Canadian Horror Films
Canadian Horror Films
Canada has provided an endless stream of performers for Hollywood, and directors ranging from James Cameron to Norman Jewison have also migrated from the Great White North to seeks their fortunes. But not everybody leaves Canada for California, resulting in a film industry that’s turned out a number of home-grown classics. This is especially true of Canadian horror films, as visionaries such as David Cronenberg have made their mark by maintaining roots in their native land.
The following list includes a number of my favorite Canadian horror films, and I’d recommend them to anyone who enjoys zombies, werewolves, slasher flicks, or body horror. For a country with one of the highest standards of living on the planet, Canada has a much darker side when it comes to cinema.
- Fido (2006) - Set in an alternate universe that looks a lot like the 1950s, Fido follows life after the Zombie Wars, a showdown which determined whether man or the undead would be the dominant form of life on the planet. Humanity won, and now zombies are used as manual labor thanks to control collars manufactured by Zomcon. When a housewife (Carrie-Ann Moss) gets an animated corpse to help out around the house, her youngest son names him Fido (Billy Connolly). But thanks to a malfunction in his collar, it’s not long before Fido is nibbling on the neighbors and instigating all manner of havoc. A subversive comedy that pokes fun at corporate greed, as well as the sexist and racist climate of the ‘50s. Scottish comic Connolly is especially effective in his role as the sympathetic and perpetually hungry Fido.
- The Brood (1979) - The first significant hit for filmmaker David Cronenberg, The Brood stars Oliver Reed as a psychotherapist whose techniques encourage patients to undergo drastic physical changes in order to get their negative emotions out into the open. In the case of Nola Carveth (Samantha Eggar), this results in her giving birth to a number of strange children. Linked telepathically with their mother, the brood act out whatever emotions she’s feeling, even if they involve murder.
- Ginger Snaps (2000) - Brigitte (Emily Perkins) and Ginger Fitzgerald (Katharine Isabelle) are sisters with a love of the macabre who have trouble fitting in at their local high school. But their teenage angst becomes even more pronounced when Ginger gets her first period and is attacked by a werewolf at the same time. Now filled with a lust for blood and sex, Ginger’s transformation mirrors the confusion that all teens go through during puberty. Way edgier than the Twilight series, the success of the film would lead to two sequels.
- Scanners (1981) - One of several David Cronenberg entries on this list, Scanners is a mind-blowing (literally) tale about a war in the telepathic community. On one side is the heroic and formerly homeless Cameron Vale (Stephen Lack), while the murderous renegades are led by the powerful Darryl Revok (Michael Ironside in a role that would guarantee him a career playing villainous badasses). Patrick McGoohan and Jennifer O’Neill co-star, and the exploding head courtesy of effects whiz Dick Smith remains one of the best death sequences in motion picture history.
- My Bloody Valentine (1981) - While it never achieved the level of fame as Halloween or Friday the 13th, this Canadian horror film is every bit as good (especially in the case of the latter). In 1961, miner Harry Warden was trapped underground for six weeks, eating his co-workers to survive and losing his mind in the process. Once he was rescued, he wasted no time in cutting the still-beating hearts from the chests of those he held responsible (the foremen who had left work early to attend a Valentine’s Day dance). Twenty years later, a group of youthful miners decide to resurrect the tradition of the town’s Valentine’s Day dance, but that’s not all they resurrect. A miner with a rather nasty pick-axe begins dispatching the townsfolk, and everyone soon comes to believe that Harry Warden has returned. The original release had several minutes removed by the MPAA in order to achieve an R-rating, but the 2009 DVD release restored all the gory goodness. It was paid a major compliment when Quentin Tarantino listed it as his all-time favorite slasher film.
- Black Christmas (1974) - One of the most overlooked of all Canadian horror films, Black Christmas played a pivotal role in helping to create the slasher genre. Directed by the diverse Bob Clark, who also helmed such movies as Porky’s and A Christmas Story, the film centers around a serial killer hiding out in the attic of a sorority house and picking off the girls one by one. Set during the Christmas holidays and boasting a strong cast (Olivia Hussey, Margot Kidder, Andrea Martin, and John Saxon), Black Christmas innovated such slasher mainstays as the killer’s POV shot. Don’t claim to be serious about horror movies until you’ve seen this one.
- Prom Night (1980) - A Canadian slasher film starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Leslie Nielsen, Prom Night follows a group of teens as they’re methodical hunted down by a killer during the night of their high school prom. While we don’t learn the maniac’s identity until the very end, the motivation for the murder spree has something to do with a tragic childhood accident. Jamie Lee continued to build up her reputation as America’s leading scream queen, and the success of the film would lead to three sequels and a crappy 2008 remake. Nielsen, by the way, plays the heroine’s father and the high school principal.
- Terror Train (1980) - Jamie Lee Curtis followed up Prom Night with yet another Canadian horror movie, this time about pre-med students being killed off while attending a costume party aboard a train. And just like in Prom Night, the murders are payback for an event from the past. Jamie Lee is the good girl, Hart Bochner is the asshole, Oscar-winning Ben Johnson is the conductor, and David Copperfield is the (surprise) magician. It’s not often you get a horror flick featuring a killer in a Groucho Marx costume.
- Videodrome (1983) - James Woods has always excelled at playing scumbags, and this David Cronenberg body horror feature gives him a prime opportunity to do so. Woods stars as Max Renn, the head of a UHF television station devoted to giving its viewers a steady stream of filth and exploitation. Always looking to push the boundaries, Renn becomes enamored with a Malaysian faux-snuff show called Videodrome. But imagine his surprise when Renn realizes that the show isn’t fake, is actually being broadcast from the United States, and is part of a bizarre cult centered around television. Crazed women abound (including Deborah Harry), and Cronenberg lets it all hang out with sadomasochistic sex and violence.
- Seed (2007) - Uwe Boll is always thought of as a German filmmaker, but this nihilistic serial killer flick was actually filmed in British Colombia, Canada. And while many of his works have been justifiably ripped for being substandard, Seed isn’t one of them. Boll regular Will Sanderson stars as Max Seed, a masked madman who’s killed 666 people over a six year period. Finally captured and sentenced to die in the electric chair, Seed survives the first two jolts of 15,000 volts. Thanks to an obscure law, he’ll be a free man if he can live through the third, so the warden (Ralf Moller) has him buried alive. Bad move. Seed escapes, and now he’s really pissed. Also starring Michael Pare.
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