Editorials
‘Tailgate’ Is a Combustible, Dutch Road Rager [Horrors Elsewhere]
Horrors Elsewhere is a recurring column that spotlights a variety of movies from all around the globe, particularly those not from the United States. Fears may not be universal, but one thing is for sure — a scream is understood, always and everywhere.
Lodewijk Crijns‘ Tailgate starts out in the remote, Dutch countryside. In this dreadful yet scenic cold open, a terrified bicyclist flees a deceptively genteel man known only as Ed (Willem de Wolf). The daunting stranger runs the panicked cyclist off the road with his white, nondescript Volkswagen Caddy before proceeding to shove the business end of a pressurized sprayer into the victim’s mouth. Clad in exterminator gear, Ed finally dispenses a direct dose of chemical discipline for reasons unknown.
The remainder of Tailgate focuses on Hans (Jeroen Spitzenberger) and his family as they make their way to see the grandparents. The stress of the trip irks Hans before they even leave; he ignores his mother’s phone calls that morning and constantly snaps at wife Diana (Anniek Pheifer) and their two young daughters, Milou (Roosmarijn van der Hoek) and Robine (Liz Vergeer). Once they hit the road, everything from the flow of traffic to the children arguing over tablet time cranks up the tension. The audience is now trapped in this Volvo with a temperamental father, a passive-aggressive mother, and two spoiled brats.
Hans does not help matters with the way he drives; he makes up for time by speeding like a bat out of hell. So when he comes across another driver going too slow for his liking, Hans blares his horn, tailgates, and makes a rude gesture toward the other motorist once they make eye contact. Unfortunately for him and his kin, the offended party is none other than Ed the exterminator. The grandfatherly killer catches up with Hans at a gas station and demands an apology. Staying true to form, Hans refuses and goes on his way, none the wiser of the fate in store for him and his family.
The Netherlands has gone to great lengths to deter traffic accidents and decrease fatalities over the years. The country’s roads, which are otherwise ranked as some of the safest in the world, are suddenly a vehicular hellscape marred by aggressive, anarchic drivers. Crijns undermines the government’s “Sustainable Safety” act with his movie; his characters wantonly disregard traffic laws or use violence to enforce them. This sort of opposition to the system is why Tailgate is one of the more subversive examples of “Nether-Horror.”
Road-trip horror movies often occur in broad daylight. This choice toys with the preconception of bad things only happening at night or in isolation. Fellow road ragers The Hitcher and Joy Ride negotiate day and night settings, but Tailgate fully takes place when the sun is out. Cinematographer Bert Pot resists the expected iconography of the subgenre — dusty, lonely stretches of pavement and gravel along with a series of dingy roadside stops — and finds terror in everydayness. The routes and gas stations are clean, and the neighborhoods are picturesque. Ed’s evil is not obscured by nightfall or restricted to outlying locations; he can easily murder someone in their own house or in an open, empty field.
Both leading, male characters are cut from the same cloth in spite of a generational gap; they are pathologically cocksure and unable to admit to their mistakes. Hans is stubborn to a fault and has no foresight when it comes to his immature actions. Meanwhile, someone as self-important as Ed is equally unyielding, yet he obviously takes things much further than the average egotist. So although their exteriors and methods are worlds apart, Hans and Ed operate on the same wavelength, albeit at different ends.
As much as he screams and pushes people’s buttons, Hans is still vulnerable to the same fears as everyone else. He has simply found a way to mask those insecurities. In his case, Hans’ more contemptible behavior flares whenever his parents are a factor; he becomes more irritated with every mention of them. There is an unspoken strain to their relationship that Crijns hints at rather than spells out, but it is apparent Hans has some anxiety concerning his father. As Oma Trudy (Truus te Selle) states so bluntly on the phone, this could very well be Opa Joop’s (Hubert Fermin) last birthday. Dodging his mother’s calls, scolding Diana for waking up late, driving recklessly to make it in time to see his father — there is more to the story when understanding why Hans is so detestable.
Before all hell breaks loose and Ed whips out the poison again, Hans is given one last opportunity to apologize. Hans instead doubles down, not knowing what kind of person he is dealing with. This is of course after Diana pleads with her husband to do the one thing that will end this problem; she even promises not to tell anyone. So it is clear Ed is not only a threat to Hans’ physical wellbeing but also, and above all, his pride. With an apology, people have to sacrifice a bit of themselves and show their vulnerability. However, Hans does not want anyone to see how frightened he really is; whether it be of a murderer, or the mortality he is reminded of whenever his father’s dotage is brought up.
Stock horror villains who hide behind masks do not instill as much fear as they used to. Ed, on the other hand, looks like he should be gardening rather than spraying random people with vesicant poison — it is that innocuous veneer that makes his misdeeds all the more unsettling. Ed’s identity is no secret, and viewers have a decent grasp of his personality before he succumbs to his baser instincts. Ed feels emboldened by the absoluteness of the law when dealing with those he marks unruly, and a holier-than-thou attitude spurs him to tell children they are eating carcinogenic hamburgers. On top of that, he looks to the parents when casting blame for their progenies’ insubordination; Oma for Hans’ disobedience and Diana for her general permissiveness with her daughters. There are layers to this very unusual and meticulous antagonist.
Tailgate will fail to elicit sympathy from those demanding compassionate characters in bad situations, but the intensity of the chases, the inherent moral questions, and credible hostility all help prolong this thriller’s tread life.
Horror was thriving so well in the 1980s that movies like Pen Densham’s The Kiss (1988) would understandably get lost in the shuffle, only to then gain their fans later on in life. Even still, this one Canadian-American curio has had a more challenging time than others, as far as contemporary reevaluations go, which is very likely due to the movie’s limited availability—at least as of this write-up.
However, the scarceness of The Kiss, while a bit annoying, makes it like catnip for ‘80s horror completists everywhere. Hopefully, a lot of them will walk away satisfied after watching this hidden gem.
Even though The Kiss was intended as the first of several horror collaborations between Astral Pictures and TriStar, as well as the first feature produced by Densham, Richard B. Lewis and John Watson’s Trilogy Entertainment Group, it ended up being the only one produced from that former union. Once the movie was released, TriStar’s distribution jitters—they opted for a regional rollout—did the $6-million flick no favors. TriStar’s cold feet toward horror releases have been well noted, but The Kiss still did a tad better than Night of the Creeps (1986), another genre outing that flopped due to its regional opening.
Shot in Montreal, but set in Albany, New York, The Kiss—which was still called The Host just a few months before its October premiere—concerns an average middle-class family and their forthcoming situation. The uncanny problem in store for them was, in fact, set in motion some years earlier. As that hot and dusty flashback to the Belgian Congo shows, a familial curse was set upon the two Dunbar sisters well before Meredith Salenger’s teenage character was born.
Meredith Salenger, Nicholas Kilbertus and Mimi Kuzyk in The Kiss
The Kiss, which was based on a story by co-writer Stephen Volk (Ghostwatch) and penned by both Volk and Tom Ropelewski, has the outward appearance of The Stepfather (1987). This movie, though, is anything but a gender-flipped retread of that classic domestic disturber. For starters, The Kiss is far less grounded in reality—that much is clear from its unsettling opening scene. There, a trusting girl (Priscilla Mouzakiotis) is the victim of her own deceptive aunt (Céline Lomez); the movie’s titular act, and the story’s first shock, becomes the means of transferring an ancient evil from one host to another.
In the present day, Salenger’s role of Amy Halloran, a religious schoolgirl, is dealt a harsh blow in life once her mother, Hilary Halloran née Dunbar (Pamela Collyer), suddenly dies in a freak accident. But rather than a complete stranger sweeping the Halloran widower (Nicholas Kilbertus) off his feet some months later, Joanna Pacula’s character is that chosen temptress. Here, Pacula plays the grown-up version of the afflicted girl last seen in the movie’s opener. Since Amy’s mother is insistent about there being no reunion between estranged sisters, and she even contemplates buying a gun shortly before her tragic demise, it’s presumable that Aunt Felice poses a threat to her family.
The Kiss isn’t a movie ever too concerned about its own predictability. The audience is indeed often one step ahead of the story here, but also keep in mind how every one of those steps is loud. Take, for instance, the death of Amy’s mother; the Halloran matriarch goes out in garish, gruesome fashion, as a supernaturally commandeered truck sends Collyer’s character through a store window first, then leaves her one leg short. The directorial enthusiasm truly comes out in horrific moments such as these.
The Kiss is always sure to revel in its characters’ ills and misfortunes. So if the plot doesn’t impress, then its lurid parts should. Amy’s mother’s exit scene was proof of an eager, first-time horror director proving his worth. Then, bestie Heather (Sabrina Boudot) survives to tell the tale of a bizarre escalator mishap that, despite showing relatively less gore, spikes viewers’ empathy meter. The wilder bits of this movie, however, commence with that inevitable hookup between Felice and Amy’s bewitched father; their kitchen coitus is paralleled by Amy’s feverish classroom terror. The outcome there is a disquieting cross-cut of sex magic and a young woman’s menstrual onset plus hallucinations.
Sabrina Boudot in The Kiss
From foam appliances to bladders, that parade of special effects in The Kiss casts its own spell on the audience. Felice’s familiar, a visibly malevolent cat, was realized here with several models, some more articulate than others. Admittedly, the demon cat’s not as convincing as most of the effects here, but accepting that artifice, as opposed to fighting it, will make the whole experience way more enjoyable. As for the makeup used to manifest Felice’s inner villainy, it is more minimal and subtle than one might like; yet the work done to turn Pacula into an antithesis of herself is nonetheless compelling.
The otherworldly perils and dreadful goings-on wouldn’t work half as well as they do in The Kiss without the story’s contrast effect. Finding frights in picturesque, extremely ordinary settings was something that took off in the ‘80s, thanks to that sweeping shift to locales like the suburbs. And Amy’s home, a replica of a real Montreal suburban house, is the ideal battleground for any proper good-versus-evil story. It’s also prime real estate for this movie’s satanic panic-inspired horrors.
Because of their ostensibly similar plots, The Kiss has been compared to The Exorcist (1973). Except in Densham’s movie, the sinister, non-Christian entity targeting a teen girl lies within something less apparent and, perhaps, more devastating upon its exposure. To an outsider, Pacula’s Aunt Felice is too beautiful and unobjectionable to ever suspect of being a monster. More suspicious is how quickly she rips into the fabric of the Halloran home. Felice’s mere presence upsets the “texture of family life,” according to the director.
The demon cat in The Kiss
Taking out Amy’s mother and best friend, and distracting her father, would suggest The Kiss is playing by a different set of rules. It is initially leaving its adolescent target unsupported in a rather grim scenario. In contrast, though, this story offers up a surrogate parent who does her best to fill in the holes of Amy’s eroding home life. Mimi Kuzyk does good work as that family friend and doctor, Brenda, who guides the lost child without also steering her in any one direction; she is naturally skeptical of Amy’s accusations until it’s almost too late to do anything about them. So although The Kiss does an admirable job of undoing the main character’s support system, it never leaves her without a lifeline. This dark movie, in spite of everything that’s transpired, doesn’t deprive itself of light and hope.
The Kiss is a potent mélange of familiar ideas. If not for the director’s surprise flair for horror, though, the movie would have been less effective. What a shame that Pen Densham didn’t continue with the genre. As for Joanna Pacula, she is, too, owed credit as the wicked vixen opposite Meredith Salenger’s pitiable Amy; she never fails to be unsettling in her role. Pacula makes Aunt Felice a sexy yet intimidating character.
For horror that steadily doles out madness and menace, while also delivering a flashy and ghastly conclusion, The Kiss is certain to please. Yes, it’s cheesy all the way, but most favorably, everyone involved plays everything straight. That kind of commitment goes a long way with this movie.
The Kiss
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