Ransacking the films of his youth BEN ‘Bloody’ RIVERS presents TERROR! - growing unease and impending doom culled from 1980s horror movies.

'A love letter to the genre which got me into film in the first place-these films in particular, which I saw when I was about 10-12, due to a dodgy video shop owner in my village who seemed to enjoy pushing these films onto our young minds. His shop, by the way, was in the basement of the Methodist church-I don't think they had any idea what was coming out of their cellar.' - B. Rivers

Terror! is available on DVD as part of the Experiments in Terror 3 DVD here and here

“This masterfully edited compilation documentary analyzes the morphology of the horror film. Stringing together the most common tropes and scenes of slashers, zombie flicks, slumber party massacres, etc. into a single meta-horror opus, Rivers not so much deconstructs the genre as provides a tribute that reveals its limitations but also its visceral power.  It’s films like this that explain why I do film programs like ‘Experiments in Terror’” – Noel Lawrence, Provocateur Pictures.

http://www.provocateurdvd.com/

'A love letter to the genre which got me into film in the first place-these films in particular, which I saw when I was about 10-12, due to a dodgy video shop owner in my village who seemed to enjoy pushing these films onto our young minds. His shop, by the way, was in the basement of the Methodist church-I don't think they had any idea what was coming out of their cellar.' - B. Rivers

How did you settle upon the idea of ‘Terror!’ as your theme?
This was pretty easy - as we had a pretty short amount of time to complete the tape, i thought it best to do something fairly straightforward, and a subject i knew well. I also wanted to have fun - so I decided to make a homage to a genre very special to me, particularly as an influencing factor in becoming a filmmaker, as I'd watched lots of horror during my school years. Friends and me used to miss school and go to the village video shop - this was located in the basement of an old Methodist church, and the guy running it used to encourage us to get the latest nasties with no worries about our age. I decided to stick to a certain period of films that had strong effect on me from around this time - mainly films from late 70's/early 80's - this was important in narrowing the field from the start, otherwise the selection would have been too vast.

How did you go about piecing together your mixtape?
Firstly, i got together a list of about 35 titles i had in mind - then with the help of Anthony Gates I  got them together, watched them and put the parts i wanted straight from DVD or VHS onto mini dv. This was one of the longest parts of the process, followed by capturing to computer. Once all was captured I went about putting the footage into compartments - empty locations, telephones, women walking, looking, people calling names, gore - whole body, eyes, heads etc. I had in mind the idea i wanted to extend all the parts of a horror film where the tension is building without much happening - locations with no people, then introducing (mainly) girls wandering around houses, camps, woods etc. building very gradually to a final swift pay-off to the patient audience - quite simply following the classic sequencing of horror, but drawing out the build up and threatening to deny the climax - so when it does come it's colourful!
(The whole thing was edited on final cut pro)

Did the time-consuming element of going through the films effect the final content of your mixtape?
I stuck fairly closely to my plan for overall structure, though, as I went through the films new elements arouse - recurring motifs in horror films which I’d forgotten about - every film had at least one scene with a character calling out the name of someone, or scenes with lights being turned on or off. As with editing any film, you get to know the footage really well and begin to instinctively know where things should go together. As it was quite an intense period of looking at this imagery all day, for days on end, i did have some pretty disturbing dreams, but they were quite exciting.

Was the setting of a 24 minute running time constricting or helpful?
I thought this was good in terms of something to work towards - this works not only for the filmmaker, to have a rule for something which is otherwise extremely open, but also works well in terms of making this a series - this possibly being the constant in all of them. It also allows you freedom to not consider how long you think the audience might want this thing to last.

How did you think the mixtape went down with its viewers? What responses have you had?
Responses seemed simultaneously positive and disgusted, but because of the ending, i took the disgust positively too! My general impression of the night, and what the audience thought of both pieces together, was extremely encouraging - people liked the way familiar and unfamiliar images and sounds were combined to bring about a completely new film, with new ways of looking at and enjoying these elements.

If you were to make another mixtape what would you do?
There's a few I'd like to do, and spend more time making - one is where a line of dialogue from one film is followed, in a logical way, by a line from a different film, and this continues with different films until somehow ending back at the first line. Another is approaching the process as an exquisite corpse, so one image/sound follows another in a more instinctive, associative way, with no idea of where it might go...

What festivals have you sent your mixtape to?
Just to a couple - it's showing in Dead by Dawn, Edinburgh's Horror film festival April 26-29, 2007. The other was NY underground film fest, but haven’t heard back from them yet.

SF360 - SAN FRANCISCO FILM SOCIETY

Taken from 'Back to nature with Ben Rivers' by Dennis Harvey, 27th March 2009

"Then there’s the 24-minute Terror!, a contextualizing detour into actual “found” footage: Excerpts from ’70s/‘80s horror films, including some famous ones by Lucio Fulci, John Carpenter, Dario Argento and others. Rivers cuts between those moments of incidental atmosphere and “Is anyone there?” dread that invariably precede the awful (yet curiously relieving) “something” finally happening. Women hear strange noises, walk down dark corridors, flee through the woods in inappropriate clothing, etc. Finally, there’s a climactic compilation orgy of over-the-top violence—but with his emphasis on the loooooooooong buildup, Rivers signals his knowledge that what’s really creepy about these movies (as well as his own) are those disquieting moments when “nothing” is “happening,” when shadowy interiors, hesitant movements and new distrust of a familiar environment suggest ominous secrets ready to be revealed.

If that description whets your appetite for more avant creepfests, you might also want to check out locally based Microcinema International’s new release Experiments in Terror 3. This latest in a series of DVD shorts collections “pounding a stake through the heart of genre convention” includes not just Rivers’ Terror!, but also works by Guy Maddin, Mike Kuchar, "J.X. Williams," Carey Burtt, Jason Bognacki and Clifton Childree".

Taken from  Independent Film Quarterly, 21st May 2009 by Todd Konrad

"If a single film had to encapsulate the spirit and purpose of the Experiments in Terror series then I pick Terror! as the winner. On paper, it is a basic collection of every slasher, zombie, teenage massacre film you’ve ever seen pure and simple. But what Rivers crafts, by selecting and delineating every common trope of the genre , is a critical epic that comments on the genre intellectually while participating within it and amplifying the visceral power horror contains to an insanely, operatic degree. The slow build of creaks in the night, people venturing into the dark, a predator stealthily stalking his prey, etc. explodes into a pure orgy of blood, guts, and violence that is simultaneously terrifying and exhilarating. It becomes the definitive horror essay film and for good reason once you endure it".

Taken from Love Train for the Tenebrous Empire, 8th April 2009

"Devoted nerds will bask in the fanboy glow of Ben Rivers' "Terror!," a grin-inducing homage to horror cliches. Composed of clips plucked from an array of readily recognizable horror films (keep your eyes peeled for "Halloween," "The Beyond," "Evil Dead," and "Tenebre," to name but a few), Rivers assembles a 24-minute mega-mix montage tracking our hapless victims from the old dark house through their oh-so-untimely and eek-so-graphic demises ending with a meta finale that strikes just the right note. Perhaps a bit over-long for all but the most gung-ho of horror-film geeks, this particular gung-ho horror geek had a blast playing "name that film" and watching the clever juxtaposition of the tension-building
frames".

DVD TALK

Taken from DVD Talk by Kurt Dahlke, 31st March 2009

"Ben Rivers' Terror! (2007) takes 24 minutes to meta-trump nearly all horror movies. Rivers has fused almost identical bits from numerous movies (Evil Dead to The Beyond, and then some) to form a nearly wordless, narrative-free template of terror. This journey is arch, archetypical, too clever and ultimately reassuring. Sure, horror movies can be numbing in their sameness, but it's all for a good cause. Though the penultimate orgy of violence rivals anything seen in those ubiquitous YouTube mash-ups, Rivers reminds us that these campfire tales are meant to provide solace: nobody's really going to slowly lobotomize us with a drill press, right? Plus, extra points for a sound collage scream festival to give even the most horror-hardened pause".

Taken from North Adams Transcript b y John E. Mitchell, 29th June 2009

"The film is a collage work of pre-existing horror footage that reproduces the rhythm of a horror film by creating an existential scenario in which terror is almost always just around the corner but never right there.

Voyeuristic at a certain point, the film depicts what draws us to these movies beyond the horror depicted -- the feeling is that we are peering into the lives of others. It’s amazing how many mundanities compile a horror film -- wandering around, turning lights on and off, talking to yourself, showering, making yourself some tea, answering a phone -- normal activities with something horrible lurking underneath.

It’s as if slasher films are about people getting punished for being a bit dull.

The waiting, the watching -- scenes in which the silence hangs like a foreboding presence and which slowly builds up to actual terror -- gives the impression that we’ve been conditioned to feel creeped out by the movies we watch. In many ways, the carnage at the end can’t begin to live up to the mood that has come before it. The gore functions as comic relief for something that really disturbs or something so grotesque that it shocks you away from what gets under your skin".

Taken from horrornews.net b y Bone Digger, 23rd March 2009

"One of the more intriguing and surprising shorts was the 24 min piece called "Terror". "Terror" is not only a visual journey but a statement on the lineage of horror. By using a combination of all sorts of classic modern day horror films, it proves that we as an audience respond to the same types of elements. The elements are repeated, have similarities, execute in the same manner and contain plot directions and narratives that could be called formula driven. Of course most of these that I recognized went on to be big achievements for the genre. It points out that we celebrate content that travel down similar paths. If not that then an ode to the creative horror directors that have the genre figured out and give us what we desire on a continual basis. Fear, buildup, framing, location and camera POVs are all portions that are served up under different shells but still familiar enough to produce the same results in viewers. Remarkable".

Taken from IFC.com by Michael Atkinson, 9th April 2009

"kudos should go to Ben Rivers' "Terror!" (2007), or perhaps to the first half of it, which without editorial commentary cobbles together dozens of scenes from '70s and '80s slasher films -- that is, the scenes of waiting, anticipation, silence and confused anxiety, mixing them into a single suite of suspended mayhem. Then, unfortunately, Rivers splices up the climactic gore scenes as well, to much less effect".