Halloween Horror Movie Countdown Reviews

Note: In 2013 I started doing horror movie review countdowns for Halloween, since I love it and horror movies.  I thought it would be cute to do 13.  It became a tradition, although I shortened it to 7 in ’17, only did one in ’16 and ’18 due to time constraints, and shortened it to 3 in ’19.  I don’t plan to do the countdowns anymore, although I do still want to write something special and horror-related for Halloween every year.  Since these lists were originally done for friends and some appreciated them, I don’t feel comfortable junking them even though a lot aren’t very good in my opinion.  So here they are.  Enjoy?

13 FAVORITE HORROR MOVIES!!!!!!!!!!!!! – #13: THE GHOST OF FRANKENSTEIN

I love the whole of what I call Universal’s grand series, comprising the Dracula, Frankenstein and Wolf Man story lines. Of course, one has favorites even within a beloved series and this is one of mine. It’s not really a great film. In fact, it’s pretty campy. Those of you who read up on it might notice it doesn’t have a good reputation. Still, I’ve always enjoyed it a great deal more than the film that precedes it, the well-known but, to my mind, overdone Son of Frankenstein.  The Ghost of Frankenstein is a charming B movie that knows exactly what is expected of it and delivers it in fine style. Lon Chaney, Jr. as the Monster is no Boris Karloff but I think he does a solid job. Actually, the whole cast is great and they really make the film work. In the end though, the whole thing is stolen by Bela Lugosi and Lionel Atwill. Lugosi’s deliciously wicked Ygor first appeared in Son of Frankenstein but in that film the character, although he was a lot of fun, had a slightly peripheral feeling about him. Here Ygor is center stage and the movie is all the more enjoyable for it. Atwill, one of the most underrated actors ever, takes an assembly line evil doctor role and imbues it with humor, menace, and (astonishingly) a hint of real depth. Finally, there is a totally random but marvelously fun supernatural cameo that always brings a smile to my face. Look, this is no masterpiece but it sure is a good time. I sure wish they still made movies like this!

13 FAVORITE HORROR MOVIES!!!!!!!!!!!!! – #12: RAVENOUS

I recall seeing the trailer for this when it came out and being mildly interested. Remember when we used to actually see trailers for small films? Anyway, I forgot about it. About six or seven years ago, a friend mentioned this film and said it was really good. I found it at my library and have been in love ever since! Not a perfect film, by any stretch. The finale, in particular, gets pretty chaotic. Still, the virtues outweigh the flaws. “Ravenous” has a beautifully gritty period setting, fine, refreshingly theatrical acting, and an inventive and memorable score. As someone who often detests movie music, this is one film score I’ve come to cherish. Above all these things, “Ravenous” has an unusual story with a complex and troubling moral. It’s also shamelessly satirical and, at times, laugh-out-loud funny. In my opinion, the links between horror and humor are far too often left unexplored. In truth, this film tries to do a whole lot and doesn’t always succeed. However, it takes chances, shows real courage, refuses to hide behind self-indulgent seriousness. Fewer and fewer horror films (or any films, for that matter) are willing to go out on so many frightening yet wonderful limbs.

13 FAVORITE HORROR MOVIES!!!!!!!!!!!!! – #11: DRACULA’S DAUGHTER

Universal’s sequels had an odd habit of being better than the originals. We’ll come back to that much higher up on my list but this is a solid example as well. While it’s impossible (for me, at least) to not love the landmark 1931 “Dracula” with Bela Lugosi, it has major problems as a film. Contrary to popular belief, most of them were not the result of technological limitations. In any event, that film’s direct sequel, highlighted here, does not have any major horror icons but is thoroughly impressive, if somewhat campy. Gloria Holden is superb in the title role, projecting power and dominance with undercurrents of tragedy. Irving Pichel is great as her menacing sidekick. In fact, the relationship between the two contains some interesting hints of addiction and co-dependence. As someone who is utterly sick of self-doubting, noble vampires, this plot line is a reminder of how restraint in horror, on any front, usually yields rich rewards. Another virtue of this film is the human love plot. That’s right! What is usually the most insipid part of 30s/40s horror is here one of its strengths. Instead of the usual paper thin hero and heroine, we have a strong-willed and mature pair whose dialogue is straight out of a snappy screwball comedy. Edward Van Sloan, one of the best things about the 1931 “Dracula” makes a welcome return Professor Von Helsing. Best of all, director Lambert Hillyer, a B movie auteur if there ever was one, creates a shadowy gothic atmosphere, tinged with nearly art deco elements. On the other hand, his attempts at “British” authenticity are fairly risible. It’s also a shame that Hillyer abandons the moody aura about halfway through in favor of action, but at least it’s handled well. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the (in)famous lesbian scene. Don’t too excited, but it is shockingly frank for the time. This isn’t exactly a deep film but, in its own modest way, it achieves some pretty neat things. And keep your eyes OFF that ring!

13 FAVORITE HORROR MOVIES!!!!!!!!!!!!! – #10: ONIBABA

Honestly, psychological horror is not favored area. I usually prefer outright supernatural material or at least a hint of science-fiction. Still, there have been some great psychological horror films and this is one of my absolute favorites. “Onibaba” combines visual beauty with a penetrating look at the chilling darkness that probably lurks inside every human heart. While the landscapes in the film start out arrestingly gorgeous, they grow more and more sinister as director Kaneto Shindo brilliantly links them to the awful goings on of the plot. Eventually, you start to feel like the land itself is the real monster but it’s really just the utter indifference of nature to human folly and suffering. This is scary enough but, of course, the real monsters are the people in the film. Not that any of them are cartoonishly evil. In fact, in other circumstances they might well be decent enough folks but they are pushed to extremes. How many of us would do better in these terrible circumstances? Some horror fans, raised on bloodier fare, might object to the film’s restrained style but they are dramatically missing the point. The film’s ultimate moral, that just because we make our own monsters doesn’t make monster any less real, goes right to the core of the horror genre’s origin, value, and enduring appeal. And if that mask doesn’t freak you out, you’re tougher than I am!

13 FAVORITE HORROR MOVIES!!!!!!!!!!!!! – #9: DAWN OF THE DEAD (1979)

Oh boy, this one might be controversial! I am one of the few people who considers this the least magnificent of George Romero’s “Dead” trilogy. HOWEVER, that doesn’t mean it ISN’T magnificent! Perhaps the most convincing look at what the end of civilization might look like that I’ve ever seen, Dawn of the Dead combines soul-crushing bleakness with a shockingly merry dose of what can be termed the very definition of gallows humor. The acting, from a cast of mostly unknowns, is pitch perfect and Romero (in his prime, at least) seems to me one of a small number of directors who truly understands how to infuse scenes with a kind of primal dread. Ultimately, the whole film feels like an elaborate tragic symphony. There is still a scherzo, just as there are moments of joy in the worst experiences but, in the end, Dawn of the Dead chronicles, in a chillingly convincing way, the declining slide of the once mighty human race. NOTE ON THE SPECIAL EFFECTS: The zombies are slow! The makeup isn’t perfect! You can tell it’s not real blood! My feeble, atrophied imagination can’t bring itself to do any work and see past technical flaws to the moving and powerful core of a work of art! *ROLLS EYES* People like that will complain that Leonardo didn’t use 3D digital animation…and I have little patience for any of it.

13 FAVORITE HORROR MOVIES!!!!!!!!!!!!! – #8: BEDLAM

There is going to be a lot more Boris Karloff on this list and this is a good place to start. First, a smidgeon of history. In the 1940s, producer Val Lewton was hired by RKO Studios to make horror films that could compete with those of Universal, horror’s reigning champ. Lewton, despite being burdened with awful, audience tested titles, crafted some of the most beautiful, thought-provoking films of the time. While they made money, RKO got nervous about their “artsiness” and hired horror mega-star Karloff to add star power and make sure Lewton stayed on course. While he was initially annoyed, Lewton found in Karloff a kindred spirit and the two continued exploring dark places with artistry and wit that few mainstream films could even approach.  Bedlam was, sadly, Lewton’s last horror film and (obviously) it’s one of my favorites, and my absolute favorite of his work with Karloff. I should say, however, I’m cheating a LITTLE by putting this on a horror list.  Bedlam was certainly marketed as a horror film and it does turn up in horror film guides, what with the horror credentials of Lewton and Karloff. Despite these points, its genre status is somewhat debatable. It’s really a period drama, set in the 18th century. There is nothing supernatural/fantastic/science-fictional and you couldn’t even classify it as psychological horror. Still, I think it fits, albeit in an unusual way. The film does not lack for monsters, that’s for sure. Despite the chirpy, ironic tone, the film is a sharp deconstruction of how want and indifference feed off each other, creating social misery, especially among those people (in this case the mentally ill) who cannot defend themselves. The scene with the boy painted gold (just watch it) is one of the most horrific I’ve ever seen, not so much for what is done to the victim, which is dreadful enough, but for the reaction of many of those observing. But this is a film with hope. Intriguingly, we see how two people, both of whom are in a way victims, react in dramatically different ways to the ugly world they are forced into. By the way, the film is, all around, a marvel. Perhaps the earliest period drama to actually take the period it’s set in seriously, Bedlam is superbly acted and meticulously constructed all the way through. Special shout-outs have to go out to the Hogarth-inspired set decorations and the authentic sounding score. Perhaps most importantly, Karloff is at his VERY best, and that’s saying a whole lot. While his smirking villainy is delightfully chilling, he also manages to make his wicked asylum keeper, comically hen-pecked and, ultimately, almost tragic. In his great performances, and this is one, Karloff always sought to remind us that monsters, however irredeemable come from somewhere, somewhere very familiar.

13 FAVORITE HORROR MOVIES!!!!!!!!!!!!! – #7: HELLRAISER

Anyone following this list might have noticed that, while not rigid, my taste in horror is undeniably gothic. I prefer a straight out supernatural approach and I like it handled with dialogue and, hopefully, a little humor. As a result, the slasher genre has never been my favorite. Seriously no offense is meant to Messrs. Myers, Voorhees, and Krueger, et al or their admirers but that’s just not my cup of tea. That’s why it tickles me that, right in the thick of the slasher and post-slasher era’s heyday came this unashamedly piece of gothic decadence. Author Clive Barker adapted his own (superb) novella The Hellbound Heart and undertakes directing duties himself. This is not always a recipe for success but it sure did work in this case. Using his book more as a template, Barker focuses on memorably disturbing yet always beautiful imagery while never neglecting the characters. Truth be told, there are QUITE a few risible moments in the story but they only get in the way if you’re paying attention. And why would you be doing anything other than getting drunk on the bizarre atmosphere Barker creates? That atmosphere is usually tinged with irony and the actors intentionally, and skillfully, ham things up. Rather than distracting us from the film, this irony makes us appreciate its twisted yet alluring structure even more. A critic once compared Hellraiser to watching a surrealist painting come to life. That’s a solid statement. Think how absurd those paintings would be if they were acted out! Would we care? The absurdity is part of the fun and part of the aesthetic mission of making us focus on form and themes of desire, sexual jealousy, repression, and the true meaning of pleasure. I also HAVE to mention the final moment of cinematic bravura that delighted me as a kid and still makes me grin warmly just thinking about it. ( ; The famous antagonist of this film, Pinhead, has become something of a pop culture cliche. In this film, as in Barker’s original book, he’s much less center stage and all the more fascinating and sinister for it. My advice is to go no further than this film’s first sequel, Hellbound: Hellraiser II.  Honestly, even that, while it has its moments, is unnecessary. I admit I haven’t seen the others but what I’ve read has pretty much guaranteed that won’t happen soon. Stick with the deliciously weird, intentionally funny, and always gorgeously outrageous original.

13 FAVORITE HORROR MOVIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!! – #6: DAY OF THE DEAD (1985)

This film, zombie godfather George Romero’s third look at the flesh-eating corpses that have become a sub-genre unto themselves, did not do very well when first released. Audiences and critics compared it unfavorably with Romero’s beloved earlier zombie films, Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead.  It also suffered due to competition from Dan O’Bannon’s The Return of the Living Dead.  That film, a brilliantly witty satire of the whole zombie genre, was released the same year. It must have seemed fresher and more gleefully subversive than Romero’s film.  The Return of the Living Dead IS indeed a masterpiece but, in my view, Day of the Dead is too. A greater masterpiece, but one that could never hope to compete with the O’Bannon film for some very intriguing reasons. I also adore the other two Romero “Dead” films mentioned earlier but I join a growing number of people who feel Day of the Dead is woefully underrated. Why has it been such a hard film to love? Probably because it’s one of the bleakest horror films ever produced. Many films in my favorite genre aspire to tragedy. They attempt to project an atmosphere of degradation and misery while failing utterly to catch a hint of what creates a true tragic vision. Romero catches it here and it is soul-crushingly masterful. Essentially taking place after the end of the civilization, Day of the Dead pushes even further into a theme Romero presented in his two earlier zombie films: the inability of humanity to cope with major crisis, even when the answers are starring them right in the face and waving their arms around. While many of the human characters in this film are as repulsive (maybe more so) than the zombies, Day of the Dead also features some of the most movingly sympathetic people in any zombie movie. We root for these people, knowing that, even if they win, it really means nothing. One of the most commented upon aspects of the film, the possible hint of a solution to the zombie plague, is one of Romero’s most complex and chilling plot developments. We DO get a glimpse of a very plausible flicker of promise. However, it is bound up with such an absolutely terrifying and (in my view) utterly plausible theory of what it means to be human, that it is virtually certain to be rejected by the tattered remnants of humanity. As usual, people cling to their lies about themselves, even if it means watching the race itself perish from the earth. The flicker fades away (or does it?) and whatever remains is dead, or will be before long. Kafka’s words come back to me: “There is an infinite amount of hope in the universe … but not for us.”

13 FAVORITE HORROR MOVIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!! – #5: THE MUMMY (1932)

Just so we’re all clear, there is only one brief scene with a bandaged shuffler. That particular trope arrived later with a succession of fun but light mummy movies in the ’40s. Also, kindly note the date of this film. Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz, and The Rock, no offense to any of them, are nowhere to be found. No, this is the film that all of those are ostensibly based on. However, they bear no more than a passing resemblance to the original, far less than is usual for remakes or reboots. Why is that? The reason is what makes this original film such a classic, and one of my absolute favorites.  The Mummy is not focused on action but instead on love. It is really a love story about a man who undergoes the most appalling torments for a woman, torments that turn him into the kind of monster she could never love in return, even when he has crossed the centuries to find her. One of the highlights of ’30s horror, this film features a rock solid cast, arresting imagery (courtesy of a great cinematographer turned director), and a unity of plot and theme that is frequently lacking from horror movies of this era. There is no annoying comic relief. The human love story is convincing and never gets in the way. Most crucially, the pace never slackens or speed tracks its way forward. We are able to lose ourselves in the film’s dark and mysterious world, one moment alluring and romantic, the next dangerous and utterly terrifying. At the center this world is Boris Karloff’s performance as Imhotep, the mummy of the title. Karloff is one of my acting heroes and this film was the one that made me such an admirer. It is one of his greatest moments and there is not an off note anywhere in his characterization. As usual in his best roles, Karloff gives us a monster who, while indeed monstrous, became that way because of forces equally dreadful, in this case fanaticism and puritanism. We fear Imhotep but also wish he could be truly free. That he cannot be makes The Mummy a particularly tragic horror film. As such, it could never really be followed up, hence the shuffling bandage-wearers and summer blockbuster re-imaginings. No big deal, I guess. But none of them can touch this melancholy masterpiece.

13 FAVORITE HORROR MOVIES!!!!!!!!!!!!! – #4: I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE

All right, so first things first. If you’re looking for flesh-eaters, look elsewhere. I love ’em too but this just isn’t the place. This film concerns classical zombies, from Afro-Caribbean folklore. That’s what they were till 1968 when the great Night of the Living Dead changed the whole definition of the word. Can’t stand the thought of a zombie movie without rotting, flesh-chomping corpses? Get over it. This is a great film. On that point, I know some people will take one look at this title, smirk, and walk on. BIG mistake, even if you’re not a horror film. Producer Val Lewton had titles foisted on him by the studio. Only rarely did his films end up having much to do with their campy monikers. This is no exception. If you avoid this film because you’re too cool to watch a movie with this kind of title, you are cheating yourself.  I Walked with a Zombie is one of the greatest American films of the 1940s. I love all nine of Lewton’s horror films but, I must admit, it is difficult to pick favorites. Lewton’s films are incredibly economical, which is great, but you do end up wishing there was more to each film. In reality, you need to watch all nine to get his full vision. But, if there was an ultimate Val Lewton film, this would probably be it. Many commentators have noted the connection with Jane Eyre.  It is there but the film is a great work of art in its own right. Visual poetry is a phrase thrown around a BIT too often, but this is the genuine article. If my description of this film seems short compared to others on my horror list, that is because writing words about I Walked with a Zombie really doesn’t make much sense. One isn’t supposed to over-analyze haiku and this is about as close to haiku as a mainstream film is likely to ever get. However, the flawless, almost painterly visual surface does hide some enormous complexities of character and plot. These include meditations on racial intolerance, the conflict between dogmatic religion and the desire to help people, emotional abuse and addiction, and what it means to really love someone. The fact that none of these are really resolved by the unforgettable climax is not a flaw. Rather it’s a testimonial to the ambiguity that hangs over all human beings, whether they care to acknowledge it or not. Please, please, PLEASE get over your disappointment in the lack of flesh-eating and/or your cynicism about the title and experience this masterpiece!!! Final note: I cannot begin to explain how great it is… to watch a film with a score by a composer (Roy Webb)…who was actually mature enough…to know when to SHUT THE HELL UP!!!

13 FAVORITE HORROR MOVIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!! – #3: THE NIGHT STALKER

Ah, for the days when vampires were mean! If you’re burned out on certain sparkly young creatures, (no offense to fans of that unnamed series) this is the perfect bloody antidote. Janos Skorzeny, the vampire in this film, bears a closer resemblance to Ted Bundy than any brooding teen idol. This is, I think, one of the greatest vampire films ever made. Filled with memorably acted characters and fired by a witty script, it is also notable for its unconventional mise en scene and its alarming subtexts. The atmosphere, dominated by shiny, seedy Las Vegas, has an almost neo-noir feel that perfectly fits the story which is structured like a crime drama. That atmosphere also matches the unethical (almost amoral) protagonist who becomes a hero almost in spite of himself. If that sounds upbeat, I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed. This is a shockingly disturbing film. Our protagonist, we realize, is not only battling a powerful, undead fiend. He’s battling a corrupt and entrenched establishment that will stop at nothing to hide its incompetence. Guess which foe proves more dangerous and enduring? In addition to being a lot of fun, “The Night Stalker” packs a great many weighty matters into a tight little space without ever feeling overstuffed or self-righteous. Not bad for a TV movie! Not bad for any movie!

13 FAVORITE HORROR MOVIES!!!!!!!!!!!!! – #2: NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968)

For me, this will always be THE Halloween movie.  It’s one of my only ‘holiday’ movies. I strongly considered making it #1 on my list and the fact that it’s #2 should not be taken as a sign of weakening admiration or affection. Most people know this film was tremendously influential in the horror genre. What’s even more astonishing is that we continue to watch its influence spreading, even today. This is no chapter in a cinematic history. The entire zombie explosion comes straight from this single movie. Many low-budget zombie (or zombie-esque) films continue to adapt this film’s simple but brilliant template, for better or worse. The flesh-eating ghouls that have become almost overly familiar didn’t even exist till director George A. Romero and his colleagues came up with that nasty little idea for this film. At the risk of sounding like an old fuddy duddy, I want to register a complaint against some fans of The Walking Dead I overheard trashing Night of the Living Dead.  Look, if a person doesn’t have enough imagination to see past technical limitations, that’s their loss. However, trashing something that essentially GAVE BIRTH to your favorite show is more than immaturity. It’s outrageous ingratitude. But what of Night of the Living Dead itself? Does it hold up? There are continuity problems. Some of the effects are no longer remotely convincing. A few of the zombies don’t look particularly threatening anymore. Yes, yes, yes, and I don’t care. In my humble opinion, this is not one of those films that had an impact but isn’t very good. It had an impact AND is a masterpiece, a masterpiece that transcends all the dated technical details and sloppy flubs. The film is great because Romero and company understood something that the greatest horror filmmakers have always understood: it’s not really primarily about the monsters. If Night of the Living Dead were about the gore it would be laughable today. It’s about the normal, decent, everyday people and the way they utterly collapse into madness and monstrosity when confronted with something so threatening. What are we underneath it all? This film suggests it’s probably best we never find out. That, when handled as well as this film handles it, is as terrifying today as it was 1968, or 1368 for that matter. It will be just as terrifying in 3068, assuming we get that far. Over the years of my horror obsession, I’ve occasionally been surprised by how highly I regard this film.  Night of the Living Dead was not just influential by creating the flesh-eating zombie sub-genre. It was responsible for shifting horror away from its gothic roots towards a bloodier, nastier aesthetic that includes the slasher and torture porn eras. For the most part, I regret that shift. However, I’ve come to realize that I don’t so much oppose grimness and gore in horror. It’s just that too few horror filmmakers handle these things with anywhere near the skill and wit that Romero demonstrated in this film and its first two sequels. Yes, I wrote “wit.”  Night of the Living Dead is not funny in terms of plot but watch it carefully next time, especially the end. Is the whole thing constructed as a kind of horribly sick joke? Maybe! Bottom line, I love this film and its first two sequels. Avoid Romero’s interesting but fatally flawed fourth entry, “Land of the Dead” and his blase reboot. Stick with the first three, treasures not just of zombie movies or horror films, but of world cinema.

13 FAVORITE HORROR MOVIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!! – #1: BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN

Well, I guess this was inevitable. Tough to find enough words of appreciation for this gem of a film. Director James Whale’s darkly comic vision hasn’t lost one bit of freshness, even as it gets closer and closer to the hundred year mark. Wow, where to begin? You know what, I’m just going to focus on two things. First off, the performance of Boris Karloff. He was apparently uncomfortable about having the Monster talk. His instincts were spot on. His mime work in the original 1931 Frankenstein (a fine film, but not much compared to this one) was stunningly poignant. The smart thing was to continue that. However, Whale knew that Karloff was capable of something even more radically wonderful. He was right. This is a performance for the ages, one that constantly makes me tear up, laugh, and sometimes just marvel at the actor’s artistry and insight into loneliness and suffering. Next, Ernest Thesiger’s portrayal of Dr. Pretorius. It is really the unapologetically evil and utterly delightful Pretorius who makes this film unique. Unlike even the best Universal horrors of the ’30s, Bride of Frankenstein eschews gloomy romanticism for a frenetic, almost proto-Monty Python zaniness. This has often led to the notion that the film is a satire. Actually, it is greater than that. It is an exploration of where horror comes from, launched from within the genre itself and characterized by a kind of insane candor. Dr. Pretorius is the essence of this. Why is the Monster a monster? Does anyone ever give him a chance to be anything else? The only one who doesn’t automatically run away is the wicked Pretorius. As long as we run away and he doesn’t, there will always be plenty of monsters, and plenty of horror, to go around. I know this is kind of disjointed. Look, I just adore this film and it’s hard to talk about it without getting giddy! Just go watch it and forgive my subjective critical writing. To quote the good Dr. Pretorius, it’s my only weakness! Well, subjective criticism and Bride of Frankenstein!

TOP 13 UNDERRATED (OR AT LEAST BETTER THAN YOU MIGHT THINK) HORROR MOVIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!-INTRODUCTION AND #13: CHILDREN OF THE CORN 666: ISAAC’S RETURN

INTRODUCTION:

As I’m sure I’ve made tediously clear by now, I love horror, Halloween, and October. In 2013, to celebrate one of my favorite months, I did a list of my top 13 (hehe) favorite horror movies. It appeared to be well received. For some time, I pondered doing a sequel. Went back and forth, largely because I didn’t want to be an attention hog but…well…  Since I covered my favorites in ’13, I thought I’d devote this list to horror films that I think deserve a bigger audience. However, as my ambiguous title might suggest, this list also included films that exceed low expectations. To put it bluntly, there are some bad films on this list. I cut horror movies (and the whole horror genre) FAR more slack than I do almost anything else, but I argue that the bad films on this list are worth watching for a variety of surprising reasons. This part of the list celebrates the shining, unexpected moments that occur in mediocre films when few (by “few” I mean me) are watching. The higher the list goes, the better the films get till we hit some real masterpieces. Some of the films on my favorites list would fit on this one too but I’m excluding them for the sake of variety. So, without further ado…

 

Hold on, let me explain! In the summer of 2013, I found myself busier than usual. In order to give myself something to look forward to at the end of the week, I rummaged through K-Mart for some cheap horror DVDs. I found one set that contained the Children of the Corn movies, parts 2-7. For some reason, I’d always had a fantasy of watching an entire horror series in order. The price was right so I went for it. I found the original film elsewhere. Now, I was aware of the LOW reputation of this series, but the idea had always intrigued me, and I’d loved Stephen King’s original (and masterful) short story. Perhaps there were some diamonds in the rough. Ho boy! The original film sabotages itself at almost every turn, squandering some solid elements. After that, it’s mostly downhill, and that’s really saying something. 2 and 3 are of the campy, so bad they’re fun variety. 4 is the Halloween 3 of the series and is passable but unexceptional. 5 is excruciatingly bad, and is made worse by watching David Carradine (RIP) debase himself. Naturally, I put part 6 into the player without much excitement. Almost immediately, something caught my attention. What was going on? I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Eventually, it hit me. Style! Not off the charts, but present and palpable. Someone was actually DIRECTING this movie! Kari Skogland, who I understand has gone onto impressive credits in television, creates an atmosphere of inevitable doom, typified by a familiar but well-used, ticking clock motif. The use of autumnal colors also takes advantage (for the first significant time in the series) of the story’s paganistic, harvest-oriented themes, themes which thrill me but, until this entry, had to reside primarily in my imagination (and my memory of King’s excellent story). The film is also aided by likable lead actors, Natalie Ramsey and Paul Popowich. They are admirably backed up by old pros Stacey Keach and Nancy Allen, who must be horrible people since they were obviously being blackmailed into appearing in this movie. In casting terms however, the best part is John Franklin, returning from the first film as Isaac, the demonic prophet of the corn cult. Franklin was one of the first film’s primary assets, and he was criminally wasted. Not so here. Franklin’s scenery-chewing intensity, his conviction, and his charisma are sometimes the only things keeping certain scenes alive. And there’s the rub. For this to actually be a good film, it would have to have more under the hood and it doesn’t. This movie goes absolutely NOWHERE! Gold star to whoever can explain the ending to me! The writing in this film (which Franklin had a hand in) is atrocious and, ultimately, that undermines the positive elements, intriguing though they are. So in the end, another bad sequel to a lousy original. Why put it on the list? Look, if Skogland and her associates had checked out, painted by the numbers, delivered the usual junk, and collected their checks NOBODY would have cared. The fact that they tried to do the best they could, even in a grimy straight to video flick, is pretty cool. Who on earth would ever expect part 6 to be the highlight of a series?! Not me! That deserves a pinch of praise. By the way, part 7 sucks.

TOP 13 UNDERRATED (OR AT LEAST BETTER THAN YOU MIGHT THINK) HORROR MOVIES!!!!!!!!!!!!! – #12: ONE BODY TOO MANY

For some horror fans, the genre was basically born in 1968 with the glorious “Night of the Living Dead.  They’re not satisfied without copious buckets of blood and gore, preferably delivered with a sadistic cackle or two. I get it, and I’m not some old fuddy-duddy. I love gore as much as the next horror hound, but I like to think I’m ecumenical in my tastes. The genre DOES go back a ways, and there WAS good stuff in the softer, gothic days. Just like today, there was also a wide variety of sub-genres. One of the most common (probably due to its cheapness) was the old dark house story. While it’s largely gone the way of the dodo, some of you might recognize the basic tropes, largely due to cartoons. Usually, a gathering of people (eccentric relatives, random strangers) find themselves menaced by strange goings on at a large, forbidding mansion. To give you a sense of the form’s prevalence, be aware that there is a (wonderful) film directed by James Whale (Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, Bride of Frankenstein) actually called The Old Dark House…and it wasn’t the first of its kind! Anyway, there were a whole lot of these things. With a few exceptions, they tend to run together. As someone who spends far too much time seeking out and watching moldy PD films from the 30s and 40s, believe me when I say this. So what’s up with this flick? Well, for the most part it’s standard ODH fare. And yet, in a couple of key ways, it’s not. To start with, we are treated to a deftly comic and winning turn by Jack Haley, the Tin Man himself. His character’s status as a bumbling, and initially disinterested, insurance salesman mistaken for a detective gives this film a surprising proto-noir feeling. Another tremendously appealing aspect is the presence of horror legend Bela Lugosi in a modest character role. On the few occasions when Lugosi got to do a humorous role, he shined and obliterated the campy Dracula image that had brutally typecast him. Some fans may know his work as Ygor in Son of Frankenstein and The Ghost of Frankenstein.  These are both fine examples, and certainly the best-known. In this obscure movie however, Lugosi doesn’t just break out of his usual image; he takes it head on. His butler character looks like Dracula, but acts like the Count’s befuddled understudy. It must have been refreshing for Lugosi to tweak the albatross around his neck and it’s great fun to watch. Smaller virtues include a wonderful fast pace, nice use of shadowy cinematography, and a cast that seems to know it’s in a pretty silly film. In the end, the dull ODH tropes reassert themselves and nothing much of note happens. I honestly have little more than a pleasant memory vibe from the film. But that’s pretty solid considering how many of its cousins fade into the woodwork. I know nothing about this film’s origins or production so I can’t speculate on how these unusual elements came to be. Maybe they were just pure luck, but they don’t feel that way. Either way, I like to think of some movie-goer in 1944, ducking into the theater just to kill time, seeing this and saying “Ha! That was a little different!”

TOP 13 UNDERRATED (OR AT LEAST BETTER THAN YOU MIGHT THINK) HORROR MOVIES!!!!!!!!!!!!! – #11: HOUSE OF DRACULA

Although still popular, by 1945 the Universal horror cycle was sputtering aesthetically. The studio had first done a monster combo with 1943’s Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man.  That film is OK in some places, not so much in others, and the first half is better than the second, never a good sign. However, the money was good so Universal kept the two monsters together, and awkwardly inserted Count Dracula, in House of Frankenstein (1944). While campy fun, that film is juvenile and sloppily made. The critical consensus is that these films helped ruin a once great franchise. And, after one last feeble effort (this film), the gothic origins of the classic Universal monsters went out of style. While the big three (Count Dracula, the Frankenstein Monster, and the Wolf Man) would reunite once more in 1948 for the wonderful horror comedy Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein, they and their gothic/supernatural brethren had to cede their place to the Hiroshima/Nagasaki inspired sci-fi monsters of the 1950s. For the most part, I fully concur with these views…except on House of Dracula.  In no way is it the equal of the earlier Universal masterpieces. It’s far too tame, there’s way too much stock footage, and any film that wastes the magnificent Lionel Atwill needs some serious knocks on the head. Still, in my view this film at least allowed these beloved ghouls to end their series with a degree of dignity (Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein is great, but I don’t consider it canon). Despite having the same writer and director as the (to put it far too kindly) loosely constructed House of Frankenstein, House of Dracula delivers a firm, engaging story that actually makes the monster rally approach (kind of) work. I’ll also forgive it’s ignoring Dracula’s death by sunlight in the last film (although it’s always bothered me) because that means we get to enjoy John Carradine again as the Count. All honor to Bela Lugosi, but Carradine more than holds his own. While he more closely resembles Bram Stoker’s original, less sexy vampire, Carradine still exudes a magnetic intensity that makes his dangerous allure plausible. His Beethoven-underscored seduction of the film’s heroine at a piano is a major highlight. Casting is overall a strength. Skelton Knaggs delivers a few doses of refreshing humor as a village busybody and Jane Adams is fantastic as a hunchbacked assistant whose deformity, for once, does not detract from her humanity or turn her into a villain. Her character’s bravery and self-sacrifice show a startling departure from the loathsome bigotry against the physically disabled that often characterizes older horror films. The unfairly underrated Lon Chaney Jr. is in fine form as Lawrence Talbot, AKA the Wolf Man. If you’re not moved by his speech about the hope that keeps him going, well…maybe it’s not Shakespeare but it moves me, so there!  However, the finest performance in the film is undoubtedly that of Onslow Stevens as the requisite scientist Dr. Edelmann. Notice I did not write “mad scientist.” Edelmann is really more of a Dr. Jekyll character, with the twist of being totally innocent of any responsibility for his plight. Stevens’ depiction of a kind man slowly turning into a monster and tormented by the knowledge of what he is doing against his will, has a note of real tragedy about it. That’s well above the standards of the usual characterizations in later Universal horror films. Stevens himself was a somewhat tragic figure, dying under suspicious circumstances in a nursing home. I’ve often thought of that and wished that his talents got a little more recognition. Cheers to him! And cheers to this film which, while no masterpiece, gives three iconic characters their proper sendoff.

TOP 13 UNDERRATED (OR AT LEAST BETTER THAN YOU MIGHT THINK) HORROR MOVIES!!!!!!!!!!!!! – #10: WOLFEN

This film came out in 1981 (when yours truly made his debut on the planet), a year which saw an intriguing werewolf boom. Two indisputable classics, Joe Dante’s The Howling and John Landis’  An American Werewolf in London also came out that year. They’re both great films, but they have left this poor little flick in a lurch it doesn’t deserve, for all of its issues.  Wolfen is usually remembered, if at all, as the lackluster third film in the werewolf explosion. This is a mistake right off since this isn’t even really a werewolf story! The title creatures are really something else entirely. What they are is what gives Wolfen its unique edge. A few admirers of the landmark documentary Woodstock might know this movie as the second and last major effort of director Michael Wadleigh. That connection is not as bizarre and random as it might seem at first. Wadleigh weaves themes of Native American mythology and urban decay to make a passionate, but not preachy statement of environmentalism. In a way, Wolfen is horror gone green. A series of brutal murders revolving around a construction project shocks New York City. Following some mysterious clues, a maverick police detective discovers links to a long hidden civilization, one that might have just had enough of the human race’s jolting arrogance. Despite the gritty settings and sharp political edge, Wadleigh infuses the film with the sense of a philosophical meditation. It is also filled with remarkable beauty, even at its ugliest, as is the earth itself. All in all, Wolfen is a refreshingly grown-up horror film. However, I can’t help feeling that it would have been better off if Wadleigh had made a full-blown art house movie. As it is, it teeters uncomfortably between avant-garde tone poem and mainstream thriller. I have long meant to read Whitley Strieber’s novel The Wolfen, which this film is based on. The book probably provides many details and characterizations that would make the story intelligible. That may make for a fine piece of literature (Strieber has a strong reputation in the horror field) but I do think Wadleigh was right to give his adaptation such an elusive feel. Part of his theme is the vastness of the unknown, and humanity’s foolishness in assuming it has mastered every aspect of nature. Again, it would have been fascinating if Wadleigh had just dropped all the characters and most of the narrative. They’re the weakest parts of the film. Even the great Albert Finney, in the lead role, feels distant and hazy. With all these flaws, Wolfen is not easily forgotten once seen. I’ve rarely felt as disturbed and unsettled after watching a horror movie. Thinking about this film again, I find myself remembering the question many children have heard from disapproving adults: “just who do you think you are?” In Wolfen, that query takes on grander, and very frightening depths.

TOP 13 UNDERRATED (OR AT LEAST BETTER THAN YOU MIGHT THINK) HORROR MOVIES!!!!!!!!!!!!! – #9: CTHULHU

Ah, Lovecraft! Next to Poe, he might be the most influential horror author. He is certainly the apotheosis of the gothic tradition. Yet in life and art, he insisted on making things exceedingly difficult for himself. I’ve often amused myself thinking of Lovecraft submitting work to a modern writers’ workshop. The adjectives alone would get him expelled! Recently when I taught his story Celephaïs, a student explained his reaction by holding his hands to his eyes, as if to block sunlight. Yes, by all standards of writing as decided by a group of academics who had a story published in a university lit mag twenty years ago, Lovecraft’s work should have slipped into oblivion long ago. But it hasn’t. It rises from the depths, propelled by his mastery, always finding fertile ground in some of the darker corners of human thought. For while Lovecraft was a pro at producing creepy monster stories, his horror goes much further. He was a significant philosopher of nihilism, flinging an often repellent but usually eloquent challenge to almost every aspect of progress. Even if we reject everything he stood for (and we should), the poetic resonance of his rage at the decline of what he held dear can only be ignored by those arrogant enough not to care that not everyone feels triumphant in the “bright future.” None of this is particularly easy to take. Hence the abundance of Lovecraft fandom converting his work into one more form of pop culture. No harm in that; it often happens to difficult authors. With Lovecraft, it’s been happening since shortly after his death when his well-meaning friend August W. Derleth tried to mute the amorality of Lovecraft’s vision. The direct descendents of this can be found in the plush toys and board games with “Lovecraftian” themes, in films (like the insipid Hellboy) that have been described as inspired by Lovecraft and bear no resemblance to his bleak, tragic world. Again, nothing really wrong with any of this. Some of this stuff can even be quality work, but they’re not Lovecraft. Some films, like the classic Ghostbusters, at least resemble Lovecraft’s invented mythology, but even they come nowhere near the dark heart of his work. No mainstream film could, nor could they ignore characterization the way Lovecraft did, as part of his attempt to depict humanity as floating alone through an indifferent universe. Well, I’ve always maintained that not every literary work NEEDS conversion into film. But wait! What have we here? In 2007, a group of independent filmmakers (and Tori Spelling, just deal with it) made a (very) loose adaptation of Lovecraft’s magnificent story The Shadow Over Innsmouth.  They updated it to modern times and added an LGBT-themed storyline. Like Lovecraft, they seemed determined to make life difficult for themselves. Maybe that was how things started going right. For maybe the only time, we have a film that makes an attempt at having a genuinely Lovecraftian worldview. But a word of warning: despite the title, anyone looking for a cool octopus creature is going to be sorely disappointed! Instead, we have the scion of the mysterious Marsh family, long exiled from his clan for being gay, trying to sort out his destiny against the backdrop of bizarre global events that might signal a reckoning for civilization. While this film attempts to avoid the usual monster cliches, it doesn’t skimp on the creepiness. Some scenes positively throb with an otherworldly eeriness. However, the true horror comes from much more disturbing places, in a manner which is truly, not faux, Lovecraftian.  Cthulhu peers into the ugly side of family honor as it manifests itself as an obsession with blood purity. This simultaneously honors and satirizes Lovecraft’s own fixations. Perhaps most notably, the film actually tries to approximate Lovecraft’s lack of characterization. While there is a sympathetic protagonist, we are often distanced from him by long visual tableaus of breathtaking beauty, but cold remoteness. At times, it feels like we are privileged observers of mythical events in the distant past, almost like we got to watch Biblical stories or the Trojan War as they really were, but without being fully able to abandon the legendary significance they have for us. These are major achievements, but the film falls short of full greatness. This has NOTHING to do with its low budget, but with a lack of experience behind the camera. Unfortunately, this caused some serious missteps, which are discussed with admirable candor on the DVD commentary track. Several scenes become chaotic to the point that the film’s tone is badly muddled. Some serious cutting was needed, because while not exceptionally long, the film often feels bloated. Finally, while the acting is mostly rock solid, some of the previously mentioned issues cause moments of unintentional comedy in certain performances. However, while all of this is frustrating, the virtues of “Cthulhu” outweigh the flaws. It all comes together stunningly in the final scenes, which contain a twist on the origins of the family’s homophobia that can only be described as devilishly original. And it’s fun to see a nod to Lovecraft’s preferred pronunciation of Cthulhu! Despite all the problems, Cthulhu manages to capture more of Lovecraft on film than virtually any other movie. That may not be necessary, but I’m glad they did it. Like Lovecraft himself, Cthulhu knows that the grim parts of life don’t vanish because we all agree they should. I believe its reputation, while it may always remain modest, will rise in the coming years, just as Lovecraft refuses to vanish, much to the consternation of all right-thinking critics. Because of course, “with strange aeons even death may die.”

TOP 13 UNDERRATED (OR AT LEAST BETTER THAN YOU MIGHT THINK) HORROR MOVIES!!!!!!!!!!!!! – #8: THE LAIR OF THE WHITE WORM

Ken Russell was the kind of director the film world today seems determined to obliterate. He made the movies he wanted to make, the way he wanted to, and when he wanted to. If he wanted to do a tastefully erotic, but scrupulously faithful D. H. Lawrence adaptation, he did it. If he wanted to make a film about sexual violence and the occult so horrific that even the avant-garde crowd fled from it (yet so correct in Christian doctrine that a Catholic priest declared it acceptable), he did it. If he wanted to make inaccurate, zany biopics of great composers, or a version of a popular musical comedy starring the model Twiggy, he did it. In 1988, he wanted to make a campy horror movie, so he did…and in the process alienated some cineaste admirers. They could endure his weirdness, but not if he sullied himself with something as lowbrow as GENRE films! (Russell made another camp horror flick not long before this one called Gothic.  Very good, but this one is superior in my opinion.) But Ken Russell didn’t make movies for the art house crowd anymore than he made them for the masses. He made them for himself, to express and engage with what mattered to him. This did not always lead to masterpieces (witness the hideous Salome’s Last Dance), but his work was always brave and honest. Luckily, the campy horror movie he wanted to make is also a wonderful film!  The Lair of the White Worm takes its title and a very few points of inspiration from the last novel by Bram Stoker, of Dracula fame. However, to my knowledge the film is largely original. Indeed it’s difficult to imagine a movie the uptight Victorian author would hate more than this one! It feels far more to the taste of Stoker’s frenemy Oscar Wilde. Russell’s film is an orgy (in more ways than one) of pure, joyous camp. Many who know me will know I have my prudish moments, but if you can’t howl with enjoyment through this movie, I don’t know. Dealing with the old legend that inspired Stoker, Russell gives us a riotous tale of kinky vampires worshiping a phallic, pagan god in the English countryside. Somewhere, James Whale is smiling! Will the heir to the D’Ampton estate and his friends be able to stop the raunchy demons in time? If you’re wondering, I have a more important question for you: who the hell cares? Plot takes a backseat in this one to wave after wave of off the wall fun, catchy music, and outrageous in-jokes. Once in a while, Russell throws in some disappointing nods to more conventional horror structure, but not often enough to ruin the fun. It’s also enjoyable to watch future stars like Hugh Grant and Peter Capaldi in a movie they had better consider a career high point or I will lose all respect for them. Is there anything deeper going on here? Maybe, maybe not. But the world would be a poorer place without the kind of guffaws this film can provide.

TOP 13 UNDERRATED (OR AT LEAST BETTER THAN YOU MIGHT THINK) HORROR MOVIES!!!!!!!!!!!!! – #7: NADJA

Full disclosure here: this one brings back A LOT of memories. If you can, cast your minds back to 2000. I had just started college at Manhattanville. There were a bunch of sign up booths for clubs. I joined the Film Club, mainly because Zack, the friendly guy who helped me with my computer, urged me to. Anyway, at the first meeting I attended, we watched this movie. “Arthouse” movies, at least the ones with unusual visual styles, were fairly new to me. The fact that it was a vampire flick helped a great deal since I really liked those (not that I would have admitted it then). I enjoyed Nadja a great deal, but it’s taken me much longer, and a couple of other viewings, to really appreciate it. One thing that really annoys me in cinema is when films do bizarre loop-de-loops with the camera just to make people go “Ohhh, deep!” Grouchy and conservative? You bet, and proud of it!  However, while that ticks me off, what really INFURIATES me is when horror films are nihilistic and vicious for pure shock value. If you have something to say that requires that, do it. But don’t be gratuitously ugly just to look “hard edged,” especially when it’s against the grain of the story you’re telling. I’ve seen way too many horror films do that and it is pathetic. Well, here we have a director, Michael Almereyda, who has had his pretentious moments. Witness his off-putting version of Hamlet with Ethan Hawke. At first glance, this film would appear to suffer from the “artsiness” for its own sake that bugs me. It’s in black and white (Ohhh!), faces are often difficult to make out, at times viewers are clearly meant to be unsure about what physical space the characters are occupying. However, Nadja soon shows us that these unsettling techniques are not just for show; they bring us deep inside the dangerously seductive world of the title character. That character (an incredible performance by Elina Löwensohn) is no average vampire. She turns out to be the daughter of a familiar Transylvanian count. On the one hand, that revelation is deliciously funny.  Nadja is not a film that takes itself particularly seriously. That is a breath of air it would be a dramatic understatement to call “fresh.” The quietly humorous undercurrents are often brought out in the person of Professor Van Helsing, delightfully played by Peter Fonda (yes, you read that right). On the other hand, Nadja’s world is not just one of gothic mood and clever jokes. This film is basically a rethinking of Dracula’s Daughter, a favorite of mine. While that film only hints at the tragedy of being a child of Dracula, “Nadja” gently probes the loneliness of the undead. The fact that this often feels extremely sad without turning into annoying, navel-gazing angst is a real tribute to the filmmakers’ delicacy and taste. As the film progresses, the images look less gimmicky and begin to take on a real sense of the poetic, matching the story’s incremental delving into more weighty themes. The scene depicting the origins of Nadja and her brother is a visual marvel that, I for one, found unforgettable. *SLIGHT SPOILER ALERT* I remember watching this the first time and thinking the film was headed to a very dark place, despite the humor. To my surprise, Nadja defied my expectations. In a move that I have become more grateful for with every passing year, the film rises to a finale of radiant joy. Like almost everything else in Nadja, this is accomplished with finesse and a soft touch. What we have here, unusual for both arthouse films and horror movies, is an understated film of modest goals. For all that, it’s pretty damned good! Wherever you are, thanks Zack!

TOP 13 UNDERRATED (OR AT LEAST BETTER THAN YOU MIGHT THINK) HORROR MOVIES!!!!!!!!!!!!! – #6: THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL

If you asked random people on the streets about Satanic ritual attacks, a good number of decent, intelligent folks would probably say SOME group had done SOMETHING, SOMEWHERE. SOMETHING happened with kids and devil-worshipers back in the 70s or 80s, right? In reality, almost nothing happened. Scratch that! Something did happen. The publication of Ira Levin’s wonderful novel Rosemary’s Baby touched off a wave of Satan-themed horror novels and movies that lasted through the 80s. By a pure coincidence (sarcasm intentional), reports started coming in of actual crimes committed by Satanists and related groups. This did actually lead to false arrests and convictions, but that’s an ACTUAL horror and far too depressing to get into here. Bottom line, the “Satanic Panic” was 99% hot air, mixed with insecure religious bigotry and a hefty dose of too much time spent in the movie theater. And yet, to this day, many think there was SOMETHING to it. Their vision of what exactly happened probably looks a lot like a movie…or rather a few movies. That’s where this awesome flick comes in.  The House of the Devil takes place in the 1980s at the height of the Satanism scare. Those fears are central plot elements. But writer-director Ti West didn’t stop there. In a grin-inducing satirical twist, he stylistically and thematically references numerous films of the time period and sub-genre his film takes place in. While this leads to plenty of enjoyable in-jokes, its purpose is much more serious. The panic largely came from fiction. By converting it back into fiction, The House of the Devil confronts us with the trajectory of how and why pure fantasy means so very much to us.

TOP 13 UNDERRATED (OR AT LEAST BETTER THAN YOU MIGHT THINK) HORROR MOVIES!!!!!!!!!!!!! – #5: KWAIDAN

With this one, I’ve got some more personal memories to share. If you don’t like those, check out for a while.  Some of you may recall that in 2011 and 2012, we didn’t really have Halloween on the east coast. In ’11 we had a freak blizzard and in ’12 we had Hurricane Sandy. Halloween is dear to my heart, so these two things really bummed me out. In fact, the list I did last year was partially inspired by a desire to celebrate the first Halloween we’d had around here since 2010. That year was probably the darkest, most miserable time in my life thus far. So while we had Halloween, I wasn’t able to truly enjoy it. 2011 and 2012 were much better times and I was psyched when October rolled around. Alas, I had to wait. Anyway, back in ’10, despite my frame of mind, I was determined to do something for Halloween so, inspired by conversations with a friend, I watched this creepy anthology, based on several stories by the eccentric author Lafcadio Hearn. I have seldom seen a film more beautiful. The visuals in Kwaidan are the equal of several paintings by the old masters. This is a cliche but, seriously, they will take your breath away. A number of hardcore horror people are probably skeptical. Don’t let the beauty fool you! This is a film with incredibly sharp fangs. Its use of sound is one of its most masterful, and terrifying, attributes. Few films, horror or otherwise, have any idea how to use silence. Many seem afraid of it.  Kwaidan uses it to devastating effect. That silence had me practically climbing the walls in certain scenes, especially during what I think is the most horrific scream ever depicted in a movie. Pretty dark? Yes, but huzzah to a film that gave me 183 minutes of aesthetic pleasure during a very dark reality.

TOP 13 UNDERRATED (OR AT LEAST BETTER THAN YOU MIGHT THINK) HORROR MOVIES!!!!!!!!!!!!! – #4: HOUR OF THE WOLF

Many of us probably know and love Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining.  I think certain scenes in it are among the most terrifying ever filmed. Well, remember those seemingly normal but increasingly malevolent ghosts who start multiplying as the film goes on? Imagine being trapped with them for a whole movie! That’s part of what legendary director Ingmar Bergman does here. I’m not saying it’s better than The Shining.  It just reminds me of it, and seems like it’s sort of what the Kubrick film would be if Kubrick had been in a REALLY, REALLY bad mood. Bergman masterfully blends his trademark surrealism with the trappings of gothic horror to create a skin-crawling tale of alienation, madness, and mystery. There is no resolution in “Hour of the Wolf.” We are left gazing into the void, as we so often are in life, and asking questions for which there are no real answers. Aside from its intrinsic value, Hour of the Wolf is a great counterargument to the idea that horror films cannot be artistic. It is quite remarkable how similar it is to Bergman’s better known films. The horror elements are only upped slightly. However, they were probably upped enough to annoy his snootier fans. Luckily, Bergman was too great a filmmaker to care.

TOP 13 UNDERRATED (OR AT LEAST BETTER THAN YOU MIGHT THINK) HORROR MOVIES!!!!!!!!!!!!! – #3: GANJA & HESS

A few people might remember me babbling about this film back in college. I’d heard rumors about it for years. It was known as the only other film containing a leading performance by Duane Jones, famous for starring as Ben in Romero’s Night Of The Living Dead, one of my favorite movies. It was also supposed to be an unusual take on the vampire story. I absolutely love vampire movies, but I often find they become cliched pretty fast. Naturally I was intrigued but, pre-college, I had no way of gaining access to Ganja & Hess.  Then I spent much of college pretending not to care about horror movies. Finally, near the end I dropped that nonsense and this movie came back into my consciousness. It was then that I learned of its troubled release history. Luckily, by that time it was possible to see Ganja & Hess as it was meant to be seen and, even more luckily, I did. Now, a number of films have tried to tinker with the typical vampire mythology. I’ve highlighted some of them on this list and on my list from last year. However, I sincerely doubt that any has gone as far as this film. The work of the tragically short-lived writer/director/actor Bill Gunn, Ganja & Hess is an awfully difficult film to describe. I don’t think I had any success urging it on people ten years ago, but I’m going to have another go at it. When I first watched this, I understood very little. I only felt in my gut that I had just witnessed something alien and monumental, something that made its own rules and dared anyone to object. While I think I get the film better now, this review still might not work. Let’s start with the easy stuff.  Ganja & Hess is the story of renowned anthropologist Dr. Hess Green (Jones). Green, an uptight intellectual, moves in an upper class world in which he is one of the few African Americans. He has made a special study of the ancient African civilization of Myrthia. Myrthia was apparently a brutal and imperialistic society that believed in consuming the blood of its enemies and slaves. In a struggle with his mentally disturbed research assistant George Meda (Gunn), Green is stabbed with a Myrthian dagger. He then becomes what we would call a vampire (the word is never used in the film), in that he cannot be killed and has an insatiable desire for human blood. Green embarks on a double life as a tormented serial killer, until George Meda’s wife Ganja (Marlene Clark) comes looking for her husband. She and Green quickly develop an attraction, and their relationship takes them both to strange new places. Among many things remarkable about Ganja & Hess is the fact that Gunn could have easily made an excellent, off-kilter film with the plot I just described. In fact, I understand there is excised material that sketches out the story. This material formed the basis of an alternate version of the film prepared without Gunn’s participation. Done this way, Gunn’s film could have been a vampire movie with some interesting and unusual undercurrents. But Bill Gunn didn’t want that. He wanted to make a film that plunged headlong into the murky depths of its themes. His deliberately elliptical style and often shockingly bizarre narrative techniques (crucial plot points are advanced by way of the soundtrack) make Ganja & Hess feel like a dream, a dream where we confront emotions and thoughts in their purest forms. What are those all about in this movie? There are far too many to list, but the central idea in the film is the conflict between the instinct to rule and the instinct to serve. Every human has this conflict within them, as does every human society. What happens when a society is dragged into slavery (as so many Africans were), forced for centuries to hide or suppress the ruling instinct? On the other hand, what happens when the serving instinct is denigrated in the name of pride and strength? Ganja & Hess shows us the darkest answers to these questions, symbolized by the Christian cross and the Myrthian dagger, but offers no convenient outs, only the choice that every individual and civilization must make sooner or later. Committing to rule leads to cruelty and violence. Committing to serve leads to impotence and annihilation. Trying to balance the two leads to confusion and alienation. Hess Green and Ganja Meda both make choices with serious consequences, but any desire to judge them should be tempered by the knowledge that they are than mere characters; they contain multitudes and are legion. This kind of film is often not kind to actors, but Ganja & Hess is full of magnificent performances, likely a result of Gunn’s remarkable ability to unite his collaborators behind his unique vision. There really are no weak links in the cast but I have to focus on Duane Jones. Anyone who ever loved his performance in NOTLD should see this film so they know that was no accident. Cinema suffered a terrible loss when Jones decided to focus on teaching and theater. His depiction of the troubled, introverted academic is filled with immense power. His performance is also one of extreme physicality, often at odds with Green’s personality. Jones pulls off this doubling flawlessly. I honestly can’t think of another actor who could have done it. Alright, so have I sold you on the movie? I don’t know what I think of this review. At least it’s sincere, but I know full well that to really appreciate this remarkable film you just have to watch it. Nothing I read really prepared me for it and I don’t think I’ve done it for any of you. If you see it, then maybe we can talk. One last thought however: when I mentioned that Ganja & Hess often feels like I dream, I realize it’s more like a particular kind of dream, namely a nightmare. That’s an appropriate cliche for a horror film, but for this film it is the real deal. I recently had a nightmare. As it was going on, everything I saw and heard seemed new but dreadfully familiar somehow. THAT’S what watching Ganja & Hess is like. We don’t recognize anyone in it, but we know them. We’ve always known them. And we always will.

TOP 13 UNDERRATED (OR AT LEAST BETTER THAN YOU MIGHT THINK) HORROR MOVIES!!!!!!!!!!!!! – #2: ISLE OF THE DEAD

The great producer-auteur Val Lewton had it pretty rough. First off, the titles of his films were predetermined, often ridiculous, and frequently unrelated to his scripts. Try convincing “serious” film buffs that The Curse of the Cat People is a sensitive masterpiece about childhood. Trust me, you won’t get far. His films were also low budget horror movies, which meant they were automatically considered inferior by film critics whose idea of analysis was repeating what they heard from someone else. (There are still far too many of these “critics.”) At the same time, I get the distinct impression that Lewton is often viewed with suspicion by horror people. He stubbornly defied horror conventions, eschewing easy scares for under the skin psychological fear, and sometimes not even including an obvious monster. Genre fans, of which I am one, are known for being somewhat territorial. We don’t like it when we hear that something is like what we love “but better.” We think what we love is fine as is, thank you very much! Hence, the weird reaction to Lewton from the horror field. James O’Neill, author of the 1994 book Terror on Tape refers to Lewton in a sidebar as often making “pretentious” movies. He then proceeds to give positive reviews to almost all of Lewton’s work. In the DVD commentary to the Universal classic The Wolf Man, film historian Tom Weaver castigates Lewton for plagiarizing that film for his Cat People.  This is an interesting statement since it is quite well-known that Lewton’s studio specifically instructed him to basically rip off The Wolf Man! (Weaver also ignores the fact that the two films only superficially resemble each other). On the commentary track for Lewton’s Bedlam, one of my favorites, Weaver dismisses all but two of Lewton’s films without explanation. However, none of Lewton’s nine horror films comes in for as much scorn as Isle of the Dead.  DVD Verdict is one of my favorite websites, but it published an astonishingly foolish review of this film which made me suspect the critic had only half-watched it. Is Isle of the Dead devoid of problems? Hardly. Production had to shut down while star Boris Karloff recovered from surgery. There are moments that feel rough around the edges and the finale is somewhat rushed. In my view, anyone who pays more attention to these minor problems than this film’s overriding power has their cinematic priorities seriously messed up. To be a little more charitable, part of the confusion might lie in the fact that Lewton’s horror films, even more than those of most auteurs, are inextricably linked. There really is no “ultimate” Lewton movie. To see just one is going to feel incomplete. To “get” Val Lewton, you have to see all nine. Two of Lewton’s major themes are the conflict between aged cynicism and youthful hope, and the danger of too much reliance on “the letter of the law.” Both are strongly present in Isle of the Dead.  The films drips with a carefully cultivated atmosphere, simultaneously gloomy and beautiful. Much of this is due to Lewton’s startlingly accurate recreation of the painting from which his film takes its title. That painting is by symbolist painter Arnold Bocklin, a favorite artist of mine, and its fun to see Bocklin’s creepy self-portrait make a brief cameo in one scene. Still, solid as the rest of the cast is, the film might be little more than atmosphere were it not for its star. I’ve argued before that Boris Karloff was one of the greatest actors of all time, and I’ll argue it again now. He WAS one of the greatest actors of all time. Not “in horror movies,” but including all genres, and all time periods. Here he plays Greek General Nikolas Pherides, a genuinely kind man who has dedicated himself to his country with such ferocity that he operates as two people. One is a friendly, generous fellow. The other is a cold-hearted enforcer. Karloff’s depiction of this effective split personality is spot-on. When he finds himself facing an enemy he can’t fight or outmaneuver (a deadly plague), Pherides’ dual identities start to crumble. His strictly logical worldview also buckles, causing him to turn to long buried superstitions in order to fulfill what he feels is his mission. Watching this tragedy play out on Karloff’s flinty features and in his increasingly desperate eyes is not a pleasant experience, but it is masterful acting. What makes the film so dark is the fact that the tragedy of death is presented as inevitable. Still, General Pherides could have lost that battle heroically. Instead, he goes down as a pathetic fanatic, failing to heed what he is told early in the film: “Laws can be wrong, and laws can be cruel, and the people who live only by the law are both wrong and cruel.”

TOP 13 UNDERRATED (OR AT LEAST BETTER THAN YOU MIGHT THINK) HORROR MOVIES!!!!!!!!!!!!! – #1: POSSESSION

Some people who talk to me have gotten the idea that I don’t like non-linear, elliptical, or surreal films and plays. That isn’t true. What I don’t like are pieces that employ these techniques for no particular reason. When that happens, I see very little artistry, just a kind of dull trickery. I’d take a shallow, but extremely well-made traditional film over a thoughtless and sloppy avant-garde one. At least the former shows craft and dedication. The latter is just trying to be clever. None of this has anything to do with avant-garde techniques themselves. They can be instruments of immense aesthetic power in the hands of true artists. That’s the case with this remarkable film. If I ever had to prove that I don’t just like traditional films, this would probably be my exhibit A!  Possession is an incredibly disturbing, frequently confusing movie. At core, it is a story of a spy whose marriage is falling apart. The collapse of love and what is left in its destructive wake are probably the easiest themes to grasp. Director Andrzej Zulawski was, I believe, inspired to make the film after his own divorce. However, Possession goes even deeper, in ways that are brutally honest, perceptive, and artistically challenging. The dark secret at the heart of the collapsing marriage in the story is a distorted mirror image of the festering political secrets in the spy Mark’s (Sam Neill) background. We never really know what’s going on in Mark’s world of espionage. Indications are it is incredibly dangerous. But whereas in that world, Mark is a privileged insider, when it comes to his wife Anna, he is forced to take on the role of a baffled spectator. Even the people who hold the world in their hands have to deal with those they love most. If they don’t understand them, they don’t really know much at all. Neill’s performance is great, but pride of place has to go to Isabelle Adjani as both Anna and the estranged couple’s son’s teacher Helen. (Anna and Helen are different emotionally but inexplicably identical physically). Zulawski clearly asked a great deal of Adjani. No one could have blamed her for holding back. The fact that she delivered fully, without flinching, is a testament to her ability and passion. One scene with Adjani (if you see Possession, you’ll know what I’m talking about) contains perhaps the bravest performance on film I’ve ever seen. A few people might be wondering how this is a horror movie. I could go on and on about the monsters within people, but that would be selling this masterpiece short. I’ll just settle for assuring those doubters, there IS a genuine monster, as in scary creature monster, in this film. It was even designed by special effects maestro Carlo Rambaldi, of Alien and Close Encounters of the Third Kind fame. What that monster really is, whether it’s as much of a threat as the lies, cruelty, and failures to connect that we see elsewhere in the film, are questions Possession puts to us. It does not answer any of them. That, like deciding whether to view our loved ones as individuals or as extensions of ourselves, is left up to us.

13 RANDOM HORROR MOVIES!!!!!!!!!!!!! – INTRODUCTION AND #13: THE EVES

INTRODUCTION: In 2013 and 2014, I had a lot of fun doing Halloween horror movie countdowns. In 2013, the theme was my thirteen (hehe) favorite horror movies.  In 2014, I did thirteen underrated (or at least better than you might think) horror movies.  In 2015…  Honestly, I wasn’t sure a list would happen at all. Finally, I decided to go through with it, but the films were TOTALLY random. Some of the reviews were also quite brief.  Anyway, you may not find this list quite as well worked out, although a few of the reviews are, but I do so love Halloween, I just couldn’t resist. So…

 

Why, you ask? I’m gay, and I love horror movies, which should be no surprise to anyone. This movie has no LGBT themes, aside from a couple of juvenile gay jokes, so what the hell am I talking about? Well, you’ve probably heard and/or read of guys watching horror movies for a glimpse of scantily clad young ladies. It’s been a prerequisite for many horror films since the slasher era of the 1980s. We gay male fans are often out of luck. However, I’ve always enjoyed glancing at certain horror films with good looking guys in them, despite the fact that they’re rarely dwelt on with the same sexist gaze. This film has several very attractive young gentlemen in it, more than usual. I enjoy looking at them. That’s pretty much it. Otherwise, there’s the usual crudeness and vulgarity. There’s a good amount of garbled, fundamentalist Christian doctrine, demonstrating that the writers know next to nothing about the religious views they think they’re so clever in mocking. On the plus side? Um, well, the ending (the VERY ending) actually kind of surprised me. And did I mention the hot guys? If I didn’t, I’m not sure why I started writing this.

13 RANDOM HORROR MOVIES!!!!!!!!!!!!! – #12: THE GREEN INFERNO

I must admit, despite never having seen any, the Italian cannibal sub-genre of the 1970s-early 1980s, always seemed a bit redundant to me. Why bother with cannibals when you have zombies? Also, from what I’ve read, the cannibal films often deal in tasteless gore for gore’s sake. That’s not me. While I have absolutely no objections to gore in horror, I want to have a point. Much more seriously, cannibal films seem to traffic in racial stereotypes about indigenous cultures, and that’s really disturbing. Still, any iteration of the horror film interests me to some degree. I’m always curious how these things come to be, why they catch on, and why they eventually fade away, only to return later on.  However, I’d be lying if I said my curiosity was not somewhat soured by this film, Eli Roth’s tribute to the cannibal sub genre. This might surprise some friends, but I actually liked Roth’s 2005 hit Hostel.  While it wasn’t perfect, I found it used the “torture porn” trappings in an intriguing way, and made some disturbing points about the mutually destructive relationship between parasitic affluent nations and grasping developing ones. It seemed to me Roth MIGHT be capable of doing something worthwhile with the theme of cannibalism. The Green Inferno has a few good ideas. The way unscrupulous characters use the guilt-inducing language of social justice to trick and exploit is well-handled. The fact that our seemingly dilettante heroine remains committed to aiding the natives who nearly devoured her gave the character some unexpected depth, especially in contrast to the do-gooders around her, several (though not all) of whom turn out to be either shallow or outright malicious in their motives. Unfortunately, these positive points are outweighed by so many negatives, I have nowhere near enough time to name them. A few highlights would have to include Roth’s love of degradation. The amount of gore and just generally disgusting incidents will probably anger some. I get that, but to me they just became dull. I wasn’t offended. I wasn’t excited. I was just bored. Next up, the cavalcade of cliches! My god, does Mr. Roth think no one has ever seen a movie before? Final girl? Check! Sympathetic child? Check! Nonsensical twist ending? Check! Last but not least, I should bring up the issue of racism. I know several commentators, especially those of indigenous backgrounds, have been deeply hurt by this film, and that is unsurprising. Nowhere does Roth attempt to seriously engage the native characters, nor does he even go to the trouble of emphasizing there might be more to them than the protagonists are capable of learning under these circumstances. Aside from the formula-dictated, prop-like kid-sympathetic-to-heroine, the natives are a swirling mass of menace. This is an incredibly wrong-headed and dangerous thing to do in a film in 2015. However, I would argue with the racial critiques somewhat, although not in Roth’s favor. I think those critics are giving him FAR too much credit. He doesn’t come off like a genuine racist here. Whatever he’s like personally, in The Green Inferno, Roth comes off as not much more than a callous, snarky little jerk.

13 RANDOM HORROR MOVIES!!!!!!!!!!!!! – #11: MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM

My first encounter with this was a curious one. I had rented the DVD of the more famous (and quite good) 1953 Vincent Price remake of this film. The original, once thought lost, was included as an extra and, after watching the Price film, I watched this one late at night. If I recall correctly, I was rather exhausted and watching this movie did quite a number on my brain. Filmed before the censorious Hollywood Production Code was strictly enforced, the film features frank (and sometimes offensive) dialogue on drug abuse, race, sexuality, and crime that is frankly bizarre to hear coming out of the mouths of 1930s film characters. It was also filmed with an early two-color Technicolor process that is nothing like the familiar, lush look of Golden Age Hollywood films. Try to imagine only really being able to see red and green, especially red, and you’ll have some idea of the imagery of Mystery of the Wax Museum.  Finally, the pace of the film is breathtakingly fast, and is frequently punctuated by a torrent of zippy wisecracks. All of this combined made me feel like I’d imbibed some questionable substance, nodded off, and had a rather curious dream. For some time, I tended to think of the film with affectionate derision, but I’ve come to have real, if modest, regard for it.  Mystery of the Wax Museum was made when horror and mystery were closely linked, and the movie is structured as a tight whodunit. Modern audiences will probably find it lacking in grisliness and, for once, I tend to agree. There’s a lot here (a look at the newspaper business, long police interrogations) that I could do without. But do not despair! Solid ghastliness is at hand in the person of the magnificent Lionel Atwill. Easily the equal of such Golden Age horror masters like Karloff and Lugosi, Atwill is sadly underrated. This is probably due to his lack of identification with a particular character and the fact that studios often wasted him in minor supporting roles. Here he gets a rare chance to headline and he far more than proves his himself a top ghoul. As mad sculptor Ivan Igor, Atwill may not be frightening in the modern sense, but he is seriously creepy and unpleasant. Intriguingly, in the equivalent role in House of Wax, Vincent Price plays the sculptor as a tragic, wronged figure, which works just fine. ABSOLUTELY no disrespect is meant to Price, but I think Atwill was a more daring performer. His sculptor, obsessed with artistic purity, is a truly demented figure. While there are touches of sadness about Igor, Atwill focuses on his cruelty and arrogance, suggesting they were present long before he became a victim. Atwill leads a stellar cast, which includes the scream queen herself, Fay Wray, of King Kong fame. Her pipes are put to good use here and, despite her limited range, she is an unusually likable damsel in distress throughout. More central to the story is Glenda Farrell as a sharp edged reporter. Farrell’s style of humor has dated somewhat, but her personality carries one through. The character’s status as an independent career woman, and the real protagonist of the story, has an appealing proto-feminist vibe, and Farrell also creates a fully-fledged human being, capable of vulnerability and toughness. (The final scene, involving Farrell’s marriage, is a major flaw. It’s not exactly a cop out, but makes almost no sense in the context of the story). Also on hand are Gavin Gordon as a surprisingly personable millionaire playboy and Frank McHugh as a grouchy but witty editor. Michael Curtiz directs with his trademark fast (REALLY fast) pace, although if ever one needed proof that he was not primarily responsible for the greatness of Casablanca this is it. I have to say something about the special effects and makeup. Those are not areas I usually focus on, but I think it’s important when dealing with a 1933 film. Yes, they’re not up to our standards in some ways, but they are damned good all the same. A revelation involving Igor’s…um…appearance is flawlessly executed, and gave me an honest jolt. Wray’s lines after this moment are the reason I love this film. You’ll have to see it to find out! Do so! It’s no masterpiece, but it sure is fun.

13 RANDOM HORROR MOVIES!!!!!!!!!!!!! – #10: THE STRANGE DOOR

As the editor of a science fiction anthology, it would be pretty rich if I said anything against that genre. I never would. I adore it! Still, my first love is definitely horror, and gothic horror in particular. Therefore, I always feel a pang of sadness when I read about the decline of gothic horror movies after World War II, replaced as they were by the more topical science fiction films about atomic monsters and aliens. Even Universal Studios, which had made Dracula, Frankenstein, and the Wolf Man household names for moviegoers, had moved on to sci-fi themes. Still, occasional glimmers of the old gothic formula would shine out of Universal from time to time for several years. In the early fifties, writer Jerry Sackheim engineered a small-scale gothic revival at Universal with two films: The Black Castle, and this movie. Both are good, but The Strange Door has the upper hand for a number of reasons. Do be aware however, that the word “horror” is more related to atmosphere in a film like this. In some ways, “The Strange Door” is as much a period adventure as it is a horror film. That being said, this is a great movie! Sackheim skillfully adapts a wonderfully perverse, but quite short, story by the great Robert Louis Stevenson into a twisted tale of cruelty and intrigue. Usually adaptations like this pile on irrelevancies, but Sackheim is generally faithful (aside from an odd change of time period) where he can be. His additions also make sense and don’t compromise Stevenson’s tone. Everything else in the film works perfectly, creating a more than solid gothic, grand guignol chiller that genuinely builds in suspense as it goes on. The finale is particularly grisly and nail-biting. My only complaint is the wasting of Boris Karloff, one of my favorite actors. He does a good job as a friendly servant, but I don’t know how the filmmakers ignored the opportunity to do more with him. On the other hand, the star of the film is the only actor I love more than Karloff, Charles Laughton. As the wicked Alain de Maletroit, Laughton is a jolly, quivering mass of pure evil. Most of the time, Laughton’s finest performances contain elements of tragedy, but he was fully capable of playing a formidable villain when called on. His work in The Strange Door makes one lament his horror roles were fairly limited. I challenge even a jaded viewer not to sweat during his first appearance! Black and white fifties costume drama trappings aside, his is the dark face of sadism, and, while the rest of the film is all very capital, it is Laughton who makes a true horror movie.

13 RANDOM HORROR MOVIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!! – #9: SON OF DRACULA (1943)

Despite Dracula having begun the Universal horror cycle, the studio often seemed reluctant to use their first monster. After Bela Lugosi played him in the iconic 1931 film, the Count didn’t appear again until John Carradine took on the role (briefly) in 1944’s House of Frankenstein.  In the intervening thirteen years, there were only two Dracula films, both featuring offspring of the top vampire. 1936 gave us Dracula’s Daughter, a direct follow up to the Lugosi film, and then in 1943 we got this more loosely related movie. Why so little from Dracula? I couldn’t say, but I suspect it had to do with the sexual overtones of the vampire mythology. Censorship increased dramatically after the early thirties, and it was pretty tough to scrub vampires clean of their decadent, transgressive elements. Luckily for us, the studio found courage from time to time, and this is one solid example. I must say, when one looks up critical reaction to this film, one is struck by how spoiled viewers over the years have become.  Son of Dracula is definitely underrated, and that’s all well and good, but occasional write-ups make it sound like some cinematic abomination. One commentator I recall reading practically declared it unwatchable. I admit, it has flaws, but considering the crushing inanity of much of cinema today, where one is forced to decide between self-righteous philistinism on the one hand, and preening pretentiousness on the other, it is hard not to cry out for an age of films that could be concise, entertaining, and a little thoughtful all at once, whatever their other problems. In Son of Dracula, the problems include underdeveloped characters, plot threads that don’t go very far, and a somewhat rat-a-tat-tat pace that fails to take advantage of the intriguingly murky southern gothic atmosphere. Another issue involves the star, Lon (the Wolf Man) Chaney Jr., son and namesake of the legendary Man of a Thousand Faces.  Virtually every critic I’ve ever read, describes Chaney as “miscast” in the title role. It really is hilarious how they all use the exact same word without fail! I don’t agree, although there are problems with his performance. Chaney is horribly underrated as an actor. Reading some people, you wonder what exactly their standards for bad acting are. I’m frankly mystified by some of the vitriol I’ve seen poured on the somewhat modest, but still quite notable talent of this actor. As the younger Count Dracula, Chaney does struggle at times, but for reasons having little to do with his ability. The concept of a vampire in those days was of a suave, sexy charmer, in the Lugosi mold. Chaney just wasn’t like that and, when pushed into it here, he seems to be going through the motions. On the other hand, the script allows him at times, especially in the finale, to show a more wild and desperate strain. In these scenes, Chaney’s vampire develops a truly distinct personality one wishes had been further explored. Elsewhere in the cast, Louise Albritton, gives us a chilling portrait of amorality as a female vampire. Robert Paige, as the man who loved her, evolves tantalizingly from bland leading man, to crazed victim, to the tragic moral center of the story. The story is by the great horror guru Curt Siodmak (virtually everything you think you know about werewolves is something he came up with). Despite the problems I mentioned earlier, the story is quite meaty by late Universal standards, with some fun twists and turns. Curt’s brother Robert directs. Robert Siodmak would become known as a film noir maestro. That future is on display here with the inky visual palette and, more importantly, in the genuinely bleak feeling hanging over the proceedings. There is a stereotype of older films as lacking in darkness. Anyone who thinks that should see Robert Siodmak’s film noir The Suspect, one of the most downbeat movies I’ve ever seen.  Son of Dracula doesn’t go that far, but the final scene is one of the most wrenching in a film of this sort that one is likely to see.

13 RANDOM HORROR MOVIES!!!!!!!!!!!!! – #8: THE SEVENTH VICTIM

While people seemed to like these horror lists of mine (many thanks for that), I feel I had very luck promoting the films of producer-auteur Val Lewton. I profiled three of his films before this one, to very little reaction. I do get it, trust me. But I ain’t giving up, NO WAY! Lewton’s horror cycle at RKO Studios in the 1940s is on of the most underrated sequences in American cinematic history, and it deserves all the pushing it can get. Why are people reluctant? Lewton’s titles were force-fed to him by the studio. They had little connection to his beautiful and complex films.  This one KIND OF turned the tide.  The title isn’t THAT kooky, and there’s nothing remotely supernatural in the plot. Got that, anti-genre killjoys? Nothing supernatural! Do you have enough permission to at least investigate? I promise your pure little brains won’t be sullied by anything your high school teacher, or Harold Bloom, or the New York Times Book Review says can’t be art because INSERT IMPRESSIVE SCIENTIFIC-SOUNDING WORDS. So what’s up with this film? Alright, I confess there are Satanists. But it’s not really about them. (In fact, not only do they have no supernatural powers, they’re also pretty lame. Cruel and dangerous, yes, but ultimately more than a little pathetic). So what is it about? Short version, living in the world, those who can and those who can’t. To be totally honest, not even all open-minded viewers will “get” this movie. To enter into it, one has to have an at least somewhat tragic view of life. One has to have not just sat in lonely silence. We’ve all done that. No, you have to have listened to that nothing and not been at all sure that it would ever really end for you. You have to have looked at life’s challenges, seen nothing but failure and ruin, and retreated back into a shrinking safety zone for as long as possible. Even when forced out of it, you have to have never really given up on returning, by any means necessary. You might have noticed I have not given any plot description. Perhaps you think the story is largely irrelevant. It’s not really, but going into it wouldn’t help explain it properly. While impeccably acted (Ben Bard’s chief Satanist is a particular standout), this film speaks a primarily visual language. The shadowy murkiness of Nicholas Musuraca’s cinematography is not just aesthetically brilliant, it stands in for the soft, gauzy horror of life itself. That’s part of why I do believe this IS a horror film, not a film noir. Certainly it is closely related to noir, but the terror/love of death is too intense to not be horror. But in this horror film, the monster is life itself. And for those who realize it, there is of course only one means of escape. I should pause to say The Seventh Victim has flaws. Deleted subplots and sloppy editing leave some moments almost incomprehensible. The funny thing is, I only noticed these problems after several viewings. Its intellectual unity is so complete, the technical errors almost seem to correct themselves. They made sense to me the way a dream makes sense, and that’s all that matters. This is also a testament to Lewton’s greatness. No film is a totally solo effort, and Lewton had wonderful collaborators. But his nine horror films are ultimately his, no doubt. And it was the power of his themes and vision that smooths over any rough moments. I’ve written before that there is no single ultimate Lewton film. They all make up a kind of symphony. Consider this one a grim, funeral march adagio, where Lewton looks at the worst parts of his worldview in a way that casts a pall over even the brightest movements elsewhere in his films. But please don’t avoid The Seventh Victim for being too much of a downer! A film this gorgeous and moving needs to be seen. But as composer Roy Webb’s score reaches its mournful conclusion, make sure you’re in a warm, cozy place. You’re not going to want to be anywhere else for a while.

13 RANDOM HORROR MOVIES!!!!!!!!!!!!! – #7: SATURDAY THE 14TH

OK, I’m not going to lie here. There is really no way anyone could claim this is a good movie. It’s a lame horror spoof I enjoyed when I was a kid. That’s a big part of why I’m bothering to put it on this list. While I no longer see most of it as particularly funny, I still find it smile-inducing due to the “it’s so bad it’s good” mindset and a heavy dose of nostalgia. Despite all this, the film does have virtues, in my (very) humble opinion. First off, I just have a soft spot for old-fashioned, Borscht Belt style horror comedies. They give me a warm, fuzzy feeling that’s increasingly hard to come by in movies. Next, ya gotta admit the title is fantastic! Even more fantastic is that this is NOT a parody of slasher films! They lampooned the title of one of the best known slashers of all time and then didn’t even bother to extend the satire to the sub-genre! Instead, it’s a parody of “old dark house” movies, and other traditional gothic fare. That leads to another plus of Saturday the 14th.  It was made back when the old, gothic monster archetypes were much more powerful cultural icons. I personally wish that was still true, and this movie warms my heart in that respect. Next up, amid all the shtick, there are genuinely funny performances by Rosemary DeCamp as a greedy relative and, especially, Severn Darden as an exterminator named Van Helsing (I know, I know). Is it worth watching a dumb movie to find out how onion dip, club soda and Barbara Streisand records can help save the world? I think so.

13 RANDOM HORROR MOVIES!!!!!!!!!!!!! – #6: TOWER OF LONDON (1939)

A Universal horror version of Shakespeare?! Ah, if it had only been so! This film covers roughly the same events as Shakespeare’s Richard III but the script is original. As you can probably guess, it doesn’t QUITE measure up to the Bard. Still, it’s an interesting attempt to merge the historical drama with gothic horror. Director Rowland V. Lee has never been one of my favorites, but he does quite well here. The film has a good pace and a solid balance between grisliness and pomp. The cast is uniformly excellent. It’s fun to see future horror great Vincent Price as the sniveling Duke of Clarence. The magnificent Boris Karloff plays (the totally fictional) club-footed assassin Mord. In my view, Karloff was at his best playing at least somewhat sympathetic characters. Still, he was capable of being a top-notch heavy when the occasion called for it. Mord is wonderfully despicable and demented throughout. However, the most riveting performance is by Basil Rathbone (legendary for playing Sherlock Holmes, of course) as that ultimate ruthless ladder-climber, Richard of Gloucester. Sitting down to watch for the first time, I fully expected a vicious human troll. Stunningly, Rathbone avoids all the cliches associated with Richard. The physical deformity is present but downplayed. This may have been the result of censorship, but I doubt it since it seems to play into Rathbone’s conception of the part. His Richard is indeed evil, but not in a cartoonish way. He believes he must be king, and nothing will stop him, but his ultimate goal is power, not cruelty. As such, his villainies, while not white-washed, are incidental, more the natural outcome of the ugly politics of the day than of some ingrained wickedness in Richard. Since Rathbone’s Richard is not some kind of human vermin, we sense real charisma and attractiveness. For once, it’s possible to believe that people would really be drawn to Richard’s side. In some ways, Rathbone’s characterization is more interesting than Shakespeare’s monster. It is probably also more historical. My own guess is that Richard of Gloucester/Richard III was pretty ruthless, but no more so than the people around him. Rathbone plays him as someone who probably would have been perfectly nice in another context. That’s actually pretty scary, when you think about it!

13 RANDOM HORROR MOVIES!!!!!!!!!!!!! – #5: THE RETURN OF THE VAMPIRE

So how many times did Bela Lugosi play Count Dracula in the movies? Ten? Twenty? Can it even be counted? Would you believe it was a grand total of twice? Yep, the actor so associated with the top vampire that he was buried in costume only played the part in two films. First was obviously the iconic 1931 Dracula directed by Tod Browning. The second was the classic horror comedy Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein in 1948. OK, fair enough, you say. But he must have played plenty of other vampires over the years, right? Well, when you count non-Dracula vampires, the total goes up to three. Even though it’s a fairly modest film, I thought that one extra film deserved a shout-out.  The Return of the Vampire was made by Columbia Pictures. Now if you know much about horror and monsters in the 30s and 40s, you know they were dominated by Universal, with RKO frequently scaling the mountain for a strong second place. Other studios tried out occasionally, but tended to lack the carefully developed, in-house style of Universal or RKO. This film is no exception, but it’s still a lot of good, blood-sucking fun. Director Lew Landers (who made about a billion movies) faithfully apes Universal’s Hollywood gothic look. From the mistiness, it’s hard to believe he wasn’t also influenced a bit by Val Lewton over at RKO. The overall effect is quite satisfactory, aside from the hilarious talking werewolf assistant. However, two performances make it stand out. The first is obviously Lugosi himself. Playing the Dracula-esque Armand Tesla, Lugosi proves he was in a class by himself when it came to vampires. The other is Frieda Inescort as Tesla’s nemesis Lady Jane Ainsley. Inescort plays Ainsley as unusually tough and self-reliant for a female character in the 1940s. The confrontation with Tesla over the piano, where both Lugosi and Inescort pull out all the stops, is worth sitting through the whole film for. But that’s not to say the rest of the film is a penance. It’s an awfully fun, late night movie, when you’re in a gently gothic mood. I’m in that mood a lot, so I love it!

13 RANDOM HORROR MOVIES!!!!!!!!!!!!! – #4: NIGHT OF THE GHOULS

Anyone who can actually say they dislike Ed Wood’s movies is not anyone I really want to meet. To be sure, they suck, but they suck in a way that makes my heart smile. I recall sitting through Man of Steel (Shudder!) and later on thinking something along the lines of “The people who made that take no joy and feel no love for movies.” Nobody could ever accuse Wood of that. His films are joyous, full of affection for what he is doing, and yes, utterly inane. This one, long difficult to see due to Wood’s inability to pay certain fees, is no exception. One of the few films by Wood to prioritize horror over science-fiction, it may not be as jaw-droppingly off the wall as Glen or Glenda or Plan 9 From Outer Space, but it’s easily as much fun as Bride of the Monster, to which it is a sequel (Plan 9 is also referenced and the three films share the character of Kelton the cop, making them a kind of trilogy). Should you really spend your time watching this movie? Well, that depends on if you think it’s fun to see juvenile delinquency ascribed to haunted houses, cowboy-voiced evil swamis, and opera-cloak wearing police detectives. If you don’t, that’s fair. If you actually look down on people who do enjoy that, you were obviously never a child and should not be permitted to watch movies ever again!

13 RANDOM HORROR MOVIES!!!!!!!!!!!!! – #3: THE UNHOLY

I think most folks know I’m not a religious guy. I’ve been a staunch atheist since I was about twelve or thirteen. And when I have felt pulled by certain belief systems, they have always been ones that had no supernatural elements. However, I feel no contempt for sincere religious belief and, for reasons I’m not sure of, I feel an emotional pull to Christianity, especially Roman Catholicism. One thing that irks me to no end, is the tendency in modern horror films to show the forces of Christ as helpless against vampires, demons, etc. You even have scenes of the monsters pushing crosses out of their way, or the crosses erupting in flames in the monster’s presence. What’s up with that? Whatever I may think of religion, it symbolizes humanity’s efforts to make sense of the world and codify everything good and decent. I prefer when that is respected. For all these reasons, I’ve always liked Satanic-themed horror movies. This little number, is one of the most underrated. Anyone who grew up loving the wonderful eighties film The Monster Squad probably saw the trailer, but that’s it. Because I’m weird, many years later, I sought out The Unholy on the basis of that childhood memory. And it’s surprisingly good! Structured as a gritty mystery, with the Satanic elements slowly and effectively revealing themselves, The Unholy kept me guessing and continues to occupy my imagination. To be sure, plenty of it is tacky and dumb, but the central mystery lingers. Part of this is due to a fine script, co-written by noted author Philip Yordan. The well-above average acting also contributes, especially the lead performance by Ben Cross. Cross plays a young, warm-hearted but somewhat conflicted priest (obvious shades of The Exorcist) and, for a low budget horror movie in the eighties, he turns in one hell of an acting job. You honestly wonder who this man is, and if he is at all capable of dealing with what’s going on around him. The finale, where he *SPOILER ALERT* rises to the occasion, had me thinking of the doctrine of the “secret church.” That’s a concept that, regardless of formal structure, denomination, or specific points of doctrine, Christ’s true church has existed since his time, in the hearts of those who truly believe and are willing to act on it. I can’t really believe in that, but I do believe in what it stands for, what it says about the good and heroism all men and women are capable of if they will only embrace them.

13 RANDOM HORROR MOVIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!! – #2: THINGS HAPPEN AT NIGHT

Cards on the table here: it is entirely possible that this little flick is nowhere near as good as I found it, by any objective standards. Looking at professional and amateur reviews online, I haven’t found many positive comments. But I’m including it because, when I first watched it under unusual circumstances, I found it utterly charming. You are forewarned however, that I appear to be part of a VERY small minority (seven people, me included, had “liked” the film on Facebook when I first wrote this review) on this one. First off, the unusual circumstances I mentioned. Early in 2015, I was combing through a DVD set of vintage, public domain crime films. It’s a wonderful set, full of gangster flicks and films noir, many of which are not nearly as well known as they deserve to be. Most of the films are American, but there are a few British movies there, this one included.  When I started watching Things Happen at Night, I had no knowledge of it. To my surprise, I quickly saw that it was not a crime film at all, but a horror comedy. This was tantalizing for a number of reasons, including the fact there are few British horror films made before the 1950s (largely due to censorship), and because the horror in question is the result of a poltergeist, channeling the classic Tobe Hooper film from the eighties, which I’ve always loved. Enough of historical interest though, what about the film itself? Well, it’s about a possessed teenage girl whose problems with ghosts are causing huge problems for her previously wealthy father. A major business opportunity could save the family, but the presence of a practical joke-playing spirit could completely queer the deal. Now, to be clear, the word “slight” might have been invented for this film. Nothing really comes to anything, and this has got to have the least scary ghost in history. Frankly, it seems to make life much more interesting and pleasant! There is also a choppy feeling to the story which seems to be the result of missing footage. (I would LOVE to see a complete version!) Even the comedy is a bit thin, although there is a wonderfully funny performance by Gordon Harker as a gruff but sweet insurance agent, in the house to investigate a claim on a fancy rug ruined by the poltergeist. So why did I like it? I’m really not sure. There’s a warm, gentle feeling to everything. The young girl actually feels like a real kid, and even the most annoying characters come off like sympathetic people. The performances, while they may not make me laugh (Harker’s aside), make me smile a great deal, due to the fun that everyone seems to be having. And I just love the idea that a possession can be solved by a firm but gentle talking-to! Anyway, I enjoyed Things Happen at Night a great deal when I first saw it. Re-watching it, I still liked it, but almost nobody else seems to. What can I say? Maybe I’m just nuts, but I still like it!

13 RANDOM HORROR MOVIES!!!!!!!!!!!!! – #1: THE GHOST SHIP

It was not my original intention in these lists to be political. However, I expect most people can tell what my general views are. Of course, people of good will can disagree quite sharply over politics. My objection is not when someone sees things differently from me, but when their desire is not to do the best for the world. That is probably a fairly hypocritical comment of mine. I have no doubt that people on the opposite side of the political spectrum from me see my side as likely to have selfish motives, just as I tend to see them that way. Most people want to do the best; we all just have different ways of going about it. Fair enough. But there are some people, of various persuasions who do not want to do the best. Even worse, are some who just don’t care. During a conversation with a (perfectly decent) acquaintance (no, he’s not on Facebook) I was told the following: “The fact is, the strong win nearly all the time. Every now and then the little guy breaks though, but usually they’re crushed. So you might as well stick by the strong.” Almost immediately, I thought of this film, one of Val Lewton’s best but least well-known efforts. First off, there are no ghosts. Only some off-hand suspicions that there might be. As is frequently the case with Lewton, the real monsters are within. In the story, a young merchant marine named Tom Merriam is handpicked by veteran Captain Will Stone to be third mate on Stone’s ship. The Captain takes a fatherly interest in Merriam but, as you can probably guess, strange things start happening. Merriam comes to believe Captain Stone is a cruel autocrat and, possibly, a dangerous, narcissistic madman. Stone seems to believe that, as long as someone is under his authority, he has the power of life or death over them. He masks this with the language of responsibility but, in fact, he feels no obligation to his men, only a lust for power over their very souls. A common theme in Lewton’s films is an older, more “experienced” figure trying to corrupt a younger person. The corruption however, is not of the conventional kind. Lewton’s villains want their victims to accept the concept that the world is worthless, and that human beings are all filth. This film is a prime example of that leitmotif. The performances are superb. Richard Dix, as Captain Stone, could have played a straight villain, or he could have created an overly tragic figure. Instead, in a much more daring performance, we get a strange, disturbing mixture of both. It is extraordinary watching the character trajectory Dix manages in a fairly short movie. Russell Wade plays Merriam, transcending the bland, innocent leading man tropes that could have trapped him. Merriam isn’t especially intellectual, but his decency is iron-clad, and that strength grows despite all the attacks, infuriating Stone. Much of the film really is a battle between these two, but there are also appealing turns by Edmund Glover and calypso singer-actor Sir Lancelot as fellow sailors. Even better is Skelton Knaggs as a mysterious mute crew member. All of the other stylistic attributes that make Lewton’s films unique are present, but what makes this film exceptional is its moral core. That comes out best in a late confrontation between Stone and Merriam. The Captain proclaims: “That’s what I want you to learn, Merriam! Men are worthless cattle! And a few men are given authority to drive them.” It’s a strong claim, but Merriam has a phenomenal answer: “You can’t prove that to me, even with a gun, Captain. I know people aren’t that way. They’re good, kind. They help each other. It’s only hard to get them to understand.” In past years, I would have considered Merriam not only morally right, but factually correct. The last several years have shaken my belief in the factually correct part. But as for the morally right part, I still believe, and I always will, despite all the victories of the strong and the cruel, despite all the lashings that the little people take, despite all the gloating of those who celebrate and fetishize winning at all costs, that Merriam is right, and that his belief is the only ideology worth fighting and dying for.

BRIDE OF THE GORILLA

HISTORICAL NOTE FOR THE FOUR OR SO PEOPLE WHO MIGHT BE INTERESTED: In October of 2016 I was rather swamped and simply re-shared old reviews from my three previous lists.  However, I wanted to do one new piece and this was it.  No one read it, but I’m not so bitter that I’d remember that or anything.

 

As is often the case, I find myself wondering if I’m just crazy. Few seem to have any warmth for this bargain-basement jungle tale, crossed with a horror flick. But I like it! Part of what delights and amuses me is the strange jumble of styles and themes going on here. Writer-director Curt Siodmak (who created everything you think you know about werewolves) was one of the giants of Universal’s horror cycle in the 1940s. Naturally, the general mood of this film, the structure of the plot, the presence of Lon Chaney Jr. (The Wolf Man himself!) brings us back to those movies. However, the dialogue sounds about half film noir, dime store philosophizing and half overdone metaphysics from some highbrow melodrama of the 20s or 30s by Robert Sherwood, Maxwell Anderson, or maybe the young Eugene O’Neill. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, see the film version of Sherwood’s The Petrified Forrest staring Humphrey Bogart. Better yet, see a classic parody of that kind of play in the Marx Brothers’ Animal Crackers.) That “theatrical” feeling is exacerbated by the fact that most of the film takes place in two or three static locations. Now, I’m pretty unsympathetic to the modern movie fan’s complaint that older films “feel like plays.” I’ve read and heard people saying that about films, old and new, simply because they don’t have dramatic explosions or shots of people flying every 30 seconds or so. Thus far in my life, I’ve yet to attend a play that has close-ups or cutaways. I imagine such a production would be a terrible strain on the crew. Bottom line, “it’s like a play” is too often today’s film audiences and critics complaining that they actually have to use their brains for a short period. That being said, Bride of the Gorilla often is stagy in the worst sense of the word. There’s a sense among some horror/sci-fi fans that those genres’ offerings in the 50s (as opposed to the 30s and 40s) offered too much talk, not enough monsters/aliens. I’ve often felt similarly, and Bride of the Gorilla is a good example of that perception being accurate, at least in this case. Still, I like the movie! Part of the reason lies in the fact that the dialogue, though overblown, actually does a decent job of creating sympathetic, well-rounded characters. We’re not talking Shakespeare here, but Siodmak was primarily a writer, and it shows in this movie when the virtually non-existent budget means our entire focus is on the characters and what they’re saying. Speaking of characters, Bride of the Gorilla benefits enormously from a cast of serious pros. Raymond Burr, with an appealing dark glamour, manages a surprisingly complex combination of villain and leading man. Even better is Barbara Payton as his love interest. Instead of the wicked femme fatale trope I was expecting, Payton (whose tragic life story fits the noir-ish trappings of her character here) deftly balances the intriguing (but potentially muddling) character arcs Siodmak throws at her to create a figure almost approaching the tragic. Tom Conway’s smarmy but golden-hearted routine was getting a bit thin, but he’s still effective as a lovelorn doctor. Finally, while he may be about as Latin as a serving of roast beef and mashed potatoes, Chaney’s native but western-educated police commissioner turns into a wonderful chorus-like figure, framing the sordid narrative and reflecting on his own inner conflicts. The performance reminds us that, while he may not have been the greatest actor of all time, Chaney was often absurdly underrated. The cast is, like much of the film, a jumble. Chaney and Conway feel like they’re coming in from one of Siodmak’s 40s creature features. (Conway’s presence, and all the intellectual talk, make this feel like a rejected Val Lewton project at times). Payton and Burr have more of the feel of a late noir. Despite this, the styles merge well enough, and the ensemble seems to have some sincere chemistry. On the subject of Chaney’s character’s ethnicity, where exactly does this flick take place? I know it’s supposed to be on the edge of the Amazon, but that doesn’t account for the odd mishmash of people. Spanish is heard at times, and Burr’s character has a Latin last name. However, the natives (who appear to be aboriginal, Latin, and African) treat him as an outsider. The white characters, some of whom speak of coming from elsewhere, have a variety of British and American accents, but their names are Dutch! I suppose all of this could be recognizing the fact that Central and South America are more ethnically diverse than many realize. Call me cynical, but I sincerely doubt it. It’s probably just carelessness on Siodmak’s part. However, it has the side-effect of creating genuine atmosphere in the film.  Bride of the Gorilla feels like it inhabits its own little, sealed-off world. Some modest visual virtues also help with that atmosphere. Siodmak’s pretty much a point and shoot director. In fact, this was only one of a small number of films he actually directed himself. His cinematographer, Charles Van Enger, on the other hand, really knew what he was doing. While the film is stitched together with stock footage, Van Enger achieves some legitimately fluid moments, and keeps the whole thing looking tight in a way B movies often don’t. (Still, it’s a shame Siodmak couldn’t get his brother Robert, a fine director, to helm this one). There’s also a too loud but still effectively creepy score. (The music is credited to Raoul Kraushaar. My understanding is that he usually arranged and took credit for the music of Mort Glickman. Either way, it’s a pretty good score.) Look, I really shouldn’t oversell Bride of the Gorilla.  It’s got LOADS of problems, not the least of which is the offensive sight of white actors portraying other ethnic groups. All the same, I found it hard to hate this little movie. Even on the politically correct front, it has its pluses. Burr’s character’s amorality and cynicism about the natives, and the other white characters’ recognition that he is wrong, is a reminder (as is much of the emotional turbulence of film noir) that the USA was less sanguine about the post-World War II state of affairs than our sanitized version of the 1950s would have us believe. It’s also worth noting that the natives’ magic is on the side of justice that would otherwise go undelivered. And then there’s the question of the title. No doubt some of you are envisioning that same gorilla suit that seemed to pass its way around Hollywood for about 60 years. Well, it DOES show up, but Siodmak actually resists overdoing it. That’s worth a star or two, in my book. Also, at 70 minutes, the sins of this film don’t wear one out. I’d rather put up with the warm laughs those problems bring out of me than the issues bedeviling the average, current Hollywood blockbuster, clocking in at a soul-grinding two hours or more. Then again, I might well be crazy!

7 GREAT RECENT HORROR FILMS!!!!!!! – PROLOGUE AND #7: WARM BODIES

PROLOGUE: We are in the middle of a golden age for the horror film. I realize this will seem a highly controversial statement to many. To be honest, it sounds strange, turning it over in my own mind. The lover of genre films is quite often annoyed (or even angry) at the present, looking back wistfully to better days. As a horror movie fanatic, that has been me as much as the next person. Many will know that I have a distinct (though I hope, flexible) antiquarian streak. My absoulte favorite period for horror films is the 30s and 40s, the era of James Whale and Val Lewton, of Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. As such, I have rarely been delighted by the horror films of my own time, for a whole slew of reasons. However, there’s no denying that the horror genre has seen a dramatic shift in recent years. To me, it is a positive shift, one which has reminded me of the genre’s unique ability to comment on its own times, to strike out in surprising creative directions, and to have (and give) an incredibly good time. The reasons behind this shift are no doubt complex. My brief, feeble sketch of an explanation is as follows: horror was coming off some very lean years in the early 2000s when torture porn arrived, films like “Hostel” and the “Saw” series. Not all of these films were bad; some were even decent. The problem was, they convinced people working in horror that a horror movie HAD to be degrading, dark, and cynical. Ugliness and despair were not aesthetic tools, but absolute requirements. As such, the horror genre became heart-breakingly self-handcuffed, unable to take chances and, bluntly, have fun. By 2009-10, you start to see timid signs of a reaction against endless misery, and I think we see the full flowering of it in the last few years. Horror movies have again dared to be funny, to use mood and atmosphere as well as violence and gore, even to (gasp!) sometimes end with hope. It’s not that we don’t still have excellent, very dark horror films. Rather, these filmmakers seem to be following their own aesthetic instincts, rather than some notion of what someone thinks a horror movie is supposed to do. Because I find all of this cause for celebration, I wanted to highlight 7 great examples of the trend as a countdown to Halloween. Enjoy!  PLEASE NOTE: The 7 movies in questions were “recent” in 2017, when this list and prologue were originally written.

 

This is, by far, the weakest item on the list. It’s the only one I don’t consider at least a minor masterpiece, although I do think it’s a pretty good flick. I highlight it more for what it represents than its own artistic merits. The zombie sub-genre had been doing well in the early 2000s, alongside torture porn. Certainly zombie movies fit the bill for unrelenting darkness well. By its very nature, the concept of a zombie apocalypse is one of the grimmest concepts in horror. While this was often handled with wit and creativity in the past (RIP George Romero), many (not all) zombie moves in the early 2000s went the route of cynical bleakness without much else to recommend them. When hope was possible, it tended to be about a few people managing to survive against the odds.  Warm Bodies, (based on a novel I haven’t read) has hope, but of a much broader kind. The concept of a zombie redeveloping his or her humanity was not new, but this film’s emphasis on the ability of intrinsic humanity to survive anything was rather commercially radical, considering what zombie fans are known to expect. SPOILER ALERT I found Warm Bodies slight but striking in what it seemed concerned with. It could have been a powerful (even as a romantic comedy), genuinely memorable film if R, the zombie clawing his way back to humanity, actually had a real fight to get his soul back, or if Julie, the woman he falls in love with, were ever in any REAL danger from him. Still, instead of being preoccupied with the ghoulishness of a zombie love story, Warm Bodies centered itself on the hope that humans (pre or post-mortem) can always find a way back to their essence if they’ll only look. Many zombie films conclude with the end of the human race. Others end with human survivors finding safety behind walls, literal or figurative. Warm Bodies ends with a literal wall coming down. In the context of this cute little movie, it makes the viewer go “Awww!” In the context of the horror genre’s recent startling shift, it seems to stand for the welcome collapse of much lousy “conventional wisdom” on how to make a horror movie.

7 GREAT RECENT HORROR FILMS!!!!!!! – #6: IT FOLLOWS

Surprise, surprise, I made mistakes in my youth. These errors in judgement led to a brief, 2-year period of drifting without much direction. Pretty quickly, I started paying seriously for these misjudgements. My payment came in the form of extreme economic anxiety, for myself and my parents. As a result for basically all of 2009 and 2010, I was a seriously miserable person. My father had informed me, without warning, that our situation was dire, in large part my fault, and that it was my job to fix everything. As I drove back and forth from a job I deeply loved (and which my father constantly mocked), fearing what I’d find when I returned home, wondering how much longer I’d have a home, plotting and quickly dismissing various escape attempts, listening to idiotic pop songs on the car radio because their simplicity and inanity was oddly calming, it frequently occurred to me “This is being an adult, I guess. Why would anyone live to endure it?” More than once I would think “I wish I’d died just before all this started.” I made it out of that hole, but its effects linger. It (likely permanently) destroyed my relationship with my father and crippled me with a fear of homelessness that paralyzes me at least once a day. Stranger and difficult to explain effects include a shorter attention span, damaging my love of film and an agonizing block on my long-standing gratifying passion for opera and classical music. I mention all this because it’s what I think this movie is all about.  It Follows was overpraised when released. Forgetting a lesson I learned long ago about making up my own mind on films, I sat down to watch it expecting the greatest horror movie ever, and was sorely disappointed. The icky atmosphere and cast of callow twenty-somethings seemed to typify everything I DON’T like in contemporary horror. I still think they hold the film back, somewhat. Luckily, I kept watching and soon noticed the profundity beneath the insipid “date movie” surface. The plot is incredibly simple, and demonstrates a welcome tendency in recent horror films to leave a great deal to the imagination (much more on that in future entries): a young woman named Jay has sex with a new boyfriend and finds herself drugged and tied to a chair. Instead of assaulting her however, the boyfriend apologizes and explains he needed her to free himself from being pursued by a mysterious creature. The creature takes human form and moves very slowly, but if it ever catches up it will brutally kill its target. If Jay wants to survive, she will have to stay alert…or have sex. The creature will then pursue whoever she slept with. But if it kills that person, it will come back for Jay, and so on up the chain. The boyfriend has no idea why this is happening or what the creature is. He then points out the creature, which is indeed walking towards Jay, before releasing her. Obviously, many interpretations of “It Follows” have emphasized narratives about AIDS and the Sexual Revolution. I think they’re understandable but wide of the point. Sexuality is startlingly absent from the film, despite the obvious opportunities. Even the most sexually explicit scenes are remarkable for their clinical detachment. There is also not an ounce of judgment expressed towards Jay, a sharp (and probably intentional) rebuke to numerous slasher and post-slasher films that make a direct, misogynistic link between female sexuality and death. For It Follows sexuality is not the essence of this monster; it just happens to be its vehicle. That is why I, a nearly asexual person, was able to connect so strongly. Finding yourself part of a vicious cycle of pain with no clear beginning or end is something most of us have to find a way to deal with as we reach adulthood, whether that cycle relates to sex, money, family, something else, or any combination of these things. Our society has crafted numerous justifications for this wretchedness, most of which make the cycle even more dispiriting. Living this way forces us into compromises and even worse decisions, till we have trouble remembering a time when we would have refused to consider such things. The conclusion of It Follows is ambiguous but implies a measure of salvation through the sacrifice of the innocent. But then Jay is innocent, too. So everyone ends up victim and predator sooner or later, and the real villains stay safely out of focus, always just out of reach. Of course, most people survive and muddle through. But It Follows doesn’t make the mistake of celebrating this. Instead, it seems to see this survival as animals engaged in self-preservation. That’s hardly worth celebrating and if that’s what adulthood, what life is, what exactly is the point? I find the attempts at visceral fear in It Follows fairly weak, but I find its well-articulated thematic underpinnings piercingly scary, with an almost existential despair at the bottom. Maybe this isn’t the greatest horror movie of all time, but it’s a damned good horror movie all the same.

7 GREAT RECENT HORROR FILMS!!!!!!! – #5: IT COMES AT NIGHT

The end of the world is traditionally the province of science fiction, but horror sometimes gets in on the act. Certainly the zombie apocalypse sub-genre often deals with the concept. It’s all a matter of degree and emphasis. Certainly this remarkable film deals with the concept of humanity’s last bow from a horror-esque vantage point, but it does so in some ways that are genuinely fresh and thought-provoking. Considering how well-trodden the ground is, it’s pretty miraculous that “It Comes at Night” never feels remotely familiar. Any plot summary will be utterly useless in describing this movie, but here are the basics: a devastating plague appears to have caused the collapse of civilization. A married couple, Sarah and Paul, have taken refuge with their teenage son Travis at Sarah’s father’s remote house in the woods. There they rigorously guard against infection. When a stranger appears, looking for help… Many of you probably feel you know what’s coming and you’re probably not far off. But while most apocalyptic horror films follow a kind of survival game template, It Comes at Night virtually ignores all the standard tropes of this sub-genre. Instead, we watch an emotional and visual poem of the agony of loss, loss which extends to all humanity (probably), but is expressed on an intimate, individual level. That is the heart of this film’s genius. What does the end of the world really mean, it asks? Whatever “theme” such a tragic event would have, all it really means is people suffering, desperately trying to survive, and then dying. There are “ends of the world” every day, every hour, and we’re all moving towards them; we’ve just learned not to think about that. Visually, It Comes at Night is amazing, although not in the ways that usually means. The images speak of loss: the items abandoned, the dreams with only one message, the lines on the faces and strain the eyes of those who know they’re just marking time. Even more than the visuals however, the movie uses emotional expression to tell its story. The pain present in everyone is devastating to observe, but it’s a pain that will be familiar to anyone who has lost someone/thing that mattered to them, or feared having that happen-in other words: everyone. In keeping with the gratifying shift away from nihilism in recent horror films, It Comes at Night depicts all of this without gloating and, despite the brutality of much of the action, with a genuine sense of compassion for all involved. My understanding is the writer/director, Trey Edward Shults first conceived the film as a way to deal with the loss of his father. By linking his own grief to the common grief of the world, Shults has crafted a fine example of the great insight that animates so much art: whatever we are, whatever we’ve done, we suffer as individuals, and we suffer more or less the same way. So…what is “it”? I don’t know and I don’t care!  The elliptical nature of the film irked some audience members. Some critics have taken this ambiguous quality to represent a trend called “post-horror.” (Another prominent example of this supposed trend, The Witch, was produced by the A24 company, the same folks who produced It Comes at Night.) Anyone curious will find plenty of information about this term by googling it. I for one tend to be highly skeptical of critical terminology, especially when it attempts to divorce high-quality works from genres that supposedly cannot be serious or profound because…well… Maybe It Comes at Night is just a wonderful and unusual film that exists in the horror genre. Whatever one labels it, it is a film not easily forgotten, and I feel certain it IS a horror film, although its horror is not the horror of fear, but the horror of loss, a horror that will engulf us all soon enough, with or without the end of the world.

7 GREAT RECENT HORROR FILMS!!!!!!! – #4: THE WITCH

As a staunch Gothic man and a devout history buff, I admit to having a special fondness for this particular entry on the list. The witch of the title is genuine, complete with spells and flying, and is under the supervision of a certain smooth-talking gentleman who would love your signature in a particular book. The dialogue, atmosphere, visuals and character preoccupations are all drawn painstakingly from documents and folk stories of Puritan New England. But fear not, friends who cannot endure the sight of people wearing strange clothes and talking weird and think the world began in 1965, your feeble modernist eyes will find plenty of points of “contemporary” interest. In fact, along with the last film on this list, It Comes at Night, The Witch, (which was distributed by the same company that produced It Comes at Night) is often taken as a prime example of what some critics have called “post-horror.” As I discussed in the last review, I don’t entirely buy the existence of post-horror, and applying it to The Witch strikes me as bizarre. The films is actually wonderfully old-fashioned, utilizing restraint, mood, and atmosphere in a way closely patterned after American Gothic horror films of the 30s and 40s, and British films (by companies like Hammer and Amicus) of the 50s and 60s, among others. Of course, none of this would matter if The Witch wasn’t any good; luckily, it’s magnificent. The plot involves a man named William who, because of an unexplained doctrinal disagreement, removes his family from a New England Puritan community. The family sets up house in an isolated spot near a large forest…and quickly runs into tragedy. Katherine, William’s wife, is devastated by the disappearance of her newborn son. Katherine seems to vent much of her rage on her teen-aged daughter Thomasin, who was with the baby when it vanished. And that’s just the start of a series of misfortunes, not to mention the influence of the family’s unknown neighbor in the forest. Part of what’s so amazing about this movie is the way it combines a non-judgmental look at Puritan mindsets with a very 21st century outlook (specifically a feminist one) in the background. Thomasin is clearly an exceptional young woman, while William is obviously mediocre and, far worse, arrogant and self-deceiving. Unfortunately, the society in which they live consigns one to a subservient role and elevates the other to a leading position he is simply unequipped for. Who takes advantage of all this? Guess!  The Witch is moving, spooky, subtle, thought-provoking, wonderfully acted and beautifully filmed. Whether that’s pre, post, or present horror, I don’t know. But it IS a great horror movie, that’s for sure!

7 GREAT RECENT HORROR FILMS!!!!!!! – #3: GET OUT

Please don’t take my somewhat brief comments here as representing a lack of enthusiasm for this incredible film. Frankly, while I have plenty to say about it, I fear that most of it has already been said, and said quite well. Since I don’t want to be overly repetitive, I’m going to limit myself to three points about Get Out.  First, this movie provides an incredible service. There are certainly plenty who legitimately dislike it, although aesthetically I have trouble understanding such a perspective. However, listening to many of those who (in their own typical tones/words) hated, Hated, HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATED this film, it can be quite instructive to watch them try to avoid admitting their fury is due to how Get Out exposes genteel racism, a mindset they CERTAINLY don’t have!  Second, I wanted to mention the movie’s utterly absurd plot. I don’t mean that as a criticism. On the contrary, in an age when so much art insists on over-explanation and/or avoids any sense of mystery, it’s delightful that writer/director Jordan Peele decided to embrace the wonder of storytelling. The film’s deeper meanings and the artists’ commitment to the film’s imaginative power carry us through with ease. This is one of the strengths of telling a good story that I feel has become far too rare nowadays. Finally, while Get Out stands very much on its own two feet, it is a lot of fun to see how it fits in the venerable traditions of dark comedy and satire within the horror genre. Fairly recent examples that Get Out has links to would be the films of Joe Dante, while I also detected some nods to Ken Russell’s forays into horror. Above all though, I think Peele was often channeling the shade of James Whale. Just as Whale deftly threaded satire and genuine pathos to make comments on sexuality and conformity in his horror films, so does Peele here manage a blending of sharp commentary with wry humor. How anyone maintains such a balance successfully is beyond me, but Whale did it and so does Peele. Many have said that Get Out is the perfect horror film for this era of resurgent racism, and it certainly is. However, as with Whale’s films, I am certain Get Out will transcend out times and go on to be seen as a great horror film for the ages.

7 GREAT RECENT HORROR FILMS!!!!!!! – #2: CREEP

In Bertolt Brecht’s play Jungle of Cities, one man viciously persecutes another for no apparent reason. When, near the end of the play, the victim finally confronts his pursuer and begs to know why this is happening, the antagonist replies (and I’m paraphrasing): “Because I love you.” The blurry lines between love and hate, the baffling twists of fate that toss one person into the path of evil, and (surprisingly) the humor that courses through even the darkest human relationships are the themes of this incredibly engaging, and strangely endearing film. I confess, when a friend, whose taste in horror is superb, first suggested I watch Creep, I really wasn’t sure. The “found footage” style is one I usually find incredibly lazy and annoying. However, this friend was right, as usual!  One of the wonderful things about this movie (and much of the horror genre at its best) is how it proves you can make a compelling human drama with very little. There are two characters in this film. Another character appears briefly as a voice and a few people are glimpsed in the background. Yet never does the film feel remotely anemic. In fact, its depth makes watching Creep a much richer experience than watching the average “blockbuster,” most of which are full of, to quote a critic savaging heroic drama of the Restoration period, “electrified sawdust.”  Creep involves a down-on-his-luck videographer named Aaron who answers Craigslist add offering work. As a result, he meets Josef, who, despite his cheery attitude, claims to be dying. Josef wants to leave a video behind for his young son. However, Josef’s behavior quickly starts to alarm Aaron, and the two men are soon locked in a struggle where nothing is as it seems. It is not common for me to be afraid watching a horror movie, but more than once, I had to look away while watching Creep.  The title ain’t lying, take it from me. And yet, I also laughed a great deal. Mark Duplass as the sinister yet witty Josef and Patrick Brice as the bumbling Aaron frequently steered the disturbing material in the direction of an off-beat, buddy comedy, only to wrench it back to horror without a moment’s notice. That’s not just great storytelling; it’s a clever comment on life itself. One moment you’re on top, the next you’re on bottom. One second you’re laughing at someone’s jokes, the next you’re not sure who exactly they really are. One day you have a (more than) devoted friend, the next a deadly enemy. Everything being connected is usually supposed to be an optimistic philosophy.  Creep reminds us that “everything” includes quite a bit most of us could do without. But we really don’t have much choice, do we? Josef thinks he’s got everything under control, through the use of his countless masks (one terrifying example of which is literal). In the end though, he’s as much a prisoner of the masquerade as the man he stalks, compelled to act for reasons he’ll never fully grasp. He might win, as might we all, but none of us will ever be free.

7 GREAT RECENT HORROR FILMS!!!!!!! – #1: THE BABADOOK

Several years ago, a young woman who was attending the college I had graduated from was strangled to death by her mother. The family had lived on campus for years since the student’s father worked at the school. I did not know them but I certainly recognized the name. Naturally, I was shocked and horrified. Then I made the mistake of looking at the comments section of an online news article about the murder. Numerous people expressed sympathy for the killer, and by that I don’t mean some sort of “I feel sorry for everyone” attitude, but genuine solidarity. There were several ugly jokes and delighted reactions to them. One person, who identified herself as a mother, did say “Don’t kill your kids.” She was NOT talking about moral objections however, but that murdering offspring would create irksome problems for the parents. Instead, her proposal was simple: “Just throw them out of the house.” Countless commentators cheerfully agreed with her. This particular woman, and several other commentators, drew attention to the fact that the young woman had been “disrespectful” to her mother. To them, this was obvious justification for the killing. Now, if this mother had flown into a rage and pushed her daughter or something like that, maybe I could vaguely understand these expressions of support, while still finding them hideous. But think about strangling someone. Think how hard that would be, how much the person would fight, how many chances you’d have to stop. Then imagine that being someone you’d literally carried inside you…and all of it over “disrespect.” To me, it is almost beyond comprehension, and I have no children, nor do I want any. That last point has gotten me some shocked expressions over the years, and lectures about the delights of parenthood. And yet here were (I admit, claimed) parents, giggling over the idea of slaughtering their own children or, to avoid the inconveniences of doing that, throwing them in the trash. Thinking about those comments (and I lost sleep over them) made me realize how hypocritical we are about children. Having and wanting them are used as talismans of normalcy and respectability. But this greeting card sentimentality ignores the fact that children aren’t props but developing and deeply vulnerable human beings. The moment kids demonstrate this humanity, in all that word’s complexity and troublesomeness, there is a tidal wave of resentment and, sometimes, vicious hatred directed at them. None of this is to suggest that parents don’t go through hell for their children. It is a grueling and often thankless job, even in the best of circumstances, and I have tremendous respect for parents who care and try their best, all any parent really can do. Doing one’s best as a parent can become a genuine nightmare when the child has special needs, as Sam the 6-year-old boy at the center of this incomparable film has. To make matters worse, his mother Amelia struggles for money and battles depression at having lost her husband in an accident as he was driving her to give birth to Sam. As the film opens, Amelia is trying to come to terms with the fact that Sam is clearly seriously disturbed. Then a strange children’s book about a creature called the Babadook appears mysteriously in the house and unleashes a fearsome evil on Amelia and Sam. The monster is real enough, but is it any more dangerous than Amelia’s simmering resentment of her own son? Writer/director Jennifer Kent (who might be the find of the decade) tells this story with an eye towards detail and development that truly approaches flawlessness. Very quietly, about midway through, the perspective subtly shifts from Amelia to Sam. Instead of viewing Sam as an energy-sucking troll, we suddenly realize how tiny and helpless he truly is. His need for and loyalty to his mother provide some heartbreaking moments. However, this does not obviate Amelia’s own struggle. As an adult, she has more resources, more context , but this can be a curse as much as a blessing. The temptation to abuse the only power she has, over her son, can be incredibly appealing when Sam is screaming at or striking her. With a malevolent force promising her peace if she will only “bring him the boy” it might be more than she can endure. And yet Amelia fights back, and she fights with the only weapon available: the knowledge that Sam is not only a powerless child, but her own flesh and blood, and therefore deserving of protection. Sam sees this and, even in his fear and immaturity, it gives him something to grasp hold of. While the surface of The Babadook is straightforward and simple, Kent’s masterful pace and the pitch-perfect performance of the two leads, gives the film numerous layers that are, as in much of the greatest works of art, hidden in plain sight. Viscerally terrifying as VERY few horror films can possibly hope to be (if you think a scene showing someone turning pages in a book can’t give you nightmares, prepare to be surprised), The Babadook is, in my humble opinion, about as close to perfection as cinema can get. The ending has been criticized, not as a disaster or anything, but as not living up to the rest of the film. This point has some merit but ultimately I feel the conclusion is aesthetically justifiable by the film’s theme and focus. As such, it actually adds to the overall message of the film, a message (which I won’t spoil) the vitality of which is not a bit diminished by its familiarity. Many have found the last scene of Mozart’s Don Giovanni a letdown, or have complained about the narrative chaos that engulfs Shakespeare’s Hamlet, but can anyone really imagine them any other way? I’m not necessarily saying this movie is on that level (although I’m also not saying it isn’t) but it is a masterpiece and, like many other masterpieces, it ultimately ends the way it has to end. In any event, I feel quite confident in stating that The Babadook is the crown jewel of recent horror films, and that’s saying something considering the artistic richness of many recent horror films, as this list has shown, I hope. It is also one of the greatest films of the last 10 years. Just remember before you watch it “if it’s in a word, or in a look, you can’t get rid of the Babadook.” You REALLY can’t!

THE VAMPIRE’S GHOST

Quick note: In 2018 I was busy and exhausted so, like in 2016, I re-shared old reviews and did one new piece.  Since all the ones I re-shared were reviews of vampire movies, I decided to make the one new review of a vampire movie I’d seen recently.  Fascinating, I know.

This film fascinates me on so many levels.  Before I dive in however, let me include a warning.  As is often the case, I need to invoke the possibility that what intrigues me about a particular movie might be too idiosyncratic to mean much to anyone else.  Critical reaction to The Vampire’s Ghost does not seem especially warm (although there are some exceptions) and, apparently, even the primary screenwriter (noted science fiction author Leigh Brackett) didn’t think much of the film.  Certainly I would never claim this as a lost masterpiece; there is plenty done poorly or merely blah.  That being said, in the end I can only go with my own reactions, and The Vampire’s Ghost really drew me in.  Watch it and call me crazy, but I’m going to try and explain why I was fixated.

Some background should be helpful.  I stumbled across a reference to this film while reading about John Polidori’s 1819 short story “The Vampyre.”  That story is generally seen as the start of the vampire sub-genre in horror.  Polidori was a doctor and wannabe writer, who managed to become the personal physician to the notorious poet and celebrity Lord Byron.  While initially star-struck, Polidori came to see Byron as a cold man who used people, especially women, and then discarded them.  Byron and Polidori were among the guests at an almost legendary literary house party in Switzerland that included Percy and Mary Shelley.  Due to the horrible weather enveloping much of the world that summer (the “Year Without a Summer”), the gang was forced to stay in doors where they hit upon the idea of writing ghost stories.  Mary Shelley’s would eventually become Frankenstein.  Byron started a vampire tale but never completed it.  Later, he dismissed Polidori, who took revenge by appropriating Byron’s vampire plot and making the ruthless, seductive undead fiend resemble the famous poet.  “The Vampyre” was a great success (partially due to a publisher’s possibly intentional error in implying Byron had written the piece) and vampires left folklore to become the pop cultural stand-bys we all know them as today.

Let me explain that I have been enthralled by the details of the story I outlined above since I was around 10 or 11.  Ever since I first became aware of it, I’ll read pretty much anything on the subject.  Certainly I’ve always loved Frankenstein but I guess Polidori’s story particularly excites me because of my love of vampires.  Even before I was really old enough to read “The Vampyre,” my interest was stimulated by a line of abridged horror classics for children which, along with the usual suspects (Poe, Dracula, Frankenstein), inexplicably included a toned-down version of Polidori’s seminal piece (the title modernized as “The Vampire.”)  Later, I finally read the original and, even though Polidori was no master, it has been a favorite of mine ever since.  Through the stilted prose is the intriguing spectacle of a man dealing with someone he could not dissever himself from, despite finding him utterly repugnant.

While I knew “The Vampyre” had inspired numerous plays and etc. in the years after its release, I had never heard of any later adaptations.  By the time cinema came along, vampire stories were firmly in the grip of Bram Stoker’s infamous count.  Of course, vampires have gone in many, non-Dracula directions since then, but Polidori’s short story seemed to be mainly remembered as the fount of the sub-genre.  That’s why I was startled one day last year (2017) to come across, in the Wikipedia entry for “The Vampyre,” reference to a film version called The Vampire’s Ghost…from 1945!  Could it be possible?  I had never heard of the movie, and I have a pretty extensive knowledge of horror films from that era.  How could I have missed this title, especially if it was an adaptation of the half-forgotten Polidori story I loved so much?  Excited, I started reading up on The Vampire’s Ghost.  I was initially puzzled since there was little available information, and none of it mentioned Polidori.  Still, I was determined to see the film and was grateful when I found it could be easily accessed online.

To be sure, The Vampire’s Ghost is undoubtedly based on Polidori’s “The Vampyre,” albeit loosely.  The story concerns an (apparently) American business and missionary outpost in central Africa.  Several mysterious murders of native workers have put the whole community on edge.  This much is Brackett’s, but she still includes many of Polidori’s central plot points.  The vampire ruining people financially just for the hell of it, the undercurrent of sexual abuse, the oath of silence the hero is tricked into, all of these come straight out of “The Vampyre.”

However, what really ties this film to the Polidori story isn’t the use of plot details but the overall tone and atmosphere.  In an astonishing move for the time, The Vampire’s Ghost is completely independent of the Bela Lugosi-Dracula mold pioneered in 1931 at Universal Studios.  Few vampire films of the 30s and 40s managed to be free from Lugosi’s long shadow, and none so thoroughly or boldly as this modest little flick.  Many bits of conventional vampire mythology are jettisoned, such as bats and death by sunlight.  The vampire of this movie, Webb Fallon, is totally unlike Dracula in every significant way.  Like the character he was drawn from, Polidori’s Lord Ruthven (pronounced “Riven,” get it?), Fallon’s evil is as much a product of his cruelty to others as his thirst for fresh blood.  When we first meet him, he is gambling at the nightclub he owns (one of many times I was reminded of Casablanca), a look of exquisite boredom on his face as he bankrupts his competitors.  That sets the tone for the whole movie.  In fact, a few shifts early on could easily turn Fallon into a film noir heavy, without any supernatural overtones.

Speaking of the portrayal of Fallon, it’s time to talk about the actor playing him.  John Abbott was a British-born performer, familiar to audiences from numerous film and TV appearances.  While I don’t want to exaggerate this little movie’s virtues, in The Vampire’s Ghost Abbott gives the performance of a lifetime.  While the rest of the serviceable cast basically fades into the background, Abbott dominates every scene with ease.  He turns Fallon into a genuinely troubling character.  While not viscerally frightening, Abbott’s performance is one of the few in the horror genre of this time to exude a real sense of menace and ugliness.  With his charming smile turning at a moment’s notice into a vicious sneer and his subtly changing vocal inflections, Abbott evokes what must have been centuries of Fallon’s destructive seductions.  With his large, starring eyes, Abbott deepens the character further, simultaneously projecting cold mastery and a strange undercurrent of childish insecurity.  Fallon, while deeply evil, thus comes off as a figure approaching the tragic.  All due respect to Bela Lugosi, but Abbott is in another realm altogether here.

Abbott manages to do all this without any particularly revelatory speeches and in the space of a film that lasts a bit less than an hour.  His performance is a perfect example of something I really love about many of these older films and the actors in them; their ability to stimulate the imagination, rather than merely gratify the senses.  Abbott feeds us just enough to set us daydreaming, thus allowing a cheaply made programmer to achieve an almost epic vibe.

While I do feel Abbott is the alpha and omega of The Vampire’s Ghost, the film has other significant virtues.  Capable journeyman director Lesley Selander generally sets a fast pace, but never lets things feel rushed.  He even effectively slows things down on occasion, especially to highlight the peaks of Abbott’s performance.  While the film is fairly conservative visually, there are a handful of above average shots, particularly in the rather jolting finale.  Lush movie music is happily applied with restraint and the tedious, inevitable “reading of the vampire book” scene is kept mercifully brief.

Setting also plays a positive role.  Fallon’s nightclub has just the right air of noir-ish seediness to match the vampire’s personality.  The fact that the movie takes place in Africa, however, is the most intriguing aspect in terms of setting.  For 1945 audiences, this probably had the effect of evoking mystery and terror.  Contemporary viewers are more likely to focus on the film’s (probably largely subconscious) racial politics.  Surprisingly, things are not totally cringe-inducing on that front!  True, the African characters are not given much personality, but they are also not demeaned or mocked.  The fact that Fallon initially kills natives while avoiding the white residents could be read as having an anti-imperialist bent, since Fallon seems to view them as “safe” to target due to their inferior status.  An interesting counter-reading could concern the fact that the white characters are worried by the negative impact the vampire killings have on their access to native labor.  I’m probably being too soft but I did find it pleasing that, despite the talk of business conditions, the white characters are shown to be genuinely horrified by the killings.  Also appealing is a plot point lifted from the horror trope of “the wisdom of folk/native lore.”  While this is standard fare, Selander, Brackett and co. handle it in an interesting way.  The natives identify Fallon as the source of trouble but, in a key scene, Fallon completely bamboozles the (white) authorities since he knows what buttons to push with them.  Eventually, the other white characters not only admit the natives were correct, but defer to their expertise in handling the situation.  I don’t want to pump this up too much; it isn’t made a great deal of.  However, the fact that it’s handled at all, and in such a quietly effective way, is pretty impressive.

Fans of 30s and 40s American horror might well be thinking of Val Lewton after reading the last couple of paragraphs.  The horror producer-auteur’s work at RKO Studios probably hovered all American horror movies in the 1940s, and I did detect a great deal of his influence.  The complexity of Fallon’s character, the noir touches, the lack of too much underscoring, the ridiculous title (there’s no ghost), the avoidance of most horror cliches, and the absence of racism when dealing with black characters all point to Lewton.  Alas, only in Abbott’s performance does The Vampire’s Ghost really rise to that level.  Lewton would have insisted on a genuinely good score, created better supporting characters, more striking visuals and, above all, provided his African characters with genuine dignity and agency.  In the end, The Vampire’s Ghost doesn’t have any truly major artistic ambitions.  Still, the Lewton influence is much more pronounced here than in many other films of that time, most of which seem to “evoke” Lewton mainly by including misty cinematography.  I’ve written before about how studios outside Universal and RKO were unable to establish a house style for horror movies.  In The Vampire’s Ghost and the following year’s The Catman of Paris (also directed by Selander), Republic Pictures seemed tantalizingly close to creating just such a style.  It’s true Val Lewton would have made this film better, but he also would probably not have been attracted to such an explicit vampire story line.  Aside from Abbott’s performance (in my opinion an underrated high point of 40s horror) The Vampire’s Ghost is a minor film.  But it does what it does with style and smarts, makes good use of positive aesthetic influences and doesn’t overstay its welcome.  It may not be a masterpiece but it is its own movie, and a pretty good one all around.

3 HORROR FILMS!!! – #3: HEREDITARY

The reactions to this (in my view, brilliant) 2018 film are fascinating and they say a lot about the state and perceptions of the horror genre in recent years.  Readers and friends will know that I consider horror to be in the midst of a new golden age.  Having cast off the shackles of unrelenting grimness, horror filmmakers in the last five years or so, seem to feel liberated to go in all sorts of different directions.  This has returned a sense of giddy fun and even goofiness to the genre, largely missing since the very early 1990s.  However, horror is only in the midst of a wonderfully fun period if you look at it as a vast genre, capable of an almost endless multitude of approaches and interpretations.  If, on the other hand, you view horror as needing to accomplish specific things in a specific way, the state of horror cinema might be quite frustrating, and a movie like Hereditary could be downright infuriating.  I think horror is at a crossroads, where many fans are willing and even excited to see it dance around gleefully, while an almost equal amount are grousing that many of these new movies “aren’t even horror.”  I am emphatically with the former camp, but it’s important to understand where the latter is coming from.  The conflict over Hereditary is a good place to start.

When Hereditary had been in release for a bit, film commentators noticed that there was a sharp division between film critics and the general public.  The critics mostly lauded Hereditary while regular moviegoers were much more mixed in their reactions.  The friend who first recommended Hereditary to me (whose taste in horror movies I consider superb) was astonished when he looked at the film’s audience reaction score on Netflix and saw an, at best, fair rating.  I said something like, “You know there are always a lot of people going ‘That’s the dumbest movie ever!’ when a film is a little different.”  He nodded sadly and laughed.  Similarly, many have chalked up the lukewarm reaction of some audiences to Hereditary to the supposed tendency of the great unwashed to undervalue great art, especially when said art first appears.  There are elements of truth to this, but I’ve come to think that it’s a quite snobbish perspective and that, in any event, the truth about the reaction to Hereditary is much more subtle and interesting.

When I referred earlier to “the shackles of unrelenting grimness,” I was speaking about a long stretch when horror films seemed practically bound by law to be as utterly bleak and vicious as possible.  Some of this was left over from the slasher era of the 1980s, but even more from the torture porn of the early 2000s.  I don’t mean to knock those particular subgenres; neither is my favorite but they’re both capable of quality work.  The problem developed when the grislier aspects of these approaches became dogmatic in the horror world.  A horror movie came to mean something quite detailed and relatively easy to predict: things would be incredibly awful, they would sadistically get much worse, and all would end badly.

One might think Hereditary would fit the pitch black requirements I just outlined.  The characters are frequently unpleasant, there’s incredible cruelty, and a good amount of gore.  But the more I thought over the film, the more it dawned on me that, on a certain level, it has a happy ending.  Now, for those who’ve seen it, don’t keel over just yet!  Obviously Hereditary doesn’t really end happily, in the way we usually mean.  However, it does end with a feeling of affirmation, for one particular character at least.  I encourage everyone, whether seeing the film for the first time or re-watching, to pay close attention to the final scene.  What does the tone tell us?  How does the (incredible) music score suggest we feel?  Instead of gloating over the awfulness, there’s an almost lyrical expression of triumph.  Anyone with a list of requirements for a horror movie is going to be pretty confounded.

And that’s only the finale!  While most of the time Hereditary is somber and includes a fair amount of jump scares (though not as many or as wrenching as, say, The Babadook), the plot revels in gleeful absurdity.  In this, Hereditary has more than a little in common with another gem of contemporary horror cinema, 2017’s Get Out.
That film is more open in its use of ironic humor, but watching the zaniness pile up in Hereditary, it was hard not to sense a bit of a smile in the background.

That kind of genre rule defiance is bound to tick off people who want to know what they’re getting into, and I can empathize.  Still, it’s that kind of imaginative leap that often makes a story worth telling, at least to my mind.  In the case of Hereditary, I think the film was, consciously or not, reviving an earlier definition of “comedy,” one where the term meant a positive result but not necessarily laughter.  One can find this in Dante, in Shakespeare’s “late romances,” and in the early nineteenth century Italian opera genre “semiseria.”  Unlike the rigid operatic genres of “seria” and “buffa” that had usually prevailed, opera semiseria offered a generally light tone with a happy ending, but with some sadness mixed in, and relatively few outright laughs.  You might even cry a little before things worked out.  Hereditary is certainly quite different.  Still, watching it relish its own nonsensical plot and picking up that note of celebration at the end, I couldn’t help but feel that, for all the dreadful things that happened in the story, all was as it should be.

3 HORROR FILMS!!! – #2: WAXWORK

Over the last year or so, it’s become clearer and clearer to me that the 1980s was, at least in the context of the United States, the last great era for horror movies before the present day.  Many readers will understandably berate me for stating the obvious, but let me explain that I was once rather ignorant about many aspects of horror, even as I loved it.  As such, when I thought about eighties horror movies, I did not think of wonderfully offbeat and proudly inane films like this one, films which in my view make up the lifeblood of horror.

So what was behind my woeful undervaluing of eighties horror?  Well, as friends know, my favorite period for horror movies has always been the 1930s and 1940s.  Because of my adoration of the gothic-tinged scary movies of this era, I was sometimes stupidly suspicious of other horror sub-genres.  This led me to think of the 1980s as little more than “the slasher era.”  Now please understand, I have also moved away from the notion that the slasher sub-genre was all bad.  It’s still not exactly my cup of blood, but dismissing it as I often did when I was younger was utterly foolish.

That being said, even worse than my disdain for slasher films was my notion that they more or less made up the entirety of eighties horror.  True, they certainly played a prominent role, but the 1980s yielded all sorts of horror movies, often cross-pollinating in some fascinating ways.  I honestly don’t know how I missed this but I can tell you how I started getting over it.  It was just kind of a process of noticing things.  I noticed that several beloved horror movies, (Hellraiser, Re-Animator) were from the eighties.  Then I noticed that a lot cherished horror memories from childhood (The Monster Squad) and favorite, undervalued obscurities (The Unholy) were also eighties-born.  Finally, I started noticing that when I discovered an incredible horror movie for the first time, say The Howling, it frequently came from…yep, the 1980s.  Aesthetic prejudice smashed!  Not only smashed, I’m now a confirmed convert to the glory of eighties horror.

But what made eighties horror so great?  And what does this have to do with 1988’s Waxwork which, despite my affection for it, isn’t even a minor masterpiece?  A number of film critics and commentators I’ve read note that fantasy, horror, and science fiction movies in the eighties benefited from two things that might initially seem contradictory.  First, special effects achieved a new kind of sophistication.  Second, those effects were still mostly not at CGI-level wizardry.  Thus horror and etc. of the eighties was able to make a lot of dreams (and nightmares) come true, but was still forced to leave quite a bit to the imagination, in a way which actually improved the aesthetic quality of the films.  I think these observations are spot on and they help explain why Waxwork, despite its (seriously) numerous flaws, is not only a great deal of fun but something of a guide to the artistic highlights of eighties horror movies.

There’s certainly nothing particularly startling or original about the story.  A bunch of dopey college kids find a mysterious waxworks in a creepy mansion.  You can probably figure out most of what happens from there.  The exhibits lean towards the demonic, come to life and suck our heroes in.  The whole thing turns out to be part of a scheme by dark forces to take control of/destroy the world…or something like that.

Even though I think aesthetic classifications of “good” and “bad” tend to rest on pretty shaky ground, I’d be lying if I said I considered Waxwork a good movie.  It is, however, frequently quite enjoyable.  Some of that is simply due to a spirited production overcoming a lazy concept.  Anthony Hickox directs with genuine energy and the cast (including some well-known performers) is appealing, especially an amused and charming Patrick Macnee, and J. Kenneth Campbell in a surprisingly powerful turn as the Marquis de Sade.  The tributes to older horror films are also fun without getting out of hand.

However, these modest virtues only explain part of what Waxwork has going for it.  Throughout the film, I was struck by how much of the plot we are just expected to kind of go with.  When the ridiculous backstory is explained, there’s no attempt to make it remotely credible, even within the film’s fictional and fantastic context.  It’s open and proud about being nothing but childish make-believe.  It seems to me that a number of eighties horror movies do this; their “mythologies” have a tendency to feel like little kids playing with toys.  Sure, it’s pretty laughable when you think back on it as an adult, but it also produces a kind of joy you never quite find again in life.  Plenty of eighties horror movies do this and, unlike Waxwork, actually manage to be genuinely good (and sometimes even great) films, but it was Waxwork that first helped me put my finger on what I liked so much about eighties horror, so I’m grateful to it for that.  The sense of exuberant playfulness and wonder that characterize Waxwork and much of eighties horror, even when the gore is flowing freely, is something the genre would frequently lose track of in the years after the close of the 1980s.  Fortunately, while things are certainly very different today, horror seems to have found its way back to the ghoulishly gleeful spirit of that quirky decade.

3 HORROR FILMS!!! – #1: THE CATMAN OF PARIS

I’ve always been a little puzzled over why some fellow fans of old-time horror movies are so critical of the 1940s.  Sure, some of the dark comedy and sexual/social undertones that characterized the best of 1930s horror diminished, but forties horror continued to deliver well-made gothic chills while bringing a new level of technical smoothness to the genre.  I don’t say any of this to cast aspersion on thirties horror; I’ll always be a vintage horror freak but, for me, that means loving both decades of horror’s first golden age.  Sometimes I’m in a thirties mood, sometimes I’m in a forties mood, but they were both great.

When it comes to forties horror, I have a (probably unfortunate) tendency to put everything up against the work of Val Lewton.  The brilliant producer made nine incredible horror movies for RKO Pictures, starting with Cat People in 1942 and ending in 1946 (intriguingly the same year this film was released) with Bedlam.  Visually and thematically, Lewton delivered quality and subtlety, despite being saddled with low budgets and often laughable, prearranged titles.  I used to think that Lewton’s influence spread throughout the horror genre in the forties, and it probably did to some extent, but a friend pointed out to me that other forties horror films often just reflected a similar mood to Lewton’s.  Be that as it may, I still think Lewton’s work almost unparalleled.  He was also able to maintain his inspiration across two quite different stylistic periods.  His first period has an almost dreamy, poetic quality.  Then RKO insisted he bring in horror star Boris Karloff.  While Lewton was initially reluctant, he and Karloff became good friends, and Lewton was able to continue making artistically serious horror movies.  His films with Karloff were, however, quite different from his earlier work.  Meticulously crafted period drama was the keynote of Lewton’s second period.

In both styles, Lewton was the horror king of his time.  The folks at Universal had their own thing going, held over from the thirties of course.  But only Universal and RKO (mostly under Lewton, but also the radically different King Kong movies) seemed capable of regularly delivering top-notch horror.  Everywhere else was hit and miss…with one tantalizing semi-exception.

In 1945, poverty row studio Republic Pictures made a little horror movie called The Vampire’s Ghost.  Those interested can find my review of it elsewhere on this blog.  When I first sat down to watch it, I wasn’t expecting much but found it to be, within its limits, remarkably effective.  I figured however, that it was a fluke or entirely due to the participation of one of its screenwriters, Leigh Brackett, who would later go onto fame as a science fiction writer.  I’m sure her contribution was significant but, to my pleasant surprise, Republic seemed capable of making a more than solid horror movie without her.  Their follow-up to The Vampire’s Ghost, the very next year’s The Catman of Paris, is also a real find for fans of thirties and forties horror.

The Catman of Paris concerns a writer in 1890s France named Charles Regnier.  Regnier is troubled by blackouts and strange dreams.  He has also run afoul of the government, due to politically sensitive material in his latest novel.  When a series of grisly murders, with the victims apparently clawed to death, begins, the government targets Regnier, who fears that his visions of a terrifying “were-cat” creature might be his subconscious telling him about himself.

If The Vampire’s Ghost is reminiscent of Lewton’s lilting first period, The Catman of Paris (despite the obvious nod to Lewton’s very first horror movie), brings to mind the aesthetic qualities of his second period.  Like the Lewton/Karloff sequence, The Catman of Paris gets high marks for using history as more than a mere backdrop.  Director Lesley Selander (returning from The Vampire’s Ghost) genuinely tries to evoke fin de siecle Paris and its cultural world.  I wouldn’t say he quite pulls it off, but the seriousness of the attempt makes the film far more interesting to watch than one might expect going in.

The Catman of Paris also benefits from a decent cast and a nice sense of mystery, reminding one of the old links between the gothic horror and mystery genres.  I actually cared about the characters and was, to some degree, surprised by the end.

Does any of this make a masterpiece?  Well, no.  The cast is good, but none of them are Karloff, Selander was thoughtful, but not Lewton, and screenwriter Sherman L. Lowe was clever (if derivative), but no Poe.  The Catman of Paris is a fun, above average curio.  Your reaction to it will depend on what little horror curios mean to you.  For me, they’re the stuff of life, so I love it!