Editorials
Why ‘High Tension’ Still Divides Audiences 20 Years Later
For a lot of people, Alexandre Aja‘s High Tension (Haute Tension) was their first taste of the New French Extremity. And since 2003, this French slasher has been a source of frustration for horror buffs; they feel betrayed after witnessing one of the most shocking plot twists to come out of the genre. All the while, there are those who are fascinated by the film’s audacity and multifaceted story. Wherever someone might fall on the spectrum, though, everyone can at least agree that High Tension is impossible to forget.
The conventional slasher film never quite caught on in France like it did in the United States. There are exceptions here and there, of course, but as a whole, this subgenre of horror is more of a local flavor than a universal one. However, by the time High Tension had come out, American slashers themselves were victims of postmodern overkill, parody and stagnation. No one took these films seriously anymore once Scream 3 came and went — especially not the filmmakers. In the meantime, transgressive French cinema was on the rise around the turn of the century. Not every film is of the horror persuasion, at least not in the traditional sense, yet these feral stories intentionally evoke a variety of unpleasant feelings.
High Tension is widely recognized as the first film to combine the conventions of horror with the intent and style of the New French Extremity movement. This riff on a well-known setup — women are terrorized by a bloodthirsty assailant — sounds old hat, but the execution is what seized everyone’s attention back then. Free of self-awareness, High Tension draws from the vintage era of slasher films as opposed to the then-recent revival. Marie and Alex (Cécile de France and Maïwenn) portray hapless victims who neither laugh in the face of their attacker nor seek comfort in irreverence. Because they take their dilemma seriously, so do the viewers. Playing everything straight was seen as refreshing.
High Tension starts out like other slashers. Students Marie and Alex are visiting Alex’s family in the South of France (really Romania near Bucharest) when a random intruder (Philippe Nahon) suddenly breaks into the house and murders everyone but the two protagonists. Alex is then taken hostage by the killer, urging Marie to come save her. The body count continues to rise as the hero and villain play an especially sanguinary game of cat-and-mouse in the countryside. It all sounds like a series of horror clichés, yet the story does something bizarre and startling toward the end.
(There are major spoilers beyond this point.)
According to some, one seismic revelation undoes all of High Tension’s good work. To this day critics and audiences alike bemoan the fact that Marie had been the killer all along and how everything seen in the film’s first two acts was her distorted account. The needle has hardly moved an inch in regards to the story’s devastating curveball; the double-crossness of it all still leaves a sting in repeat viewings. To forgive this kind of cinematic head fake seems next to impossible, but detractors can find merit in the film even if they cannot reconcile the ending.
High Tension implements as well as investigates the basic framework of American slashers. While many of its more recent predecessors relocated the killing sprees to urban surroundings and turned everyday safe spaces into death traps, this film steps further into the past. Rural environments, deserted highways, and an isolated farmhouse all register as clichés of the genre. In truth, though, Aja and co-writer Grégory Levasseur are using familiar horror iconography to create a false sense of comfort. The audience, thinking they know what is in store for the characters, fail to realize they too are becoming victims of someone’s break from reality.
Circling back to the divisive ending, High Tension takes the biggest of risks by turning the hero into the villain. Additional viewings would naturally involve the hunting of clues that foreshadow the story’s jarring turn of events. Upon closer inspection, the opening shows Marie inside an unknown facility, injured and incoherent, repeatedly muttering a line heard later on in the film (“I won’t let anyone come between us anymore.”) Then immediately the scene transitions to Marie waking up from a dream on the way to Alex’s house, claiming she was running away from what looks to be herself. What might have been dismissed as a throwaway line is actually a significant indicator of what is to come.
Now aware of the film’s conclusion, rational viewers will undoubtedly be irritated as they go back and uncover one plot hole after the other. To seek logic in High Tension is a Sisyphean task, though, only because the story comes from an unreliable narrator. Marie, in her current frame of mind, is untrustworthy. Rather than admitting her romantic feelings for Alex, she becomes a man. Not an ordinary man either — the killer is a stereotypical brute who unflinchingly acts on every desire and craving without consideration or remorse. He will take Alex’s love, and if not her love, her body. Her life. Eventually Marie subdues her dark half, albeit temporarily, before resuming to inflict her psychological drama on everyone around her.
To convey their hopelessness and harsh worldviews, New French Extremities tend to employ superrealism. This approach is not far off from that of older Grindhouse films, although filmmakers like Aja pursue a more painful aesthetic. Cinematographer Maxime Alexandre, a frequent collaborator of Aja, turned in an impeccable-looking debut with High Tension. The film has a metallic, cold gloss to match the killer’s deadly instruments, the overall bleak appearance channels the foreboding horrors of gritty exploitation classics, such as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and The Last House on the Left, and the graphic extravagances of Italian gore masters Dario Argento and Lamberto Bava are evident in the kills. The ferocity of High Tension is certainly not for squeamish or general audiences, however, in line with other works from the New French Extremity movement, this film always manages to find the beauty in destruction.
Some would go so far as to call High Tension a waste of time. It is understandable that the twist would upset people — even more so than the story’s actual violence — but perhaps that was the goal all along. Bodies have been violated and destroyed in horror for decades prior to Aja’s own quarrelsome take on the slasher formula, and audiences, at the time, were not as receptive as they once were. Nothing felt unsafe anymore, so something had to change. Nevertheless, this unique abandonment of self-conscious horror accomplishes what it set out to do; it completely unsettles the viewer like anything else to come out of the New French Extremity. The only difference is High Tension achieves its goal in the most unexpected way.
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.
The great Ernest Dickerson turns seventy-five years old this month, so we’re looking back at his most memorable contribution to the horror genre – 1995’s Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight!
The film hit screens while the Tales from the Crypt series was winding down its run on television, and it stands apart with a story that feels a step or two removed from the franchise norm. That was the smart play, though, as the show’s stories – and those from the original EC comics – work best in short bites. The result is a film that holds up beautifully as a gory good time.
Now keep reading to see what I heard on the commentary for…
Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight (1995)
Commentator: Ernest Dickerson (director), Michael Felsher (moderator)
1. Dickerson was in post-production on Surviving the Game when he got a call from his agent saying that producer Gil Adler wanted to meet about a Tales from the Crypt feature film. It went well, so Dickerson met with Joel Silver next and secured the job.
2. The original screenplay for the film came to the producers as a spec script wholly detached from the Tales from the Crypt brand. They added the Crypt Keeper (voiced by John Kassir) bookends to make it fit.
3. Dickerson was more familiar with the original EC comic books having read them as a kid, but he had watched a few episodes of the HBO series, so he knew what the current vibe was for the project.
4. Adler directed the film’s wraparound segments, meaning Dickerson never actually got to work with the creepy puppet. “Gil and the Crypt Keeper had a great relationship,” he adds, “they worked together for years.”
5. While he was new to the Tales from the Crypt family, Dickerson had previously worked as a director of photography on the Tales from the Darkside anthology series. That show is underappreciated in my humble opinion, and I will go to bat for both it and the equally underloved Monsters.
6. A big appeal of the horror genre for Dickerson is the idea of dark mysteries that challenge our imagination. For this film, that came down to the mythology being created between the characters.
7. Five executive producers are listed in the opening credits, but Dickerson says the only two he had dealings with were Silver and Richard Donner. The other three were Walter Hill, Robert Zemeckis, and David Giler.
8. Dickerson had only ever seen Billy Zane in movies with a full head of hair, so he was surprised when Zane showed up on the first day with a bald head. “He had this case, and he opened up the case that he had all these hair pieces in, and he says, ‘So which one of these do you think I should use?’” Dickerson looked at him and suggested he just go bald for the character.
9. While the bulk of the opening exteriors were filmed in a desert just outside Los Angeles, the shot of the old church at 11:26 was created on a warehouse hangar soundstage where the film’s interiors were shot.
10. When he had read the script, Dickerson pictured the character of Jeryline (Jada Pinkett Smith) “as a little, tough lady.” He had recently seen Smith in Menace II Society, and while the producers had someone else in mind for the role, he fought to get her instead.
11. Just as Zane surprised Dickerson with his hair (or lack thereof), Smith arrived on the first day with her hair dyed platinum white. He “liked the idea” but asked her to please get it tweaked so it looked more yellowish blond. “It’s definitely a statement.”
12. He had seen Brenda Bakke in the 1989 sci-fi/action film from Japan, Gunhed, and thought she’d be great here as Cordelia. The rest of us might recognize her from Death Spa or Trucks.
13. Felsher comments that the film’s setup does a good job not telegraphing who’s going to live or die, and he uses the “nice guy” (Charles Fleischer) and “the kid” (Ryan O’Donohue) as examples. “You don’t play by those rules here,” he says, and Dickerson replies that he wanted to subvert those rules. That extends to Smith as well because she’s Black, “and usually in movies like this they’re the first folks to die.”
14. Dickerson says they had forty days of filming, “which, the way I’m used to working, was a very generous schedule.” It was budgeted at around $10 million.
15. This probably won’t surprise you, but Zane improvised the bit at 26:25 after he jumps out the window and says, “Fuck this cowboy shit! You fuckin’, hodunk Podunk, well, then, motherfuckers!”
16. In the original script, the demons that The Collector (Zane) raises from the dirt actually looked more like the people they used to be. “They were more human,” but the very smart decision was made in pre-production to make them look far more unique instead.
17. The demons are killed by shooting their eyes, but Dickerson felt there should be one more element to it. “Shoot out their eyes, you gotta duck because the souls come shooting out, and if it hits ya, boom, it can kill ya.” This is a fun touch.
18. He’s been asked more than once if these demons are where Peter Jackson got the idea for how the orcs would look in his Lord of the Rings movies. “They do look like orcs.”
19. He recalls having seen Ronny Yu’s The Bride with White Hair shortly before going to work on Demon Knight, and he hoped to bring some of that staged style into his own film. An example of that in practice is Brayker’s (William Sadler) brief flashbacks to Christ on the cross.
20. Character deaths were mostly based on the idea that “each person’s downfall was going to be predicated by their weakness.” The Collector discovers someone’s weakness and then uses it against them. Cordelia wants to be loved, Jeryline wants to travel, Uncle Willy (Dick Miller) is a horndog for both liquor and ladies, Danny loves horror comics, etc.
21. Dickerson says that plenty of genre classics were in the back of his head while making the film, including Assault on Precinct 13, Alien, Aliens, and more.
22. Cordelia is possessed into a demonic form, and Dickerson’s idea for how she’d look was originally a bit different. “Since Cordelia was a prostitute, I thought that her mouth should actually be a vertical slit that was in her stomach… which would open up with teeth and a tongue.” It was nixed, he says, when “the wife of one of the producers read that and said ‘no way you’re putting that in the movie.’”
23. The key makes an appearance in the followup, Tales from the Crypt: Bordello of Blood, but it wasn’t originally meant to. Apparently, early test audiences expected it to be a more connected sequel to Demon Knight, so the filmmakers added it in to appease them. This is where I go on record saying that Bordello of Blood is a fun time. Can’t touch Demon Knight, obviously, but it’s more entertaining than its reputation suggests.
24. They had to film Uncle Willy’s bar scene “dream” twice, once with the women topless and once with them in bikinis, to have versions for both theaters and television broadcast. “Dick’s a pro.” (To be fair, Dickerson says this in regard to Miller having to endure the makeup application, but the sentiment fits both situations, so…)
25. Dickerson says he’s “always amazed at the love that people show this film,” and adds that fans bring it up to him incredibly often. This is great to hear, as we should always be telling artists how much their work means to us while they’re still alive and able to hear it.
26. Zane also suggested the gag at 1:08:21 with the sponge coming out of his mouth. The beat reminds Dickerson to praise the actor even more, adding that he was an “ally” to the director when “bad ideas” came down from the studio suits.
27. He didn’t get any pushback on killing little Danny. He did insist on one added element, though, as he wanted to immediately follow the boy exploding in the air with a shot of his bloody and torn sneaker hitting the ground below. “And the sneaker had to be a hightop.”
28. Dickerson says there’s “something kinky sexy about” Smith being covered in blood, and then the two commentators go quiet for almost two minutes out of respect for the scene. It’s a good opportunity to reflect on how Dickerson had previously mentioned Alien and Aliens as films being in the back of his head during filming, and how two scenes here reflect that – Jeryline stripping down to her underwear for the final confrontation feels like a nod to Ridley Scott’s film, while an earlier scene with Irene (CCH Pounder) and Dep. Bob (Gary Farmer) realizing they’re surrounded and choosing to blow themselves up alongside some of the demons is something of a callback to the air vent sacrifice in James Cameron’s film.
29. Asked about the film’s critical reception at the time of release, Dickerson says it received good reviews from horror-loving critics and then talks about the importance of horror in general. “Horror has always been a great way of putting out ideas, of talking about some of the things that affect us as people. Some of the best horror, like the best science fiction, talks about what it’s like to be human. Some of the best horror gets very political.”
30. The original ending would have featured The Collector showing “his true self, which is a demon made of fire.” They spent a lot of time trying to make it work, but it was “extremely difficult… back in the day of analog effects.” It was rewritten into the faceoff between him and Jeryline featuring the dancing, the crotch fire, Zane’s attempts at saying “love,” and his eventual demise from her bloody spit.
31. They both agree that a direct sequel to Demon Knight could be a lot of fun, but Dickerson says he’s unaware of any talk on the possibility.
32. Dickerson was super excited about this new Scream Factory Blu-ray in 2015, and he mentions that before its release, he had imported a Blu-ray from Germany presumably to enjoy the film in HD. He’s just like us! (Or am I the only one here who’s imported a German Blu-ray of the much maligned werewolf flick Big Bad Wolf…)
Quotes Without Context
“I was so happy to get Dick Miller for this movie.”
“There was a time when guys used to put ketchup on everything.”
“I’m a big student of Hitchcock, and the best way to make a moment of horror work is to lull the audience into a false sense of security.”
“A villain should always be the most interesting person in a movie.”
“They were a really great bunch of performers who were performing on these little leg-extension stilts wearing a diaper that had a radio-controlled tail that was being manipulated by a special effects tech right out of the frame.”
“It’s hard to direct air; it doesn’t do what you want.”
“The only censorship problem came from the producer’s wife, who didn’t want the vagina dentalis [sic] in the movie.”
“One of the executives wanted to know why the devil didn’t try to have sex with Jada.”
“It always starts with the script.”
Keep up with more horror commentary breakdowns here.
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