Editorials
June Release ‘Censor’ Delivered a Mind-Bending Nightmare Set in Video Nasty Era [Indie Horror Spotlight]
The content space is more crowded than ever, making it challenging to keep up with all of the genre titles available via streaming platforms, VOD, and theatrical releases. It can be overwhelming just to browse. To help prevent great indie horror from slipping through the cracks, we’ll spotlight our favorites every month.
The early ’80s Video Nasties craze marks one of the most contentious points in horror history, and it’s surprising that it hasn’t been explored more within the genre. The rise of VHS meant an unregulated market, which then gave rise to fears stoked by the British press that the horror and exploitation films hitting shelves would corrupt youth and render viewers violent. Owners of tapes and filmmakers were sometimes prosecuted, video stores were raided, and the BBFC went about slicing out the more salacious bits from horror’s more notorious offenders.
Censor offers a character study entrenched in the Video Nasty era, at once a fascinating descent into madness, an exploration of art censorship, and a love letter to horror. Prano Bailey-Bond‘s feature, co-written with Anthony Fletcher, centers around a rigid film censor, Enid Baines (Raised by Wolves’ Niamh Algar).
Enid takes great pride in her work. She tirelessly rewinds and scrutinizes videotapes for extreme gore and other material deemed too offensive, penning notes of eye-gouging and such to be snipped. Enid views her role as a protector of the community. Her tidy, sanitized life threatens to unravel entirely when her parents finally declare her long-missing younger sister as dead, and a new horror film triggers repressed memories about her sister’s disappearance.
Bailey-Bond’s feature debut is a fictional tale, not a historical one. Still, Censor does incorporate clips of actual Video Nasties in the opening sequence to flesh out Enid’s world and role. It’s not a declaration that Bailey-Bond has done her homework, though that’s certainly evident, but a foundation for the central theme of this fugue-like psychological horror movie. While the filmmaker isn’t interested in providing easy answers for Enid’s reality, Bailey-Bond does lob scathing critiques on film censorship’s ineffectualness against the real world’s horrors. As one character, a horror filmmaker, notes with laser precision, “People think I create horror. Horror is already out there; it’s in you.”
Algar excels as Enid, a stern, old-fashioned woman slowly unmoored by seismic shifts in her safe little bubble. While Enid is a scrupulous character with mounting desperation and erratic behavior, Algar deftly blends in sly humor, too. The real standout of Censor, however, is Bailey-Bond’s assured direction. The use of drab period detail in contrast with the vibrant neon hues that indicate nightmare logic taking over is brilliant. So, too, is the subtle voyeuristic shots that both unsettle and give insight into the madness. The filmmaker even toggles between aspect ratios, shrinking as reality becomes more elusive, distorting the truth. Bailey-Bond doesn’t just use the Video Nasty craze as a basis for its story but repurposes the era’s stylings to flip the script on the censors’ mindset.
Using the Video Nasty era as a framework to tell a story about a woman’s downward spiral is an innovative choice. But it packs a potent punch on many levels. Enid is an isolated character by choice. Interactions with colleagues and even her parents demonstrate a socially awkward woman whose prim, aloof mannerisms are more of a defense mechanism. Enid thrives in her role as a censor because she desperately needs to maintain control. Enid loses her tenuous grasp on reality through a horror movie-induced trigger, creating a slow descent that won’t be for all tastes.
It’s a thematically rich feature debut matched by its arresting visuals; Censor is gorgeous horror. There’s an intangible, surreal quality to Enid’s slipping grip on her controlled reality. It’s a mind-tripping journey open to interpretation, with layers to uncover upon subsequent viewings.
Censor gives us a peek into the Video Nasty period from a fictionalized censor, where the horror is entirely of their own making. This striking debut makes a visceral case that closing your eyes to reality’s terrors won’t make them go away or undo past traumas, no matter how many edits you attempt to make.
Bailey-Bond brings an assured, confident vision to a blood-splattered character study, one that feels protective of horror in many ways. Censor is an exciting introduction to another new voice in the genre, and it’s available to rent via VOD now.
Read my review of Censor here.
The penultimate season of Tales from the Crypt (1989–1996) aired its first three episodes on October 31, so it’s understandable that at least one of those three stories is set on Halloween.
Sandwiched between “Let the Punishment Fit the Crime” (Russell Mulcahy, Ron Finley) and “Whirlpool” (Mick Garris, A. L. Katz & Gilbert Adler) is the most severe episode of the bunch. Maybe the entire series? William Malone and Dick Beebe’s “Only Skin Deep” traded the show’s typical sense of fun for startling amounts of bleakness and kink.
“Only Skin Deep” is, apart from the Crypt Keeper’s intro and outro, noticeably unfunny. There are no considerable attempts at making the viewer laugh. Come to think of it, if those bookends had been replaced, and there was more of a sci-fi element in the story, HBO could have easily squeezed this tale into that successor anthology, Perversions of Science (1997). In Crypt, though, “Only Skin Deep” is much too grim for an audience that had become accustomed to campiness and levity.
What makes “Only Skin Deep” feel dark, among other things, is its protagonist. Showing up to a Halloween party where he’s not welcome, and where his former girlfriend (Diane DiLasco) is attending, Carl Schlag (Peter Onorati) first comes across as your standard bitter ex. You soon realize it’s much worse than that, once Carl threatens Linda (“You know, silly me, thinking I gave you what you deserved. If I’d have done that, I’d have killed you”). Now, I haven’t forgotten that Tales from the Crypt was teeming with vile men who did women harm. Yet Carl’s brand of misogynistic menace hits differently—it borders on being too realistic for this kind of series.
Mike Vosburg’s EC-style comic cover for “Only Skin Deep”, as seen in the Tales from the Crypt episode.
Despite donning a party mask for much of the episode, Carl can’t ever mask his true nature. The invitation did say “come as you are”, after all. That inability to change and be better, however, is why Carl ends up in such a karmic predicament. His outburst of anger at the party attracts the attention of one loner partygoer named Molly (Sherrie Rose, who was also in Season Four’s “On a Deadman’s Chest”). Her bone-white, featureless “mask” and body-bag costume don’t initially register as too strange, especially on a night like this. But at a party chock-full of colorful, cartoonish, and lighthearted ensembles, it does look out of place.
Darkness attracts darkness as Carl ditches the party and accompanies the mysterious Molly to her place. Which, by the way, should have been an immediate red flag. But perhaps she’s so hot, he doesn’t seem to mind the serial killer aesthetic. Resembling a warehouse that has been converted into living spaces, but never then decorated to remove the cold, industrial look, Molly’s home (or lair) is as gloomy as this whole episode feels. It’s like the set of a grungy music video, albeit a tad cleaner. The environments in a typical Crypt episode tend to be small, overfilled, and broken-in. Warm, regardless of any weird goings-on. All that empty space in Molly’s hovel, on the other hand, elicits a creepy feeling that Carl was unwise to ignore.
Tales from the Crypt featured more sex than it didn’t, but hands down, “Only Skin Deep” boasts the steamiest scene in the show’s history. Pushing it over the line, in addition to Onorati showing bare buns and the camera never turning down one of his pelvic thrusts, is the twisted dirty talk. Carl stays in the moment, whereas Molly unleashes charged lines like “the hurt, the anger, give it to me” and “take it out on my flesh like you want to”. It’s all quite kinky, as well as tied into the story’s theme of pain.
How else “Only Skin Deep” differs from other episodes is its twists. Or rather, its lack thereof. Nothing comes as a great surprise here, particularly because the deuteragonist’s ulterior motives are so obvious. By no means is Molly a wolf in sheep’s clothing; her face is a fright mask, she practically reeks of death, and she lives in what can best be described as a serial killer’s hideout. That last-act revelation of Molly’s mask really being her face is also nothing shocking. Cleverness is certainly not this episode’s strength.
A page from “…Only Skin Deep!”, as seen in EC Comics’ Tales from the Crypt.
While “Only Skin Deep” isn’t the most universally loved episode of Tales from the Crypt, it’s an interesting preview of William Malone’s future as a director. Most notably, he went on to helm House on Haunted Hill (1999) and FeardotCom (2002), the former of which was co-written by Dick Beebe, this episode’s writer. Dark Castle Entertainment, that genre house founded by Crypt producers Joel Silver, Robert Zemeckis, and Gilbert Adler, was instrumental in bringing out Malone’s gruesome, over-the-top vision in House on Haunted Hill. However, FeardotCom and Malone’s Masters of Horror episode, “Fair-Haired Child”, are the most stylistically compatible with “Only Skin Deep”.
As one might guess, this episode is nothing like its source material. The “…Only Skin Deep!” found in the pages of EC Comics is set during Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and save for its last couple of pages, is pretty sweet in nature. There, a man named Herbert is enamored with a woman he met five years prior to the present-day story. Every year, he has come down to Mardi Gras to see Suzanne, who’s always dressed as a hag-faced witch. Well, this time, Herbert plans on popping the question and marrying someone who is, for the most part, a total stranger. Suzanne accepts his proposal, but with one condition: they stay in costume until they’re officially hitched. You can probably see where this is going…
Once they are married, Suzanne remains incognito, even when she and Herbert have consummated their vows. A semi-predictive nightmare then rattles Herbert; he dreamt that Suzanne’s real face was as wizened as her mask. Finally, in his haste to find out the truth, Herbert winds up killing his new wife. Faceless and well on her way to bleeding out, the dying Suzanne manages to say she never wore a mask.
For more traditional EC-style ghastliness, your best bet is reading the comic. It’s wickedly sad. For something less conventional, as far as Tales from the Crypt goes, the role-reversing adaptation is worth watching. It’s not the best this show had to offer, although Malone’s visual style, plus the sexual abandon, does set the episode apart. If nothing else, “Only Skin Deep” leaves an impression that, even years later, shows no signs of fading.
Season Six of Tales from the Crypt can be streamed on Shudder, starting on June 5.
Tales from Tales from the Crypt celebrates the show’s Shudder premiere by singling out one episode from each season. So don’t even think about changing that dial, boys and ghouls. More spot-“frights” are to come.
Carl discovers Molly’s collection of human ‘masks’ in the Tales from the Crypt episode, “Only Skin Deep”.
You must be logged in to post a comment.