Editorials
Looking Back at the Grounded Apocalyptic Terror of ‘Black Death’
Christopher Smith might just be one of the most underrated genre filmmakers still working today. From his 2004 urban slasher debut Creep to the fan-favorite mind-bending thriller Triangle (and even the criminally underseen Severance), the director has long established himself as one of the most consistently entertaining voices in the genre.
That’s why it’s so strange that Smith is rarely brought up during discussions about the most influential genre creators of the 2000s, especially now that indie horror with high-concept twists has become more popular among mainstream audiences. I found myself thinking about Smith’s tragic lack of recognition after revisiting what I believe to be his most underrated project, 2010’s historical horror-thriller Black Death.
I’d actually argue that this bleak little film is even more effective now than it was over a decade and a half ago, as its grimy mid-budget thrills are hard to come by in an industry now dominated by hastily produced streaming content. That’s why I’d like to invite my fellow horror fans to accompany me as we explore the flick’s production and how Smith turned it into a somber period piece from hell.
The film that would eventually become Black Death started out as a very different project meant to be produced in the UK and helmed by prolific TV director Geoffrey Sax. Written by Dario Poloni (who had previously penned MJ Bassett’s surprisingly entertaining survival flick Wilderness), this initial version of the story was far more supernaturally inclined, with the second half resembling a more traditional folk horror story than a grounded take on what living through the bubonic plague would actually have been like.
This would change once Smith took over the project and the shoot was rescheduled to take place in Germany, with the Berlin-based Egoli Tossell Films taking over production. Smith went on to rewrite large chunks of the script in order to change the story into something less literal after researching the nuances of the time period. Fascinated by the fundamentalist beliefs of the era, the director began to imagine what a period-accurate conflict between a knight and a necromancer might look like, with this idea leading Smith to the realization that the real terrors of the plague would only be diluted with the addition of familiar paranormal tropes and medieval wizardry.
Though Sean Bean was attached to the film from the very beginning (with his interest in the project helping the team to acquire funding), this updated take on the story would end up replacing established co-stars like Famke Janssen and Lena Headey due to budgetary issues when it became clear that the movie was headed in a darker and less easily-marketable direction. The flick was also one of Eddie Redmayne’s first forays into genre film, with the young actor undergoing an extensive research process in order to bring his medieval monk to life.
Black Death ended up sharing quite a few cast and crew members with the then-concurrent Game of Thrones TV adaptation. However, the on-location shoot in Blankenburg and Querfurt ended up making the movie feel like an appropriately grounded production in comparison, despite both stories featuring plenty of dark subversions of what audiences typically expect from sword and sorcery.
In the finished film, we follow Redmayne as the novice monk Osmund as he agrees to guide a dangerous mission led by the devout knight Ulric (Sean Bean). Ulric and his band of fellow warriors have been urged by the local bishop to investigate rumors of a remote village said to be protected from the devastating effects of the plague by the actions of a necromancer. During his travels with the group, Osmund has his faith tested as he slowly comes to terms with the true extent of the plague’s damage on both men’s bodies and their desperate souls.
The first time I watched Black Death was in the company of an uncle who had rented the movie expecting something more in line with the action-horror thrillers of the 2000s (such as Van Helsing and Constantine). Naturally, he was disappointed with how the film turned out to be an atmospheric character study where the spiritual implications of disease and religious conflict are far more dangerous than spell-slinging warlocks. I think a lot of folks felt that way back in the day, especially since Sean Bean’s casting may have unintentionally suggested some form of thematic connection between this film and epic fantasy narratives like The Lord of the Rings (or even the aforementioned Game of Thrones series).
In reality, Black Death is an unrepentant horror film where even the brief action set-pieces are shot in a way that’s meant to disturb viewers, not entertain them. From disgusting, practical gore effects to the morally complex nature of every single character, it’s clear that there are no obvious heroes or villains here. Hell, even the pagan “antagonists” are merely perpetuating the cycle of violence begun by the Christians who persecuted them in the first place – an idea explored to the extreme in the film’s divisive epilogue.
Black Death may not be as polished or historically accurate as a Robert Eggers endeavor, featuring common tropes and myths like witch-burnings and anachronistic armor/weapons, but it certainly nails the apocalyptic atmosphere of a period that must have really felt like the end of the world. This oppressive ambience is only enhanced by moody cinematography that takes full advantage of on-location shooting in ways that we rarely see in contemporary productions.
It’s also impossible not to think of COVID when characters express irrational paranoia about the infection, and the gruesome imagery involving diseased bodies and mass graves brings to mind just how vulnerable we are as a species – an idea that makes the characters’ callous acts of intolerance that much more terrifying.
While the film’s story is a bit heavy-handed in its symbolism and presentation, the mere fact that it respects the audience’s intelligence enough to allow us to decide for ourselves who (if anyone) was in the right more than makes up for any narrative blunders like cheesy dialogue and unnecessary narration. Even then, the cast appears to take their characters so seriously (just look at Eddie Redmayne’s silent transformation from naïve young man to jaded zealot) that you’ll rarely be taken out of the experience by iffy dialogue.
That’s why I think Black Death would have been more successful if it had been released a few years later. Modern audiences are more used to somber period pieces in the vein of The VVitch, and the movie’s understated terror would likely have been better appreciated in a cinematic landscape where horror is taken a little more seriously. That’s why I still recommend this one to fans of historical horror, so long as you go in expecting slow-burning tension and horrific moral dilemmas rather than zombies and epic duels.
Black Death is currently available to stream on Disney+, Hulu, Pluto TV, and Tubi.
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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