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| Images courtesy of Shout Factory |
Called by Guillermo Del Toro ‘One of the most original
voices to emerge in the horror field…’, New York based independent American
actor, producer, writer, director, editor, cinematographer founder Larry
Fessenden first appeared in the 1980s in his short film White Trash
before founding and managing his Glass Eye Pix film company in 1985. A multifaceted film worker working in film,
television and even video games having written Until Dawn as well as
cameoing in Martin Scorsese’s Bringing Out the Dead, the grizzled snaggle
toothed icon of New York based indie horror is something of a Universal
Monsters movie director by way of John Cassavetes or Jim Jarmusch channeling
old fashioned creature feature thrills into a contemporary timeline and
setting. Still working today including
having recently starred in Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon and
having directed the 2023 horror film Blackout while steadily producing
the films of Kelly Reichardt and Ti West, Fessenden while wholly original and
widespread within the filmmaking community nevertheless remains to this day
curiously overlooked if not unknown by cinephiles beyond staunch horror
fans.
Back in 2015, Shout Factory joined forces with Fessenden and
Glass Eye Pix to make a comprehensive four-disc blu-ray boxed set featuring some
of his most critically acclaimed and celebrated works in newly minted director
approved high-definition transfers. Comprised
of his 1991 mad scientist horror No Telling, his self-deprecating 1997 New
York vampire addiction film Habit, his celebrated woodsy wintry 2002 monster
movie Wendigo and lastly his 2007 scope widescreen Ron Perlman starring
arctic chiller The Last Winter, the aptly named The Larry Fessenden
Collection also includes several of his short films including but not
limited to White Trash, Santa Claws, N is for Nexus from The
ABCs of Death 2 and some of his commercials and music videos. Each film comes with a newly recorded audio
commentary by Larry Fessenden as well as extensive extras including making-of
documentaries and gag reels, all newly remixed into DTS-HD 5.1 surround
sound. Sadly that release is long out of
print and goes for obscene amounts on eBay, but that shouldn’t stop us from
talking about the film and the distinctive one-of-a-kind indie horror artist
behind them.
No Telling (1991)
In his feature length filmmaking debut, No Telling or the
Frankenstein Complex or No Telling… for short, we find ourselves on
an isolated farmland in the countryside where Dr. Geoffrey Gaines (Stephen
Ramsey) and wife/artist Lillian (Miriam Healy-Louie) have taken up shop enjoying
the solitude as the doctor sets up a secret lab where he can continue his
ongoing medical research. As to what
that research entails, Lillian is in the dark but doesn’t seem to care outside
of sensing impending distance between herself and her husband ensconced in his
work. Meeting a friendly neighbor named
Alex (David Van Tiegham) who is also trying to raise awareness about the
negative effects of pesticides, Lillian soon finds herself growing increasingly
suspicious of what her perpetually absent husband is up to, eventually leading to
a most shocking subset of uncanny discoveries.
Loosely influenced by Rachel Carson’s 1962 environmentalist
book Silent Spring which managed to sway opposition against the use of
pesticides in the United States as well as a postmodern reworking of Mary
Shelley’s Frankenstein, No Telling… co-written by Fessenden and Beck
Underwood is a slow burn of ecological horror featuring wild and innovative
creature effects makeup and decent performances from the ensemble cast. One of the strangest eco-horror flicks since The
Living Dead at Manchester Morgue, No Telling… while not particularly
frightening manages to disturb and/or horrify with its regard for animals being
integrated into the mad doctor’s experimentation. It also functions as a marital disintegration
thriller with the good guy neighbor Alex posited in the film with potentially
romantic triangular leanings. Fessenden’s
regard for sexuality in this and his next film Habit is disarmingly
ordinary and feels less like titillation than borderline apathy.
Featuring warm sunny summer cinematography by David Shaw
with a suitably unnerving score co-written by co-star David Van Tiegham and Tom
Laverack, No Telling… while occasionally rough around the edges in terms
of the performances and rusty filmmaking gets the job done with some startling
top-down bird’s eye view camera zooms and animatronic makeup effects that go
far on very little resources. Presented
in 1.78:1 widescreen, the shoestring production never quite feels fully fledged
but has enough homegrown ideas and regional imagery in it to stand on its own two
legs made up of disparate animal body parts.
Fessenden himself, in time honored tradition, also sneakily cameos amid
the proceedings without drawing too much focus to his own idiosyncratic if not
disheveled figure. No Telling… is
the weakest of the bunch but for Fessenden fans and newcomers it clearly paves
the way for a completely new horror voice that would flourish and mutate over
the next three films featured in the set.
Habit (1995)
Piss-drunk scruffy New York based drifter Sam (an
unflattering if not dirtied Larry Fessenden) has broken up with his girlfriend
and his father passed away, catapulting him into the streets, nightclubs, art
gatherings and parties sauntering from place to place in an intoxicated fog. With his ratty hair and frequent display of
his snaggle tooth for the sake of the camera, the part-time bartender
moonshining vagrant Sam crosses paths with Anna (Meredith Snaider) a young brunette
nymphet partier who takes to him with wild passionate sex. However during one sexual encounter she bites
him and he begins feeling peculiar if not hungry for blood. Functioning as a semi-autobiographical
allegory for addiction and being one of many offbeat city-based vampire films
including but not limited to Nadja, The Addiction and Vampire’s
Kiss, its a film that makes the gulf between substance abuse and vampirism
indistinguishable and offers Fessenden a rare opportunity for self-deprecation. Whereas other directors casting themselves in
the lead role might have feared exposing their unappealing qualities, Fessenden
confidently lets it all hang out in a film edited by himself.
Featuring a low-key score by Geoffrey Kidde and gritty
documentary-like 1.33:1 16mm cinematography by Frank G. DeMarco, Habit looks
and feels intentionally scrappy like a grimy early Abel Ferrara or Larry Clark
film. With a chunk of the film’s ugly
ass feel stemming from its visual look, the shoestring quickly shot (within
three months) promenade through nighttime New York as a lost soul finds the
heart of darkness frolicking deep inside it, Habit feels like inhuman
bloodlust dampened by a hangover.
Fessenden himself is a good character actor and he goes the full-distance
as well as Meredith Snaider who draws the character of Sam into her spider web,
seducing her victim as she captures him in her undead fangs. Of the films included here, Habit is
most certainly the smallest and least effects-oriented one but it nevertheless
captures the essence of vampirism as a metaphor for addiction with Fessenden
dunking on himself as the picture’s grizzled protagonist.
Wendigo (2002)
The notion of the Algonquian Native American folklore spirit
the Wendigo which originated as early as 1714 is synonymous with timeless
folk horror. Associated with northern
winter and famine, it is a skeletal, deer-human hybrid creature of cannibalism,
decay and death with sharp dangerous talons.
Further characterized by Algernon Blackwood’s 1910 novella and later
Stephen King’s Pet Sematary, the descriptive traits of the creature kept
evolving with ram’s horns, a yellow tongue and vapor billowing out of its nostrils. Eventually the Wendigo character saw
itself appear in a number of monster movies including Ravenous and Scott
Cooper’s 2021 film Antlers. Few however
became as immersed in the lore, biology and iconography of the Wendigo creature
spirit mythos as writer-director Larry Fessenden who not only tackles the
monster head on in his 2002 film, but seemingly again in his 2007 film The
Last Winter and the 2015 videogame series Until Dawn which itself
was made into a horror film this year.
While sadly the film bombed theatrically at the time, Fessenden’s Wendigo
represents the director’s most polished and fully furnished cult favorite
up to that time in a film that gradually found more widespread exposure on home
video circuits.
Anxious antsy professional photographer George (Jake Weber
of Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead redux) is sick and tired of his New
York advertising workload and is more than a little desperate for much needed
vacation time. Venturing with his wife
Kim (Patricia Clarkson of Jumanji) and ten-year-old son Miles (Erik Per
Sullivan of Malcolm in the Middle) in tow to upstate New York for a
scenic winter vacation, things are looking up until near their destination they
hit a deer with his truck. Upon
inspecting the damage, a group of boozing rowdy hunters spearheaded by angry
Otis (John Speredakos) happen upon the scene enraged their intended kill was
ruined by George’s truck. Kim and George
drive off to their cabin, but a vengeful Otis can’t help but spy on their
after-hours fireside sexing. Meanwhile
Miles is told by the local shopkeeper of the legend of the Wendigo which transforms
from a cannibalistic human into a skeletal animal with supernatural powers and
the ability to shape shift ala John Carpenter’s The Thing. After being given a Wendigo figurine by the
shopkeeper, mysterious things begin to happen around the cabin including
terrifying encounters with some kind of antler-like creature in the woods.
Arguably the most well-known Larry Fessenden production in
the film community, garnering a theatrical release as well as a review from
Roger Ebert who disliked the film’s ending but admired much of the rest, Wendigo
is perhaps of his oeuvre the quintessential Fessenden picture. Wintery, remote and steeped in folk horror
and sporting at the time the most notable screen talent in any of the director’s
films, it manages to be the outright creepiest Fessenden effort debatably of
the whole box. Featuring a moody score
by Michelle DiBucci and wonderfully chilly, largely nighttime cinematography by
Den of Thieves cameraman Terry Stacey, the production values of the film
are a lot handsomer than what we’ve seen before from the indie horror
director. As with his others, Fessenden
serves as the editor and manages to conjure up some hyperkinetic freakout
montages in key sequences.
While it didn’t take off in theaters and was met with tepid
criticism, over time it ascended the ranks of the director’s filmography as
perhaps the consummate Larry Fessenden picture.
Predating the costlier and more cliched Antlers by over a decade
and setting a new standard for independently financed and composed horror, Wendigo
found new life and fanfare on home video as a frequent VHS tape renter at
Blockbuster Video. With its early
performances by Jake Weber and Patricia Clarkson before their own forays into
mainstream Hollywood, creative creature effects and subliminal jump scares as
well as sense of country hick unease, it is as close to being something of a
wintery horror western as John Carpenter’s The Thing or Quentin
Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight with just the right amount of cabin fever
claustrophobics to push the film over into being a pressure cooker chamber
piece. All in all, arguably Larry
Fessenden at his best.
The Last Winter (2007)
After deep-diving into the freezing cold New York snowfall
of Wendigo in 2002, Larry Fessenden was far from done with the metaphysical
supernatural chamber piece winter folk horror film. In between doing a documentary short film Searching
for the Wendigo, Fessenden began setting his sights on a new horror film
that takes place in Alaska. While
researching locations for what was shaping up to be a continuation of his
ecological horror fixations with respect to environmentalism and concepts of
global warming or climate change, his scouting landed him towards Iceland where
he began putting together an Icelandic crew including The Battle of Wallis Island
cinematographer G. Magni Ágústsson and a starkly terrifying bass-heavy score
by In a Valley of Violence composer Jeff Grace. The resulting film The Last Winter, an
understated and strangely Earthy scare fest prominently starring Ron Perlman, James
LeGros and Connie Britton predated (and arguably bettered) M. Night Shyamalan’s
2008 eco-thriller The Happening. While
a bigger, more polished and well-known film, it absolutely pales in comparison
to what Fessenden unleashed here.
American oil giant K.I.K. Corporation stationed in the
northern Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is fixing to build an ice road for
further oil drilling, tasking hardnosed chief executive Ed Pollack (Ron
Perlman) with driving the environmentalists working the base into a dangerous
mission that could threaten to melt the icy region in the process. Running against him is driller James Hoffman
(James Le Gros) who quickly becomes Pollack’s arch-rival and competitor for the
romantic affections of Abby (Connie Britton).
As the days and long icy winter nights bore on, new hire Maxwell (Zach
Gilford) becomes increasingly erratic claiming to see and hear ghostly spectral
cattle stampeding through the frozen darkness.
As the crew of the arctic base begins to unravel with characters
disappearing or stripping naked before running outside in the cold, Hoffman begins
to suspect the strange phenomenon plaguing the are is the result of sour gas
emanating from melting glaciers as a result of climate change. Slowly but surely, the whole thing devolves
into a madcap hallucinatory freakout including a frozen body with its eyes
pecked out and a scary plane crash.
The most expensive (and first scope 2.35:1 widescreen)
Fessenden effort up to that time, costing close to $7 million compared to the
meager budgets of before, the film co-written by Robert Leaver and co-produced
by Jeffrey Levy-Hinte represents the director debatably at his most ambitious
while staying true to his ecological horror fixations. Featuring some memorably terrifying night
vision scenes of a naked man looking into a camera as some sort of spectral
creature crashes into it, frightening nervous breakdowns from multiple
characters, a plane crash featuring a Fessenden cameo as the pilot and Ron
Perlman debatably at his slimiest and most neurotic, The Last Winter while
not as scary as Wendigo absolutely cranks the volume up a lot
higher. With undeniably the director’s
most painterly looking aesthete yet, it is Fessenden with elegance and
vastness.
Released in the US in 2007 following the Toronto
International Film Festival, The Last Winter underperformed at the box
office taking in around $92,522 globally before becoming a Blockbuster Video
exclusive DVD disc release. Despite the
weak numbers, it fared a lot better with critics with the New York Times columnist
Manohla Dargis adding it to their Critics’ Pick list. While Fessenden carried on making films
afterwards with the television episode of Fear Itself and his catfish
horror film Beneath, Shout Factory’s comprehensive The Larry Fessenden
Collection ends here in what is still probably the director’s most complex
and interpretive ecological horror film.
An isolated winter creep fest with the same outlook on isolation as Wendigo
only with bigger star power and resources, The Last Winter closes out
the now sadly out-of-print collection of films with a loud frightening bang,
the culmination of a wholly original multi-talented New York horror auteur at
the peak of his creative inspirations.
--Andrew Kotwicki
