[Guest author Christopher Lombardo of Really Awful Movies celebrates Canada Day by looking back at three backwoods Canadian horror films.] In the ’70s, Canadian tax loopholes spurred growth in domestic horror films, providing a more reliable low-cost means of recouping one’s investment in a frequently fickle business. A few, like Martin Scorsese’s favorite The Changeling, were critical darlings, while the bulk of them were regarded as cheap government-funded trash. A prominent Canadian critic famously called Cronenberg’s Shivers “an atrocity, a disgrace to everyone connected with it” in a jeremiad titled “You Should Know How Bad This Film Is. After All, You Paid for It.”
Luckily, for those of us invested in such things artistically if not financially (unless you count our tax dollars), we got gems such as Happy Birthday to Me, My Bloody Valentine, Black Christmas (1974), and many others.
The “tax shelter” era, in addition to straight-ahead slashers, also gave us lesser-known films that exposed class divisions—punishing urban interlopers who lacked the necessary survival skills to thrive in the wilderness.
Luckily, for those of us invested in such things artistically if not financially (unless you count our tax dollars), we got gems such as Happy Birthday to Me, My Bloody Valentine, Black Christmas (1974), and many others.
The “tax shelter” era, in addition to straight-ahead slashers, also gave us lesser-known films that exposed class divisions—punishing urban interlopers who lacked the necessary survival skills to thrive in the wilderness.
- 7/1/2016
- by Christopher Lombardo
- DailyDead
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