One of the most original filmmaking talents to come from Exeter, Ashley Thorpe makes animated horror films like none other. Lee Morgan talks to the animator about his astonishing short films and why new ‘horror porn’ is no match for the classic silents.
Ashley Thorpe’s horror is more scalpel than sledgehammer. His animations have a refreshingly classic feel, not least due to the meticulously researched material and his love of horror in all its purest, and least pure, forms.
As he says: “The Penny Dreadful, or the Penny Blood’s, were sensational stories published in weekly parts. Usually with an emphasis on the terrible and the fantastic and often inspired by gothic melodramas of the time, the ‘Bloods’ were an important feature of Victorian sub-culture. The thing that attracted me were the characters. I have an interest in comics and an interest in horror, and that leads me back to the Penny Dreadfuls. There isn’t that much out there like them.”
And the next film, ‘Springhill Jack,’ is a reincarnation of one of the stars of the Penny Deadful. “The thing that got me excited about ‘SHJ’ is that the character represents for me a shadowy blend of the Jack the Ripper myths, Mr Hyde and everything good and gothic about Batman,” said Ashley, not giving a hoot about stamping all over DC Comics’ Dark Knight (heck, Spring Hill Jack even had a bat-like cape).
“He’s a character that started off as a Victorian boogeyman and then ironically ended up being transformed by the Penny Dreadfuls into a embryonic superhero. It’s at once a classic piece of English gothicism and a template for pretty much every comicbook character that followed. What I’m attempting to do with this telling is to take aspects of SHJ as boogeyman and hero and present a kind of complex ‘super anti-hero’; a man at the mercies of his darker self.”
“SHJ also gives me the chance to create a set-piece on the rooftops of a city, something I’ve been looking for an excuse to do since discovering ‘The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari’ as a teenager,” said Ashley. Two other films in Ashley’s Carrion stable have benefited from this Penny approach: Scayrecrow (The Highwayman) and The Screaming Skull. The Screaming Skull builds on a Victorian theme and toys with the notion of your legacy, or heritage, being something that you don’t actually want.
“I’ve always been completely fascinated by highwaymen,” says Ashley, and he recalls 70s ads for historic sites, which would have the highwayman rushing past in all his regalia.
In terms of style, Ashley’s work has evolved, and keeps on evolving, combining traditional techniques and more modern developments.
“In some ways it is traditional animation, in others it owes a lot more to a storybook effect,” he says. The traditional element of horror is more about fear than gore.
“The Penny Dreadfuls were lurid but they weren’t really gory. It was all about suggestion.And I want to stay away from the modern element - like Hostel - where it’s more a violent pornography. I’m more interested in the supernatural element of it.
“You can imply violence a lot more powerfully than actually showing it. The shower scene in ‘Psycho’ is proof of that. It’s horrible and it always will be but that’s because of the visuals and music in harmony. You don’t need to show great slabs of flesh falling at her feet,” says Ashley.
“The problem is if you push special effects in peoples’ faces, they are looking for the join. You’re looking for the zip up the back of the monster suit. If you don’t do that, if you let their mind paint every single picture, that’s when they really start watching the thing through their fingers. The horror is actually going on between their ears as opposed to directly on the surface in front of them.”