The Lucky 13: Week Ten: Ghosts, Haunted Houses and Psychic Phenomena

Folks, I can't say I know this to be actual fact, but if I had to venture a guess, I'd say that the paranormal--i.e. ghosts--probably makes up the oldest of all horror sub-genres, going all the way back to horror's origins in literature and folklore. Fear is based primarily on what we don't understand and don't know, and so that one great unknowable, death and what comes after, has provided us with some of the most primal sources of pure terror.

The paranormal has been fodder for so many classics. Who doesn't love a good ghost story, after all? There's something about them that feels like the very essence of what horror is all about at its core. And so it's with great pride that both Brutal as Hell and The Vault of Horror bring you our favorite films tackling this otherwordly subject matter...

B-Sol on The Shining

Stanley Kubrick's cinematic jewel is a work of absolute genius from top to bottom. This is a film so rich in texture and flawless in execution that I find it a rewarding experience to watch every single time. More than a horror movie, this film is a work of art.

It's brilliantly shot, thanks in part to cinematographer John Alcott, who had previously worked with Kubrick on A Clockwork Orange and Barry Lyndon (and, incidentally, shot Terror Train right after this). With a sense of light and color that achieves a level of perfection few films ever do. The scene with Jack and Grady in the men's room is a thing of beauty, that can be watched with the sound off and you still wouldn't be able to take your eyes off it. Its a classic example of the Kubrick style.

The imagery is pure Kubrick, presenting the viewer with visuals that stay in the brain long after the movie is over. The barely glimpsed shot of the hacked-up Grady twins; the old lady in the bathtub; that creepy dude in the bear suit--this is surreal, nightmarish horror at its very best.



Cinema Suicide's Bryan White on The Sentinel

Haunted house movies aren't what they used to be. Pardon me while I play the grumpy old man here, but Hollywood and the contemporary audience don't seem to have the time anymore for a deliberately paced ghost story anymore. Everyone wants to see the apparitions right off the bat. They want special effects and lots of them. These days you couldn't possibly get away with making a movie like The Sentinel. It's a movie that takes too long to get to the stuff that people identify as scary, and that's too bad because The Sentinel is freakin' terrifying!

Christina Raines plays a fashion model on the edge who takes up residence in a Brooklyn townhouse. If she wasn't already on the edge of collapse from a crazy work schedule, her neighbors are a bunch of weirdos and when she mentions them to the real estate agent who hooked her up with the place, the woman insists that the only other occupant of the building is an ancient priest who spends his days and nights sitting in the window at the top of the building. I'm tempted to spoil the whole plot here but therein lies the fun. The revelation as to why it's called The Sentinel is fantastic, and what an ending!

The Sentinel, for some reason, is a horror movie that lives below the boards. The '70s was full of horror that capitalized on the Catholic fear generated by The Exorcist. For some reason, everyone in America seemed spooked by the threat of evil spirits and it took Hollywood no time to capitalize on this trend. For this reason, a lot of the movies to follow in the wake of The Exorcist seem like exploitation movies, and The Sentinel was victim to this generalization. It has an absolutely killer cast, with Burgess Meredith playing the ring leader of a band of completely deranged New Yorkers. You also get a quick dose of Christopher Walken in an early role, if he's your bag.

The Sentinel zeroes in on the sort of abstract horror that tends to get under my skin. People behave strangely, as if it's the most normal thing in the world and that I'm the weird one for being the outsider to their strange games. There are also a couple of great jump scares, which no haunted house movie should be without. It owes a lot to H.P. Lovecraft's short story, The Music of Erich Zann, which is a favorite of mine. Haunted house movies aren't supposed to be the sort of thing that repels you with explicit imagery, it's all about implication and only the best haunted house horrors do this right. Chief among them is The Sentinel.



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Only three weeks to go in The Lucky 13! I'd like to thank my contributors, who have thus far helped make this little endeavor what it is--your efforts are greatly appreciated. Now head over to Brutal as Hell to see what Marc Patterson and his crew have come up with. And if you're interested in taking part in the future, just give Marc or myself a holler.

Week 1: Grindhouse & Exploitation
Week 2: Creature Features & Monster Movies
Week 3: Demons, Witches & The Devil
Week 4: Gore!
Week 5: Horror Comedies
Week 6: Vampires
Week 7: Psychological Horror
Week 8: Werewolves
Week 9: Serial Killers

Join us next week, when we finally hit upon that one sub-genre so many of you have been waiting for. That's right, it's zombie time!

Horror vs. Thriller: A Conversation

It's the eternal question: Is it a horror movie, or is it a thriller? What's the difference? Are they two distinct genres, or is there an overlap? Fans have been debating these issues since forever, and it's not likely to be settled anytime soon. Nevertheless, I recently had a long conversation on the subject with VoH contributor and self-professed girly-girl Marilyn Merlot, which I think touched on a lot of interesting points with regard to these questions. So in the interest of hopefully adding something to the debate, here's the transcript of that conversation:

B-Sol: I think the biggest thing that separates horror and thriller is the supernatural. If a movie has supernatural stuff in it, to me it's automatically horror. Even though there are horror movies that are reality-based and not supernatural. So it's tough.

Marilyn Merlot: I don't know if I would consider the supernatural automatically horror. Sometimes you can even have a mix of horror and thriller.

BS: So what makes you consider a movie a thriller and not horror? Like you've said Silence of the Lambs is not a horror movie, and I kind of agree.

MM: Yes, Silence of the Lambs is a thriller. To me, a thriller is a movie that has some kind of mystery to the story, and a creep factor. It may have some suspense to it, and some fast-paced action.

BS: Yeah, I think Silence of the Lambs and movies like that get more involved in the crime aspect of things, in the detective work and all that.

MM: Where horror is fear, and wanting to scare and terrorize viewers.

BS: Yes. The main purpose of a thriller is not to terrify you. It's to build suspense, but not necessarily to scare the shit out of you.

MM: For example, Jaws. The ocean at night is creepy, and when she jumps in the water at the beginning, you know that shark is coming. That's where it starts to get suspenseful. Jaws is also a thriller, not horror.

BS: Very interesting, because Jaws is another one that I've never found to be a horror movie. It's suspenseful, but not horrifying. Jaws, to me, is more about the adventure of killing the shark, than the fear it's instilling in people.

MM: It can also come down to someone's personal perception, what they find to be horror or thriller. You and I may not agree. I think it can also be different for men and women. Women are generally more scared, or creeped out easier. So what I might find terrifying, you may find laughable. I've got a great example, if you want to debate the movie with me... I know we dont agree. Let's talk Blair Witch Project.

BS: You know I hate it, right?

MM: Yes. You know it creeped me out, right?

BS: But even though I don't like it, I will definitely say it's a horror movie, and not a thriller.

MM: And I was going to say it's a thriller.

BS: Wow, really? Explain.

MM: First off, I have a tendency to over-think a little, and try to put myself in that moment. I guess you can say I'm a girly girl. Yes, I like horror, but I do get freaked out pretty easily. With that movie, think of being lost in the woods, with knowing the back story, and hearing all the creepy things at night. Anyone would be a little freaked out. Then again, i think it comes down to girls being more scared.

BS: But don't you feel like since the whole thing is about making you scared, that it's horror?

MM: The movie had its suspenseful moments and creep factor, but nothing compared to what horror is. Did I find it terrifying? No. The movie wasn't violent, nor did it have a villain--that we saw, anyway.

BS: It did have an evil spirit, though. See for me, that totally takes it into horror territory. Maybe if it was something human, i might think differently.

MM: Yes, but as I said, in my opinion a movie can be supernatural and still be more thriller than horror.

BS: Yes, we disagree there. I think if there's something unreal, something beyond reality that can't be explained rationally, it's automatically horror. You're saying some movies like that can still be thrillers. So let me turn it around this way. Give me an example of what you would consider definitely a horror movie, and not a thriller.

MM: OK, let me stick with the classics: Halloween.

BS: Great example, because that's a movie that is not supernatural. It's a human killer, so someone might say that makes it a thriller. But i would agree, it's totally horror. It's not like Silence of the Lambs, because in Halloween, we're not mainly focused on Dr. Loomis and the cops trying to stop Michael. We're mainly focused on watching Michael stalk and kill these kids.

MM: Well most people may disagree, but The Shining is not horror. I really like it, but it's not horror.
BS: Totally disagree. Maybe because I'm thinking thrillers always have to make sense somehow in the real world. And Shining totally doesn't, it's like a nightmare.

MM: He's a writer, taking care of a hotel. That's real-world.

BS: Yeah, but what happens to him? Unless you take the position that it was totally in his head. That might turn it around and make it a thriller...

MM: There are strange happenings, and you wonder about Jack and the other characters. He's losing his mind. He's not all there, that's basically it. I'm not terrified, sitting on the edge of my chair. Is it creepy? Yes, all children in these types of movies are creepy, so once again theres my "creep" factor. That, for me, makes it a thriller.

BS: I could totally see that one depending on how you interpret it. Because some people (like me) see it as him being influenced by spirits haunting the hotel. Although Nicholson plays it like a lunatic from the beginning, but that's just Jack.
Here's something I was reading recently [in Taschen's Horror Cinema] about this whole thing that makes sense to me. A thriller is all about the buildup, about the expectations, about the terror of wondering what's going to happen. The suspense. But horror is about actually having that terrible thing happen, seeing your worst fear actually happen, and the effect of it. It's all about absorbing the shock.

MM: I totally agree and again, I think it's going to come down the individual, and what people can and cannot handle.

BS: True. I do think, though, that sometimes filmmakers set out to make a horror movie that turns out to be more of a thriller to a lot of people, and vice versa. But here's something else about this whole thing that bothers me. I think sometimes people use the word thriller because they think it makes a movie more respectable than being a horror movie.

MM: Good point, I agree. A lot of people shun horror movies, they automatically think all that blood and guts and torture, it's awful, who wants to see that? I think a lot of people think that way once the title of horror is thrown in there.

BS: Right. Sometimes a studio will want to sell their movie as a "thriller" even if it isn't. Although I was afraid they were doing this with Shutter Island, and I was wrong. At first, it looked like a straight-up horror movie. But in the end, it did turn out to be a total psychological thriller. Once you learn the nature of what's really going on, instant thriller.

MM: It's a fine line and will always be--but it makes for good arguments!

BS: Yes. There will always be a fine line between the two genres. And it led us to this very intriguing debate, so hopefully we made some kind of sense on this tough issue. But in the end, it's up to the viewer to decide!

The Horror of the Printed Page

[Tonight I bring you a special contribution from award-winning book blogger Katiebabs of Babbling About Books, and More. So let's shut off the DVD players for a minute and think about the books that really scare us, shall we?]

The horror! The horror! Quick, can anyone tell me where that line is from? And no, I’m not talking about one of the most famous movie lines muttered from Marlon Brando in the Francis Ford Coppola classic, Apocalypse Now.

It may seem unfortunate that most of the screams and thrills people find are in movies. I’m a true horror movie buff and I love having the ever loving shit scared out of me as I watch some poor sap die a horrible death from some maniac or supernatural monster. But it may come as a surprise that you can feel these same emotions in books. One of my favorite genres is horror. There has been many times where I have been sitting in my bedroom late at night all alone and scare myself to death by what I am reading.

There are hundreds of books I could recommend that can send chills up and down your spine but since I have limited space, I will give you some of my all time favorite tales of terror. You may find yourself surprised that these books will give you nightmares.

Many of the horror stories I have love are short tales of murder, mayhem and death. One of my all time favorite horror authors is Edgar Allen Poe. My appreciation for Poe began when I watched Vincent Price starring in many screen adaptations of Poe’s work. Two Poe stories that always give me the willies are The Tell-Tale Heart and The Masque of the Red Death. The Tell-Tale Heart is a chilling telling by the narrator as he tells about a murder he committed and how he got rid of the body. The police come to him to ask him questions about the missing person. They have no clue that he is the killer, and he is about to get away with the murder. But as the police interview him, he begins to hear a noise, a sound that won’t go away. The sound becomes louder to his ears, till he is near insanity, wanting it to stop:

"Villains!" I shrieked, "dissemble no more! I admit the deed! --tear up the planks! here, here! --It is the beating of his hideous heart!"

The Masque of the Red Death takes place during a masquerade ball where the guests are murdered by some unknown killer. The question is, who is this killer and why is he targeting these people? The ways they die are very gruesome. But no one is safe because the Red Death is actually a terrible plague that has swept across the land.

Don’t Look Now by Daphne de Maurier is another short story that was made into a cult classic movie in 1973 with Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie. A married couple are on vacation, trying to get pass their grief over the death of their little girl who drowned. The husband begins to see a little blonde girl in a red coat everywhere. He starts to believe she is his daughter because his daughter had drowned in the same type of coat this strange little girl is wearing. When he finally catches up to the little girl, the twist will shock the ever loving crap out of you. The ending to the story gave me nightmares for weeks. And if you decide to see the movie, don’t be surprised if the last two minutes makes you piss your pants from fright.

The one type of creature, that makes me want to hide in a closet and pray for a quick death if they find me are zombies. I blame George Romero for that lifelong fear. But without Richard Matheson there would be no Night of the Living Dead. Matheson wrote a story in 1954 that has influenced many horror authors and Hollywood filmmakers. I Am Legend helped develop the vampire and zombie genre by building upon the idea of an apocalypse of disease that will destroy the world. This story is the reason Stephen King wanted to write horror and responsible for flesh eating zombies becoming such a cultural phenomenon in movies and literature. It is about the one soul survivor left on Earth after a virus has turned humans into undead mindless zombies. The reader goes through the experience alongside Robert as he tries not to go crazy because every night he is stalked by these creatures. Imagine if you were the last person on Earth with no where to turn to for help, only you own thoughts to keep you company as you try to stay alive or become food.

Speaking of Stephen King, he is my idol, my reason for reading and wanting to write like he does. He has shaped the horror, science fiction and fantasy genre alike. It is so hard to choose his best work. The three that come to mind are The Stand, It and The Shining. With The Shining, King is able to tap into a person’s inner demons and the eventual break down of a person’s mind because of those demons. Part psychological thriller, part ghost story, this is one of the finest books I have ever read. It gave me an intense dislike of clowns and the underground sewage system, and The Stand is my number one favorite book of all time. The Stand taps into the desolation and fear in people of what is right and wrong and how one would survive if an epidemic such as a virus wiping out the world did occur.

Many of the books I have listed are classics. There is one final book I would like to mention that was just released this year and you may come as a surprise because it is a Young Adult book written for the teen audience. The Forest of Hand and Teeth by Carrie Ryan is such a book that in my past twenty odd years of reading scared me to the point I was looking over my shoulder as I read, expecting the monsters from the book to be standing there. The Forest of Hands and Teeth is a cross between M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village and George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. This book has tapped deep into my fears and psyche. Imagine the world filled with zombies who want to eat you. You have no where to turn, for they are all around you, crying in hunger, waiting for the right moment to attack. Imagine the only thing that keeps you from being infected by them and becoming one of them or becoming zombie food is a fence that keeps them out. What if that fence was breached and they were able to come through? This is a book not for the faint of heart. There is death and destruction, filled with violence and fear. The fear is not surviving from the monsters whose only goal is to consume the living. But is this truly surviving? (For more on The Forest of Hands and Teeth, you can read my review here: http://kbgbabbles.blogspot.com/2009/03/forest-of-hands-and-teeth-book-review.html)

I thank B-Sol for giving me this opportunity to talk about my favorite horror reads. What are some of your favorite horror books or authors you can recommend to fellow horror fans?

Katiebabs from Babbling About Books and More! http://kbgbabbles.blogspot.com/ Twitter: @Katiebabs

The Tuesday Top 10: Most Well-Made Horror Films

I know I may catch some flak for this one, and maybe be labeled a "film snob". So be it. Maybe I am one, a little. Let me explain what the concept behind this week's list is...

There is a big difference between a favorite movie and a great film. Just as when you're asked, "what's your favorite movie ever?", it's a very different question from, "what do you think is the best movie ever made?"

With that in mind, I'm putting together a list of the ten most well-made horror films ever. These are films that I would put up against any straight drama nominated for a Best Picture Oscar in its respective year--and, in fact, in some cases these films were actually nominated, or won. More than just great horror flicks, these are excellent films, period.

Let me explain the difference. As much as I love George Romero, and Dawn of the Dead is my favorite horror movie of all time, I can admit that I love it because it's a cool horror movie. It has flaws--the acting is often stiff, the editing sometimes sloppy, the soundtrack delightfully cheesy. That's all irrelevant to why I love it. As much as I adore it, if we look at the films nominated for Best Picture that year, we find movies like The Deer Hunter and Midnight Express. You can hurl tomatoes at me if you want, but I'm not going to put DOTD in a category with those movies.

On the other hand, if we look at a movie like The Exorcist, in my opinion, we're looking at a film that is superbly made from every aspect--apart from being a great horror movie, it is just a great film, plain and simple. And it was nominated right alongside films like American Graffiti and The Sting--and deserved to be. That's the difference I'm talking about. Film snob? So be it.

Got it? OK, let's proceed...

10. 28 Days Later (2002)
Before he became a mainstream darling with Slumdog Millionaire, Danny Boyle gave us this frenetically paced and brilliantly photographed picture. I remember seeing it at the time and thinking it was made with more quality than any horror films that had come along in a while, and I still stand by that opinion.

9. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Although I hesitate to call it a horror movie, it is generally considered as such, and thus it didn't seem right to leave it off. Jonathan Demme's masterwork became the first horror film to win Best Picture, and also took home statuettes for director, actor, actress and screenplay. This was truly horror's greatest moment in the sun.

8. The Haunting (1963)
Powerhouse director Robert Wise, who made his bones under Val Lewton in the 1940s, delivered this, the finest ghost movie ever made. Without ever showing us a thing, Wise creates an atmosphere of sheer terror. The editing is crisp, the camerawork restrained and effective. This is an awe-inspiring fright flick.

7. The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
While I enjoy the first Frankenstein more (and ranked it higher on my '30s movies list), I have to agree with most critics that this is a film of slightly higher quality. Working from a clever, satirical script, James Whale imbued his sequel with rich symbolism and wit. The sets are gorgeous. And that cabin scene with the blind man is one of the finest scenes in any movie--ever.

6. Jaws (1975)
Another flick I never quite considered horror, but I am decidedly in the minority, apparently. This is Speilberg at the height of his powers, and it earned him a Best Picture nom. Some of the finest performances you'll ever find in the horror genre, courtesy of Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss and the great Robert Shaw.

5. Alien (1979)
Ridley Scott turned what could've been your by-the-numbers alien critter-in-space B-flick into a superb piece of filmmaking. With a knockout cast, flawless effects, captivating set design and beautiful cinematography, it is a true pleasure to watch. And I stand by the opinion that James Cameron's sequel, while perhaps a more action-packed popcorn flick, is in every way inferior.

4. Let the Right One In (2008)
Folks have called this the finest vampire film ever made, and I'd say that's accurate. But beyond that, this is a work of heart-breaking beauty that literally transcends the genre. Without the vampirism, it would still be outstanding. In a few more years, with a little more perspective, it is entirely possible that I would put it into the number-one position (as BJ-C suggested).

3. The Exorcist (1973)
The 1970s was perhaps the greatest decade for film, and this was horror's greatest contribution to the new movement. William Friedkin's finest moment, it's characterized by an excellent script from novelist William Peter Blatty and incredible performances from Ellen Burstyn, Linda Blair and Jason Miller. Nominated for the big one, and deservedly so. Never gets old.

2. Psycho (1960)
Alfred Hitchcock's proto-slasher has become a film school standby, and one of the most revered films ever made. And it's not even Hitchcock's best. A true master of the medium, Hitch dazzles effortlessly with gorgeous composition and a pacing rhythm that gives you no choice but to watch. Anthony Perkins is a revelation, and the landmark Bernard Herrmann score needs no hype.

1. The Shining (1980)
This whole shebang is a matter of opinion, and in my opinion The Shining is the finest horror film ever made. Stanley Kubrick's cinematic jewel is a work of absolute genius from top to bottom. This is a film so rich in texture and flawless in execution that I find it a rewarding experience to watch every single time. More than a horror movie, this film is a work of art.

Retro Review: The Shining

This review might cause some waves, since for whatever reason, this movie seems to have somewhat divided the horror fan community. Not so much the mainstream audience, which views it as an unquestioned classic, but rather the Stephen King die-hards, some of whom embrace it, and others who--like the author himself--reject it utterly.

Well, I fall in the camp of those who worship at the altar of the great Stanley Kubrick, and this film is just about his finest hour, along with the likes of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Dr. Strangelove and A Clockwork Orange. In this blogger's humble opinion, Kubrick's The Shining holds a very special place as perhaps the finest-made horror film of all time, right up there with The Bride of Frankenstein, Psycho and The Exorcist.

Comparing this cinematic diamond with a TV movie starring one of the guys from Wings is like comparing Morton's Steakhouse to Jack in the Box. Yes, I get that the '90s TV version is far more faithful to the book, but that's not finally the point. What's the point of being more faithful if the movie is inferior? Let's face it, Kubrick was a cinematic mastermind, and he knew better how Stephen King's epic novel would work on film than King himself did. Plain and simple.

Take a look at what we have here. A film that's brilliantly shot, thanks in part to cinematographer John Alcott, who had previously worked with Kubrick on A Clockwork Orange and Barry Lyndon (and, incidentally, shot Terror Train right after this). With a sense of light and color that achieves a level of perfection few films ever do. The scene with Jack and Grady in the men's room is a thing of beauty, that can be watched with the sound off and you still wouldn't be able to take your eyes off it. Its a classic example of the Kubrick style.

It's been said that most of Kubrick's films deal with two main themes: The first being dehumanization, and the other being the complete and utter collapse of what seemed to be a perfect scenario. And in The Shining, we certainly see both themes in full display, explored as only Kubrick could, both visually and contextually. It may be true that Jack Nicholson comes off as a little crazy right from the very beginning, as opposed to the perfectly normal Jack Torrance of the book, but nevertheless, his transformation to murderous psychopath is breathtaking to behold.

Some accuse the film of glacial pacing. I think these are the same people who complain that baseball is a slow sport. It's all about what goes on inside your head, the expectation. I find the film to be perfectly paced, drawing you in slowly with an unmatched sense of foreboding--aided in no small part by Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind's unforgettable score.

Jack Nicholson does what he does best in the lead role. Say what you will about his deviation from the character in the novel, but you can't stop watching him for a second when he's on screen. The bar scene... the typewriter scene... and of course, "Here's Johnny!" Whether playing it over-the-top or subtle--and yes, there is a lot of subtlety to his performance here--it's arguably the greatest role of Nicholson's legendary career.

Also terrific in a supporting part is the charismatic Scatman Crothers as the ill-fated Dick Hallorann. And of course my personal favorite, the menacing Delbert Grady, played with relish by Philip Stone, who had previously played Malcolm McDowell's dad in A Clockwork Orange. Little Danny Lloyd gives one of the great child performances as Danny Torrance, and it's good that he does, since the film sort of hinges on his dread being believable. The weakest link in the chain may very well be Shelley Duvall, who seems somehow out of place as Jack's wife, perhaps owing in part to her reported on-set animosity with Kubrick. Still, I've always felt that her hysterical panic in the famous axe scene is utterly authentic and suitably chilling.

The imagery is pure Kubrick, presenting the viewer with visuals that stay in the brain long after the movie is over. The barely glimpsed shot of the hacked-up Grady twins; the old lady in the bathtub; that creepy dude in the bear suit--this is surreal, nightmarish horror at its very best.

I take nothing away from Stephen King, who is undoubtedly one of the finest, and possibly the most important, writer of horror fiction in the 20th century, and today. But the track record for movie versions of his novels is not the best. For whatever reason, something often seems to get lost in the translation, and this is why I humbly submit that maybe King doesn't quite understand how best to transfer his ideas from the page to the screen.

And even though he bashed Kubrick to anyone who would listen, nevertheless the fact remains that King was blessed by having a filmmaker of Kubrick's calibre take on his work. In the process, he created what is easily one of the greatest horror movies ever made, and definitely the greatest adaptation of King's horror-related work ever mounted, with Carrie being a close second. Is it faithful to King's book? Not really--Kubrick, egomaniac that he was, took the source material and ran with it, twisting it into his own unique vision. And for that I say, thank goodness.

The Tuesday Top 10: Favorite Horror Movie Characters

I was recently tagged by D.J. Heinlein (if that isn't your real name, it should be) over at Matte Havoc as part of his "Ten Favorite Movie Characters" blog meme. So I figured I'd tweak it just a bit for The Vault, and use it as an excuse to unveil my new weekly feature, the Tuesday Top 10 (sorry, BJ-C, not trying to steal your Tuesday thunder--it's all about the alliteration, kid.)

And so, without further ado, I give you my Top 10 Favorite Horror Movie Characters:

10. Capt. Spaulding
"Why don't you just take your momma home some chicken, and then I won't have to stuff my boot all up in your ass!"
Nearly as entertaining as the Groucho Marx character from which he takes his name, Sid Haig's character in Rob Zombie's House of 1,000 Corpses and The Devil's Rejects is a joy to behold. You can keep Freddy Krueger, Hannibal Lecter and Patrick Bateman--for my money, the good captain is horror's most charismatic psychopath.

9. Dr. Pretorius
"To a new world of gods and monsters!"
It takes a special kind of man to out-crazy Dr. Frankenstein. And by gum, Pretorius is that man. His bizarre experiments with tiny "homunculi", and unholy desire to continue Frankenstein's work on the reanimation of dead tissue even have ol' Henry himself calling for a time-out. And you have to love any guy who can sit down to a chicken dinner inside of a crypt.

8. Delbert Grady
"Perhaps they need a good talking-to, if you don't mind my saying so. Perhaps a bit more."
Is he a figment of Jack Torrance's warped imagination, or an honest-to-goodness phantasm? It's tough to know for sure--although the infamous food locker scene leans me toward the latter--but whatever he may be, ol' Grady is one hell of a riveting co-creation of King and Kubrick. And if you don't agree with that, I might just have to... correct you.

7. The Hitchhiker
"My family's always been in meat."
This backwoods wackjob did for roadside hitchers what Jaws did for sharks and Fatal Attraction did for side poon. Leatherface may hog all the glory when it comes to the TCM family, but I'll take this hand-slicing, weird facial birthmark-having, photo-burning fruitcake any day of the week. Too bad he was the only family member who didn't survive to make it to the sequel.

6. Eli
"Please Oskar... be me, for a little while."
Just for the record, if I was a 12-year-old boy and she moved next door to me, I would happily run off with her and become her pint-sized Renfield. Without looking back. Sorry, Mom and Dad... Thanks to an enigmatic and chill-inducing performance by remarkable child actress Lina Leandersson, Eli is the most fascinating movie vampire since Bela walked down those castle steps.

5. Tarman
"More brainsss!!"
By now, my unconditional love for all things Return of the Living Dead is a well-known fact (expect a big announcement pertaining to this soon). And hands down, the coolest thing in the whole movie (aside from Trash's graveyard dance) is this walking-and-talking gelatinous cadaver. The only thing that pissed me off is how easily Bert disposes of the big guy. Batter up!

4. Renfield (as played by Dwight Frye)
"I'm loyal to you Master, I'm your slave, I didn't betray you! Oh no, don't! Don't kill me! Let me live, please! Punish me, torture me, but let me live!"
One of the most criminally underrated character actors of the 1930s, Dwight Frye turns a minor character in Stoker's novel into arguably the character who steals the whole damn movie. You can live for a hundred years, but if you've seen Tod Browning's Dracula, you will never forget the image of Frye grinning from the below the deck of the Demeter, emitting that iconic laugh...

3. Bub
"Hello, Aunt Alicia."
Speaking as a connoisseur of all things Romero, I can say with confidence that this was the maestro's finest zombie creation. Ditto goes for makeup wizard Tom Savini. Day of the Dead has its problems as a movie, and may not quite be in the class of its two predecessors, but Howard Sherman's character makes it a must-watch, it's as simple as that.

2. Ashley J. Williams
"Gimme some sugar, baby."
Alright, so it's always cool to namedrop Ash for horror street cred, but you know what? There's a reason for that. The guy is legitimately the single greatest bad-ass in the history of fright flicks. I love him and his boom stick in Army of Darkness. I love him fighting his own hand in Dead By Dawn. Hell, I'll even take the more timid, boyish Ash of the first Evil Dead. That's how much I love him.

1. Count Orlock
"Blood! Your precious blood!"
It's been said before, but it may still very well be that F.W. Murnau's 1922 classic is the finest Dracula adaptation of them all. Yet, Max Schreck's Orlock is an entity all on his own, with a distinct persona and look that virtually transcends horror cinema, if not cinema as a whole. The rising out of the casket, the unforgettable shadow-walk up those stairs. This, readers, is the stuff of cinematic horror immortality. It gets no better.

What Goes Bump In the Night…….? Chapter II

(We join our regularly scheduled blog post, already in progress.)

While still young, I did succumb to more than one “devil movie.” The two most famous were of course The Exorcist and The Omen. While The Exorcist was one thing all to itself, The Omen was rather the flagship to a genre of ‘70s devil movies. While The Omen was creepy, mostly because of that chubby little kid, there was one titled Devil Dog, Hound of Hell. Now this sounds stupid, like a Drake’s cake gone wrong. But to the ten year old me who decided to watch it on either the “Five Star Movie” or “Drive in Movie” on channel 5 one Saturday afternoon, it was a little more than that.

Now that lousy movie “Devil Dog…” was one of those poorly shot, poorly produced, poorly scripted ‘70s horror endeavors where the film is so bad that it is dark during the day time. And I think it was this poor film quality coupled with a fairly decent devil story. Now, why were devil stories so effective? I think it can be summed up in that a) the devil (or Devil), is all consuming evil, way more evil than just a zombie or slasher, and b) the devil always came in the package you were least expecting: a little girl, a little boy, or, in this case, a little puppy. It is the destruction and the perversion of the innocent into something diabolical that really makes devil movies, and their related genre scary. The same effect can be applied to other stories of a similar vein, like Children of the Corn, and for its part, Pet Semetary’s Gage.

I won’t say much about The Exorcist, as it is like a 5 tool player in baseball (it scares for average, scares for power, etc…), except that a) some of the really scary parts are when you just see the shadows of the demons, and b) when Regan bends over backwards to scuttle down the stairs – whoa, that’s a bad 3 seconds of film. Why? Because it is friggin’ weird, and weird is scary.


A few weeks back B-Sol was good enough to do a post on Hieronymous Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights, and in particular, the Hell portion of the triptych. The thing is, while the Hell portion is obviously terrifying, the other two panels, one of Eden, and the other of Earth, are both so weird (and ahead of their time, for purposes of fantasy and science fiction), that they border on the scary. Scary in the sense of making no sense, the horror of a topsy-turvey world. In the Eden Panel, there are the naked Adam and Eve with a clothed Jesus (ok, nothing weird yet), but the surroundings are filled with never-before-seen animals, and a really strange castle in the center. The middle portion of Earth is even worse, with a multitude of nude figures with an enormous amount of oversized birds, fruit, strange vehicles, and in the far background, even stranger creatures and weirder architecture. And the Hell portion is, well, Hell. What is all the fuss? Well, what I am saying is that the weird can be scary, and this triptych is friggin’ weird.

A recent example as to the frightening nature of the weird is the video from The Ring. There really isn’t anything scary about it. But it is shot in that off-color, with strange set pieces (ladder against a wall, centipede running through a living room, the silhouette of the tree), weird sounds, and doesn’t make much sense. But there is a malevolence running through it that is expressed via its strangeness, which fills one with unease. Unease is the first level of fear.

Mr. Hungus cited David Lynch’s Lost Highway as an example of unnerving cinema. I agree, and put forth that another Lynch classic, Blue Velvet, while also not a horror movie by any stretch, is also disturbing as the characters are nearly alien in their various versions of madness. It has always turned my insides how the characters seem to choose to follow the wrong path at every turn, how it almost doesn’t make sense.

Weird first scared me when I saw the Beatle’s Yellow Submarine. While the Beatles are about the least scary rock band in history, Yellow Submarine, with the Blue Meanies, can scare any little kid. Why? In part because the story is really weird, with really strange creatures, and makes little sense, and also because the Blue Meanies are really weird as well, and in addition, they are cruel for cruelty’s sake. Now, I don’t think Yellow Submarine is scary as an adult, it does bring me to my next observation – cruelty is scary.

Cruelty has a tremendous effect on me. That otherwise normal human beings are capable of the most inhuman acts is the terrifying part of being human. Not to wax political, but we in America are often given to the illusion that all we have wrought is good because we are good, and only the bad people have done awful things. Things that the Communists did in Russia, China, or Cambodia. Things that the Nazis did in Germany, Austria, or Poland. Or the Japanese did in the Pacific.

What is lost in this worldview is that the awful occurrences did not happen outside the purview of good people, but rather despite them, or with their assistance. Horrible human acts by otherwise normal people are not impossible. Cruelty has, more often than not, been the norm. And it percolates just below the surface of all of us. All it might take is one act, or one person, one event to bring it all up, and terrible deeds will come to pass.

Torture porn, a genre of which I am not a great fan, attempts to use cruelty for this sake, to get at us under our skins. Like in Hostel, where there is systematic kidnapping/torture/murder, the scary thing isn’t the torture itself, but that people want to torture, to maim, to kill, and even videotape it, like in Vacancy. It is scary because we are all, in the right time and place, capable of some very awful things.

For instance, the most horrible scene of cruelty in the classic Texas Chainsaw Massacre comes not when Leatherface is chasing anyone with his saw, but when he suddenly appears from a corridor, smashes a fellow human on the head with a mallet, and then, while the body is violently twitching, drags it inside, and then slams the door closed. It is the casual nature of the act which reinforces the cruelty. On the other hand, over time, other slashers, like Jason Voorhees or Michael Myers, are rendered less scary in that they only do what they do but for no other reason than that’s what they do. They do not do it out of any cruelty – they are essentially knife/axe/machete wielding zombie automatons.

Sometimes annihilation comes from large groups. Being faced with the overwhelming force of a community bent on my own destruction, like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, is a form of group cruelty, in that it seeks the end of my person, if not my torture. The scary aspect isn’t that they are alien plants, but that it is everyone but me. Body Snatchers is about being the last free thinking man amongst the Nazis, the Bolsheviks, or the Khmer Rouge.

The Shining is a similar dynamic, but instead of human cruelty, or reeducation via seedpod, the overwhelming forces arrayed against the Torrance family is that of ghosts through the transmitter of a sentient building, the Overlook Hotel. But that malevolence is something more seething than apparent, and only is truly manifested in the third act of the film. But it is its cruel nature, wanting sacrifices of blood, that makes the Overlook such a scary hotel.

In that vein, I think we begin to return to the unseen. I wrote my first post about The Thing by John Carpenter, and state unequivocally that it was the scariest horror movie of all time. I think that the horror from this movie is that, like Body Snatchers, the monster lurks within, with other factors elevating the terror. This is no longer an anti Communist, anti-intellectual screed (as was its titular predecessor, as well as Body Snatchers). Rather, the fright is of the psychological nature, when the civilization of the men involved breaks down (fear of madness), when they realize they no longer know each other, or truly know themselves. What could be more frightening than not knowing if you continued to be you? Couple this with the thought that if in fact you are you, at best one of your colleagues is harboring a very slimy and malevolent monster under his skin. The isolation of each character, from himself, from his friends, and from the rest of the world, is total. Personally, I think I would have flipped my lid like the character Windows, and beat a hasty trail right to the arsenal (I often think how the shotgun would vitiate most horror movies plots, but probably not The Thing).

Well, that’s about it for now, gentle reader. As Mr. Hungus asked: What scares you?

Yes, This Is a Real Book

And you can get it here. Effing brilliant.

Stephen King, By Way of Lucio Fulci

I confess that up until recently, the only Lucio Fulci film of which I was closely familiar was the infamous Zombi 2, undoubtedly the closest thing to a mainstream horror movie the Italian splatter maestro ever produced. I had yet to really delve into his even more greatly revered trilogy of terrors: The Gates of Hell, The Beyond and House by the Cemetery. 

Well, I did something about that several weeks ago when I received House by the Cemetery in the mail from the fine folks at Netflix--whom I still love, even if this is the only one of the trilogy they currently offer. Now, there's nothing I love more than a good, down-and-dirty 1970s exploitation horror flick, and House by the Cemetery delivered the goods. I was mucho impressed, and pleased as I always am at discovering a horror gem for the first time. That happens less and less these days.

But there was something about the movie I immediately noticed, and after viewing it, I jumped on the internet, only to find that nearly no one else seems to have made much of it at all. But it hit me like a water-logged boxing glove, so I thought I'd share it and see who among you shares my opinion. Simply put, it seems very obvious to me that, as enjoyable as House by the Cemetery is, it's basically Lucio Fulci's attempt to ride on the coattails of The Shining.

Just as he had done in 1979 when he put out the misleadingly titled Zombi 2 to capitalize on the success of George Romero's Dawn of the Dead the previous year, so too, it appears to me, did he crank out HBTC in 1981, a year after Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of Stephen King's novel, as a direct reaction to it.

Let's take a look at this, shall we? Both films focus on families moving into houses that are in the possession of some kind of malevolent force. In both cases, the man is moving in for professional reasons, and has a very young son who is contacted/befriended by an otherworldy spirit. The parents are aware of this, but believe it only to be their sons' imaginary friend. Both stories focus on the father of the family, and his journey of discovery as to the nature of the house and its evil presence. Both also showcase a distraught, put-upon wife who grows more and more terrified as she witnesses bizarre events unfold in the house. The Shining ends with a time-paradox twist involving the father and the earlier period in which the disturbance originated. At the end of HBTC, the son finds himself transported somehow back to an earlier time as well.

Where King/Kubrick and Fulci deviate is that in The Shining the force is far less tangible, and eventually imposes an evil influence on the father, turning him into a killer, while in House by the Cemetery, the entity is much more corporeal in nature, dispatching of its hapless victims directly.

Essentially, HBTC is a haunted house story, with a decidedly Fulcian twist. That twist has to do with Fulci's fascination with the physical, and the horrors of the flesh. Whereas most ghost stories are atmospheric in nature, frightening viewers on a psychological level, Fulci's aesthetic requires that the antagonist be much more of a physical being, able to perpetrate acts of graphic violence to showcase his beloved gore effects for the purpose of causing revulsion. This makes the movie a rare hybrid of the haunted house story and splatter flick.

My observation of Fulci's aping of The Shining may be fairly obvious to some of you, but the fact remains that I've been able to find hardly any mention online of any observed connection between the two movies. Yet for me, it was one of the first things I noticed. The film marks such a departure for Fulci, content-wise, that one cannot help but conclude that he had beheld the enormous success of Kubrick's pic and felt that maybe the writing was on the wall, that horror was returning to its more gothic roots. And so he attempted to get on board the bandwagon, albeit not without leaving his own bloody handprints so no one forgot whose movie it was.

The result makes for a surprisingly entertaining movie, particularly for those with a good old-fashioned attention span, who appreciate having their patience rewarded with properly paced and placed payoffs. Despite the hack editing and flaws of logic inherent in any Fulci picture, it works on several levels, producing more purely atmospheric terror than Fulci was customarily known for, while also punctuating the proceedings with a healthy dose of gut-wrenching grue. Despite its derivative nature, Fulci somehow manages to make it into a fairly unique movie--a paradox if ever there was one.

Blood & Guts: A History of Horror Movies, Part 5

In the wake of the turbulent 1960s, the horror genre had been dramatically and permanenently altered. One taboo after another was being torn down, and it would be in the following two decades--viewed by some as the genre's second golden age--that the doors would be completely blown off.
In many ways, the 1970s represent an era in horror flicks which has yet to be equalled in terms of shocking themes, graphic violence and unflinchingly grim outlook. The demise of the restrictive Hays Code spawned two branches: one in which top-flight films began to be made with horror subject matter, and the other in which blood-soaked low-budget exploitation material meant easy money.
The success of Rosemary's Baby led to 1973's The Exorcist, often hailed as the most frightening horror film ever made. Whether or not it was, The Exorcist was a mainstream American film dealing with demonic possession--something that would've been unheard of just several years before. A series of occult and Satanic-themed pictures would follow, including Alice, Sweet Alice (1976) and The Omen (1976). All dealt frankly with matters of religion, and contained powerful dramatic performances.
On the other end of the spectrum, American audiences were confronted with a type of horror they were thoroughly unprepared for, and in the process some of horror's finest directors would make their names. Wes Craven emerged on the scene in 1972 with The Last House on the Left, featuring brutal scenes of rape and disembowelment. Two years later, Tobe Hooper created what was arguably the pinnacle of the subgenre, the nightmarish Texas Chainsaw Massacre. And in 1978, George Romero followed up his seminal '60s masterpiece Night of the Living Dead with Dawn of the Dead, this time ratcheting up both the gore quotient and the social commentary.
This explosion of explicit gore content was unheard of in the history of cinema, particularly American cinema--and it didn't go unnoticed outside U.S. boundaries. Other countries, most notably Italy, soon followed suit. Italian filmmakers such as Dario Argento, Mario Bava and Lucio Fulci churned out films that in many ways surpassed their American counterparts in terms of their power to both disturb and revolt.
Popular horror fiction writer Stephen King would become a force to be reckoned with in the movie world, as well. Beginning with 1976's Carrie, his novels and short stories would prove a fertile source of film material. Perhaps the greatest of them all would be Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980), quite possibly the best-made fright film ever.
By the end of the 1970s, the new style of horror was firmly in place, and even some of the old subgenres would begin to be reinvigorated by it. Ridley Scott gave us Alien in 1979, capitalizing on the success of Star Wars to bring back the horror/sci-fi movie. And it was the year before that John Carpenter produced a film that would take the territory first mined by Psycho to a whole new level, defining 1980s horror in the process.
Halloween was a new kind of horror flick, specifically, it was a slasher flick, portraying a superhuman, stalker/killer (in this case, Michael Myers) who systemically murders a series of hopeless victims over the course of 90 minutes. Although most still regard it as the high watermark of slasher movies, it spawned literally countless followers.
Chief among them would be Friday the 13th (1980) and A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), the franchises which gave the world Jason Voorhess and Freddy Kreuger, respectively. The 1980s would be dominated by these types of horror movies and their limitless sequels. And although today a generation of fans who grew up on them look back with fondness and nostalgia, at the time they were viewed by critics and older fans as the genre's all-time nadir.
Nevertheless, by the early 1980s horror had begun to struggle again at the box office. Some point to the advent of VHS home video, with most low-budget flicks in general having trouble competing for audience dollars with massive Hollywood productions. Horror would find a new home in the video market, with releases such as The Evil Dead (1981), The Fly (1986) and Re-Animator (1985) becoming run-away hits with audiences that found it easier to pay less and watch in their own homes. In the U.K., this led to the phenomenon of the so-called "video nasties"--movies deemed by British censors to be unacceptable due to home video's availability to children. Naturally, these pictures would become the most sought-after for British horror fans.
The 1980s' other major contribution would be the proliferation of horror comedy. Although humor had always had a place in the genre, never before had gut-wrenching violence been so deftly meshed with black comedy as it was in such pictures as Sam Raimi's Evil Dead II (1987), Dan O'Bannon's The Return of the Living Dead (1985) or Peter Jackson's Bad Taste (1987). With the almost mind-numbing level horror movie violence had achieved, it was a natural reaction to spoof it.
The 1970s and 1980s produced some of the most powerful and disturbing horror movies ever seen. Some would even argue the genre hasn't reached similar heights since. Yet despite changing times, the standard set during those years would become a benchmark to inspire and motivate every horror filmmaker who came after.
Other major releases:

• Black Christmas (1974)
• The Hills Have Eyes (1977)
• Suspiria (1977)
• Phantasm (1979)
• The Brood (1979)
• Zombi 2 (1979)
• Scanners (1981)
• Creepshow (1982)
• The Thing (1982)
• Basket Case (1982)
• Poltergeist (1982)
• Day of the Dead (1985)
• Hellraiser (1987)
• Child's Play (1988)
  

Part 1: The Silent Dead
Part 2: Gods & Monsters
Part 3: It Came from Hollywood
Part 4: The Times, They Are a-Changin'
Soon to come - Part 6: From Post Mortem to Postmodern