for many centuries, all of these legends speak to a baser human fear of those who would prey upon their own kind. In the 19th Century, the Vampire suddenly took center stage after a series of gro
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A Matter of Cultural Identity

       In Powell and Pressburger’s A Matter of Life and Death (1946), a British airman, torn between life and the afterlife, falls in love with an American servicewoman. In order to gain more time with his newly found love, an “appeals trial,” of sorts, is held in order to grant a stay-of-execution on the young airman’s death. Central to the argument of the prosecution, the Continental Soldier Abraham Farlin, is that this Englishman is little more than a corrupting influence on the life of a young, Bostonian woman. The defense, personified by the airman’s friend, the late Dr. Frank Reeves, argues, in turn, that America and England are more alike than even the superficial and historical similarities. “Does [a glass] break because it faulty or because it is glass?” The prosecution asks. “We are all as God made us,” he argues -- asserting that the difference between an American and an Englishman is as clear-cut as the difference between an American and a banana. Reeves is quick to poin
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