Twitch-O-Meter: Blood and Donuts

Bob Clark (Black Christmas) – Canada’s great full on genre director is most likely Bob Clark. Although born in New Orleans and educated in Michigan, he spent most of his career working inside the Canadian film industry. He is one of ours now. Clark is never quite given credit for setting the mold for the 80’s style slasher film way back in 1974, about 4 years before John Carpenter made Halloween, the film which is usually given credit for the birth of the modern slasher film. Black Christmas is stylish and inventive, often using the killers point of view, and it as it ticks down a group of sorority sisters one at a time there it is interesting to see a film which walks the line between something definitely of North America, but also the European Giallos - a style popular at the time. Pay no attention to the remake of the film which stunk up the multiplex most recently, and find the original, as it has aged considerably well. As an aside, Clark also may kicked off the modern teen gross-out film. There would likely be no American Pie without Canadian Porky's. He had two fine entries into the Zombie sub-genre with Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things (which he is remaking himself at the moment) and the under seen but well-loved cult classic Death Dream. Lastly, if you have paid attention to the ebb and flow of popular culture, Clark’s Christmas movie, A Christmas Story, has achieved a resonance with the below 40 crowd that is threatening to take over It’s A Wonderful Life as the de facto holiday broadcast (or DVD) experience. The man has got enough diversity in his filmography to forgive colossal misfires like the Baby Genius films.

John Fawcett (Ginger Snaps) – While some out there are of the opinion that the inconsequential Underworld was responsible for the resurgence of the werewolf film, in reality it is much more likely that Ginger Snaps was the real catalyst. Merging the difficulties of female coming of age with lycanthropy is the lightning bolt of genius this film rides with great performances from young Canadian actors Katharine Isabelle, Emily Perkins and Kris Lemche. Deadpan humour abounds through the film which is not afraid to blend gory and sexy in the same shot. Plus, Ginger Snaps has a whopper of an opening credit sequence involving teen suicide which I am fairly sure prevented the film from playing in the United States theatrically – a single screening in New York does not count as a theatrical release, but I assure you the film got its due on the big screen north of the border. A couple interesting sequels followed which offered diminishing returns but were somewhat held together by kinetic direction (Ginger Snaps: Unleashed) and the chemistry of the two leads (Ginger Snaps: The Beginning)

Bruce McDonald (Hard Core Logo) – The Rock ‘n Roll documentary has been a small but vibrant niche since the late 1960’s. They typically come across as loose studies of the band (and the ego) over the course of a single tour and/or often get at the heart of the particular type of music and its scene. Compare Monterey Pop to Gimme Shelter and you get the peak and fall of the hippie culture at 24fps. Watch the beginning of the end of the first wave of punk culture with The Great Rock and Roll Swindle and of course Rob Reiner’s loving faux documentary Spinal Tap creates three hilariously flawed characters while spoofing ‘hair-metal’. Hard Core Logo pushes this type of film in a darker, more subtle and completely character direction. Like Spinal Tap, it’s a mock-doc, but the similarities pretty much end there. Hard Core Logo follows a Canadian punk band across Canada on a tour initiated as much out of desperation as for the stated charity cause to raise money for a fellow musician who lost his legs. The front man of the band is played both with menace and innocence by real life musician Hugh Dillon. Ubiquitous character actor Callum Keith Rennie plays a potential successful guitarist who wants to dump the losers he is touring with and go for a rich paying American gig. He can’t quite come out and say it because he has been friends with his band mate since they were six. The film heads into some interesting ego conflicts and has a whopper of a closing scene. Centered in the film is a wildly surreal, drug fueled orgy of violence involving livestock some which lands somewhere Apocalypse Now and Altered States. It is also worth mentioning that McDonald has two other fine rock 'n road pictures, Roadkill and HIghway 61, which both feature fellow Canadian actor/director Don McKellar.

Daniel Roby (La Peau Blanche) - The vampire sub-genre subverted as a metaphor for race relations? Check. An lead character with an irrational fear of redheads? Check. Daniel Roby’s award winning (and tragically under seen) 2004 film is known on DVD in English speaking Canada by its literal translation “White Skin” and in the US with the ludicrously bad jacket as “Cannibal.” It may follow the mode of stalwarts of the contemporary vampire film from The Lost Boys to Near Dark, but La Peau Blanche styles itself as a drama or thriller content to slowly build. The pace is off kilter but still immensely satisfying for those who like to think a little before the bloodletting. Roby has not done any directing since his first feature and this is a damn shame. The man has some serious talent. As a side note while talking about under seen Canadian vampire films, it is worth mentioning the nearly impossible to find “Blood and Donuts.” A mash of tone from subtle comedy to bittersweet tragedy rolled into an unorthodox character study. It’s the only vampire film I know to feature both Golf (in a kicker of an opening shot) and pastry.

Eric Canuel (Bon Cop, Bad Cop) – How do I rationalize my scorn for Michael Bay and love of Eric Canuel’s Bon Cop, Bad Cop? It is patriotism that gets this film the passing grade? Perhaps it is the sly comedy thrown in with the broader elements familiar to cop action pictures. Over the top violence (‘splosions a plenty), pans across cities by helicopter, and blue and yellow filters are par for the course in Bon Cop, Bad Cop. Anyone who has seen a straight up action film over the past couple years will recognize the visual style instantly. Gratuitous violence and one smoking hot sex scene (something missing in the American action film for some time actually, and here the scene is still managed to be played for laughs in its own way) are mixed in with the oil-and-water buddy-cop hijinx. Of course all of this pays lip service (and sometimes more) to the cultural divide in Canada between French speaking Quebec and the rest of the country (except for 33% of New Brunswick), and in particular - stuffy, uptight and self-centered Toronto. Several of the side-characters are broad caricatures of actual people in the hockey world. Yes folks, the film follows a the chase of a hockey serial killer. More interestingly, however, and certainly the gimmick here is that the film is fully bilingual. The DVD of the film has three ‘versions’ with the same video track. There is the English version with all the French dialogue subtitled, there is the French version with all the English dialogue subtitled, and lastly there is the 'Canadian' version with no subtitles (less than 10% of the Canadian viewing audience will watch this version). The fact that this film is currently the highest grossing money maker for an indigenous film allows for Canadians to take heart in that a bilingual film can bring Canada a little closer together even as it mocks the differences. That last sentence is a bit of a cultural pastime. Even if Bon Cop, Bad Cop is a slam-bang American style action picture, the extra Canadian spice and chemistry of the two leads gives the final film that extra bit of subtle flavour. It will be fun to see what Canuel does next.

If you would like to dig a lot deeper into genre cinema in Canada (and have a taste for the exploitation side), I cannot recommend enough the fine website Canuxploitation for thoroughly covering (at least on the horror end of things) the subject.