Happy Beltane!

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They creep up on you, these holidays with no official recognition.  I’ve been so busy that it didn’t even occur to me that today was Beltane—May Day—until my wife mentioned it to me before I headed up to bed last night.  Why is that important?  It’s not a day off work, so why bother?  Well, for one thing it’s the fuel behind my book published in the summer of last year.  Or, according to the Celtic calendar, the fall (just before Lughnasadh).  In other words, this is the first May Day for The Wicker Man.  I should’ve been trying to drum up a little interest, but things have been busy.  Besides, my profile hasn’t grown since its publication.  Nobody even cites it on the Wikipedia page for the movie, although it takes a distinct angle.  So I’ve been busy with other things.

I’ve been trying to find a publisher for my next book.  A couple friends know what it’s about but mostly nobody else because it’s time-sensitive.  Agents haven’t nibbled.  Well, one did.  He had me rewrite the book and then decided he couldn’t sell it after all.  Back to square one.  Even presses that publish mostly non-PhDs weren’t even interested enough to respond to queries.  Nothing like writing a book to make you realize how insignificant you are.  Like Sgt. Howie, I’m caught on Summerisle.  Ironically, I didn’t even think of writing a post for my book today when I was jogging yesterday and a haze over the moon (I know the movie ends with the sun—I’ve seen it a time or two) made me think, “That sky looks like the ending of The Wicker Man.”  Well, when I get back from my jog I have to start right in to work.  And Beltane’s not a holiday in these parts.

May Day used to be celebrated, even in the United States.  Now it’s just disappeared into the haze of work days.  And we don’t have time even to watch movies on work days.  That’s a weekend activity.  Of course, my weekends are full of trying to find publishers.  Two are currently considering my unagented book.  Four have already rejected it.  I’m thinking that I could use a trip to the Green Man with Howie.  At least on Summerisle they know how to celebrate May Day.  Of course, it’s the ending that makes it horror.  And Beltane snuck up on me this year.  Without it, The Wicker Man wouldn’t even exist.

Facing Fear

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The relationship between fathers and daughters is intangibly profound.  (I can’t speak for fathers and sons, from either side of the equation.)  That was the angle that Georges Franju took when approaching Eyes Without a Face.  I have to confess that I knew the basic idea behind this movie and it took years to build up the courage to watch it.  I’m squeamish, and the fear that the film might show too much was a very real fear.  After you watch a movie, it can’t be unseen.  Still, it is a classic of the horror genre (although that is disputed) and it gets referenced all the time.  In case you haven’t heard about it, a plastic surgeon is attempting to graft a new face onto his daughter after she’s mutilated in an automobile accident.  Things, as you might guess, don’t go as planned.

Critics didn’t care for the movie when it was first released, but, as we’ve seen from time to time, re-evaluation changes things.  It is now considered good enough to be part of the Criterion Collection and ratings on the usual websites are quite favorable.  It’s often cited for its poetic treatment of the subject, and the response of Christiane, the daughter, seems to bear that out as she moves from complicit in her father’s crimes to sympathetic to his victims.  Indeed, the surgeon himself is conflicted, but that father-daughter relationship is something he can’t ignore.  He seems compelled to help her at any cost—it’s the price of parenting, I suppose.  It’s not for the weak.  But we’re in movie-land, aren’t we?

Christiane is sympathetic to the animals her father uses for his experiments.  When she frees them, after releasing the last intended victim, she’s depicted St. Francis-like, with the doves.  Knowing her own suffering, she can’t bear to impose it on another.  Our bodies are how we present ourselves to the world.  We rely on faces to tell us much of what we need to know, even without words passing between us.  Interestingly, even when wearing her mask, Christiane’s eyes tell the viewer much of what she’s experiencing internally.  Poetic, as the critics say.  If there’s a monster here, however, he’s driven out of love in the context of an imperfect world.  Eyes Without a Face works as a horror film and the reported fainting that took place among viewers early on demonstrate that we tend to feel for others, just as Christiane comes to.  And the father?  Well, that’s the unanswered question.  He’s a victim in his own way.

Panic Inducing

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Many movies appreciate in value over time.  The Devil Rides Out (also known as The Devil’s Bride) was not well received initially, but has become a highly regarded horror classic.  One of the few with a G rating, no less.  It’s also hard to see in the US, due to lack of streaming (at least where I stream) and DVDs coded to Europeans viewers.  Anyway, taken from a Dennis Wheatley novel, and screen-written by Richard Matheson, it features Christopher Lee in an heroic role during the days just before public concern about Satanism would become downright panic.  The story itself, effective if long-winded, develops among the aristocracy in England during the 1920s.  It was released, by the way, the same year as Rosemary’s Baby, which helped play into the Satanic panic.  Movies do influence the way we view “reality.”

I’ve never read any Dennis Wheatley novels, but it’s safe to say the story is pretty Manichaean in its outlook.  A coven of Satanists wants a young man and woman to complete their number but the chosen young man has a couple of older friends who quickly comprehend what is happening and attempt to put an end to it.  The Satanists, however, control real power and the movie is pretty much a tug of war between the young man’s friends and the coven.  This is done in such a way that you see very little blood, no gore, and surprisingly for the subject matter, no nudity or sex.  The Satanists here are old school—they want to worship the Devil in exchange for personal power.  It’s pretty clear that some research was done before undertaking all of this, even if the paranoia born of such things was fueled by largely imaginary scenarios. 

I’d been wanting to see this film for some time because of its clear connection between religion and horror.  There’d be no Satan, as we know him, without Christianity.  Indeed, there’s heavy Christian imagery in the film, in keeping with Wheatley’s outlook.  Crosses cause demons to disappear in an exploding puff of smoke.  Interestingly, however, there’s no crucifixes or holy water.  This is a Protestant view of the Dark Lord.  The Satanists, however, are defeated by the spirit of one of their own who refuses to allow them to sacrifice a young girl.  The ending stretches credibility a bit more than the rest of the movie, but still, overall it isn’t bad.  A Hammer production, it never had the box-office draw of its contemporary Rosemary.  Still, The Devil Rides Out was influential in its own right.  Even if finding a viewing copy requires almost selling one’s soul.

Wolfing Hour

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It’s not that I didn’t grow up watching horror; it’s that I didn’t grow up watching horror in theaters.  I’m sure Mom wouldn’t have had it, and besides, we could only afford movies spread apart by wide intervals.  You’d think that now I’m an earning adult (or so I’m told) that I’d have more control but watching is a kind of addiction and money’s still not abundant.  Every once in a while, however, I’ll splurge and pay for a film.  Mostly when they’re not available via any streaming service.  Like many Christians who’ve never read the whole Bible, I know the canon only piecemeal.  So I came to watch Hour of the Wolf, the Ingmar Bergman classic.  Now (at least then) streaming nowhere.  Intellectuals have always flocked to Bergman films since they’re full of symbols and not easy to understand.  (If you want to “get” Robert Eggers, though, you’ve got to do your homework.)

Hour of the Wolf is generally considered psychological horror.  It’s black and white—how scary can it be?  Pretty, depending.  The story of an artist’s wife (Alma) who lives with him in a small shack on an island in Sweden, it’s a tale of unraveling.  Nightmares become difficult to distinguish from waking realities.  The wife reads the artist’s diary, foreshadowing Wendy in The Shining, to discover that he seems to be going insane.  The island’s not abandoned, as they thought.  Soon Alma begins seeing other people too.  And attending their awkward dinner parties.  They speak freely of her husband’s previous affair.  There also seems to be an instance of a real person on the island that the artist keeps secret.

If this doesn’t give you enough to piece it together, well, it’s a Bergman film.  In college we watched The Seventh Seal.  And at least part of Wild Strawberries.  But in 1968 I wasn’t an intellectual and we were poor.  If I’d even heard of Ingmar Bergman it was via reference in some TV sitcom.   I knew to expect strangeness.  These days the box elder bugs are mostly gone from the house.  The weirdness started when, having never seen the film before, I began to pour a glass of water at the very second the artist picks up and begins to pour a glass of wine.  Strange coincidence, I thought.  Several minutes later I saw something edging around my glasses.  A box elder bug crawled right over my right glasses lens.  Like a scene in a Bergman movie.  I knew I’d have to ponder this for some time.

Wondering Wailing

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You have to wonder, it seems to me, if the western, imperialistic gaze sometimes overcompensates for its past sins.  We remain reluctant to say we don’t understand something and sometimes even declare such things superior to what we produce.  That was the feeling that came over me upon reading about The Wailing.  Don’t get me wrong—I like K-horror well enough, but I’m not sure that I would say, with some critics, that it leaves American horror in the dust.  It’s good, yes, and it’s very long (two-and-a-half hours seems too long for a horror film).  The story doesn’t answer all the questions it raises and I was looking for some kind of religious message.  That’s why I watched it in the first place.  

What’s it about?  That’s hard to say.  The best that I can do is it’s about the doomed family of a Korean police officer in a small village.  As others have pointed out, this movie has ghosts, demons, zombies, exorcisms, and other horror standards.  There’s a considerable amount of Christian versus shamanism interplay.  And it seems okay, when someone else is doing it, to suggest a foreigner is the Devil.  None of this is intended to take away from the fact that the movie is effective.  I particularly found the shamanistic exorcism scene fascinating.  The thing is, you never really learn if the self-admitted Devil at the end is working with the shaman or not.  Or if the third potential villain, a woman named “No Name,” is in on it with them.  Or maybe I’m looking at this from the wrong angle.  Maybe the policeman’s family is simply doomed.  Nothing they can do changes that.

The movie suggests that such things are like fishing.  You can’t be certain who’s going to take the bait.  According to those who know, apparently a deleted scene at the end helps to clarify this a bit.  There is a lot of talk about belief, and a Christian clergyman confronting the Devil.  For me, however, I need to be able to follow a story well enough to figure out whether I’m misinterpreting or not.  The problem with a movie this long is finding the time to go back and rewatch it.  It opens with a quote from the Bible and it uses biblical tropes, such as the cock crowing three times, to make some strong points.  In fact, the opening quote from Luke 24.37-39 implies that the ghost may be God.  One thing is certain, I’ll be mulling over The Wailing for some time.  And maybe someday I’ll start to understand.  In the meanwhile, I’ll still watch and appreciate American horror, inferior though it may be.

One Host

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I don’t want to seem an ungracious guest, but I don’t know if I met the right host.  I really need to start keeping track of film dates as well as titles.  I found two versions of The Host and one was free.  (This is the 2020 version.)  Despite what the critics say, I liked it.  It borrows quite a lot from Alfred Hitchcock, and, I’m told, from Hostel (which I’ve never seen).  The plot is complex and, it may be my own naiveté, but it kept me guessing.  It’s the story of how a down-on-his-luck Englishman mistakenly gets involved in a drug smuggling operation.  He travels to Amsterdam where his “hotel” claims they’ve lost the reservation but they can set him up in a stylish house with a local who has extra room.  The local turns out to be a very influential psychotic.  Herein hangs the tale.

For me, I couldn’t guess where this was going.  I thought the drug smugglers were the real scary people but then odd things start happening with the Englishman’s host.  When he doesn’t show up to work on Monday his brother goes looking for him and he too meets “the host.”  The charming murderer is generally a male role, but Vera, the host, plays it well.  It seems to me that those who criticize the movie most strongly have some viewing experiences that I lack.  This is a polished effort and it doesn’t appear to have been cheaply done.  The story has many twists and although it may imitate others, that’s how new filmmakers get started.  Most writers are willing to admit that they borrow.  Doing so with style can make a huge amount of difference.

What remains unclear to me is whether this was The Host I was supposed to watch or not.  There’s a 2013 sci-fi thriller by that title and I also found a 2006 monster film from South Korea.  With a few exceptions, movie titles tend to be short.  You can’t copyright a title.  And sometimes the most appropriate one for your work has already been taken.  Here (the 2020 version) the title maybe gives away who it is you’re intended to watch out for.  The drug dealers aren’t an idle threat, but Vera is a spider waiting in her web.  And the movie has a moral—actions have consequences.  The original apparent protagonist has little to no self control which he blames on an abusive upbringing.  There’s quite a lot of father-relationship analysis going on here as well.  If anything, The Host (2020) may be a little too ambitious, but it’s worth staying a spell.

Best King

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I suspect most people have read one or two at least.  Most reading folk, that is.  I mean Stephen King novels.  He’s sure written plenty.  By my count I’ve read nine: The Shining, Carrie, ‘Salem’s Lot, Pet Sematary, It, The Stand, The Tommyknockers, Revival, and Cujo.  I probably have one or two more in me.  The dilemma is that I like King’s writing—I’m not one of those nay-sayers who call it clap-trap.  There’s real literary merit to much of it (sometimes just too much of it), and he integrates religion into horror really well.  The thing is, not all of his books are made equal.  I suspect that’s true of any writer.  I’ve consulted some lists to see which are the best and I’ve watched some movies before reading the books, but I’m starting a ranking of my own here—it will probably be revisited from time to time, as events warrant.

What’s his best?  Well, such lists are supposed to start with the worst and work their way forward.  I’ll cave to convention this time.  So, The Tommyknockers and Cujo are tied for least favorite.  Each has a reason: The Tommyknockers is too long and lacks sympathetic characters and Cujo is just too nihilistic.  The premise is good but the bleakness got to me.  The Stand comes next primarily because of the length.  I like the way that one ended up, though.  Revival, my most recent read, comes here, about in the middle.  It was enjoyable to read, even with its length.  I think King has a little trouble writing convincing kids, but the story was good.  Next I would put ‘Salem’s Lot.  Who doesn’t like a good vampire story?

Not that kind of book.

My top three are, perhaps predictably, generally among the top ranked.  My order is perhaps a bit different than most, however.  I really, really enjoyed The Shining.  The movie, I believe, is better.  That may be heresy, I know.  Carrie has all the freshness of a novelist breaking through, and it’s effective.  Better than the movie.  That leaves Pet Sematary as my current favorite.  The story there caught me up and it’s the only one of my top three that I read before seeing the movie (both of them).  The book is way, way better than the movies.  Compared with Revival, which also deals with what happens after death, Pet Sematary offers a commentary on grief that doesn’t involve everyone dying by suicide.  It’s on a much more human level.  As I read more, I’m sure I’ll form other opinions, but for the time being, these three of the King’s early novels, are, in my standing, the most deserving of the crown.

Haunted Life

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It’s funny what a difference that a few years can make.  I can’t seem to recall from where I sourced my movies in the noughties.  Streaming was extremely tenuous in our Somerville apartment—the plan didn’t include the required speed for it.  Like in the old days when it took twenty minutes to upload a photograph through dial-up.  In any case, I know I’ve watched The Haunting before.  I know it was in Somerville, but having watched it again I have to wonder if my mind is playing tricks on me.  I read Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House there, and I saw the movie.  But how?  It’s all about mind games, but the mind games are played on a woman who has an abusive family, one that damages her psychologically.  Escape is important to her, even if it is to a haunted house.

I think the last time I watched this I was looking for something that might scare me.  That phase was one of thinking not much frightened me—but this movie is scary.  Even with its “G” rating, its lack of blood and gore, and black-and-white filming.  It scares.  One thing I’ve noticed when reading about these older movies after I watch them is that many improve with time.  Shirley Jackson was known during her life but you become a classic writer only AD—after death.  The Haunting has aged well.  I suspect it has something to do with Robert Wise, the director.  What must the psychology of a man be who directed The Sound of Music, The Day the Earth Stood Still, and The Haunting?  The latter is all about psychology.

Movies that make you think are those, I believe, that may become classics.  And perhaps there’s a bit of Eleanor inside all of us.  Wanting to be noticed but eschewing publicity.  Needing someone to love us, but pushing away those who try.  Children in bad environments learn unorthodox, and often unhealthy, coping techniques.  Eleanor has difficulty accepting that John is married when she thinks she’s finally found a place that accepts her for who she is.  Even if it’s a haunted house.  Especially if it’s a haunted house.  As a child I’d no doubt have found the movie boring.  There is, however, much for adults to absorb.  And, I expect, I’ll need to go back and read the novel again.  One of the reasons for watching horror is that the viewer is seeking something.  It’s not just thrills.  I didn’t write about the movie the last time I saw it so I don’t recollect when it was.  Or even how.  My thoughts now, however, are that I should’ve paid closer attention the first time.

Colorless Sunday

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Growing up, my Saturday afternoon horror movies were catch as catch can.  I never really had a plan and I’m sure that there are several films I saw that I have forgotten.  I’m sure one of them wasn’t Black Sunday.  I knew nothing of directors and their reputations then and I was unaware that Mario Bava made quite a splash with this moody movie.  I can now understand why (thanks to Amazon Prime).  This is an unusual vampire and/or witch story, and one which had quite an impact on future films, including one of my favorites, Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow.  Indeed, Black Sunday is about as gothic as they come.  A witch is murdered as the film opens, along with her lover.  Two centuries later a couple of doctors stop for the night in the Moldovan town where this happened.  They find the corpse of the witch and accidentally reanimate it.

The monster the witch raises (her lover, initially) attacks people like a vampire does and the victims become vampires themselves.  The best (but not only) way to kill them is by driving a sharp spike through their left eye.  This is quite violent for a 1960 film, but it certainly cemented Bava’s reputation.  In any case, the younger doctor falls in love with the local princess, but the witch has designs on her too.  The older doctor and the princess’ father both get transformed into vampires and get killed off.  By the end, only the young doctor and the princess remain, along with an Orthodox priest who helps with deciphering how to take care of occult monsters.  The plot is more complex than that, and the film is now understood as a landmark.

At the time and place where and when I went to college, courses in horror films were not on offer.  (I was rather preoccupied with religion, in any case, and might not have taken one anyway.)  By the time I was in college, however, I viewed monster movies with nostalgia, but I was trying hard to be respectable.  You always have to be proving yourself when you grew up poor.  Learning how these early horror films fit together is a form of self-education.  And it’s fun.  And horror movies offer an escape from a world where you know you’re having trouble fitting in.  Many of the movies I watch are still catch and catch can, but I think it pays to be more intentional about them.  And I’m glad I caught Black Sunday at last.

More Omens

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Brushing up on my eschatology, I watched The Omen again.  The original, that is.  One of the underrated aspects of cinema is that people learn their theology from it.  Movies tend to be more memorable than sermons.  It is opined among some that The Omen is responsible for the prevalence of dispensationalism among many Americans.  I’d put a bit of a finer point on it in that The Late Great Planet Earth was being raptured off the shelves all the way through the seventies (I personally bought two copies) and it caused a feedback loop with The Omen.  Many mainstream ministers, without benefit of a Fundamentalist upbringing, were caught unawares, I expect.  Scholars of religion have noted how several aspects of the narrative—the character of “the Antichrist,” the rapture, indeed, the Apocalypse—have been read back into the Bible by credulous believers.

What I found interesting in this viewing is the debt owed to The Exorcist.  Of the two there’s no doubt as to which is the superior film.  The name Damien in The Omen, I read somewhere once upon a time, was taken from Fr. Damien Karras.  During the late seventies and early eighties, unruly boys were routinely called “Damien” by frustrated camp counselors and others.  Apart from this nod, if true, is the fact that the abruptly introduced character Karl/Carl Bugenhagen is an archaeologist exorcist.  (He’s the guy who gives Robert Thorn the knives, if you haven’t seen it for a while.)  The scene shot in Jerusalem (said to be Megiddo) underscores that Fr. Merrin is also being channeled here.  I suspect that the film was getting a bit long in the tooth and some explanatory material on Bugenhagen was left out.

It has also been suggested that the number 666 entered popular culture because of The Omen.  I would temper that a bit with the fact that a lot of people were reading Hal Lindsey’s new apocalypse as well and the two of them got the job done.  There’s no doubt that after the film the evil number took off in a direction that would’ve left John of Patmos scratching his head.  This brings me back to the point that belief is influenced—sometimes constructed—by movies.  The Omen was a huge success at the time, despite the fact that many critics (also not raised Fundie) thought the premise was silly.  Most people aren’t film critics.  The Bible can be pretty impenetrable as well.  Preachers may not be inspiring.  Movies, however, wrap it up neatly and tell you what to believe.  Perhaps it’s some kind of sign.

Lying Beneath

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If you wait long enough you can find successful films for free on Amazon Prime.  What Lies Beneath had big-name star power and still retains a “horror” classification, although “thriller” is used about as often.  I actually enjoyed it and found some parts as scary as I am comfortable getting.  Although I guessed who the killer was well before the climax, I wasn’t sure how this would end.  This made the last fifteen minutes or so very tense.  There may be some spoilers as I ponder this a bit, so be warned.  Of course, the movie is nearly a quarter-century old, so you may already have an idea of what happens.  I’m a purveyor of older culture, it seems.

Claire Spencer, and her new husband Norman, live in an isolated spot in Vermont.  Norman is a genetic engineer and Claire used to be a musician, but the death of her first husband and adjusting to being an empty nester lead to her neglect of playing.  She starts seeing a ghost in the house Norman inherited from his father.  She comes to believe the ghost is of a missing young woman from the area, and she begins to find clues that link her husband to this unsolved case.  At first you think it’s going to be like Rear Window, but it turns into something very different.  The sense of unease is quite effective—you know something’s wrong but you’re not sure exactly what it is.

This is another of those movies where the genre feels up for grabs.  There’s an actual ghost and there are stingers.  Yet it’s directed by Robert Zemeckis, not really known as a horror director.  It’s stylish and has Michelle Pfeiffer and Harrison Ford in the leads.  It’s not really gritty at all.  There is blood and fear, though.  The more movies I watch the more I realize that genre is a tenuous thing.  Stories are forms of expression and sometimes they come in the varieties that explore some of the darker parts of life.  Norman’s tragic flaw is that he values his career above all else.  He tries hard to outshine his father’s accomplishments—he lives in his childhood home but refurbishes it.  He can’t get out from under that shadow and that drives him to extremes.  The movie received mixed reviews, but I found it gripping.  It’s well acted, as you’d expect, and hey, there’s a ghost.  It’s close enough to horror to work for me.

Movie Prophet

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Is there such a thing as a movie so bad that it can distort reality itself?  If so, I nominate A Haunting in Salem.  A little explanation.  I am trying to develop an aesthetic for bad movies.  I’m finding it not too difficult for movies that are so bad they’re good.  Usually such movies are fun—whether intentionally or not.  But there is a class of movie that is poorly written, poorly acted, poorly lighted, poorly set, poorly premised, poorly directed, poorly paced, and all without a hint of humor.  That’s this movie.  I watch bad movies because of my expensive habit.  I stream movies.  Since I work 9-2-5 and I’m tired by 5, I do this on weekends.  I’m not paid enough to afford renting movies every single weekend, so I look for what I can find on the services I can access—Hulu, Netflix, and, mostly, Amazon Prime.  I try to find something that grabs me.

I watched A Haunting in Connecticut and A Haunting in Georgia, as well as their remakes.  The Salem in the title made me think this might have something to say about the Witch Trials.  Perhaps it did but I was so busy groaning that I couldn’t hear it.  Although set in Salem it was filmed in Pasadena (who would notice?).  They used a 200-year-old house as a 400-year-old house, as if there’s no difference.  There’s a scene where the daughter asks her mother about her father’s PTSD.  She says something like, “He shot that man in the war.  He thought he was a bad guy, but he was a good guy.”  It’s difficult to write this badly, even if intentional.  Sorry, I’m getting away from Salem.  Well, it turns out that the witches were buried on the property of Judge Corwin’s house and they kill every sheriff and all their families, when they move in.  This has been going on for four centuries but nobody has caught on?  Even a scene where the mayor is shown raising the flag outside his office had me scratching myself bald.  Is that one of the mayor’s duties?

Most of the time the actors act like there was no direction—showing the wrong emotions and not even remembering what was said just a minute ago.  And you can’t really feel for anyone other than the deputy who seems to be trying to be a nice guy.  Maybe this is my calling in life—to serve as a prophet warning my small band of readers what movies not to watch.  I can’t recall the last time I couldn’t wait for a movie to end so that I could wash my eyes out with soap.  Avoid A Haunting in Salem.  Don’t even consider it.

No Changes

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It’s one of those polarizing movies.  Well, maybe middling-polarizing.  For certain kinds of people.  I didn’t see The Changeling when it came out, but I watched it about a decade ago.  It struck me as lackluster then, but I decided to give it another try.  One of the reasons is that I’d read a couple of things about it recently and thought that maybe I’d misjudged it.  There are those who say it’s a very good haunted house movie—one of the most influential Canadian films of all time.  Hyperbole aside, it’s one of those vengeful ghost movies and the most affecting scene, to me, is when George C. Scott is crying in his bed about the death of his wife and daughter.  There are a couple startles, but nothing really that scary overall.  It is slowly paced and sophisticated, but not terribly so.  It still strikes me as lackluster.

I’ve seen many movies since that feature a child murdered seeking to have their story told.  The end result is, however, a feeling of “so what?”  The boy’s father got away with the murder and the beneficiary—who may or may not know all or part of the story—dies in revenge.  There are just too many questions left unanswered.  The haunted house tropes are fairly conventional, and the wheelchair chase scene is a bit strange.  I wondered if there might’ve been something I was missing.  There are critics with a “meh” response, but others rate it highly.  I did learn that, although the film makes no such claim, it is purportedly based on actual events.  That I’d like to know more about.

Playwright Russell Hunter (who lends his name to Scott’s character), alleged that these kinds of things happened to him while living in the Henry Treat Rogers mansion (in Denver).  A local, Katie Rudolph, has done some fact-checking that casts doubt on the story.  Hunter claims to have found human remains (as in the film) and this would seem to be something that could be checked out as well.  In all, there’s not a ton online about the story and its supposed authenticity.  The house was torn down some time ago.  It would seem that any author (Hunter co-wrote the movie) would see the benefits of claiming actual events.  Even if the film doesn’t play that card.  Was there a murder in the mansion?  From what I’ve been able to find, there are about as many unanswered questions as there are in the movie itself.  Although next time I’m in Denver, that’s not to say I won’t be tempted.

They Come in Batches

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There’s horror and there’s comedy horror.  And then there’s just plain silly.  Gremlins 2: The New Batch falls into that last category but with the strange factor that it’s silly without being funny.  There are a few smirk moments, and sometimes the self-parody approaches clever, nevertheless it’s bad.  It’s a big budget bad movie.  The idea that the gremlins try to take over New York City is funny, at first, but other than Phoebe Cates and Christopher Lee, they don’t seem to know this is a satire of Gremlins.  I guess not knowing about the plot—I tend not to read reviews about movies before I see them—I was expecting something more like the first one, which I thought was pretty good.  The only reason I knew the movie existed at all was that the Blu-Ray version of Gremlins comes with The New Batch.  The late eighties and early nineties I was spending holed up in Edinburgh working on a Ph.D.  We didn’t have much money and didn’t see many movies.  We had no television (there is, or was, a television tax in the UK), so I never heard of the sequel.  

I presume we all know the three rules of mogwai, and needless to say, they immediately get broken.  The eponymous new batch takes over the Manhattan tower of Daniel Clamp.  His high-tech building needs no gremlins because the technology already doesn’t work well.  The high rise houses, among other things, a genetics lab where Christopher Lee camps it up, but which means the gremlins have access to formulas that allow them to grow wings, tolerate sunlight, and become spiders.  Sound silly?  You betcha.  One of the gremlins is even able to talk.  I watched with increasing stupefaction. 

Bad movies and cult followings are the peanut butter and jelly of cinematography.  Some bad movies never attain cultdom, but I can see why this one has.  The big budget ensured glitz and special effects.  Even the self-awareness to have Hulk Hogan being able to control the gremlins in the theater with a threat almost gives the movie an art film feel.  The horror, mostly based on the fact that there are monsters, is tightly constrained.  Although I felt increasingly like I was wasting my time as the movie went on, upon reflection I can see why some people have glommed onto it.  It may just have edged over into the so bad it’s good category.  I’ll need to think about it.  And avoid eating after midnight.

As We Know It

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The end of the world, as we know it, is really more recent than we think.  Yes, Christians of a certain stripe have been looking for the second coming since the first leaving, but that detailed map of how we’re living in the end times, courtesy Hal Lindsey, is a new thing.  Here are the fast facts.

First and second centuries, Common Era: early Christians tended to think Jesus would “be right back.”  When that didn’t happen they began to look in the Bible for reasons why and started to develop theologies to cover the bases.

Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages: settled in for the long haul, theologians developed eschatology.  Although that sounds like a disease, it’s actually a system for thinking about how the end of the world will come down.  There were conflicting theories.  The two main flavors were premillennialism and amillennialism.

Early Modernism: Protestants came along and searched the Bible for minute clues to make into a system.  In response, postmillennialism became a thing.  Now there were three options.  Various phases were discussed: tribulation, resurrection of the dead, and the already-met millennium.

1820s: William Miller, a Baptist minister, began number-crunching and figured the end of the world would take place by 1843.  His followers, “the Millerites,” continued on after what was called “the Great Disappointment.” 

1830s: John Nelson Darby, a Plymouth Brethren leader, came up with Dispensationalism, a scheme that divides history into eras, or “dispensations.”  He thought we were living near the end of that scheme about 200 years ago.  The idea of “the rapture” was added to the other phases.

1917: Cyrus I. Scofield, published the Scofield Reference Bible.  A man with little formal education (and a “colorful” background), he applied Darby’s dispensations in his Bible, giving the United States a road map to the end times.

1970: Hal Lindsey, a seminary educated evangelical, published The Late, Great Planet Earth.  It became the best selling book (classified as nonfiction) for the entire decade.  New ideas, such as “the Rapture” and “the Antichrist” began to be read back into the Bible.  The book was made into a movie.

1976: David Seltzer, a Jewish screenwriter, penned The Omen.  The movie made use of Lindsey’s adaptation of Scofield’s adaptation of Darby’s ideas.  The wider public, seeing it on the big screen, believed it was about to happen.

2000: the world still didn’t end, either with a second coming or Y2K, as many predicted.  Round numbers will do that to people.  It didn’t stop predictions of the end of the world.

2012: the Mayan calendar gave out.  A movie was made.  People believed. Apocalypse averted.

2024: you fill in the blanks.

Image credit: Albrecht Dürer