I had the absolute best experience recently. I spent the end of May and most of June in Ocean City, MD, where I come every summer to help my family mount their pirate show at Jolly Roger Amusement Park (magic, songs, pirates, treasure, etc). I build and paint sets and make props and costumes and prepare technical elements. It’s always a huge job and I always use it as an excuse for why I haven’t posted for a while. This year was no exception, but towards the end of my visit, I finally took an afternoon for myself – went to the beach and saw the ocean for the first time since I’d arrived, got a slice of pizza, and most importantly, went to check out something I’ve been wanting to revisit for years.
We moved to OC full time when I was in the 4th grade, quite a while ago. And down on the boardwalk, there is this old ride-through haunted house, what I’ve come to learn is called a “Dark Ride.” I remember going on it last time when I was a little kid – it could have been 35 years ago. And I was totally in love with it then. I don’t remember much from that time, but I remember that, inspired by it, I had a short lived ambition to design my own ride-through haunted attraction – for some time I even had recurring dreams about it and just knew that if I could actualize what I’d seen behind my eyes, it would be life-changingly extraordinary.
Well, I never did that. But over the years, I’ve thrown plenty of good Halloween parties, and as I’ve written about a few times, come late October, my cabaret group always does something spookily thematic and I get to come up with new horror effects to do live with an audience (I’m already planning some exciting new tricks for this year – people will gasp I tell you, gasp!), so part of the dream survives…
Anyway, sometime this last year, the OC Boardwalk Haunted House popped up on my social media feed and I learned that it had been designed by a famous ride designer back in the 60s (Bill Tracy) and that it was really worth seeing. For years and years, I’ve been walking by it (I visit my parents every summer – they’ve been doing their shows in OC for the last 25 years!) and loving the exterior, but always assumed that it would be lame inside, just another artifact of childhood that regrettably diminishes when looking out of adult eyes. But then, I got my free afternoon and I went and dropped I think $8.75 for a ticket and had the best damn time! It’s only a 5 minute ride, but I came out just grinning ear to ear – I bought a t-shirt – the owner was there and I got to chat with him for a while (apparently, he’s usually around – it’s been family owned and operated since the very beginning, back in 1964 – and he’s always happy to talk about the ride’s history – still a family business, his son (who took my ticket) comes up with new ideas, and he builds them), and then, with his permission, I bought another ticket and went through a second time to film it so that I could upload it here.
My rockin’ new shirt! Also, yes, it is laid out on a backdrop of my Garfield and Odie blanket, cause I’m a real cool guy.
Now, of course, my cell phone’s camera surely can’t do justice to something so necessarily experiential (and especially something so dark), but this can give some small taste of what it’s like and I really don’t think watching it could spoil the experience, so behold…(and I strongly recommend you turn your sound on)…
Ocean City Haunted House
Once you take your place in the cart, fashioned after a casket, you’re thrust through doors that slam open, into a dark, dayglow world of all manner of ghosts and goblins, skeletons and torture victims. Of the, I believe 11 features designed by famed Dark Ride builder, Bill Tracy, back in ’64, I think 9 remain, but it is amazing that they do as they are largely made of papier-mâché and plaster, and they all move and shake, thus undergoing real material stress over the years. While I’m not certain of the origin of each gag in the ride, a couple that I know to be original are genuinely impressive, both as feats of engineering, and in terms of what they got away with more than 60 years ago and have never abandoned, such as a delightfully disturbing moving tableaux in which a woman is being vertically bisected by a spinning blade in a saw mill. Other gimmicks are clearly more recent additions, such as elements referencing Pennywise or Sadako from Ringu. There’s a fence, holding back hungry zombies, that starts to collapse as you ride by. There’s a tunnel with a train coming straight at you. There’s a giant possum that suddenly lunges for your head (Why a possum? Apparently, because it’s awesome!) and a rather concerning water effect at the end (I was sure I was gonna get soaked). There are constant disorienting optical illusions, startling sounds, and myriad gleeful terrors as you’re shaken along the track. And I loved every single second of it. How can something designed to scare (and which sometimes does) overwhelmingly leave me with an impression of ‘loveliness?’
Opened in 1964 at the behest of Granville Trimper (the Trimper Family having developed much of the Amusement industry on the southern boardwalk), and built by then famed designer, Bill Tracy, the OC Haunted House has been in operation for over 60 years. Tracy was one of the most renowned Dark Ride designers in the 60s and 70s, but today, only a handful of his rides remain around the nation (perhaps 5 or 6). In the late 80s, a second level was added (utilizing, among other things, tricks taken from a different nearby Tracy ride which had been closed), and there are always new elements being introduced (just as some older pieces inevitably have to be retired). But however much things change, I feel the ride retains its classic style and identity. And I’m so glad it does cause it is genuinely, heart-warmingly, giant-smile-plastered-across-my-face charming – a glorious artifact of a bygone age. But, it must be said, it also got a couple of solid jumps out of me. However joyfully old-timey it may be, it still delivers what it promises.
I don’t know if I have the words to express just how much warmth I felt for this thing. I had gone in expecting something old and janky and cheesy, and to some extent, it may even be some of those things, but it is so clearly loved and lovingly maintained. Every bloody torture, every giant rat, every hooded victim, hanging upside down over a fiery pit as he writhes and screams in desperate agony is infused with endless love and care. And that love is contagious – or at least it was for me.
I loved this ride in very much the same way that I love the horror genre, in the same way that anyone who is a fan of some “cult” item can treasure that beloved object of their obsession. It makes no claim on being “high art,” it is entirely unpretentious, it revolves around “bad” things that you’re not supposed to enjoy – violence, titillation, gore, disgust, cheap jump scares, and simple gags. But it clearly loves all those things and people have obviously poured their hearts and souls into bringing it all to life and keeping it in good working order. Endless labor, ingenuity, and creativity has fueled this ride and just as a medieval cathedral carries the emotional frisson of the fact that generations devoted themselves to its construction, filling each stone with their belief, with their hope for a future life less bleak than that they were living, so too did this ride give me a charge, in its commitment to its scares, to its history, to the way it made me jump and laugh and ultimately walk away beaming with joy.
Pretty sure that bat’s been on the facade from the beginning.
Some artists will never win any awards, will never be recognized by any academy. Some simply go to work each day, pouring all they have into something small and overlooked and unconsidered: a haunted house, a comic strip, a children’s pirate show, a cheap horror flick. But their work is no less valuable than some highfalutin, well-funded, culturally respected piece of capital A “Art” that people shell out big bucks for. And in my opinion, in some cases, it can be worth more. This is the art that is actually in people’s lives, that gives them an experience of the new that makes existence feel slightly more fresh, if only for a fleeting moment. I’ve seen plenty of great works of art: in a museum, in the theatre, in a book, in a cinema; I have been moved and challenged and entertained. But somehow it’s hard to imagine being able to summon the same kind of loving affection for any highly valued work of “high culture” that I so easily can for a bunch of 60 year old papier-mâché and blacklight responsive paint, orchestrated simply to startle me, to disturb me, to gross me out, to take me on a ride for 5 minutes and leave me glowing.
If you every happen to be in Ocean City, MD, I can’t recommend this ride enough. And if you never are (more likely as you could be reading this in Iceland or Japan right now), my takeaway is this: Give these things a chance – when you find yourself somewhere and there is some old thing that’s been around forever and it seems touristy and hokey – a bit of kitsch, give it a try anyway (we don’t need to go through life being so “cool,” do we? We are allowed to like things – to let ourselves be surprised.). There may be a reason it’s still there. It may be just as lovingly cared for as this ride was. And it may not. Who knows? But this cost me less than ten bucks for a ticket, so what is there to lose?
I had a good run for a few weeks there, on a roll and banging out blog posts. And then, as it often does, life happened (travel, work, art, Covid, etc.), and now more than a month has slipped through my fingers when they clearly should have been typing away about horror. So, not to overthink it, I just want to very briefly run through some horror stuff I’ve been digging into during that time – nothing particularly deep, but just sharing a few things I’ve enjoyed. Perhaps some of these will warrant more attention in the future, but for now, I just want to jot down some first impressions.
So, here we go…
His Mouth Will Taste of Wormwood
Ok – I’ve found a new author to get into. This is a very small collection of short stories published under the name Poppy Z. Bright (who, since transitioning, now goes by William Joseph Martin). I mean no disrespect by using the old name, but I believe their horror fiction was all published under the Bright name, and it’s one that I’ve long heard bandied about, but had yet to read. Wow! Their work kinda gave me Clive Barker vibes, an author whom I hold in great esteem. In this tiny volume, I only had four short stories, but I loved them all – a bit of splatterpunk, a bit of southern gothic, oodles of sex and belief and need and obsession and bodies and art.
Two young lovers on a boundary pushing death trip rob from the wrong grave with fatally seductive results. A possessive ghost pulls the only young woman who can see him to join him in death, a tale both romantic and abusive. A zombie outbreak in Calcutta does little to change the flow of life in the city, but brings the story’s protagonist into an encounter with the holy. Two young musicians travel to New York City for a gig and find more than they can handle, but have solace in music and each other, and this new, overwhelming city. I can’t underline how driving and captivating the prose was and how much the thematics spoke to me. I’ve got to check out more of Martin’s work, published under the Bright name. I’m open to suggestions.
The Black Cat (1981)
I’m not quite sure what box to put this film into, ostensibly based on the Edgar Allan Poe story (but only sharing a title). This has long been on my watchlist – I love Lucio Fulci and it’s been ages since I saw something of his for the first time. I’ve seen this one listed either as top-of-middle tier Fulci or as a disappointingly perfunctory exercise that he did as a favor to the producer, but his heart wasn’t in it. Maybe both are true. The first third of the film, maybe more, I kind of loved. It doesn’t feel so much like a product of the man behind The Beyond or City of the Living Dead, but it does feel a bit like it was made by the mind behind The Psychic, a significant movie in its own right. Early on, I was really into the atmosphere and the absolute confidence of the largely visual storytelling. The music by Pino Donoggio is great – at turns pastoral, like something off of a b-side of The Wicker Man soundtrack, and playful or eerie and tense – really gorgeous work. Patrick Magee (whom I mainly know from A Clockwork Orange) really pops as the sweaty psychic in an unhealthy, abusive relationship with the titular black feline. There is solid atmosphere – all foggy and spooky, and enjoyable sequences of a cat killing (or more precisely, causing the deaths of) a whole bunch of people – and it’s all in the edit – cutting between close ups of the cat or its chosen victim, back to the cat’s eyes (ever watching, waiting, hunting) – I expect the actors were rarely actually in the room with the murderous kitty, but the kill scenes really track.
But somehow, after the midway point, I just had trouble staying focused. Was that the film’s fault, or was that a me problem? I don’t know, but for all that I appreciated so much of what was going on, I just found myself less and less into it.
Anyway, if you dig Fulci, I think it is at least worth checking out: there are endless, foggy abandoned streets; cat scratches draw pints of blood; Magee exerts his psychic domination on others as the sweat pours down his face and his eyes bug out of his head; the practical effects are obvious (there is at least one unmistakable mannequin), but the obviousness really doesn’t matter – the total effect is striking and effective; the dead talk, and scream; and there are more close ups of eyes than you can shake a stick at (Fulci gonna Fulci…). Also, it is just so well crafted. I think people often associate Fulci with extreme gore, and in his goriest work, he threw logic out the window, making pure nightmare flicks, but that doesn’t describe his whole oeuvre. He could be a real craftsman, and I think this film is an example of him in a high craft, though possibly low inspiration, mode.
But one content warning – everything may well have been on the up and up, but watching an Italian production from this era, I’m just always nervous about how the cat or cats were treated during the filming. If that’s the sort of thing you’re going to be distractingly worried about throughout the film, maybe give this one a miss.
So in the end, I’m quite glad to have finally seen this, but I don’t know that I’m going to make a habit of it.
The Metamodern Slasher Film (2025)
So, one of my very first posts here was about this exciting online conference I’d had the pleasure of attending (a lovely side effect of the pandemic was how many things opened up and became accessible when they went online), the “Slasher Studies Summer Camp,” back in 2021, and one of the stand out presentations at that conference was the keynote speech by Dr. Steve Jones on what he’d termed “the metamodern slasher film.” What he was describing felt immediately familiar and it has stayed with me as I’ve watched many recent slasher flicks that do, indeed, seem to share a similar ethos, if not approach. Since then, I’ve followed Jones on social media, so when he announced a pre-order discount for the softcover edition of his full book building on those same ideas, I was eager to snatch it up quick as can be (and happy to get the discount – academic books can be bank breaking).
I must admit, I’m not quite finished with it yet – but it is a consistently enjoyable and intriguing read. I must also admit that I still have difficulty putting my finger on exactly what the “metamodern” entails, but it is basically one interpretation of our current post-postmodern moment, and insofar as we all never fully agreed on one set meaning of “postmodern,” I think it’s fair that I have some difficulty wrapping my head around this proposed sentiment that both grows out of and reacts to what had come before.
Throughout, Jones presents case studies of contemporary slashers (the highest profile example would be Happy Death Day, but his cited filmography is deep), many of which I’ve seen and many of which I haven’t, identifying certain shared elements and/or underlying philosophies. In short, they frequently feature a knowing sub-genre self-awareness, allowing for a great deal of meta-play, but without the ironic distance/genre criticism that postmodernism frequently presented. Jones further identifies a new emotional earnestness in the work, as well as a surprisingly optimistic note – whereas postmodernism may critically suggest that it had all been done before and there was nothing new under the sun – just the same tired old tropes at which to wink, these films show a creative commitment to innovation, aware of tropes, but open to twisting them into something that feels new and fresh and fun. The optimism he reads here, particularly as identified in a bunch of what have been described as cynical “dead teenager” movies, intrigues me, given the extent to which I feel like we live in a scary, pessimistic age, where it is hard to believe that we could possible walk back the harm being done.
Honestly, I’m not always sure about the implied criticism of the postmodern set, Scream (1996) being the dominant example, but I’m curious to follow his ideas to their endpoint. I’m sure it will continue to challenge and enlighten. Also, I am certainly collecting a list of lesser known, very interesting sounding films that I’m now very eager to track down.
Race With the Devil (1975)
First of all – this movie, celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, is a blast! I feel like we don’t get a lot of horror-action flicks, or when we do, it’s more in the domain of an unseen war between denizens of the night (Nightwatch, Underworld, etc.), featuring horror monsters (vampires, werewolves, demons, etc., but not so much a horror movie of some “normal” person encountering a horrific threat that then takes on action beats (I wonder if it’s about action characters having a certain kind of agency and horror characters more having things happen to them). I think action movies with horror characters are much more common than horror movies with action characters. But this really walks the line – it might not be the scariest movie ever made, but I think it is frequently unsettling and creepy in a way I like horror to be, and then about the last third of the movie is basically a big car chase with assailants attacking our protagonists, trying to climb into their RV or drive them off the road. Cars flip or blow up driving off a bridge or get shot out. It’s exciting the way I like an action movie to be. The cast is great – I really buy the friendship between Peter Fonda and Warren Oats, two buddies who have set off on a long needed vacation in their brand new motorhome, and while the film can be faulted for giving their wives (Loretta Swit and Lara Parker) too little to do, I think they’re both great, really selling the terror and the stress they are buckling under while on the run from Texas backwater cultists. Now, I think it’s an entirely fair criticism to point out that the women disproportionately have to communicate fear and weakness while the menfolk get to heroically fight back, but as a viewer, I think the wives’ reactions are far more likely to resemble my own, and having characters carry that fear is essential to the flick. Also, while they could have had more, they did get small moments to shine, like their great scene doing research on Satanism in the local library, where they end up stealing reference books and running away all giddy. There is a real friendship dynamic there as well, and it was a treat.
In short, these two couples go off on a vacation together, setting off from San Antonio and driving through rural Texas in the direction of Aspen, where they plan to go skiing. Their first night out, having struck camp in a wild spot not far from the road, they witness a group of Satanists across the river as they first dance naked around a fire (oooh, titillating) and then stab a girl with a ceremonial dagger (uh, concerning). Then the black cloaked cultists notice they have an audience and chase the couples as they drive away. Much of the rest of the film features the couples trying to either get the authorities to do something about the murder they witnessed, or just trying to escape to the nearest big city (Amarillo – not even that big) as it seems that every rural resident of the Texas panhandle is somehow in on it. Wherever they go, people watch them strangely, phones mysteriously don’t work, or road accidents seem to have been orchestrated to force them into a trap. Every gas station attendant, every overfriendly, personal space invading neighbor at the campground, every police officer they encounter seems equally likely to be a secret Satanist out to silence them, sabotage their beautiful new motorhome, or kill their dog and fill their camper with rattlesnakes. Travelling around these rural regions, it all takes on a kind of folk horror vibe. Everyone out here in the sticks is part of one big, weird, religious conspiracy – the whole world seems like a slowly tightening noose around the necks of the two couples, until it all explodes (literally even) in the big car chase/fight at the end, not to mention a solid horror downer of a final twist.
This is one of my favorite kinds of horror in that I don’t feel like the filmmakers were trying to “say” anything particularly, so much as to just make a scary, exciting movie; but I feel like something is clearly expressed about the time and the place – the American south (perhaps extendable to non-urban America in general) in the mid 70s. This came only one year after Texas Chainsaw Massacre and while it is nowhere near as harsh or as artful, it has a lot of similarities – in both cases an urban group leaves the city, somewhere in Texas, and finds that everyone out there is a danger. Interestingly, with its focus on a group of young people, Texas Chainsaw shows them, easily identified with the counterculture moment, being hounded by a malevolent, embittered poor rural, group, all of an older generation – the heartland has poison in its heart and it’s not a safe place for anyone who could be part of the future.
In Race with the Devil the sheriff who seems in league with the cultists (or is just really bad at his job – but seriously, he worships the devil) keeps talking about those dang hippies, about the corruptive element of youth, but it’s all a cover for his own, for his group’s own corruption. And rather than attacking a bunch of hippies, he and all the other cultists are coming after four people who, from my modern, non-southern, non-Texan perspective, seem not all that unlike them. They are both working class/middle class/middle aged couples. The guys run an automotive garage and are into motorbike racing. Their big aspiration is to get out of the city, avoid crowds and basically be left alone in nature. But their seeming cultural similarities are no protection – they are no less targets. I feel like the film is just trying to be scary and paranoia filled, and the particular Satanist angle is just a convenient fill-in-the-blank horror threat, but there is a cultural impression in how all of these ‘normal people,’ people not that dissimilar to our protagonists (who are more urban, but hardly what I’d call “big city”), people who might otherwise come across on film as salt of the earth, good old-fashioned country folk, how they are all in an evil conspiracy, all dangerous. They’re not presented like the Sawyer clan in Texas Chainsaw (who are all clearly rather weird, to say the least) – nope – they’re the blood of the soil (if you want to get all 19th century nationalistic about it) and they are everywhere; you apparently can’t throw a rock in rural Texas without hitting a Satanist. The real social danger is not counter culture kids with their long hair and loud music – it’s ‘normal’ folk who will hunt down, harass, and destroy anyone or anything they feel threatens their stasis. That could be the obvious outsider. But it will also be you if you get in their way. I’m sorry to say it has contemporary resonance.
But again, while this may serve as an interesting cultural document, the real reason to watch this is that it is simply fun. Come for the paranoid horror-action flick, but stay for a bit of sociology.
Suspiria (2018) and Stacie Ponder on Suspiria
I needed some comfort food the other week and found myself gravitating back to this recent favorite, which I’ve written about before. I watched it over the span of a few days, savoring it a section at a time, regularly pausing to rave to my indulgent wife about how much I adored a given moment or character or historical artistic reference.
It’s interesting. For all that I love this film dearly, I find that I have difficulty offering my own clear reading of it. It is dense with narrative and symbol and character and simply life. While I feel hard pressed to detail what I think it may all add up to, moment by moment, I am constantly enamored with it. Its politics, its subtextual sexiness, its awfulness. Its witches who are all both monstrous and cruel and cool and utterly aspirational. Its view of a collective art making process that is both inspiring and beautiful and abusive and exploitative. Its nexus of magic and dance and bodies and power and political conflict and sadness and pain and grace. Life is complex and so is this, and I love every single minute of it.
So, having taken such joy in this recent re-watch, and wanting to spend a little more time dwelling in its moods and imagery and ideas, I went to re-read a gorgeous bit of writing from a favorite horror blogger. Stacie Ponder of the Final Girl blog went on a deep dive back in October of 2019, writing a post a day on Suspiria for the whole month, doing what I think is really significant and valuable work in picking apart nuances of the film as well as researching its influences and references. I fear any analysis I might provide would be so indebted to her, that I should just link to her entries and say if you even kinda liked this movie, you owe it to yourself to explore her explications. They were a great pleasure to revisit. Also, it gave me a few mornings of something to read with breakfast instead of the news – I like my horror fictional, thank you very much…
The Coffee Table (2022)
I’d heard great things about this Spanish language feature last year and was so happy to have a couple of hours to sit down and devote myself to something new. Having watched it, I have mixed feelings. There is a lot to like, and many elements linger in my mind, but ultimately I was unsatisfied. Still, I’m glad to have experienced it and to be considering it now.
This will be short, but I need some caveats. First, many horror fans may come away from this feeling that it isn’t really a horror movie, and I get it – there’s no monster, no slasher killer, no supernatural element. Also, it is arguably a comedy, though of the blackest vein. But, I will posit that it is all to do with “horror,” writ large, its protagonist being thrust into an encounter with a terrible truth that is beyond all that he can bear. Also, for all that this could be accurately described as a family drama (or possibly an absurdist tragedy), it features imagery, events, and pervasive discomfort that will be hard for anyone but horror fans to stomach.
Secondly, it is nigh impossible to discuss the movie in any meaningful way without significant spoilers, so if you think you might want to check out this intriguing, frequently intense, doom laden, blackly comic, tight little bottle movie about a man reckoning with the worst mistake of his life (namely, that he bought the wrong coffee table), go do so, even if I found the ending oddly unaffecting. I’d say it’s probably still worth your time.
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Ok, so here are some thoughts:
-I appreciate that when ‘the terrible thing’ happens, we don’t see how, and we never really learn how. It remains shocking, unimaginable. Jesús was there, he saw it, and he still doesn’t understand. But really, the ‘how’ is not important. It was an accident. It is terrible. It can never be reversed. If he could actually explain it to his wife, would it make it any less mind shattering?
-I wonder how critical we are meant to be of Jesús. When he first starts to clean, I was puzzled – how could he think he could actually clean this up – does he think Maria somehow isn’t going to notice? But I get it – he just can’t deal – he can’t face the difficult thing. To be fair, I can sympathize in this case – what could be worse? I think many of us would freeze up and do something stupid, undergoing such a horror. But the more I think about it, the more I feel his failure to deal is symptomatic of his whole character. Maria has to force everything in life because he refuses to make his own decisions (building to the point that he lashes out and buys the stupid table out of spite). Now, few of us are heroes, and most coast through life as he does, trying to avoid difficulties, but there is a cowardice at the center of his character that’s hard to like, though it can certainly be sympathized with (and if we’re to be honest, we all probably share). Furthermore, I’d assumed Ruth was lying/imagining things, but now I wonder – did he do something and his response was then just to shut down and deny and avoid? Who knows? I don’t exactly think he did, but the response would match his life pattern.
-How are we meant to receive the ending? The tension that runs through the lion share of the film is so engaging, and yet when revelations finally come, I feel the film pulls back. The soundtrack covers the screams. The camera looks left, looks right, and Maria has already taken decisive action, and Jesús follows. But I didn’t feel much. I didn’t cry. I didn’t laugh (it is frequently a pretty funny movie). It just felt like a bit of a relief that it had finally happened and we were no longer waiting in suspense for something to predictably go from horrible to even worse. I wonder what the filmmaker’s were hoping for. About that ending, I think perhaps the film suffers from predicating its narrative tension on waiting for something to happen that it’s hard to imagine going much of any other way. Sure, it piles on with its timing, and the actual actions taken by its characters, but sooner or later, Maria was bound to learn the truth. And then, well, it would be bad; and then she does; and it is. Ok.
-Finally, coming from theatre, I did enjoy how much this felt like a play – intense action in generally one location in a contained period of time, with a small set of players. Aristotelian unities all over the damn place. Past that, there is an absurdist approach to over the top tragedy that just feels like it often lives in the theatre more than on screen. I wonder how this would be, staged in a small space, intimate, the audience really trapped in the apartment with him, waiting for the inevitable.
So yeah, glad I watched it, kinda wished I loved the ending, but certainly food for thought.
The Phantom of the Opera (1925)
I have got to spend more time with silent cinema. Every time I do, I always come away so rewarded. Sure, there are elements of performance that can feel dated, eliciting laughter at moments I expect hadn’t been intentional, but it is a joyous laughter. It is great how much we can understand, connect with, feel without words – how little we sometimes need them. And I love how, only reading a few words from time to time, I’m given additional space in my head to think, to consider, react, and process what I’m viewing. And I feel that happens without at all taking me out of it, but there’s just that extra bit of space left to me when everyone shuts up.
I’d seen Phantom before, but was excited to rewatch it as presented by Joe Bob Briggs on the Last Drive In on Shudder. I knew it was the sort of work that he’d be able to share deep history about, and I wasn’t disappointed. If you’re interested, I recommend the episode and I won’t repeat his research here.
But I will say I enjoyed this, celebrating its 100th anniversary this year, even more the second time around. It is a huge picture, executed at such a massive scale. The sets, the cast of hundreds, the early use of color. And it is just fun and exciting from start to finish. It is a crowd pleaser, with tons of successful comedy, atmosphere up the wazoo, and indelible images and sequences that have become icons of the medium (I mean, the unmasking scene alone). It is thrilling and intriguing and beautiful.
And Lon Cheney’s praises could not be sung enough. I’m sorry to say that I’ve seen so little of his work. Basically, I think I’ve only seen this and The Unknown (1927). In this, he brings such flair to the part. Everyone of course talks about his self-administered makeup, but the performance itself is such an absolute delight. The film does everything it can to turn you against him, making him not only physically repellant, but actually a monstrous person. But Cheney’s performance overpowers any efforts of the script. I can’t imagine how anyone today could watch this and not cheer him at every turn – for his charisma, his vivacity, his playful whimsy, his cleverness. I don’t support his actions (he is rather a controlling, entitled proto-incel), but Cheney embodies him as impish and light and brilliant. And the cognitive dissonance of how I receive him makes the film all the more interesting.
He and, by extension, the film are really something to treasure. This was a treat to re-watch.
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And that catches me up on the last few weeks. I’ve honestly watched much less horror than usual, but almost all of it has been really worthwhile – there wasn’t anything that wasn’t worthy of at least a mention on this here blog. Thanks for following along with me. I hope you stick around.
It’s obvious that within horror (or anything for that matter), certain trends occasionally pop up and can dominate for a while before fading away. Some are truly short lived, and some are evergreen. Vampires come and go. So do slashers or haunted houses or zombies. The list goes on. But there is one little trend that always seemed so unlikely, so weird, and therefore, so charming. I just love the idea that some horror franchise, after a few iterations of its own formula, would shrug and suggest, “what if we do what we always do, but in space?”
Honestly, there aren’t that many of these (I’m writing about three here – there could be three more), but the fact that there is more than one seems of note, seems like enough to justify viewing this as a peculiar sub-sub-genre, and so today, let’s take a look at Jason X (2001), Hellraiser: Bloodlines (1996), and Leprechaun 4: In Space (1997) (Sorry Critters 4 – I can only do so much). Spoilers will abound. As will Space Marines, dimly lit spaceships, perfunctory nudity, deceptive holograms, liquid nitrogen freeze kills, and a faithful adherence to formula.
The notion of moving a series to the stars just seems to offer the delicious promise of hilarious laziness and joyful stupidity. That said, having watched these three for today’s post, I’ve gotta say that each in its own way comes across better than I’d expected. It just goes to show you should always give things a chance – you never know what you’re gonna find out there in the vast expanses of space.
Jason X (2001)
Ah, the Friday the 13th franchise. So beloved, so iconic, so … repetitive? I must admit, it is not my favorite series of films, though there are a few that I love (Part 2 is just great). Still, there is a kind of comfort food pleasure in the endless recurrence of their tropes and iconographies. While there were many changes and innovations over the years (from a movie about a crazy lady killing off camp counselors because some teens were screwing around when Jason, her disabled son, drowned, to a series of variations of that son (not dead after all, eventually supernatural) as a backwoods killer and later a kind of bulked up, particularly mobile zombie, willfully encapsulating every trait ascribed to the slasher film, true or not, and eventually going on some odd side quests, like when Jason fought Carrie, or the other time when he passed from body to body in a weird little worm thing), there is always a constancy – watching a F13 movie, you sort of know what you’re gonna get – it’s kinda like travelling internationally and eating at McDonalds – it might not be the most interesting, culturally specific experience, but it’s unlikely to give you a stomach bug (unlike the enchiladas in Part V).
And I feel that there is something interesting about how these movies present themselves. They were constantly attacked as violent, immoral, exploitative trash back in the heyday of the early 80s slasher boom, often subjected to censorship, leaving plenty of gore on the cutting room floor. And I feel, perhaps in response, they leaned hard into the Reagan era morality of the time (as Scream put it, the “sex equals death” equation of the classic slasher – which isn’t necessarily actually the case with many slasher flicks), almost saying, “yeah – we’re exploitative and violent, but see, the killer is only going after teenagers who are doing drugs or drinking or screwing around, so that makes it ok, right?” But now, from the perspective of 2025, I think it’s that old fashioned hypocritical “morality” that is the bigger turn-off and in a weird way, now the ugliness of this sex negative punishment can be excused away by saying, “come on, it was all just a ruse to let us make violent movies with lots of nudity in them,” the commercial exploitation actually softening the blow of the reactionary moralizing.
Even hanging out next to half-defrosted hockey masked zombie maniacs can’t kill the mood.
And so it came to pass that after about 20 years of killing teenagers on earth, it was time to get on a spaceship full of scientists and space marines, but yes, also horny teenagers, and do a bit more of the same among the stars.
Chekhov’s giant drill bit – if someone sharpens a giant drill bit in the first act, when he’s later dropped onto it, someone has to remark, “He’s screwed!”
But released in 2001, far from the cultural context of the original films, Jason X repeats many tropes (horny kids and a hulking, masked killer who’s explicitly triggered by sexuality) without carrying their original semantic values. Rather, it is done with a kind of ironic distance (which was, at the time, perhaps the contemporary way of saying, “look, we’re not actually saying these kids should be punished for being horny, AND we’re not just giving you gory kills and topless girls to titillate, NO, it’s all ironic, we’re all in on the joke,” but it’s just another line – at the end of the day, they just wanted to make and audiences just wanted to watch attractive young people get eviscerated, cause sometimes you do…
I feel like this one is often derided, but really, aren’t most of them? The original was critically panned (and it’s not like the critics ever changed their tunes with later entries), the 3rd was a gimmicky 3D cash grab, the 5th didn’t satisfy some fans on the killer reveal, the 6th is popular but some don’t like its comedy, the aforementioned 7th (fighting a psychic girl) seemed to some like jumping the shark, the 8th is supposed to be set in Manhattan, but everyone complains that it all takes place on a very slow moving boat, and the 9th features the weird worm thing – that was odd. The point is that as much as fans like watching Jason pick off a group of (not always, but often, sadly) forgettable young people who just want to have a good time, I think fans also enjoy moaning about how “this one has some good kills, but it’s stupid that – fill-in-the-blank.”
So yeah, I can’t say this is a great movie by any stretch, but it is basically fun. Coming in the post Scream era, it has a lot of self-aware humor, which some love and some find grating. For my part, I’ll say I enjoyed that, such as the character early on who, in delivering some expository dialogue, explains that Jason had been captured some time ago and should probably just be put on ice (cryogenic deep freeze), but he was too valuable to simply file away – if executives can make a bit more money, dust him off and give that man a machete!
Or of course, I think the most famous sequence in this flick has to be when Jason is distracted on a holodeck by a couple of virtual, topless teen girls expounding on how much they love ‘beer, pot, and premarital sex’ – of course he has to stop chasing his actual targets and beat them to death in their virtual sleeping bags. It is done with intentional, and I think successful humor, clearly poking fun at the tendencies of the series to date, while still getting away with perpetuating said trends, having its cake and eating it too. Cheap gag? Yeah. Does it work? Yeah!
In short, the plot sees Jason cryogenically frozen in 2008 and found by a group of students on an expedition to the now defunct “Earth I” in 2455. They bring him, as well as his most recent victim (who’d successfully turned on the deep freeze before getting stabbed), up to their ship, taking them both back to Earth II as exciting archeological finds. Of course, seemingly woken in a rage by the sense that some young people, somewhere, are having sex, he thaws out and wreaks his typical havoc until just a couple remain. Along the way, he gets a cyber upgrade and a futuristic new look.
It’s all deeply indebted to Alien/Aliens, and generally that works for it. A specimen is brought onto a spaceship – it starts hunting everyone – it might have been left behind, but it was too valuable not to take. In this case, the students are accompanied by a regiment of space marines, which really ups the body count with a stretch in the middle where well-armed people, actually prepared to fight, go after the undead, machete wielding killer, as opposed to having him picking off young people unaware that anyone else has been hurt. But it doesn’t matter – he makes quick work of the soldiers and before long, we’re down to a smallish group of students and scientists, as well as a kung fu kicking, sexy android – cause it’s the future.
I don’t think there was much in terms of scares, but it has tons of creative kill sequences (liquid nitrogen, giant drill bits, getting diced by floor grating while being sucked out into the vacuum of space, etc).
And they often come with a touch of textual comedy, such as the tough-as-nails sergeant who gets stabbed through a door and responds, “It’s gonna take more than a poke in the ribs to put down this old dog,” then a giant blade comes through his chest and he continues, “Yeah, that oughta do it.”
It’s funny, at least enough to put a smile on my face, if not to laugh out loud. Also, I was startled in the first scene to see David Cronenberg there – I mean he was really just on screen long enough for me to write in my notes “David Cronenberg is in this movie?!?” before he got a spike through his chest, but that was a fun cameo – one of the most serious minded horror directors of the era popping up in a deeply silly space set slasher sequel.
There it is.
And maybe that’s the whole film – more or less enjoyable. I imagine a long-time fan of the series might have been irritated with it back in 2001, but as I wrote above, I think that just comes with the territory for F13 fans. Come to it without too much baggage, and there is fun to be had…in space!
Hellraiser: Bloodlines (1996)
While I can’t say this was a good movie, it wasn’t bad in the way that I expect a fourth franchise entry which decides to go to space to be. In concept, and at least for the first act of the film, I’d say this was a serious, horrific, very “Hellraiser” flick and I was really there for it. It had good ideas, did better justice to the mood and thematics of the franchise than the third film had, and offered an enjoyable expansion on the mythos, while also freeing itself up from the deadly franchise trap of boredom-in-repetition by virtue of taking place during different eras, hundreds of years apart, much of it predating the cenobites as we’ve come to know and love them, and thus offering quite a different story. It really felt fresh for a while there.
In fact, the more I think about it, the more I liked it. Was it perfect? Certainly not, and somewhere about the halfway point, I found it really ran out of steam, largely due to the story getting muddied and confusing (more on that in a bit). But even with its weaker second half, this feels special – ambitious in scope and theme (even if hamstrung by execution), full of stuff to love (decadent French monstrous aristocrats doing dark magic, Doug Bradley’s “Pinhead” getting to wax malevolently poetic more than usual – and filmed to look as good or better as he ever has in the franchise, solid, inventively gory practical effects, and a surprise appearance by a young Adam Scott, who I hadn’t known was in this), and most importantly (something which becomes increasingly less true in the Hellraiser series), it really feels like a Hellraiser story.
There is so much to do with a compulsive drive – in the form of game or sex or sensation play or lust for power or the simple urge to unlock something, solve a puzzle, unravel a truth, get all the pieces to fit into place, meeting in a nexus with architecture – of a building, of a soul, of a spaceship, of desire. Narratively, this all gets confused and is ultimately unsatisfying, but the (especially initial) inference of it all is exactly the sort of intriguing psycho-sexual, metaphysical, boundary exploring, horror themed, S&M dressed vibe that I want from a Hellraiser flick. It actually feels like it had Clive Barker’s involvement (apparently the last to do so until the recent reboot), and it is all, for lack of a better word, cool.
I just wish the story worked better. And made a bit more sense. And didn’t lose me in the back half. But hey, you can’t have everything.
In short, over the span of about 5 centuries, the film follows the line of the toymaker, Phillip LeMarchand, who is commissioned by a wicked French libertine to create the iconic puzzle box at the heart of the series, the solving of which unlocks a gate to Hell (or at least some hellish otherworldly dimension – as I’ve discussed before, something I’ve always appreciated about Barker’s world building is that it allows for a satisfying tale of the demonic without having to accept Christian metaphysics, and particularly, Christian moralizing).
Not knowing what end he’d been serving in crafting his creation, LeMarchand would reverse engineer it to undo its horrific results, but he’s killed long before he has a chance. Thus, the film will go on to track two of his descendants – an architect in the 90s and an engineer in the 22nd century, as their dreams are haunted by the family’s dark past and images of the work they might yet do.
In the box’s first use, the eeeevil aristocrat who’d commissioned it summons a demon named Angelique into the body of a sacrificed peasant girl (in a pretty cool sequence of dark magic – flaying the victim and filling her emptied skin with the malevolent spirit). For the third sequel in a series, I’d say as a villain, she is a breath of fresh air, and as long as she is the only malicious entity in the game, I think the film really works. Eventually though, when we hit the second act (in the 90s), Pinhead shows up and the film hits a narrative speedbump.
We have an impression that he and Angelique are very different types of monsters, with very different methods. He has a nice line to her, on first meeting, “Hell is more ordered since your time, princess, and much less amusing.” However, while it is clear that they are in conflict, it was never particularly clear why. Who is attempting to do what and why? For all his talk of order, is he just too impatient to let her play her seduction game? Or do they just fight and betray each other cause evil demons gonna demon? At a certain point, I felt the film makers had lost the plot. Finally, by the end of the second act, Angelique is in thrall to the hellpriest, just another cenobite to cause trouble in the third segment.
That’s her on the right – all Cenobited.
I feel this was all a missed opportunity – she had been an intriguing, enjoyable new element, and Doug Bradley’s performance is as charismatic and rich as ever – if the story is actually to do with their conflict (which is a story I’d really like to watch – how do their methods/philosophies/politics really diverge?), I want to understand it – I want to dig into that, let it breathe, but it’s all given short shrift. Similarly, while it is a pleasure to listen to Bradley utter every line of dialogue, it is sadly pretty empty pseudo-poetic/philosophical hokum. But again, he delivers it with such gravity and sly pleasure that it’s ok if it doesn’t actually mean anything.
When in the third act, we watch them hounding LeMarchand’s final descendent who has been able to craft his ship as a massive puzzlebox that will finally close the gate and defeat them once and for all (or at least until the next sequel – there would be 6 more before the reboot, though, to be fair, all take place at an earlier time, so none of them undo this ending), though that storyline is still a neat idea (and a not at all silly explanation for why we’re in space), the film had already kinda lost my interest (I’ve read that there was heavy studio interference, adding a lot of new scenes in reshoots and cutting 20 minutes of material – I’m curious what it had been on the page).
So in the end, it doesn’t ultimately add up to as much as I’d like it to, but I must say, for a film that I watched just because it’s funny when a horror franchise decides to go to space, it had a lot of great, atmospheric, thematic, gory, and creative stuff. And when I went through it a second time to collect pictures for this post, I found myself digging the film even more. Far from the best of the series, but also faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar from the worst, if you like Hellraiser material, this is really worth an hour and a half of your life. I expect that if I had been a big Hellraiser fan in 1996, I would have been disappointed and exasperated, possibly even full of rage. But coming to it in 2025 for the first time, I’m happy to overlook its not insignificant flaws and rather love the sights it has to show me.
Leprechaun 4: In Space (1997)
Ok – this is it, the big one. The one I’ve been waiting for – a sequel so baldly capitalizing on the ridiculousness of taking its franchise to space, that it even proudly proclaims the fact in its on the nose subtitle: “In Space”! I’ve long been curious to check this one out, and with St. Paddy’s Day around the corner (I’m writing this on March 16th), what better time to watch an offensive Irish stereotype kill a bunch of people while nattering on about his gold? I doubt there is a more “in space” horror sequel than this one, so I’ve saved it (if not “the best,” than at least “the most”) for last. Let’s go!
And space has rarely looked cheaper.
And…it is not a good movie.
But on the other hand, I’m quite certain it isn’t meant to be.
Sometimes a movie has a low budget, but you wouldn’t know it. That’s not the case here. Rather, I feel this movie wears its low budget as a badge of honor. It’s not ashamed of the fact that it looks like it cost half the amount of an episode of Dr Who. No – it is loud and proud about being a deeply silly cheapie doing something patently absurd. And for all that it does not look expensive, there are some fun looking, creative practical effects and makeup applications (as well as some god-awful mid 90s digital effects).
About to explode in the vacuum of space…
I can’t honestly say that I loved it, but I didn’t hate it either – and in writing that I really don’t intend to damn with faint praise. Rather, I think I was probably watching it under the wrong circumstances – alone, sober, on my computer, considering it as an artefact of possible value for consideration on my oh-so-wordy blog. I can only imagine that this works much better in a kind of party atmosphere, under the influence of something or other, everyone’s incredulity amplified by the shared experience.
I can’t possibly imagine that director Brian Trenchard-Smith was trying to make an Oscar contender, but just fell short. I think this was exactly the movie he’d wanted to make. And he did. And, in its way, it is periodically fun, and I expect it could be more so if you’re watching it in the right spirit. And boy is it “in space!” I dug how at no point did it try to explain the transition to the cosmos either. Nope. It’s just some time in the 21st century and we find the eponymous green clad killer in the clearly plastic tunnels of some alien world wooing a space princess so that he might be crowned king. And we go from there.
Why do these plastic alien mine walls look so intestinal?
For the third movie in a row, space marines show up – and these are the “marine”-iest space marines to date – all “hooah!” and chanting while they march around their spaceship, with a hard as nails lieutenant shouting in their faces cause he just wants them all to come home in one piece. It’s so over the top that it comes off as a bit of marine “drag” (and there’s even a part later on when the Leprechaun ensorcells the lieutenant such that he has to do a drag floor show while attacking his brothers-in-arms).
They are sent to the planet to find the creature disrupting the local mining operation, come across the little fella, armed with an emerald green light saber, and blow him up real good.
But then one of them decides to victoriously pee on the Leprechaun’s exploded corpse, the mythological creature’s essence sneaks up the stream and hangs out in the space marine’s penis until he goes off to hook up with another soldier back on the ship, and the marine is killed in a case of premature leprechaun ejaculation. It’s that kind of movie. Now on the ship, the Leprechaun starts hunting down marines, as they try to hunt down him. It unsurprisingly works out better for him than them as he murders them in variously creative fashions.
Yes, that is a Leprechaun climbing out of a Space Marine’s exploded crotch.
Along the way, there’s also a subplot with the nefarious cyborg scientist (Dr. Mittenhand) running the show who gets transformed into a giant-space-spider-scorpion-thing (renamed “Mittenspider”), the Leprechaun gets hit with a reverse shrink ray and becomes a giant, now reveling in turning the tables and calling his enemies “short”;
We see that this Space Marine ship with maybe 7 marines and three scientists has a dance club where the marines drink out of dollar store plastic glasses and dance listlessly with each other;
Mittenhand’s assistant gets hit in the head with a big plate and his face is flattened into a giant disk; when someone requests entrance to the space lab, there is a “ding dong” like a doorbell in the suburbs; Warwick Davis gets to wax Shakespearian while plotting how he’ll eventually murder the space princess and keep both the crown and his gold for himself (“I’ll wed her, bed her, and bury her all in one day”); during a self-destruct sequence, the computer announcement is rather blasé about the urgency with which the crew needs to leave (as if to say, “look, the ship is going to blow up soon – you might want to be going”); and finally, after being sucked out an airlock and exploding in the vacuum of space, in the very end, the Leprechaun’s hand floats by the main windshield of the spaceship and flips off the few survivors.
Again, not “great,” but there were plenty of moments when my jaw literally dropped open and I was rather surprised by what I was looking at, and at no point was I bored. Plenty of the intentional comedy worked – and I trust that any cheesy moments or exaggerated performances were always conscious choices rather than accidents or failures.
Also, on a genre love level, I was tickled by the presence of Miguel A. Núñez Jr. (Spider from Return of the Living Dead and Demon from Friday the 13th Part V – he of the cursed enchilada) as one of the marines. I just looked him up on IMDB – wow, the man works (151 credits to date)! Anyway, this is not my favorite kind of horror flick, but there is a certain pleasure in its unabashed trashiness. Also, in describing the last two films, I supposed that many fans at the time might have been nonplussed with their spaciness. I’m sure that was not the case here. I’m sure anyone who rented this back in the day (it was released direct-to-video) got exactly what they were looking for.
Sometimes a movie doesn’t have to go so far as to be “good.” Sometimes it’s just enough to understand the assignment. This is one of those.
—
And so that’s franchises in space. Are these top-tier entries? Are they classics for the ages? Are they particularly scary? Generally not, though again, Hellraiser: Bloodlines has an awful lot going for it. But even the silliest, cheapest, self-knowingly cheesy of them has some fun to offer. You’ve gotta be in the right head-space, but none of them do I regret watching.
For years of being a horror fan, I’d been loosely aware of Jean Rollin and his whole vibe, but I had never ventured in to check it out. Happily, with this blog compelling me to follow my completionist urge to better know my genre of choice, a few years back, I finally took in my first of his films, The Shiver of the Vampires (1971), and I was immediately struck. Weird, artsy, bold, idiosyncratic, surreal, and clearly deeply personal and deeply felt, he was an auteur with a very specific individual imprint. Since that time, I’ve gone on to watch quite a few of his other works, at least from the first half of his career (later films, not having the budget, were shot on video, and I fear it didn’t well serve his aesthetic), many of which I’ve written about here (such as Grapes of Death, Living Dead Girl, and Requiem for a Vampire), and I must say, I’m a fan. I may not always be in the mood for what he has to offer (slow, dreamy, artful), but when I am, it can be a warm, hypnotic pleasure. That said, I think many of his films feel less like horror movies than avant-garde forays into the fantastique (this is certainly true for the film under consideration today), but there are sufficient horror markers (vampires, crumbling castles, blood and death and flesh) and well as rich, haunting atmosphere and an exploration of themes invested in the stuff of horror (need, loss, death, sex, decay, persistence, obsession, madness) to earn his oeuvre a place of honor on this here blog.
Sometimes I want the comforting glee of horny teenagers getting creatively picked off at a summer camp and sometimes I want a wistful exploration of doubted memories at the nexus of Eros-Thanatos life-death drives.
And that’s just what we’ve got today! As always, spoilers abound, but while there is actually, believe it or not, a coherent story here, this film, celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, is not focused primarily on narrative, so it really doesn’t matter. Read on, and then maybe go seek out the singular, beautiful, iconic work that is:
Lips of Blood (1975)
To write about this, I watched the film twice, separated by about two weeks, and I find it interesting that I had quite a different read the second time through. After my first viewing, in my notes, I jotted down, “Dreamy, gorgeous, barely narrative, evocative.” I’d loved it, but I’d also needed a couple of strong cups of coffee to stay focused throughout. But on second viewing, while it was no less dreamy, gorgeous, or evocative, I realized that the story was actually surprisingly clear and straightforward – but the oneiric qualities had simply dominated to such a degree that the narrative felt more dreamlike, situation sliding into situation, context and character in a constant state of flux. It’s kinda striking to watch it again and feel that wasn’t actually entirely true.
In short, the film follows Frédéric, who sees a photograph of a ruined castle in the poster of a perfume advertisement at a party (“scents are like memories – the person evaporates, but the memory remains”) and it unlocks a forgotten memory of his childhood in which he’d met a ghostlike girl at that castle and slept the night within its walls before returning to his mother. Once remembered, the memory haunts him – he doesn’t recall his early years at all, and he feels that something is being kept from him. His mother councils him to let it go – that she gave him the best life she could after they lost his father – he should stop asking about this castle, this girl, and live his life.
But he can’t. A vision of the girl keeps appearing to him, and he is pulled into the night to find her and the ruined chateau of his youth. He finds the photographer of the poster and she promises to tell him the location he seeks, but she’s assassinated before she has a chance. The assassin chases Frédéric to eliminate any witnesses, but he is saved by the bevy of half-naked vampire girls he’d inadvertently freed from their tomb earlier in the night. He’s approached by some woman who claims to be the girl of his memories (all grown up, with a pet frog), but she’s clearly lying – then the vampires eat her. He confronts his mother who has him locked up in an asylum, but it turns out that the nurses are the same vampire girls and they set him free. Finally, the vision of the forgotten girl leads him to a blind postcard seller, from whom he learns the name of the castle and he immediately boards a train.
At the castle, Frédéric’s mother reveals that they used to house a teen girl who was actually a vampire terrorizing the countryside, turning other local girls into bloodsuckers – and she also killed his father. The mother begs him to finish what she couldn’t, behead the vampire, and be done with this all. But the sweet longing is too strong – he lies about killing the girl, sends his mother away, gets bitten, and in the end, Frédéric and the girl climb naked into a casket on the beach and are pulled away by the roaring tide. Like you do.
But like I said, this isn’t about story. It’s much more quiet, more tender than that. While the narrative tracks (clearly the mother has paid people to cover up the past to protect her son from being pulled back into it), this is not a movie where we wait in suspense to find out what is going to happen next. And yet, there is a compelling, if slow, forward momentum. As in a dream, both we and Frédéric feel the urge to move ever steadily forward, to scratch the itch, to satisfy a curiosity (about what, we don’t even know).
Hanging over everything is a mood of the erotic and the romantic, but specifically defined. “Erotic” here, for all that there is plenty of naked flesh, rarely feels particularly “sexual” (that would imply “heat” and everything here is more of a lingering, alluring, magnetic “coolness”), and there is a lot of nudity without feeling very titillating. But there is a quiet, almost private pleasure in the body, and in being-in-an-environment (empty Parisian streets at night, a crumbling chateau, an aquarium after hours). This is typified by an early scene with the photographer. She’s introduced taking pictures of a nude model. The model poses in one way and another, perhaps having trouble settling on a natural state to relax into.
And then, slowly, she begins to touch herself. The photographer doesn’t react at all. The model smiles and relaxes – seemingly having a kind of private moment. Still, the photographer continues to snap photos, neither asking for more of this or guiding the girl back to less explicit material. Finally, the doorbell rings (it’s Frédéric, here to inquire about the picture of the castle), the photographer lets the girl know that they’ve finished, and she gets dressed and leaves. This intimacy was given space to exist, and nothing was pushed. The moment was explicit, and yet so gentle and light. The photographer is warm with Frédéric and before long, she’s disrobed and is embracing him – but that embrace is just that – it doesn’t feel like sex, per se – but it is intimate and warm and longing – as is the whole film.
The other illustrative scene in this vein (ah, vampire movies and unavoidable puns…) is the final one with Frédéric and the girl (who does have a name – I should start using it: Jennifer) – and this brings me to the term “Romantic,” but I use it not in the sense of Valentine’s day, but rather the 19th century artistic movement. There is a transcendent presentation of nature into which the self is subsumed. At the end, after so much silence in the film, when Frédéric has freed Jennifer and there is no concern that any will return to again entomb her, there is a moment when she is on the cliffs by the sea in silence and she shouts out, “Music!” Suddenly the sound of the sea and the wind and the gulls fills the soundtrack in an exuberant burst of chaos. Frédéric and Jennifer embrace, naked as the noise washes everything else out and there is an erasure of ego, a surrender to the natural. In this new nudity, again the sexual is lacking – it feels rather innocent, a kind of undead garden of Eden.
They speak of the idyllic days and years to come – they will be carried in their shared coffin (it matters not how long it takes to get there – they have infinite time) to a small island where they will, together, lure sailors to their doom.
They climb into the casket together, with warm care, Frédéric guides on the lid, and the waves pull it out to sea. For a time we see it crashing in the surf and then the water is peaceful and we see them no longer. Have they been dragged below? Will they reach their destination? These questions don’t seem to matter – reunited, together they have given themselves over to the white noise of the waves, to the immensity of the ocean, to time and water and salt and flesh and decay and the tender static of oblivion.
It’s not a happy ending – but it’s not sad either. There is a sense of completion, gently spiced with a pang of what? Loss? Wistfulness?
For years Jennifer had been lying in her tomb, waiting to be remembered. The perfume ad triggered a sense memory, teasing something long forgotten back into the edge of Frédéric’s mind. Half remembered – misremembered – invented – an uncanny fantastique that cannot be fixed as real or unreal, it fascinates, there is a steady obsession that can’t be turned away from. Something he is compelled to pursue – something without which he could not feel complete, could never be satisfied.
He finds satisfaction, but that also brings a kind of death, a warm oblivion, a loving sadness. I am no expert – I’ve seen like seven of his films, but this bundle of themes just feels so very Jean Rollin. Gorgeous and artful and cheap and shabby (for an auteur filmmaker that returned to the well of vampires time and time again, it feels like the fangs could be bought for 2 dollars in a joke shop and he was never interested in scares or gore), it feels like both an exploitation flick and high art.
And along the way, there are so many other surreal elements and images that feel like symbols – but ones that need not impose a hard meaning. Much of the film takes place in Paris, and it is so often entirely, impossibly empty and monumental – in haunting fashion – a looming dream labyrinth. The other vampires (particularly the twins, Catherine and Marie-Pierre Castle, who are in a number of Rollin’s films), their characteristically diaphanous gowns fluttering in the night wind, feel less like characters than alluring personifications of seductively available femininity and hauntingly attractive death in life – offering an invitation to disappear into something beautiful – dangerous and self-destructive, but nonetheless attractive, soft, yielding, accepting.
Which does bring me to one element of note – this identification of ‘nature’ / ‘death’ / ‘fascination’ with the “feminine” does feel, let’s say thematically dated. It’s hardly a “feminist” project, this male protagonist, an obvious stand-in for the filmmaker, chasing these girlish symbols of the ineffable into the night, giving himself over to them, having them thrust upon him, those figures more symbols than three dimensional characters. And yet, I still find it all rather lovely.
This feels like it comes strongly from one individual artist, who, even if he’s leaning on the kinds of tropes at which one could roll their eyes, in this case, it is so heartfelt, carried out with an earnestness that feels anything but artistically cheap. I could imagine one deriding it as naiveté (which I’m sure occurred in his native France – I understand French critics had little love for Rollin’s obsessions with genre, just as American critics could deride his art-house inclinations), but I can’t imagine being that hard-hearted myself.
Also, on the gender politics of it all, it is interesting to me that this seems to be just about the only work in Rollin’s early filmography with a male protagonist – he almost always focused on women (though that didn’t necessarily make them more characters and less symbols). This is probably a facile reading, but I somehow have the impression that, in doing this, he was rather centering himself for a change.
Apparently, it crushed him that this was such a financial failure – losing so much money that to recoup expenses, the producer forced him to film additional inserts and recut it as a hardcore porn film, Suce-moi vampire (“Suck me, vampire”), with an entirely different story. Fortunately, over time, the film found its audience who have given it no small measure of artistic respect – in that sweet spot between sexploitation, B-movie grindhouse and haute-culture, niche viewership arthouse.
It really is something special, though it won’t be for everyone. Maybe it’s for you though – if you can find it, check it out (as of today, in the States, it’s on Kanopy). Some will be put to sleep. Some will sigh in exasperation. But some will fall in love.
