Coming out of the courthouse today, I walked past a Chinese restaurant, and I got to thinking: we hear a lot about J-horror. But what about Chinese horror? They've got movie studios churning out jet Li flicks and such, so they have the capability to make movies. I wondered what are Chinese horror films like?
THAT got me to thinking about a broader question: what were horror films like in communist countries in general? And what are they like now, in those that were liberated by the fall of the Soviet Union?
Tom Clancy spoke at my college in 1991, and said "Y'know, the Russians are a funny bunch." Having studies their history, I can say that's putting it mildly. Daily life in Communist Russia had its share of horrors: the ever present KGB, and the neighbors that would be delighted to dime somebody in on the thinnest (or even totally false) charges of anti-revolutionary behavior. Widespread famine when they tried to collectivize the farms. The country being ravaged in WWII (contrary to popular belief, the USSR did a majority of the land fighting vs. the Nazis, not us). And of course, the purges. Stalin had people rounded up and shipped off to gulags or tortured and killed because they were Jewish, they dissented from the Party line, they were army officers above the rank of Lieutenant and threatened (he thought) his iron grip on the military. . . he even rounded up doctors, for Christ's sake. Between the war and the purges, it's estimated Russia lost over 20 MILLION people. A nuclear waste stockpile went critical and exploded in the Ural Mountains; we knew about it because radiation levels went up as if a bomb had gone off, and we were operating under a treaty that prohibited above ground testing. We asked the russians "Did you guys. . . .?" They replied: "Nyet, comrade." Then our spy satellites detected the crater and a whole bunch of villages just. . . gone off the map one day. They finally admitted it years later, but the fact that the entire nation could so successfully go into denial says a lot about them as a people.
Now that the Wall's fallen, they're not much better off; rampant unemployment, shortages, poverty, a ruthless and legendarily violent mafia, the suppression of the rebellion in Chechnya (and the Chechnyans' response) are probably almost as bad.
With everyday horrors like this going on in Russia, and to an arguably lesser extent in the rest of the Eastern bloc, you gotta wonder what their horror fiction (assuming the government allowed any to be published/shown) was like. What could scare these people, who stoically endured so much?
We hear a lot about international horror from a handful of countries, notably Japan, Great Britain, and Italy. But does anyone know anything about movies from the Communist or Post Communist eras in the Eastern bloc nations and China? I confess I don't, but now I'm fairly burning w/ curiosity. Can any of this stuff be acquired?
THAT got me to thinking about a broader question: what were horror films like in communist countries in general? And what are they like now, in those that were liberated by the fall of the Soviet Union?
Tom Clancy spoke at my college in 1991, and said "Y'know, the Russians are a funny bunch." Having studies their history, I can say that's putting it mildly. Daily life in Communist Russia had its share of horrors: the ever present KGB, and the neighbors that would be delighted to dime somebody in on the thinnest (or even totally false) charges of anti-revolutionary behavior. Widespread famine when they tried to collectivize the farms. The country being ravaged in WWII (contrary to popular belief, the USSR did a majority of the land fighting vs. the Nazis, not us). And of course, the purges. Stalin had people rounded up and shipped off to gulags or tortured and killed because they were Jewish, they dissented from the Party line, they were army officers above the rank of Lieutenant and threatened (he thought) his iron grip on the military. . . he even rounded up doctors, for Christ's sake. Between the war and the purges, it's estimated Russia lost over 20 MILLION people. A nuclear waste stockpile went critical and exploded in the Ural Mountains; we knew about it because radiation levels went up as if a bomb had gone off, and we were operating under a treaty that prohibited above ground testing. We asked the russians "Did you guys. . . .?" They replied: "Nyet, comrade." Then our spy satellites detected the crater and a whole bunch of villages just. . . gone off the map one day. They finally admitted it years later, but the fact that the entire nation could so successfully go into denial says a lot about them as a people.
Now that the Wall's fallen, they're not much better off; rampant unemployment, shortages, poverty, a ruthless and legendarily violent mafia, the suppression of the rebellion in Chechnya (and the Chechnyans' response) are probably almost as bad.
With everyday horrors like this going on in Russia, and to an arguably lesser extent in the rest of the Eastern bloc, you gotta wonder what their horror fiction (assuming the government allowed any to be published/shown) was like. What could scare these people, who stoically endured so much?
We hear a lot about international horror from a handful of countries, notably Japan, Great Britain, and Italy. But does anyone know anything about movies from the Communist or Post Communist eras in the Eastern bloc nations and China? I confess I don't, but now I'm fairly burning w/ curiosity. Can any of this stuff be acquired?
" dvd on Amazon as well. They don't sell it directly, but so that you know, that edition comes with english subtitles. But, yes, it's not a horror film, so it doesn't entirely belong in this discussion.
