Don’t Stop Moving

Leave a comment

Stopmotion is a strangely affecting horror movie.  Body horror as well as Euro-horror, it follows the dream-like world of Ella, a stop motion animator.  She learned the trade from her mother who, suffering from arthritis, has Ella do the work for her.  After her mother has a stroke, Ella continues working on her final film but in a new location.  Tom, her boyfriend, gets her an apartment in a run-down building where Ella meets a precocious and odd little girl who tells her she should film a different movie and proceeds to tell Ella how it should go.  To her chagrin, Ella has to admit that the little girl’s story is better than her mother’s.  With the girl’s help, Ella animates a monster, the Ash Man, who is pursuing a girl lost in the woods.  Then Ella starts receiving visits from the Ash Man, or at least she believes so.  She ends up in the hospital. Spoilers follow.

Tom, who visits her there, is worried that Ella has let this go too far.  He threatens to delete the film while she’s immobile in the hospital.  Ella’s mother dies and with the little girl’s help, Ella gets back to her apartment to finish the film.  When Tom, and his plagiarizing sister, come to return Ella to the hospital, she kills them both.  She then, with the girl’s help, finishes the film.  The film results in her own death, or at least that’s the way she sees it.  The film features quite a lot of stop motion animation although the movie itself is live action.  It’s a very artful, if gross, film.  The little girl is never seen by anyone else, nor explained, suggesting that she’s a younger Ella following her own creativity.  And paying the price for it.

I can’t claim to understand everything that happens in this movie.  That doesn’t make it bad, but worth pondering.  Those of us who live creative lives experience dry patches, and often, self-doubt.  I know that when I compare my writing to that of others, I suffer in the very comparison.  When Stopmotion first ended, I felt both confused and intrigued.  Euro-horror of recent years, to generalize, emphasizes the art of the craft.  There was a lot of symbolism in this movie, some of which I couldn’t connect to the action.  I suspect repeated viewing might bring some of this to light.  My family has often told me that with my focus and interests, I would’ve been a good stop motion animator.  I certainly have the creating monsters part down pat.  It’s just a matter of deciding which narrative to follow.

Not Frightening

Leave a comment

Years ago a friend, which I define as someone who wishes me no specific bodily harm, suggested I watch The Frighteners.  It finally came to a free streaming service (with commercials), so I gave it a go.  I really enjoyed parts of it, but on the whole, there was too much going on to make it an effective film.  It’s a horror comedy, and once films like that stretch beyond 90 minutes they tend to need a lot of magic juice to keep the engine running.  So, here’s the basic idea: Frank can see ghosts.  With the help of a couple of ghosts he makes a living driving spirits from peoples homes, after setting them up.  Unfortunately there’s a serial killer ghost actually killing people.  Since Frank tends to be the last one the victims see, there is some suspicion that he’s involved in their deaths.  

A young widow, Lucy, is a doctor and is trying to help a woman (Patricia) who seems to be abused by her mother.  It turns out that Patricia is associated with a serial killer from many years ago, and it’s unclear whether or not she’s innocent.  Meanwhile, a neurotic FBI agent comes to town and decides Frank is guilty and tries to kill him without due process.  Meanwhile, more and more people are dying.  It’s probably a spoiler to say that the serial killing ghost is the same as the serial killer that Patricia was in love with and she’s still helping him to get to a record number of deaths.  Frank ends up dying twice but is brought back to life at the end, after Patricia and the serial killer are taken to Hell.

The movie is stylish and a bit of fun, but if you’re watching it on a streaming service with commercials it ends up being over two hours long.  Some parts are funny, but not hilarious.  Some parts are spooky, but not really scary.  The plot is complex and takes its time unfolding.  The serial killers attempting to break a record is disturbing and not exactly in good taste.  The acting is good but the viewer’s left feeling a bit confused as to what the message is and how they ought to feel.  It’s the kind of movie that I might find myself in the mood to watch again, someways down the road, but in the short term, I’m glad to have seen it once.  I’m not sure my friend and I share taste when it comes to movies, but at least he’s not wishing me any harm.

Mirroring Reality

Leave a comment

I watched Oculus for two reasons: it kept coming up as a “freebie” on a service I use, and I’d been thinking about haunted mirrors.  Well, three reasons—I also liked the sound of the title.  (Not all decisions are a matter of science.). I was pleasantly surprised that it turned out to be pretty good.  I’ll probably throw in a spoiler or two, so if it’s on your list, you’ve been warned.  Kaylie and her brother Tim were attacked by their parents, but Tim was being framed by the mirror.  Both parents attempt to kill the children, but end up dead instead.  Tim is sent to an institution since he pulled the trigger, and Kaylie has spent eleven years researching the mirror.  When her brother is released she convinces him that they have to keep their promise to destroy the mirror.

The problem is, the mirror messes with perceptions of reality.  The two go back to their childhood home where Kaylie has set up a device to drop an anchor onto mirror.  This is set to happen with a wind-up timer since the mirror can control electronics.  She’s also set up the room so that everything is being recorded.  If she can prove the mirror is what she believes it to be, her father will be exonerated and her brother proven innocent.  The movie gets a little tricky to follow since their current story is intercut with flashbacks as to what happened when they were children.  Also, the mirror records events on the cameras that didn’t really happen.  Add to this the fact that Tim has undergone therapy for eleven years and he’s convinced that his sister is delusional.  It’s one of those movies that messes with your perception of reality.

When Tim doesn’t see his sister in front of the device meant to destroy the mirror, he accidentally kills her.  The police arrive, believing he has repeated his murderous attack from eleven years before.  The ending is rather nihilistic, but the scares are effective.  There are a few gross-out scenes and some jump startles, but overall it is the story that conveys the fear.  For me, the mental issues were almost triggers.  But then again, I watched it on a day when I was a bit fuzzy-headed because of waking up too soon.  I really didn’t know what to expect when I hit “play.”  I’ve done that enough times and ended up with films that were wastes of time, so I was glad to have found a competent one this time.  These are my reflections, in any case.

Hungry Madness

Leave a comment

It’s been on my wishlist of movies to watch for a few years, In the Mouth of Madness.  A tribute to Lovecraftian horror, as well as a probing of insanity, it is a heady mix.  In keeping with my usual rules for movie watching, I hadn’t pre-read anything about it that would give away the plot.  Coming to it fresh, a number of things stood out.  There were some very good scenes and parts of the movie made me want to like it a lot.  It is a great movie for religion and horror analysis, and in that regard it’s much better than Prince of Darkness (despite Alice Cooper).  In fact, had I been able to see it years ago, it would’ve been included in Holy Horror.  That itself is noteworthy since two of John Carpenter’s other movies were in it: The Fog and the aforementioned Prince.  I suppose I should provide a little summary (if possible) in case you haven’t seen.

Trent is an insurance investigator, and a hardened skeptic.  A horror writer who outsells Stephen King, Sutter Cane, has gone missing and Trent’s sent to investigate.  He discovers that Cane is in a town that doesn’t exist (Hobb’s End) and that his books are not fiction.  In fact, Trent is a character in one of his novels.  When people read his latest book, In the Mouth of Madness (a title adapted from Lovecraft), they go insane and begin killing others.  The plot gets a bit busy because people are starting to transform into slimy, Lovecraftian monsters and this reality, if the book is read, or movie watched, will spread to all of humanity, leading to our extinction.  A bit too ambitious, the plot can’t hold all this weight, but it really isn’t bad.  There’s just too much going on.

The religion elements come in because Cane has holed himself up in an unholy church.  He refers to his latest novel as the “new Bible.”  “More people,” he says, “believe in my work than believe in the Bible.”  He later refers to himself as God.  I haven’t seen all of Carpenter’s films, but there seems to be a trajectory of his earliest major films being his best.  Halloween and The Thing are classics.  The Fog isn’t bad.  When he brings religion into his stories, as in The Fog, things begin to cloud over a bit.  Prince of Darkness doesn’t deliver a believable Devil.  In the Mouth of Madness doesn’t quite hang together well enough.  It’s not a bad movie, though.  It has given me some ideas for another book, if I can stay sane long enough to write it.

Fly by Night

Leave a comment

Nightwing is a movie I learned about by reading Stephen King’s Danse Macabre.  The idea has merit but falls below the expected level of any horror film of the era—and I’m a fan of seventies horror.  Those in the know suggest that this was supposed to be Jaws with vampire bats in the era when horror movies started to re-realize the dangerous potential of nature itself.  A basic problem underlies the dull pacing, non-indigenous actors playing Indians, and fatally overstuffed plot: vampire bats aren’t dangerous.  Bats are highly advantageous to the ecosystems in which they thrive and the idea that six or seven bites could drain a person of blood is ridiculous on the surface and looks rather silly in execution.  At least the later movie Bats (also bad) had genetically mutated mammals.  Eco-horror can be effective.  Natural bats are difficult villains, though.  

So, on Hopi lands an elderly priest summons the end of the world.  Releasing a god, the bats form the precursor to a native apocalypse.  Two tribes with differing views of white drilling rights on their lands argue over this while killer vampire bats attack.  They kill a group of Quaker missionaries.  Luckily, a British vampire bat killer is after the swarm.  He travels around killing bats, which, he says, are pure evil.  The deputy of the “good” tribe, which resists white incursion, eventually teams up with the bat killer because he saved his girlfriend who was going to leave him for medical school.  For some reason, two kinds of plague (including bubonic) are released but when the tribal priests all die during a rain dance it’s because of natural causes.  The leaders of the two tribes keep trying to catch each other out.

As the movie plods along, making the viewer root for the bats, the several dropped plot lines are left dangling like so many participles at the end.  The plagues?  Red herrings.  The tribal conflict?  Unresolved.  The special poison brought in to kill the bats?  Unused.  Total number of people killed to justify a wholesale bat massacre?  Nine.  Anytime I’m viewing a horror movie and I find myself repeatedly glancing at my watch, I know that something’s off.  It’s October and bats are a typical aspect of Halloween decor.  Nightwing, however, just doesn’t make them scary.  The movie was based on a novel which I’m now strangely tempted to read.  By all accounts, even though the author was partially credited with the screenplay, the book, as usual, is better.

Reptile Puppet

2 Comments

I read about Reptilicus, but I can’t remember where.  A monster movie shot simultaneously in English and Danish in 1960, with two different directors, it was universally panned.  Some times you just have to see a bad movie.  This one qualifies.  I actually laughed out loud a time or two.  The idea behind the story holds promise: some animals can regenerate lost limbs, or even entire bodies from a severed piece.  What if a giant reptile could do the same?  The film’s problem is in the execution.  So, a team drilling for copper above the arctic circle—they’re sweating and working with their sleeves rolled up in a temperate forest—hits a frozen animal in the permafrost under the tundra.  Taken to an aquarium in Copenhagen, the animal’s tail is kept frozen until someone leaves the door open overnight.  When it thaws it begins to regenerate.

Once fully formed—and nobody could see this coming—it breaks out and terrorizes Denmark.  There are some scenes thrown in to show off Copenhagen, and the film makes liberal use of stock footage from military exercises.  The dialogue, poorly written, is delivered with wooden earnestness by actors who struggle to be convincing in their roles.  The monster, Reptilicus, is so obviously a puppet that it could scare no-one.  But it’s a monster movie!  Those of us who grew up on such fare sometimes feel a need to go back to the well.  To appreciate a bad movie, I always approach it with a certain hopefulness.  Here I am, over six decades later, watching the film.  If that can happen, perhaps someone will see that publishing my novels isn’t the worst you could do?  It makes for a crooked kind of logic.  

The main thing Reptilicus has going for it is its near indestructibility and its ability to regenerate.  How is it finally destroyed?  We’re not shown.  In one scene the general asks the head scientist, something like, “If we can knock it out, you can kill it?”  Receiving an affirmative answer, they drug the monster and send the scientist off to do his work (after he’s suffered a heart attack).  I’ve read novels where it seems pretty clear that the author was unsure how the resolution actually goes—I’ve painted myself into that corner a time or two, so I know how it feels.  If you’ve got a budget and backers, however, you have to deliver something.  The movie performed reasonably well at the box office, which shows just how indestructible some monsters can be.

In the Water

Leave a comment

On a list of hard-to-watch horror, I found the South Korean offering The Isle.  I was feeling particularly brave that day, I guess.  I was unfamiliar with Kim Ki-duk’s work, and looking for something that wouldn’t cost me any money to watch.  I found out this was one of those vomit or faint body horrors, but it is otherwise filmed so beautifully and gently that the contrast is downright shocking.  It all takes place at a low budget fishing platform rental business where the proprietor is a mute woman.  She ferries customers to their platforms, delivers food, and female companions, and occasionally takes revenge when customers treat her badly.  One day a fugitive arrives.  She doesn’t immediately know that he’s on the run, but she’s intrigued by him.  She prevents a suicide attempt and the two begin to bond.

Wanting to make sure her customer is satisfied, she starts bringing him a prostitute, but she gets jealous when they start to bond.  When the police come to find potential fugitives, he again tries to kill himself in a particularly gruesome way.  (Probably one on the vomit scenes.)  The proprietor again saves him and hides him from the police.  Apparently drawn to that type, she gets close to him and sees the prostitute as a threat.  She kidnaps the woman and when the prostitute falls in the water, hands and feet tied, she drowns.  The proprietor sinks her body and when the pimp comes looking for her, she drowns him.  The fugitive now realizes that they both have murder in common, but he feels trapped and escapes with her boat until she uses a reverse method of his suicide (another vomit scene) and he rescues her.  The police discover the bodies of their victims and the two take the platform house to a hidden location.  Apparently Kim Ki-duk likes enigmatic endings because the final scene is the proprietor drowned in a partially sunken boat.

I’m not quite sure what to make of this one.  I would agree with the hard-to-watch assessment.  Not only are there gruesome, self-destructive acts, I’m pretty sure that some animals were harmed in the making of the film—particularly fish.  I’m not often in the mood for body horror, but sometimes when I’m trying to save money, I’ll settle.  I very much doubt I’ll ever watch The Isle again.  K-horror is sometimes compelling, though.  This one manages to be emotional, and of art-house quality, but the only monsters are humans and they seem more to be misunderstood than anything else.  And I didn’t vomit or faint.

Preying

Leave a comment

Several aspects of Let Us Prey don’t make a whole lot of sense.  The police in this small Scottish town are all corrupt, at best.  And when push comes to shove, they choose to murder one another.  For some reason the sergeant wraps himself in barbed wire as he tries to bring the wrath of God onto his subordinate officers.  The night starts out with four prisoners being locked up and only one survives.  He’s shown emerging from the sea, with ravens, at the start of the movie and he’s never really explained.  He’s there to collect the souls of sinners and he seems to be able to control other people.  The whole thing turns into a bloodbath before it’s over.  In other words, it lacks the subtlety of much Euro-horror that I’ve watched.  One thing it does have, though, is plenty of use of the Bible.

I suppose with a title like Let Us Prey such a development shouldn’t be unexpected.  Rachel is a new constable in the police station.  The story begins with the stranger, Six—the number of his jail cell—nearly being hit by a car.  Or having been hit.  The teenage driver is arrested and finds a pedophile teacher already in the lock-up.  Two other police officers, after having sex in their patrol car, find the stranger and bring him in.  The local doctor examines him but when the doctor attacks him, he’s arrested as well.  Finally, Six is locked in.  It’s discovered that the doctor had murdered his family earlier in the evening, and the reckless driver had earlier hit and killed a classmate while out driving.  The pedophile kills himself and the two other police officers murder the doctor.  Then the sergeant, who’s a serial killer, comes back to kill everyone left alive.  Six and Rachel survive and Six reveals that he’s collecting wicked souls and invites Rachel to join him.

The Bible quotations (some not accurate) all come in the context of retribution.  The sinners are to be punished.  Rachel, however, escaped a childhood abduction and seems to bear no burden of sin.  The other police—who had all decided Rachel should die—end up dead themselves.  A gritty, supernatural police story, this film suggests a larger backstory without providing a lot for viewers to go on.  The openly Christian sergeant wears a cross, drinks when he drives, and kills his homosexual lovers.  Is there perhaps a message that the movie’s trying to convey?

Dark History

Leave a comment

I wouldn’t have watched The History Boys had my current interest in dark academia not emerged.  A comedy-drama based on a play by Alan Bennett, it’s set in a British boys’ school where the seniors who’ve made record-breaking A-levels, are set to try to get into Oxford and Cambridge.  The movie revolves around two teachers, “Hector,” who is unorthodox but full of humanistic spirit and Irwin, who urges the boys to stand out in originality, even if it means bending the truth, or outright lying.  The darkness, although played lightly, is that Hector gropes the boys.  This has led to some criticism of the film since Hector is presented in a positive light.  Bennett, who also wrote the screenplay, pointed out that the “boys” are actually consenting age, and know that Hector does nothing more than fondle them when fully clothed.  This hasn’t protected the film from the furor of those who find the idea offensive.

Beside the divergent approaches of Hector and Irwin’s completely opposite angles, although understated, remains the middle voice of Mrs. Lintott, the history teacher.  She does make the point as the boys prep for their entrance exams, that women have been silenced in history and they should never forget this.  The Cutler’s Grammar School boys all win entry to Oxford, and the movie ends by each of them saying what has become of them.  There’s really too much going on in the movie to chase down every plot line.  For example, the very religious physical education instructor’s story.  He’s brought up short while using Jesus to urge the boys on when one of his students is Jewish and another Muslim.  Of course, school life is all-encompassing, and vignettes are the most that movies might offer.

The History Boys is a film that would bear rewatching for the words alone.  Since the movie is based on a play and the playwright wrote the script, it is naturally very well written.  The dialogue contains many potentially quotable bits.  Dark academia tends to be that way.  At least some of it is.  Often set in educational locations, it recalls how we came to understand our world.  It really is a fraught journey.  Here the coda showing what happened to the boys is a reminder that our fates choose us rather than the other way around.  And that’s what dark academia explores—we may set out to do one thing, becoming an expert, only to find ourselves scratching out a living doing something else.  I know I’d see this again, to continue my own education.

More Curtis

Leave a comment

Dan Curtis was the mind behind Dark Shadows, an important part of my childhood.  Reading about his work in film and television, I learned that he produced a lot more than Barnabas Collins, and was an influence in horror in his own right.  A friend recommended that I find The Norliss Tapes, which I did.  This made for television movie was cut from the same cloth as The Night Stalker, which Curtis also produced.  The ending of the movie makes clear that The Norliss Tapes was a pilot for an intended series that never materialized and is a good representation of religion and horror, which is likely why it was recommended to me.  Here’s the story.   David Norliss was given a large advance by a publisher to write a book debunking the supernatural.  Before he can, he goes missing, leaving behind a set of tapes explaining what happened.  The first tape is the pilot episode.

Norliss is contacted by Ellen Sterns Cort, a widow who claims to have had a supernatural episode.  Upon following her dog to her late husband’s studio one night, she encounters her undead husband.  She shoots him, but the police can find no evidence of any body.  It’s revealed that he purchased an occult scarab ring that permits him to return to life to raise a demon who will, in turn, bring him back to real life.  To get the raw materials he needs (such as blood) he has to kill a few people and this again alerts the authorities but they insist on covering it all up.  Removing the ring from his finger will stop him, but that’s easier said than done.  At the end the demon is stopped but this is just the end of the first tape.  His publisher starts to play the second tape.

Dan Curtis productions have a certain feel to them.  I’m not sure how directors and producers do that—I’m not sure of all the tools they have in their box.  What is obvious is that watching The Norliss Tapes brings back echoes of Dark Shadows.  That’s not surprising since Dark Shadows wound down just two years before the Norliss Tapes came out.  The Night Stalker was sandwiched between them, but Kolchak: The Night Stalker was not a Curtis production and doesn’t have a Curtis feel to it.  Even though I’d never seen Norliss before, it was nostalgic watching the movie for the first time.  There’s a trick to it, I just don’t know what it is.

That’s Odd

Leave a comment

Some vaccines just wipe me out.  The shingles vaccine did it, and so did the pneumonia one.  It was bad enough that I had to take the next day off work.  One benefit of such things is being able to watch movies during the day, when you can stay awake.  The downside, as always, is affording them.  A bit fuzzy-headed, I selected one not on my list (which seems only to consist of expensive movies—I wonder why?) and found a very good one streaming on a subscription service I use.  From Ireland, Oddity is Euro-horror.  And it is distinctly creepy and, perhaps because of my state, made me literally jump once or twice.  (My usual, critical headspace scans for jump-startles on a regular basis, but this one caught me.)  A doctor in an asylum for the criminally insane is on the phone with his wife.  She’s alone at their secluded country house when one of his patients shows up and tells her someone crept into the house while she was at the car.  You don’t know whether to believe him or if someone is locked in with her.  She doesn’t survive the night.

Her identical twin sister, who is blind, runs an antique shop called Oddities.  The doctor has found a new girlfriend and she suspects that his wife’s (her sister’s) death wasn’t accidental.  She sends an oddity in the form of a wooden man, essentially a goy golem, to the house before showing up herself.  Much of the creepiness comes from that life-size figure sitting at the dining table in a shadowy room.  As the plot unfurls, it becomes clear that the husband had met his new girlfriend prior to his wife’s death.  His patient wasn’t her killer, but his orderly was.  Justice only comes when the golem comes to life.  Even so, the doctor gets away with it.  The sister, who is also murdered, sent the doctor another oddity from her shop before expiring.

Much of the movie takes its energy from the utter skepticism of the doctor—he presents himself as completely rational, not believing in anything supernatural—and the clearly paranormal events taking place around the oddities.  Also, the rational doctor is very immoral, preferring murder to telling the truth.  The sister, however, is concerned for justice and the supernatural is on her side.  This makes for a very creepy, compelling film.  I’ve been impressed by much of the Euro-horror that I’ve seen over the last several years.  This one is going into my personal cabinet of curiosities.

One of Those Days

Leave a comment

I recently lived a day directed by David Lynch.  Or at least it felt like it.  While I’m not at liberty to discuss the details, I can say it was a surreal experience that left me questioning everything.  Ever have one of those days?  It happened smack in the middle of work, forcing me to take an emergency personal day, if there is such a thing.  I’ve self-identified as an existentialist for many, many years—that may be changing in the light of Frankl—and the part I most identified with was the absurd.  It became clear to me, starting at least in seminary, how absurd my life was.  Strange things happen to me.  Always have.  I had a weird childhood and it hasn’t become any more normal since then.  Even so, some days are brought to you by David Lynch.

When I proposed to my wife, I told her that I couldn’t promise her much (I was functionally unemployed at the time, but applying for Ph.D. Programs) but that our life together would be interesting.  I doubt she would argue the point now, some 36 years later.  Even in a life defined by the odd—let’s use the existentialist word—absurd, some days stand out.  Days when, as Bruce Springsteen might say, you’re toppled over by “things you don’t even see coming.”  This particular day it was the direct consequence of the internet, our electronic metaverse, to borrow a term from Neal Stephenson.  The older I get the more I wonder if the blessing of constant connectedness is more a curse in disguise.  For thousands of years society got along without it.  Yet, as with most devils, there are definite advantages to dancing.

The next morning I saw a great horned owl while out jogging.  I know owls are difficult to spot and I’ve read enough about screen memories to make me wonder if something truly cosmic was going down.  I’d only seen one great horned owl before, and that was while jogging at Nashotah House.  I have been pondering my David Lynch day.  It actually grew into several days in which I felt completely out of control of my own life.  And the pneumonia vaccine didn’t help, donating a restless night and fuzzy head.  Some people, it seems, are magnets for the odd.  We don’t ask for it—it simply happens to us and we have to figure out how to respond.  Recognizing the absurdity may be a good start, right, Mr. Lynch?

Image credit: Alan Light, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license, via Wikimedia Commons

That Night

Leave a comment

I’m pretty sure I’ve seen Fright Night before.  It seems that it may have been on one of those trans-Atlantic flights where you exit the plane not quite sure what took place during those missing hours on earth.  I do recall that I had the hazy idea I wanted to see the movie under more controlled circumstances—with my feet on the ground and no pressurized cabin anywhere in sight.  It is certainly a passable vampire movie.  Tom Holland’s first as director.  Ironically, just the weekend before I’d had a hankering and rewatched Child’s Play, which he directed a few years after Fright Night.  I hadn’t realized they had the same director.  In any case, since the movie is now forty years old I’m not going to worry too much about spoilers.  Besides, I’d forgotten most of it since my last viewing, which was thirty or fewer years ago.

Copyright HAG ©2008

Charley Brewster and his mother live next door to a fixer-upper.  Charley, who’s a fan of the campy television show Fright Night, keeps getting distracted from his girlfriend Amy by goings on next door.  He immediately and correctly deduces that their new neighbor, Jerry Dandrige, is a vampire.  But nobody believes him, not even Amy.  As a teenager, he’s rather helpless and can’t take on the vampire alone.  When Amy sees their friend “Evil” has been transformed, she believes and eventually the unemployed star of Fright Night, Peter Vincent, styled “the vampire killer,” also joins them.  They have to stop Dendrige before Amy ends up a vampire forever.  There are a few good frights and the story still feels rather fresh.  The weird thing, it seemed to me, was the long, lingering reaction shots of Vincent (Roddy McDowall).  The pacing felt a bit off, but otherwise it was a fine movie.

The name Peter Vincent combines the two stars Holland wanted for the role, Peter Cushing or Vincent Price.  The campy performance of this character balances the body count and gore.  Although it involves teens, it landed an R rating, almost considered necessary for any serious horror movie.  The movie poster also makes it look like this might be more comedic than it is.  It has a distinctly 1980s horror film feel to it.  Now this is going to make me feel old, but I’m starting to be able to discern the differences between seventies and eighties horror films by remembering what those decades were like.  I don’t know when I saw Fright Night before, but I’m glad I saw it again.  And I’m keeping an eye on the neighbors, just in case.

Eyes Have It

Leave a comment

Seeing things from another person’s eyes is perhaps the most important social trait our species has.  We can empathize because we see someone else’s suffering.  It’s a shame to see this breaking down in real time.  Nevertheless, in the case of Laura Mars it may have saved her life.  The Eyes of Laura Mars is a psychological horror film about a controversial photographer (Mars), who suddenly sees things through the eyes of a killer.  The movie is a whodunit, keeping viewers guessing who it is that’s stabbing the eyes out of those Laura works with and cares about.  It’s not a great movie, despite the fact that it was written by John Carpenter.  Both this film and Carpenter’s Halloween were released in 1978.  Eyes is often considered a photo-slasher and Halloween was, of course, a full-blown slasher.  The former was Carpenter’s first major motion picture, while the latter was his first as director.

Screenshot

I’m about to spoil the ending, I fear, so please be warned.  Before I do, however, I will say that the film isn’t bad, even if it isn’t that good.  I had guessed the villain reasonably in advance of the reveal, but the movie did keep me second-guessing my conclusions.  The speculative element of Mars’ ability makes this a supernatural horror film, but one which seems relatively believable.  And the Bible is quoted in it, making it eligible for a Holy Sequel.  The characters—a high society artist and a New York City cop—aren’t terribly religious, but John Neville, the detective, moralizes about Mars’ work at a publicity event.  Okay, so here comes the spoiler.

After floating several possible murderers—a couple members of Mars’ crew are hinted at, as is her ex-husband—it turns out that the detective has dissociative identity disorder and although he and Laura have fallen in love, the moralizing part of his personality is a killer.  He provides Laura with a gun and tells her to shoot the man who comes after her.  When he finally does, he begs her to do it.  The twist ending, at this remove from the original, may be guessed ahead of time, but there is still quite a lot of tension in the story.  The murderer falling in love with his intended victim is a reversal of the more common lover-turned-murderer trope.  It’s not a bad freshman try on the part of John Carpenter, but when his directorial debut came out two months later, his ability in the horror genre was more fully in view.

Play Time

Leave a comment

Of course I’ve seen Child’s Play before—what kind of poser do you think I am?  But that was back before I started blogging.  After writing a post about Puppet Master, I thought I should watch it again because it didn’t really strike me as memorable the first time around.  Probably the reason for that is I knew the basics of the story before I saw the movie and, like zombies, possessed dolls are a little hard to buy into.  Still, on this second viewing I was a bit more impressed.  The idea of the monster that won’t stop coming is a scary one, and I’d forgotten just how much Chucky had to be dismembered before being stopped.  And there are some legitimately scary scenes, despite unanswered questions.  In case you’re not familiar: criminal Charles Lee Ray is shot to death in a toy store, but not before transferring his soul, through voodoo, into a Good Guy doll.  This doll is bought on the black market by a widow who can’t afford one, for her son’s birthday.

Chucky befriends the boy but starts taking revenge on those who’ve wronged him, including the police officer called to investigate his first murder.  The officer happens to be the one that shot Ray at the beginning of the film.  Nobody believes that the doll is alive until it attacks them personally.  Nobody, that is, except Andy, the six-year-old owner of Chucky.  (Although it isn’t cited as such, I have to wonder if Toy Story’s Andy wasn’t actually based on this one; that’s not the official story, but still…)  Child’s Play wasn’t the first horror film to portray an animated doll, but it was perhaps the most influential.  Chucky went on to become a repeat slasher villain with wide recognition.

I’d completely forgotten the appropriation of voodoo as the animating force behind Chucky.  Of course, that leads to the very obvious weirdness of a doll using a voodoo doll to kill someone.  To modern sensitivities, the use of Vodou feels inappropriate, but this was in the eighties, and other religions were fair game for horror.  In fact, religion was fair game.  Without it, no animated Chucky, and no threat to Andy and his mother.  Religion and horror have played together from the very beginning.  The possession aspect also ties into religion and there have been no end of possessed dolls since Chucky first lunged out the screen with his knife.  It was a good play date, it turns out.