Monster Frankenstein

Leave a comment

There have been any number of film adaptations of Frankenstein.  Guillermo del Toro, as an auteur, has a distinctive style.  I wan’t quite sure how well the two might mix.  I’d been avoiding his 2025 Frankenstein for that reason and because it’s two-and-a-half hours long.  Even rainy weekends don’t always have that big a block of time to spare.  When I finally found the time I found it an interesting departure from Mary Shelley’s story, but, as with most del Toro films, well made.  And the Bible appears in it as well.  This, of course, is part of the whole horror mystique.  Other versions of Frankenstein have played with the idea of the creature’s superior strength but del Toro adds the distinct element that Victor Frankenstein’s creation can’t die.  When he’s killed, he recovers.  He becomes the unstoppable pursuer.

The movie also makes clear that Victor is the real monster.  It is he who kills Elizabeth and then blames it on his creation.  Likewise, when his benefactor is accidentally killed, Victor blames the creature.  The dialogue focuses on religion and death—the Bible reference isn’t gratuitous—and in an interview del Toro noted that Frankenstein is, for him, religion.  Like many del Toro horror films, it doesn’t share the feel of much of modern horror.  For example, there are no jump startles and the presentation is more like a drama or adventure movie than it is a horror one.  There is gore, however, and a monster, both of which place it into the expected category.

Another theme that runs through this rendition of the iconic horror story is that of reconciling with a problematic father.  Victor’s father is cruel and demanding.  He, in turn, becomes cruel and demanding with his creature.  Both “fathers” believe they have the right to dictate the future of their sons.  Victor, while brilliant, is emotionally poorly equipped for his role as surrogate parent.  In the end the creature reconciles with his imperfect but repentant dying father.  With large themes such as this, and the religion and death dialogue, it’s natural enough that this movie attained critical recognition.  And the acting is sincere, with characteristic del Toro sympathy for the monster.  Both monsters, in this version.  The creature and Victor both undergo a kind of redemption by the end of it all.  While not emotionally wrenching—the basic storyline is perhaps too well-known for that—this is a monster film with heart.  This is, of course, a del Toro hallmark.

Monster Drink

Leave a comment

The Monster may trigger those who grew up in alcoholic households.  Still, it is effective and moving, and quite scary.  Lizzy is the fourteen-year-old daughter of Kathy.  Kathy is an alcoholic and generally not really fit for motherhood.  Their relationship is explained through flashbacks and also the events of the morning of the fateful trip.  Lizzy, typical for the child of an alcoholic, has to be the parent in the relationship much of the time, but she’s still an emotionally insecure minor.  Kathy is driving her to her ex-husband’s house for his weekend custody and she’s pretty sure Lizzy won’t come back.  Starting to realize that she’s losing her daughter for good, she tries to make up but the relationship is far gone.  Then they get into an accident on an untraveled road.  And a monster is stalking them.  The build-up is quite good.

The car can’t be driven and Kathy’s wrist is injured.  They learn, as the monster kills the tow-truck driver and ambulance crew that eventually make it to the scene, that it fears light.  They’re able to escape in the ambulance but the monster knocks it off the road and continues stalking them.  Kathy realizes she won’t live much longer because of her injuries and the two finally bond.  Kathy plans with Lizzy how the girl will escape.  Instead, when Kathy lures the monster out, Lizzy attacks it.  The monster kills her mother, but Lizzy kills it.  The acting is quite spectacular, even if the story is sad, edging on depressing.  A girl learning to face and overcome her fears, the story is almost a parable.  It’s also not unrealistic regarding life as the child of an alcoholic.  In my interpretation, alcoholism is the real monster here.

The Monster is one of those good movies that just didn’t perform well at the box office.  It may have been ahead of its time in giving actual heart to a horror setting.  It may not’ve helped that the title is somewhat innocuous.  Yes, there is a monster, but the story is bigger than that.  The monster leads to the final reconciliation between mother and daughter, even as it kills the former.  It’s a meaningful monster.  Interestingly, the reviews I read don’t make the connection with alcoholism.  Perhaps the reviewers haven’t experienced life in such a home.  It explains Kathy’s lack of parenting skills to a considerable degree.  This is a thoughtful, scary movie.  And some of the reasons for the fear may not be what you expect.

Period Exorcist

Leave a comment

The prediction was that it would be forgotten in five years after it lost the Oscar for best picture to The Sting.  The Exorcist, however, is a movie that continues to spawn new books and analyses.  I read The Story Behind The Exorcist because I wanted a contemporary account with its seventies impressions.  I didn’t see the movie when it opened; I was younger than Regan at the time.  I certainly heard about it, though.  Throughout my childhood it was whispered of as the scariest movie ever.  Peter Travers is a well known movie critic; the book was written before he joined Rolling Stone.  Stephanie Reiff is a little more difficult to pin down.  She wrote two other books, both about the occult, published in 1977.  Travers would’ve been in his early twenties when the book was published.  It shows in the at times punchy style.

The Exorcist was a phenomenon.  My awareness of it was second-hand for many years but I did hear about the long lines to get in to see it.  A whopping box-office success, it was the first horror film to be nominated for a best picture Oscar.  Horror films still tend to be shunned by the Academy, despite their frequent financial success.  In any case, when I discuss horror movies with those born in, say, the eighties or later, The Exorcist rarely comes up as among the scariest films.  It is, however, largely responsible for the way that demonic possession is understood.  No possession movie since hasn’t owed a debt of gratitude toward it.  The Exorcist often lands on lists of the greatest movies ever made.  It’s interesting to read the dismissive period reviews of the critics reproduced in the book.  The film is over fifty years old and still discussed.

While I don’t spend much time on social media, the other day a friend posted a picture of himself reading a book about The Exorcist.  I’ve read at least five on the film specifically.  Interestingly, William Friedkin, the director, never reached these heights again.  William Peter Blatty, author of the novel as well as screenwriter and producer, never replicated the success.  Not only was the movie a runaway hit, it represented the true coming of age of the horror genre.  It attempted things never before seen.  And it influenced religion itself in ways nobody dreamed mere celluloid could.  I’m still reading books on it.  This particular one doesn’t have the greatest depth, but it captures the feel of the times.  Adding The Roman Ritual as an appendix, however, may have been playing into the Devil’s hand.

Underground Sydney

Leave a comment

It’s probably best, if horror movies have taught me anything, not to go exploring underground.  As far as found footage films go, The Tunnel isn’t bad.  It didn’t make me ill from camera motion, so that puts it ahead of most recent efforts.  Some explanation of the monster would’ve been good, but even so, it does keep you watching.  The premise is that an Australian news team, in need of a big story, decides to go down into the tunnels that create a virtual second city under Sydney.  The story is that the government had planned to reclaim the water that filled some of the tunnels to help alleviate a drought.  The plans are suddenly and silently dropped, suggesting an untold story.  Knowing that the homeless use the tunnels, the team of four breaks in and finds evidence of squatters.  And more.

While getting some ambient sounds recorded, their audio engineer disappears.  Finding a room splattered with lots of blood, the remaining three have to decide whether to keep looking for him or try to go for help.  On the way they realize that some kind of humanoid monster is stalking them.  It attacks and kills a security guard who’d initially tried to keep the crew out.  The three, each of them attacked underground, manage to find their way to an active subway station.  But the producer dies while awaiting medical help.  The reporter, the only woman in the group, blames herself for putting her need for a big story over the welfare of her colleagues.  There’s also a fair bit of bitterness at having lost the producer when plenty of people, who might potentially help, were around.  Only the reporter and her cameraman survive.

Ever since The Blair Witch Project, it’s been tricky to determine which found footage horror films really work.  Paranormal Activity did.  And this one does too, at least to an extent.  Since they ostensibly tell you no more than the characters know, fixed answers are difficult to come by.  Thus we’re left wondering if the monster here is a human, mutated or not—it does move faster than most people can manage—and what its backstory might be.  The conceit of using tunnels to house it, while not unique, does offer some possibilities in the cinéma vérité realm.  It is a world of which few beyond the homeless and city engineers have direct experience, thus it’s foreign even to the locals like the news team.  Probably there are no monsters in such places, but caution, it seems to me, wouldn’t be misplaced.

Sun Cut

Leave a comment

The Severed Sun is an independent folk horror film, written and directed by Dean Puckett, that hasn’t received enough attention.  I wish this blog had a greater reach so that it might create some buzz for it.  The movie has some shortcomings but overall it is quite strong and it shows just how horror can be based on religion.  Scenes of modern conveniences, such as nicely paved roads, electrical wires, and modern-ish farming equipment suggest that the setting is post-apocalyptic.  A small band of people have gathered around a preacher whose religion is unclear.  It seems to be some form of Christianity, but he doesn’t quote the Bible and says nothing of Jesus.  There are crosses, however.  In any case, the people live in marginal land where they work communally and where each family has its own house.  They believe in marriage and male headship of the house.

Magpie kills her abusive husband.  She’s the daughter of the pastor of the community.  She has a son and an adopted son.  There’s an actual monster of darkness in the woods.  It’s unclear whether Magpie conjures it or not.  Magpie reveals the abuse of another father who’s been molesting his daughter.  The beast in the woods kills him.  The community turns on her, claiming she’s a witch.  Her father, however, saves her from immediate danger.  The pastor’s chosen acolyte, John, is in love with David, Magpie’s adopted son.  Magpie is also in love with David.  The pastor, although he shames and publicly humiliates his daughter, protects her when he can.  He doesn’t believe in “the beast,” but he uses it to get his followers to conform.  Realizing that his own heavy-handedness is problematic, he decides to kill David and the wife of the molester so that they can blame it on the beast and maintain control of the community.

Magpie escapes from the confinement where she’s being kept and kills John.  The pastor, not realizing it’s his daughter, mortally wounds Magpie and the beast kills him.  There’s a lot going on here.  The land is clearly part of the threat with which the people live, a telling folk horror element.  The religion that holds them together oppresses women and homosexuals.  And it does seem that Magpie has some influence over the monster.  Not all the details are spelled out, but enough information is given to appreciate what’s happening.  At its best moments it’s like a Robert Egger movie, but the language is clearly that of the present time, although the community lives without electricity or modern vehicles.  No farm animals appear.  Enough is strange to be unsettling, and it would be great to see more discussion of it.

Who, Forgotten

Leave a comment

He’s a part of American childhood, Dr. Seuss is.  Kids are still familiar with him.  Even many decades ago, I grew up with him.  (We didn’t have his books at home, but there was a library in town.)  We watched the Grinch at Christmas time—when the networks, chose, of course.  I never knew that Dr. Seuss had done a Grinch Halloween special as well: Halloween is Grinch Night.  I just learned about this from a Halloween fan page I follow.  It was released in 1977 and was subsequently acquired by Disney and shown a few times in the nineties.  Once I heard about it I had to track it down and I did find it.  This was a rare off moment for Dr. Seuss.  Part of the problem is that Boris Karloff had died and another voice had to be found for the Grinch.  The larger problem, however, is that it doesn’t scare.

Partially this is because of the songs.  They don’t have any scary sounds, being more like show tunes.  I don’t have the vocabulary or expertise to say why, but they are not inspired.  And the story is strange: Whoville battens down the hatches when Grinch night approaches.  Eucariah Who has to use the euphemism (this word for outhouse is also in a Seuss book, I don’t recall which), but the wind blows him out of the yard and he apparently gets lost and climbs Mt. Crumpet.  Meanwhile, the Grinch is on his way down with his Paraphernalia Wagon (perhaps a clue).  He subjects Eucariah to the frights inside, which have nothing really spooky about them.  I’m not sure if Theodore Geisel was never really haunted—but his story “What Was I Scared of?” (the pale green pants with nobody inside them)  is spooky until the ending.

The thing that really disappointed me was that the concept is good.  The execution, however, just didn’t work.  The Grinch is far more menacing when stealing Christmas.  And having Sergeant Samuel McPherson giving a play-by-play really seemed to serve no purpose.  Now, I’m no critic of children’s stories.  Like most parents I’ve read many of them (and I’m currently going through one set again, just for fun).  Not all of them work for me.  This half-hour cartoon made me feel bad.  I think it was perhaps the missed opportunity.  I may have felt differently about it if I’d seen it when I was fifteen, but I doubt it.  Sometimes we need haunted people to tell us their stories, even when we’re kids.  (I discuss scary kids’ stories in my Sleepy Hollow book, just sayin’.)

Stuffed

Leave a comment

Although a satire, The Stuff has a serious message.  This horror comedy from the eighties bears some similarities to The Substance, but in a more comic and environmentally conscious way.  The eponymous stuff is edible and discovered at a mining site in Georgia.  Its good taste soon challenges ice cream and millions become addicted to it.  The problem is, it takes over people’s minds.  Soon they will eat nothing else.  Some industrialists in the ice cream industry reluctantly hire a specialist in industrial espionage to learn what The Stuff is.  They engage Mo Rutherford, who, although crooked, is quite likable.  The film follows him as he investigates.  He eventually finds Jason, a young boy whose family has been taken over by The Stuff.  Jason saw it moving and knows it’s alive.  Mo rescues Jason and teams up with Nicole, an advertising executive who’s been marketing The Stuff.  Together, and with “Chocolate Chip Charlie” Hobbs, they decide to expose that The Stuff is animated by an alien life form and is dangerous.

There’s a lot of madcap stuff here.  The horror element comes from what happens to “Stuffies”—those addicted to The Stuff.  It hollows them out, eating them from the inside.  They’re left as hollow shells.  When shot they leak the white Stuff.  This leads an Army colonel who is also trying to stop it to his classic line, “I kinda like the sight of blood… but this is disgusting!”  There are so many corny lines that it’s no wonder that the movie has a cult following.  It’s also a parody of how industrialists will stop at nothing to get money, even when they know what they sell is dangerous.

Watching the movie, which wasn’t half bad, I wondered at how I’d never heard of it before.  There are so many movies out there and now with the internet so many websites.  Classic TMI.  I only found it by scrolling through a streaming service after a night of very little sleep when something kind of silly sounded appealing.  Comedy horror is a genre that can produce some good results.  This movie also made me think of The Blob, another shapeless monster that critics tend to dislike.  The film had a decent budget for the time and the production values are generally good.  The Stuff isn’t a great movie, but it’s a pretty good one.  The social commentary that it packs is just as relevant now as it was forty years ago.  It’s a satire worth seeing.

Pointedly

Leave a comment

Beaks, aka Birds of Prey, is either a knock-off of, or tribute to Hitchcock’s The Birds.  Some have suggested it should be considered a sequel.  For my part, I was looking for an animals gone wild movie to watch one weekend when I was alone.  It was free on one of my streaming services, so why not?  The acting isn’t great and the dialogue feels a bit forced, but this 1987 movie wasn’t completely bad.  The plot we’ve seen before.  There is a stronger environmental message here—the birds are attacking because of environmental pressures brought on by humans—than in Hitchcock.  I’m on board with that.  The story follows Vanessa, a news reporter, and Peter, her cameraman, as they cover, reluctantly, birds attacking humans.  The pacing is a bit off.  The opening paragliding sequence is really too long and confusing (where are these people?).  I did wonder, however, how the birds had been trained.

That question kept coming back throughout the movie.  The attacking birds are mostly pigeons or doves, and in the scenes where they really look like they’re attacking I wondered how they managed them.  Of course, actors can act like they’re in distress as birds go after food placed on their person, but the effects made it seem more sinister than that.  For this aspect alone the movie deserves some credit.  The opening sequence involves attacks by eagles, a bit harder to manage, it would seem.  The fatalities at the beaks of pigeons, however, are less believable.  Yes, they could attack eyes and ears and noses, but the injuries seem sustainable, and not life-threatening.  The attacks, for the most part, are realistic enough.  (When child actors are involved the attacks are far less convincing.)  The critics, it seems to me, are a bit too harsh.

A Mexican movie in English, it was filmed in Acapulco, but also Spain, Italy, Puerto Rico, and Peru.  The travel sequences, which are apparently meant to show that this is a worldwide phenomenon, sometimes feel tacked on.  More could’ve been made of the firebirds of the Inca returning.  It would’ve made for a more speculative film, of course, but it could’ve been good.  Beaks isn’t the kind of movie to which I’d give any kind of unqualified recommendation, but it isn’t without merit.  You do have to put up with quite a bit to get to the payoffs, though.  Still, when it was over I was left with the temporary paranoia about birds that Hitchcock’s film creates, so it wasn’t all bad.

Lovecraftian Layers

Leave a comment

Lovecraftian dreams dominate Hugo Yelagin’s Deadlights.  A few major themes are addressed in this debut novel.  One, which always stands out to me for some reason, is the search for the father.  Maxwell Corvid, a former medical student at Miskatonic University, is returning home to his father’s once grand estate.  Accompanied by a banker who delights in pointing out that his father’s debts, Maxwell learns he’ll inherit debt rather than anything substantial.  Accosted by a brigand, the two leap into a huge sinkhole that has taken the estate.  Maxwell finds himself among moldy people transforming into fish (Lovecraftian, as I say), but befriends a young girl who knows her way around.  They find the banker and brigand and begin trying to solve the strangeness they encounter in this world.  A couple other major characters enter the tale, but I don’t want to give any spoilers.

While novels that heavily feature dreams aren’t my personal favorites, this dark fantasy intrigues you into turning pages.  I really couldn’t guess the ending, and, like a dream, not everything wraps up neatly.  The amazing thing about H. P. Lovecraft is that his vision has inspired so many others to grapple with his worlds.  Many modern writers find the call of Cthulhu irresistible.  The sloshy, watery fear of being transformed into something you’re currently not.  This, I think, is a second theme.  Transformation.  Realizing maybe the way you see someone isn’t the whole of that person.  And, of course, the theme of light.  This sinkhole world is dark and occasional lights help the characters to see.  And they learn that those different from themselves aren’t necessarily evil.  (Although one or two might be.)

I’m not sure I’d consider this a horror novel, although there are monstrous sorts in it.  It doesn’t try to scare like many horror novels do.  It does have a gothic setting, but the timeframe isn’t specified.  Lovecraft tends to conjure the Victorian period in my imagination, but his stories probably reflect his own time, as opposed to an earlier one.  I acknowledge my own weaknesses as a reader, and as someone with historical training, knowing “when” gives me a useful framework within which to paint a story in my head.  But then again, in worlds dominated by dreams that may be a moot point.  It’s just that, in my own canvas of this story, I do wonder what was, in this Lovecraftian world, really real.

Holy Sequel

Leave a comment

I’ve made reference, from time to time, to “Holy Sequel.”  This was a potential book to follow Holy Horror, in which further examples of the Bible in horror films would be explored.  While I only half-heartedly supposed I might write such a book, I have kept track of references to the Bible in the horror movies I’ve seen since my book was published.  I haven’t done this religiously, but it struck me that someone else, someday down the road, might want to do more research.  I recently uploaded my list of such movies in the section of this blog called Full Essays.  It also lists all the movies mentioned in Holy Horror.  (I may eventually add those from Nightmares with the Bible too.)  Not all of those movies are discussed in the book(s)—some are incidental references—but a good many of them are.  And as this bit of data shows, a good many more could be.  The main reason for adding the list to this website is to offer a filmography of movies that could’ve been in the book, but were discovered too late.  Or were produced later.

I watch horror with my Bible radar on.  It’s widely recognized that strong religious themes began in horror with Rosemary’s Baby in 1968.  One of the things noted both in Holy Horror and in the list on Holy Sequel is that the Bible appears in films earlier than that.  Its cinematic nature changes over time.  I should also note that some of the movies on Holy Sequel are marked as “maybe.”  The reason is that reference to the Bible isn’t terribly explicit, or, if it is shown it’s not done clearly.  In the book I discuss this explicitly if a movie is questionable, regarding its use of the Bible.  Another feature of Holy Sequel is that it will be updated; it is now my version of record.  In fact, since posting it a movie has already been added.

In my abundant free time (ahem), I’m adding links to the blog posts in which I discuss these movies.  As with my blog bibliography, this will take some time to complete.  I realize these posts are read on other formats such as Facebook and Goodreads, but the website itself has more information than simply the daily blog posts.  I do hope it’s a resource for those with similar interests.  There are many movies with the Bible in them.  There are no indexes or lists of such movies and I’ve stopped keeping track.  Except if the movie is horror.  If it is, it will eventually be added to Holy Sequel, if I find it.  It’s a book I likely won’t have time to write; my to-do list is far too long.

Many Thanks

Leave a comment

My thanks go out to James Annitto and Victoria Jaye for a delightful discussion about demons on last night’s Nine Gates Podcast.  I will put a link to it on Spotify on the Other Social Media & Interviews page on this website.  I have to admit that I was a little nervous about it.  I wrote Nightmares with the Bible in 2019 and ’20, mostly.  Since then, in addition to the 9-2-5 that never ends, I wrote The Wicker Man and Sleepy Hollow as American Myth.  I have a good deal of another nonfiction book written, but I’ve been polishing what I hope might be my second published novel lately.  In other words, would I have forgotten about demons?  The amazing thing about being a podcast guest is that it suddenly brings back the past.  It’s like a time machine.

On my Other Social Media & Interviews page I have links to the various podcasts to which my books have garnered invitations over the past few years.  Last December Biblical Time Machine had me on to talk about Asherah.  Amazingly, although I wrote that book over three decades ago, I remembered quite a lot.  Some details were fuzzy around the edges, of course, but writing a book seems to seal certain facts in your gray cells.  The Incarcerated Christian podcast had me on for three episodes, two for Holy Horror and one for Nightmares.  My gratitude always goes out to TheoFantastique for chats about all of my books since Holy Horror on.  It’s devilishly hard to get attention as an ex-professor.  Being an editor is a quiet job.  So I’m full of gratitude for all of those who’re willing to listen to me prattle on for an hour.

I realize, by the way, that some readers find these posts on Facebook, Goodreads, and other social media.  There’s actually more to my website than my daily posts.  (They are the largest part, no doubt.)  I have individual pages on each of my books.  There’s a bit of contextualizing biographical information on this old ex-professor.  And there are links to my attempted vlogs on YouTube.  Chatting with James and Victoria last night, I was reminded again how much I’d like to get back into doing videos.  The only thing stopping me is time.  Even a 20-minute video can take an entire weekend to put together.  Thankfully there are a few folks out there who find my efforts worth an evening’s (or weekend afternoon’s) discussion.  I am profoundly grateful to this who do, if you’ll pardon my brief stint of self-indulgence.

Not Hill House

Leave a comment

I was tardy in seeing The Legend of Hell House.  Part of the problem is the number of similarly titled films: The House on Haunted Hill was a 1959 movie with Vincent Price.  Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House was published the same year.  It was adapted into a noted film, The Haunting, in 1963.  Richard Matheson’s novel Hell House was published in 1971 and this adaptation was released two years later.  Going back to the book versus film debate, I’d been hoping to read the book before seeing the movie, but circumstances—always the circumstances—meant that I’ve watched the cinematic version first.  Speaking purely for the movie (I haven’t read the book yet), there are resemblances to both the similarly named movies, but especially to The Haunting.  Not fast paced by current standards, the movie is nevertheless well made with an atmospheric haunted house and able actors.

The film opens with not a claim of being based on a true story, but a statement that such phenomena are indeed possible.  An elderly millionaire wants proof of the afterlife and offers a substantial sum to a scientist who might prove it.  Lionel Barrett agrees to take this on and brings his wife with him.  He will be accompanied by the spiritualist medium Florence Tanner and the sole survivor of a similar set up from two decades earlier, Benjamin Fischer.  Fischer is a physical medium.  Barrett intends to prove that spiritual energy is not a survival of the personality beyond life, but rather a form of energy that can be scientifically neutralized.  As the four gather at the house obvious manifestations take place and even Barrett doesn’t deny that they came come from external energy.  He just doesn’t believe that it’s personal survival.  He has a machine delivered that will drain the house of said energy.

Things don’t turn out as the scientist plans, although the machine does appear to work.  What Barrett failed to realize—that spirits are real—leads to his demise.  The movie is well made and has attained a kind of classic status, which is why I ended up seeing it before reading the book.  (That, and I found a streaming copy on sale.)  In many ways the story resembles Jackson’s classic.  Haunted house movies are among my favorites when it comes to horror films, so this one wasn’t a disappointment.  It has made me curious to read the book, so that will come in due course.  As long as I can keep the similar titles discrete.

Demons, Once More

Leave a comment

Victoria Jaye’s book got me thinking, once again, how powerful movies are.  Ever since I was a child, I think, I had some awareness that movies were more than simply entertainment.  Things I saw that scared me stayed with me.  They’d come back in nightmares or unguarded moments.  Indeed, they would frame what I thought of as real, or possible.  I read Hell, Horror and Despair in preparation for my appearance on the Nine Gates Podcast.  Perhaps it’s a combination of my age, how busy I am at work, and how I move from one project to another, but I do tend to forget things about the books I’ve written.  I needed to remind myself about Nightmares with the Bible, and reading Jaye’s book definitely helped ring a few bells.  I remain interested in all the subjects I’ve published on, from Asherah to Sleepy Hollow (and beyond).

Hell, Horror and Despair is about demonic fantasy—broadly, the ideas culture sustains about demons, largely influenced by movies.  Jaye recognizes, as many authors do, that The Exorcist was formative.  The more I ponder it, the more I think it might be the most influential horror movie ever.  William Peter Blatty famously wanted it to draw people back to faith.  I think it probably did that and mostly through the fear it inspired.  The money brought in attracted other filmmakers.  There’s gold in them thar hills!  Counting the number of movies I’ve seen featuring some kind of demon would take more than an hour or two.

And maybe they weren’t only fiction after all.  Demonic fantasy is fiction about demons that derives from the media.  The beliefs that The Exorcist kick-started have grown and evolved over the years until all kinds of beliefs about demons are held, but not tested against evidence.  Any evidence itself is dismissed by science, so people turn to the only available source: the fiction of movies and pop culture.  This is really a fascinating development.  Now we have congressional leaders, and a Vice-President, who believe UFOs are demons.  Talk about your Middle Ages!  Since science doesn’t investigate the immeasurable world, and since experts in religion tend to be unemployed these days, of course this kind of thing is going to happen.  Jaye’s book points out the problems with demonic fantasy.  Historically, prior to movies and television, it often contributed to literal witch hunts.  Today it is used to make political opponents seem evil.  And it contributes to a belief that demons are everywhere—something the Catholic Church tried to tamp down after the Dark Ages.  I’ll be on the podcast on Tuesday evening.

Not a Flower

5 Comments

There are occasional benefits from my attempts not to learn about movies before I watch them.  I approached Bugonia unaware of what it was about, or about its twist ending.  That ending makes it a difficult film to discuss in any detail, but I’ll start with the question of how to classify it.  Different websites use different designations: horror, sci-fi, dark comedy, thriller, satire, crime, and so forth.  In some ways it’s genre-defying, like Everything, Everywhere, All at Once, Parasite, and Poor Things.  A movie that will get you thinking and one that’s exceptionally good at misdirecting you.  While not a financial success, it received critical acclaim.  It does follow a storyline, and there are hints of what’s “really” going on as the story unfolds.  Here’s the basic idea, without spoilers (I hope).

Teddy Gatz is a conspiracy theorist and mentally unbalanced.  His mother is hospitalized in a coma, having been a drug addict, and he was abused as a small boy by his babysitter.  His autistic cousin Don goes along with what he says.  Teddy is planning to kidnap an alien, the CEO of the company for which he works.  He’s convinced she (Michelle) is from Andromeda and that her mothership will be in range during the upcoming lunar eclipse.  He believes the Andromedans are killing all the bees.  He and his cousin pull off the kidnapping and imprison Michelle in their basement.  He interrogates and tortures her.  She tries to convince them that this is all a mistake, but Teddy is very certain of his convictions.  Michelle finds her way into a secret room long enough to use Teddy’s conspiracy theories against him.  He takes her back to her office so they can meet the mothership.  I’ll leave it at that.

There are definitely some funny bits to it all.  It’s also a poignant movie.  At times it felt like it was making light of mental illness, but in context it really doesn’t.  The film has a strong ecological message and a somewhat disturbing final melange of images.  Is it horror?  It definitely has some elements of the genre.  I wouldn’t say that it’s the best overall classification, though.  I’m not really sure what that might be.  The thriller elements are clearly there.  It’s the kind of story for when you’re in the mood for something disorienting and a bit threatening.  I haven’t figured out the title yet, but it is the kind of movie I’m glad to have watched.  With no warnings.

Fearing Childhood

Leave a comment

There is a list.  It has the movies that I want to watch on it.  Most of the time said movies aren’t available freely (i.e., you need to pay separately to stream them, they’re only available on disc, etc.) and most of the time I’m watching my pennies.  If a movie on my list comes to a streaming service I use, I try to watch it before it disappears.  To get on the list there has to be a recommendation from someone.  The Boogeyman was actually recommended some time back on a New York Times list of scary movies.  It then came to a streaming service.  I can say that it is scary.  You have to accept the world of the story (i.e., the boogeyman does actually exist) but once you do there is a lot of tension built into the film and plenty of edge-of-your-seat moments.

So the boogeyman is real.  And it feeds on sorrows and fears.  (And people.)  It makes its way into the Harper household when a man whose children were killed by it visits Dr. Harper (a psychologist).  Harper’s wife recently died and when the man dies by “suicide” in a dark closet of the Harper’s house, the boogeyman moves in.  It can imitate the voices of people and it likes to scare you before eating you.  Harper’s two daughters see it, but since the death of their mother, family relationships have been strained.  The film is as much about coping with loss as it is about a monster, but it does build up to the monster attacks with a deft hand.  And it deals with that perennial human fear of the dark.  And closet doors that open on their own.  And things that might be under the bed.

Fear of nighttime dangers may well be universal, and it can be spurred along by dreams.  (My own dreams of late have been quite intense.)  And The Boogeyman plays on Edgar Allan Poe’s observation that women in danger is a poetic theme.  In the movie the boogeyman does seem to prefer girls.  I wasn’t aware until after watching the movie that it’s based on a Stephen King short story.  In retrospect that’s not surprising because King has a way of asking, “What if” that leads to scary consequences.  While not a great movie, it is a horror film with heart and a message.  And it’s fairly easy to see why even someone at the New York Times might recommend it as a scary film.  Horror fans can safely add it to their lists.