Influential Horror

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Media has a tremendous effect on society.  We all know that, and every four years elections prove it time and again.  Like an infinite loop or Mobius strip.  The Brits knew this well.  During the Second World War (which we seem eager to repeat), it was against the law to produce horror films in the UK.  Such things can demoralize, don’t you know, old chap?  The first British film to claim horror’s reopening was Dead of Night, released in 1945.  Germany had surrendered in May and Dead of Night, like a breath being held, was released in September.  Although hardly scary by today’s standards, it was an enormously influential film.  It’s an anthology with a framing story that ties all the pieces together.

Walter Craig is an architect called to visit a farmhouse that requires renovation.  Upon arriving, although he’s never been before, all the people at the house are familiar to him from a recurring nightmare he has and vaguely remembers.  He feels that something bad will happen since his dream seems to be a premonition.  Meanwhile, each of the guests tell their own uncanny stories.  Since this is horror, we know that the nightmare will exact its due.  Craig ends up murdering one of the guests before waking in bed.  It was his nightmare.  He receives a call to come to a farmhouse that requires renovation.  When he arrives it reminds him that the nightmare is about to play out in real life.

The movie influenced many others.  The most famous segment—a ventriloquist that goes mad when his dummy takes over—was fuel for many haunted doll stories.  One of the tales was based on a real-life murder than had taken place in Britain in 1860.  As I learned from Wikipedia, however, the most stunning effect the movie had was on cosmology.  You may remember from science class that a debate about the origin of the universe was fought between two models: the Big Bang theory and the Steady State theory.  What they don’t teach in science class is that Fred Hoyle developed the Steady State theory based on this movie of the recurring loop of a nightmare that the dreamer is helpless to escape.  I’ve been saying for years that horror is due a lot more respect than it’s given.  These movies, as an integral part of the media, do have a very real effect on the world around them.  Dead of Night is a good example of that.  And it’s still a bloody good film, after all these years.

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.

Which Mountain?

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Disney movies—and I still think of Disney primarily as a movie studio—were part of my childhood.  A small part, but there nevertheless.  We didn’t go to theaters often but we caught some movies on television (do you remember eagerly reading TV Guide to find out what was going to be on that week?).  We did watch The Wonderful World of Disney and some of their series—I recall the one ones on Daniel Boone and Davy Crocket.  Still, I missed a lot.  I didn’t see Mary Poppins, for example, until I was in college.  So the other day I got curious about Escape to Witch Mountain.  I’d not seen it as a child and never saw any reason to watch it as an adult.  I’ve been taking a break from bad movies, and, as it turns out, Disney.  So there may be spoilers below, in case you’re waiting to see it.

I didn’t know the backstory or the plot, so seeing this the first time I wasn’t sure what to expect.  The movie shows its age (I was a mere lad of twelve when it was released), but the story is interesting.  Tony and Tia are adopted but have to be sent to an orphanage.  We quickly learn that they have “powers,” and that adults like to exploit such things.  A wealthy villain has his fixer pose as their long lost uncle to get them to his house, under his control.  The children realize that they must escape to, well, Witch Mountain.  Actually, that takes some time and a sympathetic adult who can drive.  In the end it turns out that they’re aliens, not witches.

Not cheery like many Disney films, Escape to Witch Mountain, although you know it will end well, has a fair bit of tension.  Especially scary is the mob mentality that takes over the locals when they start their literal witch hunt.  Armed and dangerous, those who want to preserve the uniformity of small-town mentality are serious about their convictions.  As usual, they focus on the enemy without getting to know who, or what, they really are.  Obviously, there are larger issues to consider, as there are when anyone has an advantage.  But the kids, aliens, are sweet and mean nobody any harm.  All they want is to get back to their people.  Can humans, however, ever be satisfied knowing that there are others out there more advanced than we are?  Perhaps there’s a reason for cover-ups, after all.  Disney often says more than it’s given credit for saying.  Even if I missed it until now.

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.

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.

Which Witch Where?

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I like to think of myself as a kind critic.  I’ve been on the pointy end enough to know how it feels when those who don’t like my work are unkind.  I’ll try to find a nice way of saying Witches of Amityville, or Witches of Amityville Academy, must’ve been shot on a very modest budget.  It must’ve been written by someone who’s still working hard to master the craft.  And the actors are continuing to improve as the director gets better at that role.  Why did I watch it?  Amazon Prime gives it four stars.  The incongruity of Amityville and witches suggested it might be a bad movie, and in that regard it did not disappoint.  So what’s going on here?

There’s a witch academy in Amityville.  Although all the cars have steering wheels on the right, everyone speaks with American accents, apart from a couple of characters.  The interior shots, however, are also pretty British for the most part.  There does seem to be some awareness that Amityville is in the new world.  In any case, said academy is run by an evil coven that is seeking to release the demon Botis.  To do so they have to sacrifice college-age women (and no, it’s not that kind of movie).  One of their intended sacrifices escapes and is found by three white witch sisters who also live in Amityville.  They decide to train this young woman who, as it turns out, is a very powerful witch.  Problem is, the director of the academy can’t release the demon without sacrificing this particular victim.  So she kidnaps her back.  The three good witches burst on the scene, actually more like just walk on, and prevent the sacrifice.  The bad witch kills herself and releases the demon, but the young witch is so powerful that she destroys him.  In the end the witches must go to Salem.

What’s not to like?  Some of us, day by day, year by year, work to improve our writing skills.  We write stories that incorporate whatever ability we’ve managed to scrape together.  And we struggle to find publishers.  I like bad movies because they are a great place to find hope.  The world’s a big place.  Even the entertainment industry is large enough to absorb movies produced by Amazon, Hulu, and Netflix, among others, including the big studios.  They’ve got to be looking for content, right?  Those of us who channel our creativity towards writing, and who keep trying to get it published, have a chance, don’t we?  What’s the harm in believing in the power of magic?

Monster v. Alien

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“Horror” is a faulty genre category.  Nobody quite knows where its boundaries lie.  Take Predator, for instance.  I recently watched it for the first time although I’d known about it since I was in seminary.  I am not a fan of tough-guy movies, so it took the fact that it’s sometimes coded as “horror” to get me to watch it.  Horror is often defined as a genre that has to have a monster.  Check.  We got your monster right over here.  The monster’s an alien but so is, well, Alien.  An action-adventure, sci-fish movie with a monster—is that horror?  I knew I had to see it for the sake of completion.  I’d heard of Predator vs. Alien (haven’t seen), and enough people comment on Predator that I was beginning to feel hopelessly outdated.  Or even more hopelessly outdated.

I presume the rest of the world saw it long ago, but I didn’t even know the plot.  A group of tough-guys are duped into a covert operation that allows for many explosions and bodies flying through the air.  Then they have to get out of the jungle alive because there’s an alien sportsman on the loose.  Apparently he likes earth for a good challenge since he won’t hunt somebody who’s unarmed.  He wipes out Arnold Schwarzenegger’s team—and to the film’s credit, the Black guys don’t die first.  There’s time for that, of course.  As they tromp through the jungle shirts come off because the guys are all ripped, of course.  One of the team, Billy, decides to fight without a gun so when it’s down to just Arnold and the alien the predator decides fisticuffs will settle this in a manly way.  When Schwarzenegger’s trap mortally wounds said predator, it sets off a bomb that allows for the biggest explosion of all.

So is this horror?  Hulu thinks so.  Schwarzenegger apparently thought it ended up as sci-fi horror—which is a thing.  It’s a thing because horror is a poor genre.  It’s ill-defined.  You kinda know when you’ve just seen a western or a romance.  But lots of horror films are disputed.  Critics repeatedly opine that The Shining isn’t horror.  Neither is The Exorcist.  Of course, both always wind up near the top of horror list movies.  Horror movies don’t win academy awards, as a rule.  Still, “horror” fans seek movies out that others classify as drama, or even action-adventure.  Horror is close kin with science fiction, another disputed genre.  The two are often quite distinct, however.  So, did I watch a horror movie this weekend?  I honestly can’t say.