Verhoeven Revamped

Paul Verhoeven

With a new Total Recall on the horizon, the first viral video of Robocop’s remake released, and rumours of a Starship Troopers reboot in the works, Hollywood is mining the great sci-fi satires of Paul Verhoeven and repackaging them for a new generation.  But what made the Dutch director's ultra-violent films so memorable and what are the new films likely to offer?

It’s hard to decide what the most violent moment in Verhoeven’s sci-fi output is. Is it the malfunctioning ED-209 blowing away an OMNICORP board member in Robocop? Or maybe it’s Schwarzenegger using an innocent bystander’s corpse as a human shield in Total Recall. What about when Patrick Muldoon gets his brain sucked out of his skull by a massive space bug in Starship Troopers? All of these are gloriously gory moments, but the cream of the crop is Peter Weller having his body torn apart by shotgun shells in the first act of Robocop. If ultra-violence was poetry, this sequence would be Paradise Lost; epic, intense and unforgettable. 

 "Someone lend the man a hand."

And while all these scenes showcase one side of Verhoeven’s artistic swagger –  he willingness to tear his characters limb from limb - they also subtly hint at his other endearing trait; his humour. As gruesome as it all may be, these scenes are darkly humorous in their alacrity to display violence, for their bloodletting, in their disregard the sanctity of human life. In these films, Verhoeven mixed this bleakly comic violence with satire, deadpan wit and social commentary that was way ahead of fellow action film makers in the 80s (you can't imagine the likes of Richard Donner making anything as daring). Robocop is like watching Dirty Harry meets Robocop but through the perspective of John Stewart. 

Critical Backlash

In the early 80s Verhoeven was driven from his native Netherlands after a critical backlash against his output, especially against his 1980 controversial coming-of-act film Spetters. He ended up in Hollywood and between 1987 and 2000 made a total of six films. These included Basic Instinct (1992), Hollow Man (2000) and the infamously terrible Showgirls (1995). But it is his three sci-fi films that have best stood the test of time and what, for many, he will be best remember for.

Paul and Arnie: Still a better love story than Twilight

However on these films' initial release many parochial minded critics dismissed them as immature, vapid and needlessly violent. Rita Kempley said of Total Recall (1990) that it “disappoints with this appalling onslaught of blood and boredom.” Starship Troopers (1997) was accused of promoting military nationalism on par with the Nazi's Germany, with a number of critics not realising that the entire film was steeped in irony.

However many did get that under the action, the broken bones, the severed limbs, the gunfire and explosions, these films had a brain and a message. Robocop jabbed at cooperate America’s takeover of public services and its lowbrow entertainment and consumerism (highlighted by TV personality Bixby Snyder’s so-bad-it’s-hilarious catchphrase, “I’d buy that for a dollar”). Starship Troopers criticised the mindless mechanisms of the military that bordered on fascism, and Total Recall highlighted wealthy people's ability to destroy the lives of the poor (and that mutant cab drivers can never, ever be trusted!).

These films also included tits. This isn’t a particular relevant point, but tits are always good in films, especially when you get more than expected.

Totally Recalled

Lycia Naff: erotic or disturing? The jury's still out.

So what can we expect from the reboots? Len “Underworld” Wiseman is at the helms of the Total Recall remake with the slighter figure of Colin Farrell taking over from the hulking Schwarzenegger. The trailer is available now and one thing we know for certain is that it will carry a PG-13 certificate, likely to be 12A in the UK, a far cry from Verhoeven’s r-rated version. This means it’s highly doubtful that we’ll get to witness eyeballs being sucked out of their sockets in the vacuum of Mars, dismembered arms or people getting stabbed by industrial drills. This makes me sad.On the plus side, the trailer does have a loving nod to Lycia Naff's tripple breasted mutant lady. This make me happy. However, given the rating, it's doubtful we'll see much more than cleavage. This makes me sad.

Instead the director has said it will be closer in tone to Spielberg’s Minority Report (which, like Total Recall, was based on a short story by plastic-reality Science Fiction author Philip K. Dick). It also, from the trailer, looks to have jettisons the Mars angle of the story (Sadly this means we won’t get to hear Farrell utter the famous line; “Get your ass to Mars!”) and looks to keep the action on Earth. It’s not the worst idea in the world – the Mars element was never in Dick’s original short – and the trailer looks like it could be easy watching, bang-bang sci-fi fun, which is never really a bad thing. 

Joel Kinnaman: The new Robocop

Robo-Reboot

The Robocop reboot has caused a much bigger storm over the interwebs. Firstly there was the revelation by Joel Kinnaman (aka: Alex Murphy, aka; Robocop) that his suit will have a see-through visor and you will be able to see Robo’s eyes. This was considered sacrilege for many fans of the original. Some people seemed to feel it was the equivilent changing Dr Who’s TARDIS from a Police Box to a kebab van.

The blogosphere also went ape-shit when it saw the first sneak of the movie. The viral video doesn’t seem to contain any footage from the new film, but instead is a mock cooperate advert for the fictional cybernetics company OMNICORP (A little like the Prometheus teaser having Guy Pearce waxing lyrically about Alien’s Weyland corporation).  One significant talking point from the 56 seconds of footage is that it reveals Robocop favourite ED-209 will be making an appearance in the remake. 

2013’s ED-209 looks similar to the 1987 version, except for the fact it seems much larger than the original. One poster on the Guardian’s website bemoaned; “The new ED-209 looks exactly the same as the old ED-209. So what exactly is the point?” Then, a few posts later another complained; “The new seems ten times bigger given that it was dwarfing a battle tank.” It appears, when you’re retooling a well-loved franchise, you’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t. 

Whatever people’s perceptions, the filmmakers need to get Ed-209 right if they want Robocop to succeed. The original’s ruthless design – a cross between a tank and a dinosaur with machine guns for arms – was one of the iconic images of 80s sci-fi and it’s “You have 20 seconds to comply” command has gone down in pop culture history. No pressure then.

Next Gen Troopers

Series 8 of How I Met Your Mother took everyone by surprise

Finally, there is talk of remaking 1997’s Starship Troopers. Once again, it is unlikely that it will feature to sanguine gore of the original. Producer Toby Jaffe recently told Empire magazine the violence will have to be toned down. “The more expensive a film is, the harder it is to be that violent.” (Although this didn’t seem to be a problem twenty years ago when the original Total Recall, with a budget of $50 million, became the most expensive film it’s time). Another change that the producer hints at is that it will be closer to the original book, which is little more than a pro-military, flag waving, nuke the bugs (a conspicuous metaphor for Communist) fanfare that was almost fascist in its aggression. Verhoeven was appalled by the book and gleefully took the piss in his film. Jaffe wants to do the opposite. “Verhoeven took it from one extreme and made it almost comical, whereas our job, as I see it, is to be a little more faithful to the book and ground it.” 

These worrying signs suggest that Starship Troopers could suffer the worst remake treatment. But with toned down violence and a pro-military agenda? Expect it to be a neo-cons wet dream. 

However only time will how these films will turn out. In any case, it’s a good excuse to crack open the originals and once again immerse yourself Verhoeven’s worlds of graphic violence, exploding bodies, dark wit, social satire and some of the most inventive death scenes ever put on film.

I’d buy that for a dollar.

The analogue generation’s lazy contempt for the digital generation.

No one would have thought it at the time, but the 90s looks like a golden age in this world of economic turmoil, double-dip recessions and Bieber-fever. Where jobs were once in abundance, now every vacancy is viciously fought for by a large group of savage but jaded recent graduates; it’s like the Hunger Games but with CVs instead of crossbows.

This has prompted debate about who’s to blame for recent graduates unable to get jobs. Is it the government for their “slash and burn” mentality in deficit reduction? Or employers unwilling to take risks on hiring younger staff? Perhaps it’s the bankers with their #yolo philosophy to market trading? Or is it the graduates themselves, myopic and feckless fools, who have dived head first into their History of Art Degree without thinking how it will actually help them get a job. A recent article by Sophie Heawood in the Independent lays the blame heavily on the lastgroup.

How Heawood probably views graduates

Heawood claims her patience has run out for unemployed graduates. Her conclusion is primarily because she is sick of young people using blogs to complain that they can’t get jobs and are “totes miffed” about it ( Heawood should be aware that this phrase is used far more by cultural commentators complaining about young people’s vocabulary than it is ever used by young people themselves). Seemingly, up until this point, she has been unaware that the primary purpose of blogging is so people can moan about something or other. Maybe next week she’ll write an article about how she’s run out of patience for sex because that there’s quite a lot of porn on the net.

There was particular reference to Heawood’s piece to an article by Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett in the Guardian where she, with a good deal of self-awareness and humour, detailed the turbulent experiences of life after University. Heawood took this as a sign to comment that we are a bunch of spoilt, entitled, complaining brats who spent too much time with their heads in the clouds and not enough time watching the Young Ones (which is just one of many erroneous and patronising sweeping statements, especially because I remember watching reruns on BBC2 back in the 90s). We have also been poisoned by the self-involved hip-hip of Kanye West and Drake, instead of the entrepreneurial messages of Biggie Smalls. Apparently. 

Heawood's inspiration: Notorious B.I.G 

 

 

 But what she doesn’t seem to realise is that it’s not pity we’re after. Rather than sitting around and complaining about our position in life, we’re spending our days applying for job after job, doing countless unpaid internships and serving coffee in the meantime, just to meet the bills. How such an industrious and hard-working generation has got the label of unmotivated slobs is beyond me.

Maybe it’s a sense of intimidation. Generation X’s perpetual fear that the young, hard-working, more tech-savvy generation is going to overthrow them if they are given a chance in the work place. With many workplaces already irrevocably changed by the digital landscape, the “analogue generation” in charge are still fumbling in the dark as how to address issues caused by the switch over, all the time haemorrhaging money. Who better to find solutions to these modern enigmas than the generation who are more familiar with the digital landscape than that of print? The generation who treat smartphones as extra limbs and who grew up closer to the Internet than to their own parents?

These are the things that we offer. Far from being the useless bunch of feckless, mollycoddled idiots that popular media would have you believe, we’re a generation that is eager to work and are more than willing to if given the opportunity. We don’t want to be condemned to serve lattes to the previous generation who never gave us a chance in the work place.

If Haewood’s philosophy that hip-hop lyrics influence the motivations of a generation it’d be worth her remembering that the biggest selling hip-hop artist of our generation is Jay-Z; a serial entrepreneur who now rubs shoulders with the likes of Warren Buffet. And that’s a far better role model for the work place than Neil from the Young Ones. 

Richard Schiff interview

From dinosaurs to democrats, Richard Schiff’s career has spanned some fascinating territory in the past three decades. Now the Emmy winning actor is in UK to judge Sheffield’s International Student Drama Festival and is teaching the actors of tomorrow about researching roles, questioning their profession and avoiding late night takeaways. 

  

Schiff Happens

Not many 57 year olds can get away with a fist bump as a greeting. The gesture is in the domain of the young; the sort of thing that would usually be used by rappers in gratuitously materialistic music videos, not by a distinguished middle-aged New Yorker sporting a greying beard and trillby. However this is exactly how Richard Schiff greets people as they approach him at the Crucible theatre in Sheffield. As he extents his fist to me I see the reason for this unconventional greeting;  his wrist is bandaged from a recent injury. We touch knuckles and he languidly smiles. “A minor accident,” is all he gives in way of explanation.

Schiff has just come out of Newcastle University’s theatre society’s production of Sweeny Todd, a performance that he gave a standing ovation. He is one of three judges of Sheffield’s International Student Drama Festival, which is running from the 22^nd -30^th of June. The West Wing star is a major coup for the festival which, for the first time in its 40 year history, will include international productions and an international judging panel. By his side is the actor’s 18 year old son Gus, who diligently organises his father’s hectic schedule. It is Gus who arranges for me to attend the next day’s Q&A session as Schiff senior is swept away by a gaggle of excited theatre lovers.

With over 30 years of acting experience - covering stage, TV and film - Schiff has carved out a career as an acclaimed character actor. Starting out on Broadway in the 80s, he made the leap to TV in the early 90s appearing in shows like LA Law and Doogie Howser, M.D. before getting supporting roles in films such as the Coen’s Brother’s Hudsucker Proxy and Spielberg’s blockbuster sequel Jurassic Park: The Lost World (where he fell foul to the T-Rex). 

                                                            Ripped apart in The Lost World.

However his most famous role came at the end of the decade as dour White House communications director Toby Ziegler in Aaron Sorkin’s acclaimed political drama The West Wing. Since then Schiff has worked alongside Hollywood heavyweights such as Al Pacino (People I Know), Sean Penn (I am Sam) and Jamie Foxx (Ray).

Even with such an impressive resume and critical acclaim (he received two Emmy nominations for Outstanding Supporting Actor for The West Wing) he has never hit the heights of a superstar himself. He can walk down the streets of Sheffield unmolested, but as soon as he steps foot in the Crucible bar, or any other of the festival’s venues, he’s immediately mobbed by fans, budding actors and festival staff. He is a celebrity that is beloved in the community of actors and fans, but can still remain anonymous in public.

He seems content with this level of recognition. During the following days Q&A he reveals that the only reason he is envious of actors of a high stature – he singles outs Philip Seymour Hoffman and Dustin Hoffman as examples – is they have will have much more time to prepare a research roles. “With Philip Seymour Hoffman as Truman Capote for instance, I’m sure he took six months to work on that piece. For me, because of the tier I'm in, I won’t get that time to prepare because movies won’t wait for my schedule.”

It’s clear research is something that he feels passionately about. “I think you should research forever. Al Pacino has been working on Richard III since he was three and he’s still not ready to call it a day. He’s a little obsessed.” However he believes that budding actors should look to the real world for inspiration rather than other actors. “Some people say that acting is stealing; steal from actors, steal from each other, steal and then make it your own. I don’t believe in stealing from actors. I think living in the real world is so much more enriching. If you’re going to steal from anywhere then take it from the real world. Go up to some guy in the street. If you’ve got to play a southerner go down to Alabama and meet a guy. Don’t steal it off some actor with a southern drawl. Go hang out in a fucking trailer park in the swamps.”

For the young student actors at the festival, spending time in Alabama trailer parks to research roles is perhaps out of their reach, but he doesn’t forget his audience and has an impressive knowledge of England. He first came to the country when he was 17 in 1972, when he was visiting London as part of his travels around Europe. He had saved up a small amount of money working as a cab driver in New York and subsequently had to live on the cheap. "All I could afford was eating at Whimpy burgers, and very cheap Indian restaurants and takeaways, where I got odd looking dishes, some of which that actually moved on your plate.”

Since then he has come several times, sometimes for work (he was the sole performer in Glen Berger’s one man play Underneath the Lintel in the West End in 2007) and sometimes for pleasure. Why did he choose to come to Sheffield and do the festival? “I still don’t have an answer to that. Except something in me loves to come here and I respects the British tradition of theatre and acting. I think what I’m going to get out of it is that it’s going to remind me why I became an actor in the first place. It’s a question that I ask quite often.”

Questioning his craft out loud is something that Schiff does frequently, even when he hasn’t been promoted to. Asked how he started acting, he responds with hefty anecdote about the particulars off-off-Broadway in the early 80s before eventually coming to the conclusion: “I still don’t know if I’m an actor. And I’m really not sure if I’m going to continue with it.”

What makes him not want to continue? “I admire those that are committed to it and who decided at a very young age that they wanted to do it. But I’m not one of those people. So I’m always asking the question; what compels me to keep doing it? And what story do I have to tell?”

I ask if there is a difference between acting on stage and acting on screen, expecting another existential, stream-of-consciousness discussion on the nature of the craft. However his answer is surprisingly prosaic. “One of the first TV shows that I did was LA Law. LA Law was very quick and very fast work, because it was a machine by then. You had marks that you had to hit so the camera could focus and know exactly where to go and on stage I used to be much freer in how I moved. And a fellow actor pointed out that I kept missing my mark so the guys behind the camera were getting really annoyed. So it was hard. You had to work out how to talk and walk at the same time and hit the mark. So there are all these little technical things about acting in front of camera.”

                                         One of the famous walk and talk scenes from The West Wing

      
 Did this help you prepare for the famous walk and talk shots in the West Wing? “Oh yeah. There was a lot of walk and talk on the West Wing. As I worked more in TV I learned to become much friendlier with the camera and the camera operators. And then, as I got to do much more challenging, intimate, emotional, complex TV work, I learned to act with the cameras. You learn that your relationship with that camera is very important. It’s a very unspoken but intimate relationship that you learn to develop with the camera.”

So what’s next? He has several projects lined up including starring in Eugene O’Neil’s Hughie at the Dublin gate and Lanford Wilson’s Talley’s Folly on Broadway. There is also the small matter of Zack Snyder’s Superman reboot Man of Steel coming out next year. Schiff plays the supporting role of Dr. Emil Hamilton but, sadly, is contractually unable to provide many details. “It’s going to be huge and exciting.”

Before he is bundled off by the ever time conscious festival organisers eager to get him to his next appointment he says; “Somewhere in my doesn’t want to write but I want to tell stories through other people’s words and interpretation of other peoples characters. That’s what I want to do and that’s what keeps me acting.”

He lifts his fist with a wry smile and we touch knuckles again and then his is swept away, Gus diligently by his side, to watch the next generation of British actors in action.

Universal Appeal

Universal's centenary logo redesign

 As the oldest of the surviving movie studios hit its centenary, WWTW traces Universal’s illustrious history and finds out how the small fish in a big pond grew into a cinematic great white.

 A group of teenagers sit by a night-time campfire on the beach, drinking, smoking and laughing. A young couple quietly slip out from the main group and run along the dunes. When they are far away they start tearing off their clothes and head towards the water. The man, too drunk to continue, falls to the ground, murmuring to himself. The girl, naked and carefree, goes in the water alone. As she swims, enjoying the cool Atlantic water, something below begins to stir. The girl lets out a piercing scream as she is viciously yanked down from beneath the inky surface. She writhes in pain and the ocean froths and turns blood red. The boy, still slumped on the beach, is too drunk to hear the screams and lays motionless as the girl is dragged down to the depths, never to resurface.
                                                                                       

The opening to Steven Spielberg’s Jaws is one of the most memorable scenes in cinema’s history, shocking and thrilling audiences upon its release in 1975. Raking in over $470 million at the worldwide box office, it became the highest grossing movie of its time and forever changed movie making in Hollywood. It also reignited the cinematic fortunes of Universal, a studio celebrating its centenary this year. Whilst a world famous brand in big-budget cinema today, in the mid-70s, the studio had fallen by the wayside and was specialising, primarily, in cheap TV production. Perhaps it was fitting that it was Jaws – a brilliantly crafted monster movie – that catapulted Universal back to the forefront of cinema. Why? Because it was the monster movies that sealed Universal’s success in its early years.

Early Years

Founded in 1912 by German-Jewish immigrant Carl Laemmle, Universal was a relatively minor studio until it unearthed the lucrative market of horror and monster movies in the 1930s. Famous for its nepotism (it is rumoured that at one point Laemmle had 70 of his relatives on the Universal payroll), it was Laemmle’s son and successor who converted the small studio into one that could compete with the big guns like Warner Brothers, MGM and RKO. Michael Mallory, author of Universal Studios Monsters: A Legacy of Horror, says it was Carl Laemmle Jr.’s love of horror that changed everything. “Junior, as he was commonly known, had a fondness for horror properties and heavily invested in the supernatural. He was particularly interested in Dracula, in part because it was a Broadway hit at the time.”

Laemmle Jr. brought Bram Stoker’s supernatural chiller to the big screen, which turned out to be a great success. Mallory is certain that Dracula’s triumph was the catalyst for Universal Horror; “The success of Dracula, obviously, led to Frankenstein (1931). Had Dracula bombed, I doubt there would have been Universal Horror.”

It was a fool proof strategy: horror movies were cheap, easy to make and followed a set formula. The studio quickly established their name as the horror specialists, soon releasing two sequels to Frankenstein as well as The Mummy (1932), The Invisible Man (1933), Werewolf of London (1935) and The Wolf Man (1941).

Inevitably, the horror bubble burst when audiences became disillusioned with the monotony. Numbers waned and the Laemmle family became financially irresponsible and lost control of the studio. With a new board in place, “The New Universal” brand was born. This Universal had successes in the shape of comedy duo Abbot and Costello with films such as Buck Privates (1941) and The Time of Their Lives (1946). Yet it was signing of Alfred Hitchcock who briefly brought the scare factor back in the 50s when he made The Birds (1952).

Hitchcock and Hedren

Like the audience of the 30s, Universal was once again terrifying people back into the cinema. Trippi Hedren was cast in the lead role and it was one of Universal’s most successful films of the 50s. Reminiscent of old horror, but with a modern twist, The Birds is a typical, psychological Hitchcockian masterpiece. It revolves around a small town in California that inexplicitly comes under attack from murderous birds.

Whilst a seamless cinematic feat on the surface, the success of this film obscured the seedy underbelly of its production and the, reportedly, sadistic shoot that Hitchcock put Hedren through. The experience ended her career before it had really begun.

Still unknown, Hedren had been handpicked by Hitchcock after he saw her in an advert for a diet drink. But that was where where the fairy tale ended. One of the film’s collaborators said Hitchcock reran her screen test over and over again, “quivering with lust” and his treatment of her was described as “borderline sexual harassment”, foreshadowing the perverse production process yet to come.

Even so, it started innocuously enough, with Hedren describing the initial shooting as, “wonderful.” She had developed a fond relationship with the trained birds used on set. “I became quite fond of the birds,” Hedren said in an interview in 2008 with The Times. “One was so nice Hitch couldn’t put him in the movie because he wasn’t aggressive. He’d come hopping up the steps of my dressing room, play with my make-up and sit on my shoulder.”

Hitchcock with a couple of birds
(sexism of this kind was forgivable in the 50s).

But as the shoot progressed, Hitchcock became more tyrannical, both professionally and in his personal life. During the scene when Hedren is attacked by birds in the attic – one of the last scenes to be shot – Hedren was assaulted by real birds when she had previously told that models would be used. “Those birds pecked – I’d seen what had happened to the trainers. They tied the birds to me with elastic bands. They hurled birds at me. One of the birds tied on my shoulder only just missed scraping its claw into my eye. I shouted, ‘Get these birds off me’ and I sat in the middle of the sound-stage and cried.” By the end of the scene Hedren was so exhausted and traumatised that she fell unconscious. She recalls that it was at that moment that her ostensibly fortuitous break in being cast as the protagonist became clear: “I realised that Hitch had chosen [me] because no famous actress in their right mind would have done this movie.”

As well as putting her through physical hardship, Hitchcock’s desire for Hedren was turning sinister. “It was the start of an obsession. He watched me all the time. He really wanted to control my life.” The sexual advances of her director became so strong that the actress wanted out of the contract. Hitchcock refused to release her and only made one more movie with her, Marnie (1964). By the time she was freed from Hitchcock’s contractual clutches, she was no longer considered “hot property” in Hollywood and her career as a lead actress was effectively over.

The age of television

But these scandals behind the scenes soon became the least of Universal’s worries. By the late 50s a new threat had started to emerge in the entertainment industry; the television. As mass audiences drifted away from cinemas, the old Hollywood struggled to keep up with changing technology, resulting in huge revenue losses and the break-up of the classical Hollywood studio system. However, whilst its competitors were battling with the changing landscape, film scholar Dr Warren Buckland believes Universal had an ace up its sleeve. “[Universal’s] speedy production of low grade formulaic films was ideally suited to TV production. Universal established the blueprint for TV production when the classical film production methods dissolved.” Low budget westerns, comedies and melodramas rolled off the TV production line and into the homes of millions of Americans.

Trucking hell!

Television dominated Universal’s output for 15 years. From this fertile small-screen expansion a young Steven Spielberg emerged. At 20 he had directed episodes of Columbo and at 22 he made the TV movie Duel (1972), which was so good it subsequently received a cinematic release. Buckland says Duel’s theatrical success was because of the vision of its director. “This could have been a routine TV movie, soon to be forgotten. Instead, Spielberg turned what is basically one long chase scene into a tense, pared down thriller. He reduces the thriller format down into its two essential effects: mystery and suspense.”

Three years later Spielberg would change the landscape of film forever with Jaws. Later, in an interview with TCM, the director said the reason he thought he would be good for the job was because it was “Duel with a shark.”

The film is now credited with creating the phenomenon of the summer blockbuster, but shooting wasn’t always smooth sailing. The production team encountered numerous problems with the mechanical shark. “One of the reasons there is so little shark and so much water [on screen],” the director said, “is because there was so little shark to work with. It never quite got out of its dressing room on time.” Spielberg realised he was had to greatly reduce the amount of scene time the shark was due to appear in. “Plan B was basically to make the film as scary as I possibly could by suggesting the shark without having to show the shark.”

Despite the technical difficulties encountered, the final result was ground-breaking and made audience everywhere dread the murky depths of the ocean. Soon other studios were following Universal’s lead, releasing action- heavy adventure films, filled with special effects and promoted by hugely expensive advertising campaigns. Universal had further blockbusting successes with Spielberg throughout the 80s and 90s with E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) and Jurassic Park (1993), both of which became the highest-grossing films of their time. He also directed the harrowing holocaust film Schindler’s List (1993) with Universal, a film that would go on to win Spielberg the Best Director award and Universal the Best Picture award at the 1994 Oscars.

Even without Spielberg, Universal had critical and commerical triumphs in the shape of the Saturday Night Live comedy spin-off The Blues Brothers (1980), Vietnam drama Born on the Fourth of July (1989) and the Back to the Future franchise (1985-89).

Multimedia expansion

However the media landscape is never a static one. Since the break-up of the classical studio system in the 50s, every movie studio in Hollywood had lost their independence and become part of larger conglomerates. But the time the 90s came along movie studios were being bought and sold by mega-multinationals like regular people purchase milk. These enormous conglomerates - along with owning film production - would synchronise soundtracks, merchandise, video games and other assorted tie-ins that could be marketed alongside a new film releases to maximise profits. Universal was no exception to these takeovers and throughout the 90s and into the new millennium it changed hands many times. From 1990 up until 2010 it was bought, and subsequently sold, by Matsushita (parent company of Panisonic), Canadian distiller Seagram, French media giant Vivendi, and then General Electric – who also own NBC – and the resulting media arm became known as NBCUniversal. In January 2011 GE sold 51% of the company to Comcast, the USA’s largest cable television provider, in a merger that Comcast CEO Brian Roberts described as creating "the ideal entertainment and distribution company."

While the movie studio has been passed around like a canapé tray at a cocktail party, it has still found time to produce movies, heavily focusing on its formulaic, money making franchises such as The Fast and the Furious (2001-2011), American Pie (1999-2012) and the Bourne Identity series (2002-2012). Universal also have plans to release further installments to franchises like Jurassic Park, Despicable Me and the Pitch Black series. It seems that, just like with the 30s horror movies, when they find a formula that works, they stick with it as long as they can.

To tie in with its 100th birthday the studio is rereleasing 13 of its most famous films for the first time on Blu-Ray including Dracula, Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, Buck Privates, Jaws, The Birds and Schindler’s List.

 Here’s to another 100 years.