Monday 1 May 2017

Twixt (2011)

"So, how does it feel to be the bargain-basement Stephen King?"

I think I can safely say this is now what a horror writer wants to hear on a book signing tour. But it is what horror writer Hall Baltimore hears from Bobby LaGrange, sheriff in a small town with a very odd history.

It's a funny old place, Swann Valley, what with its belfry clock that has seven dials, each showing a different time. Then there's the old hotel where Edgar Allan Poe once stayed. Oh, and the colony of Goths on the other side of lake who the sheriff blames for a spate of murders. Murders in which the victim is staked through the heart. Naturally.

Bobby (a bonkers Bruce Dern) explains to Hall (a chubby, pony-tailed Val Kilmer) that he thinks the 'vampire equivalent of the electric chair' was used to kill the girl in the morgue. For good measure the sheriff has constructed a small working model of the staking machine. Hall, who's having the usual writers' problems with his wife and his agent, is persuaded to view the corpse, then encounters what seems to be the ghost of the murdered girl.

Bobby proposes to Hall that they collaborate on a book about the 'Vampire Killings' in the valley. Hall, desperately seeking inspiration, is tempted. But things start to go very wrong when he looks deeper into the town's history, gets drunk, necks a lot of pills, and encounters the ghost of Poe. And if that sounds loopy, believe me I have hardly scratched the surface of Twixt. It throws so  many cliches at the wall that some are bound to stick, and I can imagine a lot of people being annoyed and/or bored with it. And yet...

A friend recorded Twixt off the Horror Channel and suggested I watch it. Because just dove in with no preconceptions I think I enjoyed it more. For instance, I assumed that the rather decent production values were a lucky break for some clever young writer-director - a producer's vote of confidence. Imagine my surprise to see in the end credits that the film is written, directed, and produced by Francis Ford Coppola.

Twixt is one of those overlooked films, and you can see why. It is variously described as a comedy and an experimental horror thriller, which gives you some idea of how problematic it is. Conventional horror fans don't get much gore, comedy fans don't get many laughs. I enjoyed it, Not many other people did, thought. It bombed at the box office, as they say.


1 comment:

Oscar Solis said...

I watched Twixt a couple of years back and while I found it to contain some beautiful shots, I couldn't connect with the characters or situation. I do have to say that it was nice to see a vampire film that tried to be something different, even if I didn't care for it. Coppola's films of late appear to exist because he wants to make/see them rather than be held to yet another commercial project. Whether one likes the films or not, it's nice to see a filmmaker put his money where his mouth (or in this case vision) is.

Maybe another viewing is in order.

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