Editorials
Irish Horror ‘Isolation’ Terrifies ‘Til the Cows Come Home [Horrors Elsewhere]
Cows are considered to be the perfect livestock. Not only do they provide food like milk and beef, their byproducts yield everyday goods, including leather, ointments, soap, and toilet paper. Yet as much as cows do for humans, there is always someone who thinks they can do more. Synthetic hormones and gene-editing are common practices when trying to improve cattle, but the kind of biological tampering seen in the 2005 movie Isolation is utterly twisted. These scientists believed they could make a better cow; one that would greatly benefit mankind.
Needless to say, they were wrong.
This atmospheric rural horror, shot outside of Dublin, is based on the director and writer’s rustic upbringing. Billy O’Brien grew up on a farm, but until he moved away to the city, he never realized how unique his childhood experience was. Seeing how his city friends reacted to a story about “calving” ultimately inspired O’Brien’s first movie. Of course he needed something more to go on other than just life on a farm. Which is where the monster cow comes in.
While Ireland is certainly smaller than the U.S. of A, the Emerald Isle has no shortage of cows. There is also so much competition, which is why farms like the one in O’Brien’s debut are struggling to survive. John Lynch’s character in Isolation is in over his head trying to save his late father’s ol’ dairy farm. The milk is not quite dried up, but no one is coming to collect it. Hence Dan allowing his Bessies and Buttercups to become guinea pigs in a mysterious experiment. The desperate farmer takes what is essentially blood money as his cattle are turned into incubators for evil.
Dan has allowed his farmyard to become the testing ground for a bio-genetics firm. And as of late, his only human contact has been with the firm’s emissary, a scientist named John (Marcel Iureș, The Cave), and a local veterinarian and friend named Orla (Essie Davis, The Babadook). A test subject goes into labor late at night, but something is off about this birth. So, Dan seeks help from the young couple crashing on his land, a pair of star-crossed lovers played by Sean Harris (Creep) and Ruth Negga (World War Z). This stressful scene employs the very same calving jack used by O’Brien’s father. The medieval-looking device cranks up the tension as it slowly wrenches the calf from its mother.
Isolation goes straight from gestating horror to birthing it. Orla eventually shows up to check on the calf, but after the baby takes a chunk out of Dan’s finger, it’s clear something must be done. Orla and Dan’s struggle to “humanely” put the newborn down, using a cattle gun, is without question unsettling to watch. The mother cow literally climbing the walls to protect her young adds to the chaos of the sad scene.
If the last two set pieces have somehow failed to jangle the nerves, the calf’s autopsy is sure to make the skin crawl. Despite her proximity to bad science, Orla only knows so much about the firm’s absolute endgame. What she finds inside the calf is where Isolation earns its reputation as “The Thing set on a farm.” This calf was already pregnant with multiple fetuses. Six of them, to be exact. And each one has its skeleton on the outside. This horrifying discovery reveals John and his team wanted to “create more fertile calves.” They succeeded, but not quite as they had originally envisioned.
One of the six malformed fetuses has survived the odds and is now looking for a way off this farm. The carnivorous cow spawn in question, which resembles a skeletal larva, is well on its way to becoming the apex predator in a place with no competition to begin with. And the only resolution is to contain the threat by any means possible. O’Brien’s affection for John Carpenter’s ‘82 cult classic is apparent in the second and third acts, but the imitation is well done, not to mention a smidge more plausible despite the absurdity involved.
Isolation stokes natural fears of invasion and disease. The rapidly growing creature’s infectious bite only raises the stakes further and conveys the story’s sense of urgency. Apart from the hospital scene at the end, everything occurs on Dan’s farm. So the sensation of never being able to escape, regardless of the open air and vehicles readily available, is unmistakable. The audience grows increasingly claustrophobic as the script pulls the surviving characters into the pit of hell that is the monster’s makeshift lair. Adrian Johnston’s first horror score heightens these choice moments with dramatic strings and modified farm sounds.
Isolation’s dreary setting matches its cast. The characters are not so much unlikable as they are wretched. Harris and Negga’s characters, Jamie and Mary, are on the run from their quarreling families, so their despondency stems from an unspoken culture clash. Meanwhile, Dan is partly to blame for the festering dilemma on his hands, but Lynch does a fantastic job of manifesting his character’s self-loathing and humanizing his mistake. Davis, whose hands-on approach to her role included sticking her whole arm inside a cow’s rear-end, is regretfully on screen for a short amount of time. However, it’s clear she shows great remorse for sleeping with the enemy. And while Iureș ticks off the “mad scientist” box of this genre outing, his John character makes the effort to right his wrongs, no matter how radical his methods are.
Lovers of accidental monsters, science gone awry, and suffocating environments are urged to watch this hidden gem. The 2000s was a busy time for British and Irish horror, which explains why O’Brien’s movie got lost in the crowd. Its obscurity is more disappointing than surprising, but there was no shortage of acclaim back then. Beautifully shot, grotesque and thoroughly disturbing, Isolation is aching to be rediscovered.
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.
College kids, strippers and vampires—those were Donald P. Borchers’ only requirements when he approached Richard Wenk about writing and directing a movie for New World Pictures. As requested, Wenk cooked up Vamp (1986), a tailor-made blend of the decade’s teen movie craze as well as its horror boom.
Grim and earnest stories were still very much a part of the ’80s horror landscape, yet Vamp is something of a comedy. One difference between it and, say, Saturday the 14th, though, is the former avoids using schtick. Wenk’s movie proves that horror comedies also don’t have to subtract thrills from their recipes. Of course, it takes a minute before reaching that point; college antics and culture shocks preface this one macabre misadventure.
Vamp‘s initial setup is apt for a typical college-set, sex-driven comedy; to bribe their way into a fraternity house, two pledges (Chris Makepeace, Robert Rusler) go looking for some adult entertainment. Without wasting time on any further exposition, the characters embark on an all-in-one-night trip that quickly detours into terror.
To procure their elusive MacGuffin—a stripper willing to gyrate for some frat boys—Keith (Makepeace) and AJ (Rusler), plus a third wheel named Duncan (Gedee Watanabe), trade the safety of their remote college campus for the seediness of some unnamed city. The setting is recognizably L.A. by day, but as soon as night falls, downtown, along with the characters, slips into a kind of surreal universe. Director of photography Elliot Davis gave this early entry on his prolific résumé an unusual yet distinctive look; that Mario Bava-esque, magenta-green lighting is omnipresent, so much so that it’s almost its own character.
Chris Makepeace and Robert Rusler in Vamp
The faint comparisons to Martin Scorsese’s After Hours are merited, although not just because of Vamp’s distinguishing nighttime aesthetic. Save for the primary characters, the supporting roles in Wenk’s movie are also quite colorful and transactional in their behavior. The difference here, though, is the additional urge to ruin Keith and his friends at every turn. Some of that harm is humorous and tolerable enough, whereas the moment Vamp dishes out its first fatality, it’s abundantly clear how this movie qualifies as horror.
Vamp falls into that category of horror movie that reveals its genre with a scream rather than a series of whispers. The opening scene can function as a hint of what lies ahead—things are not at all what they appear to be—but otherwise, Wenk is more than happy to hold off on the horror. When that time does come, though, it catches the viewer off guard. In addition to the pure shock value is that sudden decision to upend the movie’s foremost feature. Or so it would seem.
If afraid of major spoilage, those new to Vamp would be wise to stop reading here. There’s just no skirting around the fact that the central fellowship in this buddy movie hits a serious snag when AJ is killed. That development causes the story to become more of a “long, bad night” journey for Keith and his romantic interest. So while Wenk scores points for subverting expectations, there is also a touch of sadness in his decision. Because if Vamp does anything well, it’s making the characters likable.
Something that comes easily to Vamp—and other teen horror movies from this same era—is its ability to invent young characters worth caring about, or at the very least, are interesting and not so immediately off-putting. More impressive is how Wenk did all this without actually fleshing out those characters. Still and all, Keith and his kind are a grade above cookie-cutter, and in some cases, aren’t completely devoid of growth.
Grace Jones in Vamp
Vamp appeals with an assorted cast of characters. No two are the same, nor are they operating on the same wavelength. The cinematically extroverted AJ, whose actor conveyed charm and vulnerability in near equal amounts, comes alive when he’s at his most undead. Makepeace then makes the chronically cautious Keith a sympathetic fellow, even as he’s more and more affected by the night’s bizarre events. Meanwhile, Duncan is indeed the designated loser of the whole bunch, but Watanabe still manages to humanize him. As a bonus, the role didn’t require him to pull a Long Duk Dong.
As for Dedee Pfeiffer, she is plain adorable as the mysterious After Dark server nicknamed “Amaretto”. She spends all night fixing her dress strap while at the same time trying to get Keith to remember how he knows her. As their offbeat romance grows, it becomes another highlight of this movie. Whether or not Pfeiffer’s character is really a vampire also creates some welcome tension in the story.
Like a lot of its contemporaries, Vamp went on to become a bit of a cult classic. That current status is determined by several factors, but without a doubt, the casting of Grace Jones is the most considerable. The image of her writhing on that unique-looking chair, a Keith Haring original, springs to mind whenever this movie is brought up.
Chris Makepeace, Billy Drago and Paunita Nichols in Vamp
Prior to that first display of unequivocal horror, local vampire queen Katrina (Jones) took to the stage and delivered a strip show like no other. One would expect nothing less from that renowned model and performance artist. By now reports of Jones’ tardiness on set are no secret, yet it’s also hard to deny her commitment to the part of Katrina. It was, in fact, Jones who took charge of her character’s appearance—on top of Haring painting her body and that now-iconic chair, she had Andy Warhol handle her costuming. And not too many actors could seize a room’s attention without saying a single line of dialogue.
In 2022, Vamp received a retrospective novelization from Encyclopocalypse. This literary union of preexisting source material—Wenk’s original screenplay—and new ideas from author Christian Francis amounts to a more comprehensive visit to the After Dark Club. The basic story there is no different than what’s shown on screen; however, Francis gets creative with the characters’ origins and designs, and he enhances a number of key scenes.
The novelization expands on the urban and social decay of the main setting, and supplies a background for the After Dark Club. Sandy Baron’s character, Katrina’s emcee and familiar, is given ample motivation for sticking around; up until the fiery end, he is loyal to his friend and former business partner “Squeak”, who looks like he was “fed through a combine harvester, and left as nothing more than a heap of mangled remains”. Then there is Billy Drago’s character Snow, the leader of a street gang called The Dragons. His reason for menacing Keith and AJ is more altruistic than in the movie; he and his peers act tough to scare off any potential food for the vampires.
Lisa Lyon in Vamp
If not for all the backstories, Francis’ Vamp would be a hell of a lot shorter. Instead, this tie-in read dives into how AJ met Keith—the orphaned Anthony Joseph hailed from a broken home back in Brooklyn—and how their friendship flourished over the years. Keith’s archership is no longer just an assumed part of his entire being; it’s a confidence-building extracurricular for a boy who got picked on before coming into the protection of the new kid in town. These supplemental, in-depth looks at the protagonists, plus their close connection, are maybe unnecessary. The movie already did a fair and concise job of addressing their platonic intimacy without the need for flashbacks and insights, specifically in that scene where AJ lays it all out as he sacrifices himself.
Where the novelization gets off course is its approach to the minor characters. Intermittently backstorying the likes of Katrina’s indentured servants, Seko (Leila Hee Olsen) and Vlad (Brad Logan), ends up disturbing the flow of the writing. Was it absolutely essential that readers know Vlad was the Grand Duke of the House of Romanov, or how Snow’s accomplice Maven (Paunita Nichols) became so dentally challenged? No, not really. However, one’s mileage with these random biographies may vary.
The novelization is a more substantial experience, but for a movie like Vamp, less is more. And as plentiful as they are, it never simply coasts on its campy charms, either. The character work sits comfortably in that realm between cursory and meticulous, the script is sharper than first realized, and Greg Cannom’s vampire makeup is straightforward yet effective. Most of all, the movie didn’t squander its out-of-the-box concept. Richard Wenk made his vision of a “comic nightmare in which just about anything that can go wrong does” come true, and it is very enjoyable.
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