Forgotten 90s horror comedy: Mute Witness (1994)

After last week's brief detour to celebrate John Carpenter's birthday we're back on track with Mute Witness, a deliciously clever thriller written and directed by Anthony Waller (An American Werewolf in Paris). The mid 90s saw string of “self-aware” horror films coming predominately (though not exclusively) from the lens of Wes Craven and the pen of Kevin Williamson. Scream, New Nightmare, Urban Legend, Bride of Chucky all played around with the conventions of slasher horror films and the mechanics of movie making. One of the least mentioned or remembered is Mute Witness, a low budget film that got swept under the carpet in favour of other films with bigger stars.

Mute Witness sees Marina Zudina play Billy, an American make up artist working on a horror film being made on the cheap in Russia. Apart from the director and her sister all of the crew are native Russians with little grasp of English. However this isn't much of a problem for Billy as she is mute anyway. One night, after getting accidentally locked in the studio and she stumbles on a tiny crew working in the basement making an illicit porno. However the situation turns deadly when the scene turns into a snuff movie. When the crew of burly Russians notice Billy they pursue her. Billy escapes the studio but who will believe her story and more importantly how can she tell it when she can't speak!

To tell more of the story would ruin it but rest assured there's many more twists and turns. Apparently Waller's original plan was to set the film in 1930s Chicago but budget restraints forced him to relocate to both modern day Russia. I've got to say the location really helps the atmosphere of the film. Much like An American Werewolf in Paris, the film plays on the inherent creepiness of being lost in the backstreets of a foreign city where you don't speak the language.

I've got to commend Waller on such a fantastic premise too. A witness who can't speak being pursued by group of criminals trying to silence her. It's the kind of thing Alfred Hitchcock would have loved to play around with. Considering some of the subject matter you'd be mistaken for thinking that the film revels in bad taste but actually Waller handles everything very tastefully and wittily. The first signpost is the opening scene in which we see a woman murdered in a bizarre fashion before panning across to see a group of men watching, then slowly revealing we are watching the making of slasher movie.

Maria Zudina makes a good female protagonist, having to use her face to do almost all of the acting. In slasher movies, the female protagonist is always referred to as the 'final girl' and Billy makes for a completely unique variation. One very surprising cameo is made by Alec Guinness, who plays the head of a criminal empire. Waller apparently filmed his cameo in 1985 (ten years before the film was made) in Germany in the hour before Guinness had to catch a plane. Look closely at his second scene and you'll notice that it's just the first scene again with the footage reversed!

The only thing I can say that's bad about the film is that the second half doesn't quite match the greatest of the first half. Hanging the film solely on Billy's muteness means the film has to go to ever increasingly ridiculous situations to keep the thrills going. But there are spots of ingeniousness still to be found such as Billy flashing her pervy peeping tom neighbour to get his attention to help her.

In summary, Mute Witness is a cracking little thriller; witty, scary and exciting in equal measures. It's a shame Waller didn't make more films like this. In terms of recommendations, I'd suggest that anyone who enjoyed the Scream movies or maybe the similar but non-horror F/X: Murder by Illusion would like this film too.

Happy Birthday John Carpenter

I don't usually do posts about famous people's birthdays but firstly I haven't had chance to re-watch this week's film (Mute Witness) and secondly I'll take just about any excuse to wax lyrical about my favourite director.

He's 64 years old today – I know, he looks at least double that. Anyway, here's a few facts you may or may not know about John Carpenter.

- Everyone says all his films are westerns in disguise. In fact he did co-write a fairly straight-forward western – El Diablo – which was made into a HBO TV movie in 1990 starring Anthony Edwards and Lou Gossett Jr, directed by Peter Markel. The film sees Edwards play an school teacher who is forced to learn how to become a gunfighter in order to track down a cowboy who has kidnapped one of his pupils.

- It's a well known fact that John Carpenter has a band called The Coupe DeVilles who recorded the title track for Big Trouble in Little China. But they also recorded an album that was never commercially released called Waiting Out the Eighties. It's actually very good and recommended for anyone who's a fan of his scores. You can quite easily find it by searching on google.

- The Coupe DeVilles other members were Nick Castle (director of The Last Starfighter and Michael Myers in the original Halloween) and Tommy Lee Wallace (director of Halloween III and Fright Night Part II). They appear as the band in Nick Castle's The Boy Who Could Fly.

- The anthology TV Movie Body Bags he directed in 1993 was intended to be the first three episodes of a Tales From the Crypt-esque show. In it Carpenter's plays an undead mortician who introduces the stories in much the same manner as The Crypt-Keeper.

- Carpenter took on the job of directing Christine because the financial failure of The Thing had left him needing to take any gig that was offered (he did Starman for the same reasons). Also, at the time they started filming, the book hadn't been released or finished by Stephen King.

- The studio really didn't want Kurt Russell to play Snake Plissken in Escape From New York because at the time he was mostly associated with the Disney films like The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes. They were pushing Carpenter to choose Charles Bronson instead.

- Carpenter's musical skills are entirely self taught. To this day he cannot read music. For many of his films he collaborates with composer Alan Howarth.

- The original director of Memoirs of an Invisible Man was Ivan Reitman (Ghostbusters, Twins). However the star, Chevy Chase, was looking to avoid doing comedies so asked for John Carpenter to come in and make it more dramatic. This ended up backfiring when audiences went to the film expecting the next Chevy Chase comedy and found a comedy drama.

- Big Trouble in Little China was John Carpenter's love letter to his favourite kung fu film Zu Warriors from the Magic Mountain by Tsui Hark.

- Carpenter is also a fan of the Godzilla movies. He made a lot of what would today be considered fan films, with names like Gorgo Versus Godzilla and Sorceror from Outer Space.

- In 1970, John Carpenter edited and co-wrote an Academy Award winning short The Resurrection of Bronco Billy, a story about a teenager who keeps slipping through time to the wild west.

- Carpenter's first idea to continue the Halloween franchise after Halloween II was to make each entry a separate story, as seen in Halloween III: Season of the Witch. When franchise producer Moustapha Akkad asked him for ideas for Halloween IV, John Carpenter suggested that they bring Myers back as a ghost who is slowly brought back to life as the residents of Haddonfield struggle to suppress the tragic events of a decade earlier (similar to A Nightmare on Elm Street). Akkad however insisted that Myers be flesh and blood so Carpenter sold his remains rights in the franchise.

- Jamie Lee Curtis did push for Carpenter to direct Halloween: H20 but remaining bad blood with the producers and scheduling conflicts meant he couldn't contribute.

- Other films he had been approached to direct include Firestarter (1984), The Golden Child (1986), Top Gun (1986), Fatal Attraction (1987).