Found Unfound

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I think I need to swear off found footage films.  My first horror attempt this October failed with Hell House LLC.  I was watching at the behest of a friend.  Hopefully one who isn’t aware of my very low dizziness quotient.  Extreme camera motion!  I was determined to try to make my way through because the Bible was introduced early on, earning it a place in Holy Sequel, but I could only make it half-way through by watching about half of that first half out of the corners of my eyes.  Even that wasn’t enough to help.  I understand they’re going for “authenticity.”  I know that walking with a camera makes it difficult to keep still, but hey, Steadicam was invented for a reason.  But instead of enjoying my weekend, I’m lying absolutely still in a darkened room.

I’m guessing demons are involved, from what I’d been able to see.  Demons that move a clown dummy around.  From the Wikipedia summary it sounds like I’m not far wrong.  So let’s step back a bit: Paul, with his girlfriend Sara and a staff of three, are setting up a haunted house attraction for Halloween at Hotel Abaddon.   The property is a fixer-upper, but sufficiently creepy that they don’t need to do a ton of work on making it unsettling.  Since it’s a hotel, they stay on site while getting it ready.  They hire scare actors and things are progressing, but the cameraman (especially) is getting freaked out, mainly at night.  That’s as far as I got.

The framing story is that a mysterious accident occurred on opening night leaving 15 people dead.  The “found footage” explains what happened.  They do make reference to Abaddon as a demon who guards Hell.  The Good Book actually uses the term as a reference to Hell itself also.  One of the scare actors informs Paul that the hotel really had the reputation for being haunted before they started setting it up as a haunted house.  Of course, the movie spawned a franchise.  Perhaps my condition is getting more acute as I age—I watched Blair Witch without any trouble—but as I write this a few hours later I still have to be careful about moving my head too much.  I can scratch it, though.  And I wonder as I do so if a little less camera motion would’ve ruined the effect they were going for.  To me the most frightening aspect is being nauseous for the remainder of the day, especially when weekends are precious free time.

On October

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October has come quickly this year.  September was quite transitional.  Mostly pleasant, but we shivered through the recent sunless days of the nor-easter around here.  Between work and full weekends, I wish the approach of my favorite month could feel more regal.  I know die-hard horror fans watch movies in that genre every night of this month.  My schedule won’t allow it, and I’ve been so busy that I’ve fallen behind on movie watching.  Most of the time the movies I discuss on this blog are ones I’ve seen the previous month or two.  It seems I have lots of other things to write about.  And I’ve been trying to step up my reading this year.  Goodreads tells me I’ve finished sixty books so far in 2026.  And so October snuck up on me.

For scholars of religion, and those of us who pretend to be such, October starts in earnest the planning for the American Academy of Religion and Society of Biblical Literature annual meeting.  It will be in Denver this year.  Last time it was there I shivered the whole time.  A colleague recently asked me to contribute to a volume on Ugarit.  I had to decline, being so out of date.  I could’ve said, “My mind is preoccupied with October.”  Horror movies and Halloween.  The changing of the leaves.  Jacket weather and reading gothic novels.  Pumpkins and apples. October is the month when many in this climate feel that they come alive, just in time for the darkness and cold of winter to settle in.

For many years I’ve been pondering the spirituality of the dark.  I don’t mean “dark powers” or Satanism or anything like that.  I mean the restorative, contemplative nature of being in the dark half of the year.  Since the equinox it’s been more dark than light.  We spend half of each year in this way.  Instead of cursing the dark, it seems to make sense to try to find its spiritual benefits.  In the Middle Ages monks used to awake in the night to say their prayers.  Even today spiritual writers occasionally venture into the realm of asking what we might learn to appreciate in the dark.  October’s a good time to think about such things.  Others have also begun to explore the spirituality of horror films.  This began to occur to me, in rudimentary ways, when I was a student in seminary.  So suddenly October is here.  Hopefully it will have some time tucked away for reflection.  Between watching horror movies, of course.

B’s and Q’s

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A friend who read my review of The Stuff recommended Q: The Winged Serpent.  The former was the first Larry Cohen movie I’d seen, one that I stumbled upon while looking for something free to watch.  I was favorably impressed—it was a comedy horror that worked.  Q was earlier and was more of a low-budget horror, but with elements of satire in it.  As well as social commentary.  If you can handle stop-motion animation, and you want to see the inside of the Chrysler Building dome, you might enjoy this monster flick.  And there was a good deal of theology in it.  It’s certainly worth talking about in the context of horror and religion.  One warning in advance: if you’re like me, all the camera motion—many aerial shots of Midtown Manhattan, it might make you a little woozy.  It did me.

The movie follows a petty criminal who discovers the lair of Quetzalcoatl inside the Chrysler Building.  Meanwhile, a priest of Quetzalcoatl is sacrificing willing victims in Manhattan to bring the deity back.  A cop who’s willing to believe (Detective Shepard) researches beliefs in the Aztec god and tries to connect the sacrificial murders with people who are disappearing—often from Manhattan rooftops.  The question arises: is this a god or just a monster?  That’s a freighted question these days.  This idea is that if it can be killed it’s just a monster.  If not…

The story has its shortcomings and the direction isn’t great, but overall it’s not bad.  A creature-feature with some thought.  As Shepard chases down experts he starts to understand that even if this is just a monster, there are devotees of Quetzalcoatl in Manhattan killing (willing) victims.  At one point Shepard says, upon seeing a victim with his heart cut out, “All we have to do is eat the bread and drink the wine,” or something similar.  This is fairly sophisticated coming from a B movie.  Religion is also behind some of the humor as well.  When the Aztec priest comes after the petty criminal he can’t kill his victim unless he says a prayer.  The criminal refuses, and in doing so saves his life.  Interesting thought.

While having the trappings and feel of a B movie, Q gives the viewer of religion and horror movies something to think about.  The movie doesn’t reference the Bible or quote it, so it can’t make Holy Sequel, but it’s worth a lazy weekend afternoon to give you something to think about.

Not Really

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Some horror films just have trouble finding their way.  Blessed is one such movie.  The writing is one problem.  The misunderstanding of religion is an even larger issue.  Samantha and her novelist husband Craig can’t have children.  When he gets a large advance for his first book (dream on) they visit a fertility clinic in upstate New York where Samantha becomes pregnant with twins.  The lake scenery in a light winter (actually in Romania) is the best part of the film.  It’s quite evocative.  The clinic, in any case, shares facilities with a cloning company.  And Craig gets introduced to a tycoon who works in multiple industries, including publishing and, hmm, cloning.  As Samantha grows visibly more pregnant Craig becomes more focused on his writing, neglecting her and visiting the tycoon in the city whenever he can.  It’s implied that they have an understanding, but that doesn’t hold with the ending.

An Italian priest starts to warn Samantha about the evil at the clinic.  Not only that, but the tycoon tells her about his fascination with saints, including Ambrose who killed an angel—Lucifer—whose blood was sealed in a vial recently stolen from the monastery in which it was kept, as per the Italian priest.  That blood made its way to the cloning clinic and so, yes, Rosemary, Samantha’s carrying twin children of the devil.  The priest kidnaps Samantha and prays with her, insisting that she take poison to banish the evil.  He then tries to burn her to death and he also drives into the clinic and sets it on fire.  Samantha survives the fire and her twin girls kill another child at a Halloween party a few years later in Manhattan.

This is one of those movies that tried to improve on Rosemary’s Baby and although some of it is eerie, it’s not really scary and many elements are simply dropped or stuck in for no apparent reason.  The novelty was twin Antichrists who were both girls.  They, like Adrian, appear only late in the movie and the visual cues for what is happening are off.  It’s an interesting attempt to bring science and religion together in horror, but it has trouble understanding the religion it represents.  Quite often in horror, and perhaps other genres, a veneer of religion is used without any kind of research into what any tradition actually believes and/or does.  The, presumably, Catholicism here is strange.  There maybe a scene with the Bible, so I’ll add it to Holy Sequel, in the maybe category.

Child Snatcher

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Folk horror, like folklore, is a commonplace of the human condition.  We are afraid and some of our fears are deeply rooted.  Some go back to traditional monsters.  The Moogai is an Australian folk horror film.  It’s based on the fact that from the turn of the twentieth century until the seventies indigenous children were taken from their parents to integrate them into white society.  The moogai is a character like the boogeyman that comes to steal children.  Set in present-day Australia with an adult child of one of these stolen children, the movie concentrates on a parent’s fear of losing her own children.  It also sets up modern medicine against folk wisdom.  Sarah is embarrassed by her birth mother Ruth.  She doesn’t like the ideas she puts into her own daughter’s head about the moogai.  At the same time, Sarah’s unable to sleep and has been seeing things not easily explained after the birth of her second child.

This leads to her husband and others questioning whether she’s experiencing from postpartum psychosis or whether something real is happening.  Then her husband sees the moogai while Sarah’s restrained in a psych ward.  When her husband is arrested for breaking her out of the hospital, Sarah realizes that she has to get to her birth mother to destroy the moogai since no “rational” people will believe her.  Using traditional methods, Ruth and Sarah confront the moogai and rescue her children.  In the process, Ruth dies.  Belief comes at a price.

As a horror film this was recommended by the New York Times.  The moogai is shown perhaps a little too clearly to be scary, but his two faces are creepy.  The really valuable part of all this, however, is the folk tradition.  And the “social programming” that stands behind the horror.  The white men stealing children are the real moogai.  It’s a movie with a conscience.  Similar assimilation efforts were made with indigenous peoples of the Americas.  There’s a horror is being told, “Assimilate or die.”  Capitalism, of course, can allow no other systems to survive.  How can you get rich if everyone doesn’t agree to play along?  Movies like The Moogai ask that trenchant question: what if native peoples know something that the power-hunger interlopers do not?  What if there really are monsters out there?  Of course, in the movie the moogai is symbolically white, just as are the government men at the beginning who come to snatch the children from an indigenous settlement.  Heavy lifting by folk horror.

Waking Up

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Moody, gothic, and intriguing.  These are words that might describe The Awakening.  It’s also an ambiguous, somewhat confusing ghost story.  To discuss this some spoilers will be necessary, so please be advised.  When you’re on the lookout for a movie to watch on an afternoon when staying awake is a struggle (which, in all honesty, is just about every afternoon), on a weekend I’ll open my long list of movies to see and compare it against what’s streaming for free on the couple of services I pay for.  Seldom do the list and offerings coincide at all.  In any case, when I find something off-list that looks intriguing I usually check IMDb to see how many stars it’s earned.  On some streaming services four out of five stars will translate to three out of ten on IMDb.  The Awakening had 6.5, which is pretty good.

So, set just after the First World War, Florence Cathcart is a seance buster who doesn’t believe in ghosts and who’s written a book debunking the whole thing.  She’s then invited to a boarding school where a ghost has been frightening the boys, one of them to death.  Her own past is deeply repressed, however.  So deeply that she has a screen memory of an event that never happened to mask it.  After setting up all her equipment she does find evidence of the inexplicable.  Robert Mallory, a teacher and wounded veteran, believes in ghosts.  He says that those who went through the war see them.  He and Florence fall in love—her fiancé was killed in the war—and during the school holiday, she’s left alone with him, Maud the housekeeper, and one student.  Here come the spoilers…

The one boy left behind is the ghost of her step-brother.  Florence grew up in that house and Maud was the housekeeper, and mother of the boy.  Her unhinged father killed Florence’s mother and was trying to shoot her as well but accidentally shot his son by the housemaid.  He then killed himself.  Florence has to remember her past to realize she’s been seeing ghosts she doesn’t believe in.  It’s an eerie film but the plot is bit confusing.  It brings religion into the story, and even the Bible.  The tale of Holofernes’ beheading from Judith is represented in a painting.  Her debunking book is kept next to the Bible.  By the end we’re asking ourselves if Florence is a ghost.  This is a good, spooky film.  A bit ambitious, but it gets more stars than the usual freebie on a sleepy afternoon.

Monster Frankenstein

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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.

Period Exorcist

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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

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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

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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.

Not Full

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Disclosure Day may not be Steven Spielberg’s best movie, but it is a good one.  Part of his space trilogy after Close Encounters and E.T., it too comes back the the theme of aliens and posits what it might be like if those holding the secrets ever release them.  Although not a horror film, it makes use of the Bible—not surprisingly since real-life discussions about disclosure often ask about its effects on religion.  In the movie, the Wardex Corporation, part of the military-industrial complex, is the keeper of the secrets.  They reverse-engineer alien technology, and get to keep what’s found from recovered UAP wrecks.  More powerful than the police, they stop and kill without compunction.  They control the highest level of secrets that the government has—even those beyond the president.  (Spielberg clearly did his homework here, even working in the bit about Jackie Gleason making the claim to have seen alien bodies.)

A couple of Wardex employees, Hugo and Daniel, smuggle out the video proof of the nearly eight-decade cover-up and they plan to release everything to the media.  A weather reporter, Margaret, sudden becomes psychic and receives an alien message while on air.  Wardex has kidnapped and roughed up Daniel’s girlfriend, former novice nun Jane, to force him to return the stolen data.  (Religion plays a big role here.)  Noah, the head of Wardex, uses advanced technology to track Daniel, Jane, and Margaret, as they are trying to meet up.  When Margaret and Daniel finally do connect, Hugo reveals that they’re both “experiencers”—they’d been abducted as children and had been given extraordinary gifts.  Margaret’s abilities are such that she can break into and walk out of a secure military base with Daniel in tow.  As they prepare to show the evidence at Margaret’s Kansas City news station, Wardex shuts them down but Jane delivers a device that allows the broadcast to take place.  The world, which is on the brink of Armageddon—World War Three—stops to listen and begins to realize that we need to work together to save the human race.  

The plot is a bit complex to summarize fully, but this gives the general picture.  Disclosure Day is a hopeful movie.  The theme has been addressed by proponents of real life disclosure before: sharing this kind of information might well save us.  And the religious community, represented by Jane’s former monastery, is perfectly okay with this development.  There’s a lot to say about such a film, and I try to constrain my word counts here.  It’s the kind of movie that grows better with reflection—the writing is a bit trite in places—and the alien tech is a bit hard to believe.  Of course, we don’t know what off-world tech can really do.  But at the end of the day, religion plays a major role in the truth being revealed.  Worth thinking about.

Stuffed

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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

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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.

Holy Sequel

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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.

Not Hill House

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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.