Seen That? Watch This is a semi-regular column from critic Luke Buckmaster, taking a recent release and matching it to comparable works. This week, he looks at the sticky-icky body transformation movies that paved the way for The Substance.
Coralie Fargeat’s insanely outré body horror movie The Substance remains one of the most talked about Hollywood films of recent times, even managing to enchant members of the Academy Awards (receiving five nominations for this year’s ceremony, and winning for Best Makeup and Hairstyling). Following an over-the-hill actor, Demi Moore’s Elisabeth Sparkle, who was once the toast of town, but is being pushed aside for younger and prettier performers, it’s a nightmarish take on the “fountain of youth” narrative that’s full of fluids. Like, a lot of fluids.
Sparkle enlists the services of a company that creates another “perfect” version of herself, “perfect” being a synonym of “young and hot.” This new version (Margaret Qualley’s Sue) literally crawls out of her back, transforming the protagonist into everything she wants to be. But, but, buuttttt, this is a horror movie, so things don’t work out tickety-boo.
If you’ve seen the film, perhaps you’d like a bunch of recomendations that helped pave the way for such gloriously perverse pandemonium. Here are four.
The Wolf Man (1941)
You know a character in a horror movie is in trouble when a gypsy woman says to them “heaven help you.” Larry Talbot (Lon Chaney Jr.), the protagonist of this cracking old school horror yarn, seals his fate when he kills a werewolf with his silver cane, transferring the curse of being madly violent and primordially hairy onto him. Director George Waggner impresses atmospherically—delivering a tight pace and crisp monochrome compositions—and screenwriter Curt Siodmak regularly defers to two essential questions. One: what happens next? And two: how is the protagonist feeling?
Perhaps recognising that special effects and costumes weren’t his strengths, Waggner deploys the werewolf elements sparingly, bathing the beast in shadows and delaying the first transformation for more than 40 minutes (and by that point, it feels earned). The Wolf Man builds an interesting psychological space, being ultimately about a person coming to terms with something dark inside themselves. You could remake this film today, scene by scene, not changing anything, and it would still work a treat.
The Fly (1986)
David Cronenberg’s cult classic stretches out the transformation process—charting one big, long, sticky descent into oblivion for Jeff Goldblum’s brilliant scientist Seth. Declaring to Geena Davis’ journalist, Veronica, that he’s “working on something that’ll change the world,” his prototype teleportation machine sure is impressive—albeit, shall we say, not quite ready. Seth discovers this one evening when he musters up the courage to use himself as a test guinea pig, inadvertently triggering a mutation process that combines his DNA with a fly’s.
Cronenberg keeps a poker face and tells the story without cynicism or an underlined metaphor, which helps keeps us grounded in this world. His direction is tight, maximizing a relatively small number of settings and concentrating on characters and emotions. Gradually, with a very satisfying sense of escalation, The Fly (which remade a 1941 film, and eclipsed it in terms of cultural cachet) shifts into a “kill the beast” monster movie. By this point we deeply empathise with the protagonist, perfectly played by Goldblum with his irresistible brand of sassy intellectual.
Death Becomes Her (1992)
Like The Substance, this is a twisted take on the fountain of youth narrative, and a satire on the entertainment industry’s brutal beauty standards—particularly for women. But this one is played for laughs, and director Robert Zemeckis shows a knack for grotesque slapstick. Two showbiz personalities, Meryl Streep’s actor Madeline and Goldie Hawn’s writer Helen, drink a potion to “screw the natural law!” and break the spell of aging. The person hawking this magical product (Isabella Rossellini) warns them that their bodies are still fallible, and thus they should take good care of them.
Which is easier said than done, when you’re being blasted by a shotgun at point-blank range. Shifting into outrageous spectacle, this funny, giddy film is cooked up with an impish grin and spectacularly acted, with big, brassy, theatrical performances from Streep and Hawn. The ultimate message is similar to many vampire movies: that it’s better to live and die than to stick around forever with no humanity. And, in Madeline and Helen’s case, fewer and fewer functioning body parts.
Last Night in Soho (2021)
What if a body transformation was mental, not physical? That sounds like a contradiction, but the protagonist of Edgar Wright’s time-hopping thriller seems both to jump out of her skin and stay inside it. Putting a grim spin on the “young woman moves to big smoke” trajectory, the story follows aspiring fashion designer Ellie (Thomasin McKenzie) as she moves to London to study. Soon after arriving, she discovers she can be transported to 60s-era Soho in her sleep, watching, and sometimes embodying, a beautiful performer named Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy).
Like Jekyll addicted to Hyde, the protagonist loves going to bed so she can live/watch her alternate life. Notions of spectatorship versus embodiment are muddied due to these sequences essentially being lucid dreams, with some extra embellishments here and there, Wright for instance deploying striking use of mirrors to suggest Ellie and Sandie are one and the same. Things scale up dramatically in the second half when the film enters giallo-esque horror, the frame bathed in over-ripe blues and reds.
