Author Archives: Glen

Post-Colonial Post-Life: I Walked with a Zombie (Val Lewton Pt. II)

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Last week I started digging into Val Lewton’s cycle of beautifully produced, artistic B-movie horrors for RKO in the early 40s with Cat People and The Curse of the Cat People, and this week, I’d like to keep going with that exploration. I’d previously seen about half of these films and it is a treat to both revisit those I know and to finally check out the ones I’ve missed. I have a few things going on right now, so I’m only writing about one film this time, but it’s a doozy. So without further ado, let’s look at the second collaboration between Lewton and Tourneur, 1943’s I Walked with a Zombie.

Typical warning: given the prominence of atmosphere, emotion, and theme over plot in this piece, I will be discussing it in its entirety, so there will be spoilers aplenty. I feel they probably wouldn’t really ruin one’s enjoyment, but if in doubt, check it out first. It’s available for rent in all the usual places.

I Walked with a Zombie (1943)

Moody, atmospheric, and chillingly bleak, this entry from the Lewton team centers around emptiness, a lack. Set on the fictional Caribbean island of St. Sebastian (which seems to stand in for Hispaniola), its eponymous “Zombie” is not your modern brain muncher, but rather a traditional folk figure growing out of Haitian Vodou. Rather than a corpse risen from the dead, it refers to a person whose life, whose spirit has been taken from them; and yet they walk. Still the “living dead,” these are not cadavers returned to life, but living people who have already died (a nuanced but significant difference). As I understand, this would traditionally be done to subjugate one to your will – to hollow them out, leaving only a shell, an uncomplaining servant.

I have cited before the old chestnut, “where there’s a monster, there’s a metaphor” (which I feel should be attributed to someone, but I don’t, for the life of me know who – if you’ve any idea, please share), and this central symbol of one who has been robbed of life, self, and personhood, one who has been made an object, one who is robbed of agency and must serve obviously references slavery, and in the case of this film, it is not merely metaphorical. The shadow of the slave trade hangs all over this picture. It is why all of the characters are here. It is what has shaped their society – even the land itself. And just as its memory is very explicitly carried by the Black characters who continue to work for a small group of rich White people (now under the guise of business and industry rather than bondage), the weight of its sins hangs heavy on those currently running the show. There is a decay at the root of their family tree and they have rotted out from within – emptied, devoid of spirit.

Early on, the owner of a sugar cane plantation explains to a new employee why they keep a statue of a Black Saint Sebastian, his body riddled with arrows in the courtyard of their home:

“It was once the figurehead of a slave ship. That’s where our people came from. From the misery and pain of slavery. For generations they found life a burden. That’s why they still weep when a child is born and make merry at a burial… I’ve told you, Miss Connell: this is a sad place.”

I assume that when he references “our people,” he means the Black population of the island who are in his employ, but it really feels like he means himself and his family – they too have come from “the misery and pain of slavery” – it’s why they’re there; it’s why they’re rich; it’s why they’re in charge. And it’s part of why they’re so very lost, why their lives feel so meaningless, why all they can do is betray and hurt each other. From a modern perspective, I can see one criticizing the film for overshadowing the suffering of the slaves by focusing our sympathies on the poor, rich, grandchildren of slave-owners, but leaving aside the obvious explanation that this was made in the early 40s (and what do you expect?) – I think the film is astute in its observations about guilt both personal and generational – some things just can’t be forgiven; some things outlast death.

It’s heavy stuff, and it is a heavy film, though the artistry on display means it is somehow consistently still a pleasure. Similarly to their first collaboration, Cat People, Lewton and Tourneur walk a line between realism and the supernatural, this sensational tale of possession, Vodou, and magic dovetailing with a thoroughly human story of guilt and jealousy under the shadow of unforgivable crimes. Once again, we are uncertain as to what is real and what is magic. Almost everything can be explained away as psychologically motivated actions, and yet the sense is that there is a cultural chauvinism, an unearned arrogance in the way the White characters discount the knowledge, experience, authority, and power of those descended from the people their grandparents had enslaved.

Also, similar to Cat People is the high style and evocative film making on display. Some of the composition is simply breathtaking. Working with a different cinematographer (J. Roy Hunt), Tourneur and Lewton maintain their ‘house style’ and Hunt really delivers. Almost the whole film was shot on a soundstage (the only exception apparently the beach and village scenes), but what Hunt does with light brings the island to life. The shadows of leaves blow in a dry, hot wind; moonlight creeps through the slats of window blinds; soft light frames a body standing among dried sugar cane stalks in such a way that he is both more and less than a man – he is a statue, or a god – both emptied-of and filled-with spirit.

This is Carrefour, which in French means “crossroads,” the most iconic presence of the film. The young protagonist is told by a servant she will find him at a crossroads, but in that servant’s somewhat British accent, it is impossible to tell if she is to find a ‘guard’ or a ‘god. His presence accompanies moments of transition: a young woman passing from the world she knows into the alien world of another culture, possibly one of unknown power; a somnambulant ‘zombie’ guided away from the home she resides in, but does not live in, and strikingly, a climactic sequence of killing and sacrifice as perhaps one enters the world of the dead to reunite with his love, or possibly just murders her and kills himself because he can no longer stand the pain of living; Carrefour is always there, watching, witnessing, maybe guiding…

His first appearance caps the primary “horror” scene of the film as the protagonist leaves the sterile, empty safety of the rich, White space she inhabits to venture out into the dark of night and Vodou magic. Working her way through fields of sugar cane by moonlight, leading her elegant but mentally absent ward, she navigates past tableaus of animal skulls propped up on sticks, a circle of bones on the ground, odd sounds whistling in the darkness, and some kind of animal carcass hanging from a noose. Finally, she comes to Carrefour and thus finally passes out of these shadowlands, into the “other” space she seeks, hoping to find the power to heal her charge.  

Lewton is said to have played a large part in terms of the script, and the writing really is a treat. I’ve read that the original screenwriter, Curt Siodmak (who wrote, among many other things, The Wolf Man for Universal) didn’t click with Lewton, who replaced him with Ardel Wray, instructing her to do more research into the culture and beliefs of what was then referred to as The West Indies, and it shows. I can’t speak to the accuracy of how Vodou is presented, but it feels researched. It feels like a good faith effort was made to feature folk practices with respect and not to generalize. It all seems more authentically ethnographic than work done as late as the 90s wherein Vodou might still come across as racialized malevolence, a sinister relic of people dark in skin and intent (and let’s not get started on 1973’s Live and Let Die – oof). I can’t say that it doesn’t at all exoticize (I mean, Darby Jones, who plays Carrefour, is possibly the main scare of the film, and much of that just comes down to his actual physical appearance), but given the period in which it was made, I’m impressed. I imagine at the time, they could have just told extras to act crazy while banging some drums and the general audience would have accepted it.

Notably, there is one striking scene of high ritual. The music is captivating, the bass so deep and powerful, and the participants so grounded in their practice. The houngan (priest) dances with a sword, his upper body articulating the rhythms of the drums. It is an evocative movement, but it is in no way wild; rather, it is one of great control and precision. Around him are normal people. They sing the song and watch with spiritual focus, but this is no generalized fervor. Eventually, one woman catches a spirit and, in a trance, enters into the central space, coming to the houngan, before collapsing under the power. Finally, two female dancers come out and their work is beautiful and intense, but also feels utterly specific – this is the dance of a real time and place and people, and regardless of any supernatural elements, the music and the dance do have power. This scene alone is worth the price of admission.

But I haven’t even said what it’s about yet. Loosely based on Jane Eyre, we follow a Canadian nurse, Betsy Connell (Frances Dee), who takes a job on St. Sebastian to care for the wife of a sugar magnate. We come to learn there had been a love triangle between that magnate, Paul Holland, his wife, Jessica, and his half-brother, Wesley Rand. Wesley and Jessica had wanted to run off together and Holland seemingly prevented them – maybe by driving her mad, maybe by having the denizens of the island turn her to a zombie, or maybe she just contracted a tropical fever that caused permanent damage, leaving her empty, without a will of her own.

Having fallen in love with Holland (for some reason – I mean Tom Conway’s performance is charmingly cynical, but I don’t get the attraction), Betsy, the nurse, desperately wants to return his wife to health and tries taking her to a Vodou Houmfort (the above referenced ritual). There she learns that Paul and Wesley’s mother has been participating in the local rites, feigning possession by the gods to instruct the locals in better sanitary practices. Though her intentions are good, she has still been manipulating the people with dishonesty. But while the two of them are talking, the houngan performs a test on Jessica, driving a sword through her arm, and when the wound draws no blood, he determines that she is in fact a zombie. For all that Mrs. Rand rationalizes the seeming power of Vodou away in service of her own health based manipulations, the wound doesn’t bleed. Something is happening.

We later learn that Mrs. Rand had more faith in the local powers than she had initially let on, and it seems revealed that Jessica has indeed been irrevocably cursed (or again, she just had a fever, went into a coma, and came out having suffered mental damage). Regardless, Wesley can’t bear to see her this way any longer, stabs her to death and carries her into the sea, where he drowns as well while Carrefour watches from the shore. Concurrently, we see that the houngan has made a doll of Jessica and everything we see happen could conceivably be under his control. It rather feels, as with much of Lewton’s work, that both explanations are simultaneously true: the psychological and the supernatural overlaid.

In the end, the zombie has been freed from her liminal state of undeath, but the survivors persist in a state of grief, of suffering, the final shot being that of the statue of St. Sebastian, an image of pain, a symbol of past crimes that can never be forgotten.

This was quite a piece of work: poetic, deeply sad, and visually striking, with lingering images of mystery and exotic power. I must admit that it took me a while to get around to it because I’d felt a film from the 40s about this subject would probably be uncomfortable when it comes to issues of race and representation and that this might sour my enjoyment of an otherwise interesting piece. I am happy to say how mistaken I was. Sure – it does exoticize its Vodou practicing local population in ways that wouldn’t get a pass these days, but at the same time, I feel that population is given honest respect. The Black characters feel like real people, neither infantilized nor animalistic. Though none are granted a protagonist’s agency, they are shown as self-aware, intellectually critical individuals with a clear view of the ugly history that has brought them here, and while they may put on a friendly face for their employers, the film itself sees the ironic distance between that mask and their lived experience and knowledge.

One of the most striking moments comes early on, when the young nurse is being driven to the estate where she is to work. Giving her the island’s history, her coachman describes how the Holland family, by whom she is now employed, had brought his ancestors to the island on a ship with the figurehead of Saint Sebastian:

“The enormous boat brought the long ago fathers and the long ago mothers of us all, chained to the bottom of the boat.”

“They brought you to a beautiful place, didn’t they?”

“If you say, Miss. If you say.”

The simple, straightforward way that he takes in her thoughtless response and answers with a friendly shrug is heartbreaking. This is the world he lives in, and there is no reason for him to expect otherwise. I think it is significant that the film sees him and is on his side. The film is aware of history and understands how it continues to weigh down all involved – how its echoes continue in the present dynamic of who is wealthy and who serves (no one tell Ron DeSantis about this movie).

However, for all of my praise, one element did fall flat for me, but I even wonder if that could be intentional. It just feels like we don’t have much of a protagonist. We follow Betsy’s story, but the moment she falls in love with Paul Holland, so in love that she would venture into the darkness to save his cursed wife, I just disconnect from her. I don’t buy the romance, nor do I particularly care about it, and while she does take one important step in driving the narrative, she mostly just witnesses the dysfunction and misery of the family. In fact, the whole cast of central characters feels detached. There’s a heightened scene with Mrs. Holland, the mother, late in the film, but she is so listless and resigned throughout her whole emotional confession. Both Paul and Wesley are wracked by guilt, but they mostly submerge their feelings beneath a removed veneer of either alcoholism or snide pessimism. And of course the wife, Jessica, is just a silent cypher, an image of loss. But again, I wonder if this sense that the film misses a true central character could be an artistic choice – one more emptiness – one more case of a body missing its soul. The film moves forward with an evenness not unlike Jessica’s, echoing her haunting lack of inner compulsion, contributing to the overall mood of hopeless loss and debilitating guilt.

Finally, let’s talk about horror. So far, my favorite of the Lewton pictures is still Cat People – I just love how it balances its thrilling story with some honest scares and its rich psychological study that can be approached through multiple lenses. I Walked with a Zombie, it must be said, is not ‘scary’ (at least not for me). It is beautiful. It is haunting. It is intelligent and atmospheric and meaningful, and maybe supernatural, but it is not scary. Which brings us to that eternal question of the genre – does horror actually have to be?

This film takes us into another world of sorts, implying powers beyond our ken. It takes a deep, endless sadness and guilt and builds from them a physical space. It maintains a mystery around what is real and what is supernatural, around borders between life and death, around the obliteration of will, the erasure of self. And in its lyrical, guilt-ridden, poetic way, it is horrific if not scary, and I’m happy to include it in the genre (not to mention the myriad ways it has probably influenced later works). Plus, more horror with such artistic inclinations should follow its example of essentialized narrative and theme. For all of the feeling, mystery, atmosphere, and technical prowess it packs, it squeaks by at sixty nine minutes long – it can do so much without feeling self-indulgent, without dragging. In this era of four hour comic book movies, this discipline is refreshing.

Cat People and their Curse – Val Lewton Pt. I

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When listing the artists most responsible for advancing the genre, one often thinks of directors – big names of the Universal Horrors like James Whale or Tod Browning, innovators of the 60s like Bava or Powell, independent voices of the 70s like Hooper or Romero, “Masters of Horror” of the 80s like Craven or Carpenter, or more recently, contemporary artistes like Aster or Eggers. But though it’s easy to view all cinema, and especially horror, with its stylistic flair, as an auteur’s medium, it is still essentially collaborative, and sometimes those responsible for bringing together the right team on the right project have made some of the biggest contributions. One of the most influential players in this regard was undoubtedly Val Lewton, the producer heading up RKO’s Horror division in the 40s, corralling a recurring band of directors, cinematographers, writers, and editors, and guiding them to create highly effective and artful work on a shoestring budget, all in his particular style and carrying his particular preoccupations. Between 1942-1946, he produced 11 films for RKO (9 of which were at least nominally horror). While not all of these could be deemed “scary” by modern standards, they really moved the genre forward, making great innovations in its filmic vocabulary (in terms of light, camerawork, sound, and editing), and I think really planting the seeds of what the field would become.

And so, on and off in the coming months, I’d like to dig into them. Some I’ve already seen and rather admire, and some I’ve never gotten around to, and I’ll have to seek out. Today, I’ll begin with Cat People (1942), his first big success, and its less horrific, but still intriguing follow up, The Curse of the Cat People (1944). Now, I don’t think the pleasure of these films can really be spoiled by knowing the plot so I will be discussing them in full, but if you haven’t seen them yet, now is a great time to check them out – they’re both available for rent on many platforms.

Cat People (1942)

Easily one of my favorite classic horror films, there have been books worth of analysis written about this one and I can’t claim that my observations are particularly novel. Still, I do love it. I mean, it is just so gorgeous for one thing, sad, and sometimes funny; and its couple of scary moments do still scare, even through modern eyes. I also feel it did so much to help invent modern horror technique.

Essentially, this is the story of Irena (Simone Simon), a Serbian woman living in NYC and working as a fashion sketch artist. After a whirlwind courtship, she marries Oliver (Kent Smith), an affable, square jawed chap, but following the folklore of her village, she’s convinced that should she ever allow her passions to run free, she would transform into a murderous feline beast, and so the marriage goes unconsummated. After attempts to cure Irena of what Oliver considers her delusions via psychotherapy (with a particularly sleazy therapist), he finally notices that he’s actually in love with his co-worker, Alice (Jane Randolph). Irena’s jealousy of Alice does what her supposed love for Oliver never did: bring out the beast within, leading her to hunt after Oliver and Alice, kill the creep psychologist, and ultimately and tragically, destroy herself.

It is a simple fairy tale of a story, but it’s also rather mature and psychological – all to do with attraction and repression; Irena’s essential fear of who she really is in her heart, in her blood. There is terror when Alice is stalked by some unseen, growling presence, but there is real horror in Irena’s refusal of self. Finally, there is tragedy as the more Irena opens herself to being who she really is, the more she approaches self-destruction. And along the way, Oliver, though motivated by love, or what he understands love to be, just cannot wrap his head around her experience, cannot open his mind to accept that she may know something he does not, and thus, in trying to help her, only makes things worse. As an encapsulation of his character, I’ve always loved an interchange with Alice wherein he explains “You know – it’s a funny thing. I’ve never been unhappy before. Things have always gone swell for me. I had a great time as a kid, lots of fun at school and here at the office.” This happy go lucky, “normal,” whitebread, American man (who seems to be fighting age, but for some reason isn’t off at the war) couldn’t possibly get where Irena is coming from, and he doesn’t really try to. The film’s story is straightforward, but its themes are rich and its treatment of big concepts like love, fear, otherness, and self is poetic and affecting.

Directed and filmed respectively by Lewton regulars, Jacques Tourneur, and cinematographer, Nicholas Musuraca, it is also just beautiful to look at, an endlessly stylish cinematic treat. Blacks are inky and whites shine. Lamps take any excuse to get knocked to the floor, throwing dramatic shadows upon the wallpaper, lights skim along walls, bringing out their full texture, and characters inhabit a world constructed almost entirely of light and shadow. Tourneur and Musuraca craft a visual vocabulary that feels as expressive and visually engaging as something out of German Expressionist cinema, while setting it all in a realistic modern context, bringing a sense of evocative mystery and deep feeling to this tale of supernatural folkloric terror as a vehicle for psychological conflict. Also, their visual contributions enable Lewton’s biggest innovation for the development of the genre: situating all of the terror in that which remains wholly unseen. Unlike a werewolf film, there is no transformation, and we generally only see large cats when Irena goes to the zoo. Rather, the shadows hold the nightmares, and they wait there, ready to strike, but never actually show themselves.

This element is so essential to what became the language of horror films. Even in an explicitly gory 80s splatter fest, there will be scenes of stalking, of a character creeping along, sure that they’re being watched, followed, terrified by what might jump out at them, even if they also feel silly because there’s evidently nothing to be scared of. The fact that later films will inevitably show something “scary” doesn’t mean they aren’t still deeply indebted to what Lewton began in Cat People. And the fact that this artistic choice was largely prompted by economics (Lewton never had to spend a dime on monster effects), detracts nothing from its aesthetic value.

The first great example of this in the film may be the first occurrence in horror of a “jump scare.” It is also a perfect 2 ½ minutes of film – scary, thrilling, and meaningful, but when it’s all over, you just want to stop the show to applaud. Alice is leaving coffee with Oliver while Irena observes them from a distance. As Alice starts down the street, Irena follows. We cut back and forth between the two women, Alice walking with a slower, steady gait, and Irena more quickly, hurried, the sounds of their steps echoing through the otherwise silent night. They each move into the small pools of light beneath the streetlamps before slipping back into the darkness. We see Irena getting closer and closer though they never share a shot. We watch Alice as she stops for a moment as if she’s heard something and turns to look behind herself – the street is empty. Worried, she starts to go faster, and then she runs. Each time she returns to the light, it is as if she’s returning to safety from the danger of the shadows, but she’s getting more and more terrified. The tension rises as light and shadow alternates with a rhythm not quite matching that of her harried footsteps, resulting in an unsettling syncopation – nothing is exactly happening, but it is uncanny, it is scary. Finally, she clutches a lamppost as we hear what sounds like a rising growl and then the hiss of…a bus pulling into the stop (and there is the first jump scare – it’s a fun irony that it’s based on not having a cat enter the frame). Rattled, she boards the bus as we see the trees moving (perhaps the wind, perhaps something else). Cut to the large cats in the zoo agitated in their cages and then a zoo worker finding dead sheep beside what look like large paw prints in the dirt. We follow similar prints on the pavement as they resolve into the tracks of a pair of muddy high heels, and finally we see Irena, shaken, dabbing her mouth with a handkerchief. Chef’s kiss!

In a later scene, Alice has gone to the pool in what I assume is her apartment building (fancy). Irena asks the girl at the front desk if she can go down to see her. We see Alice in a shadowy, eerily underlit locker room (no one in this movie ever turns on the lights). She gets spooked and dives into the water. A growling begins and we cut back and forth between her, progressively more and more terror-stricken as she treads water, frantically looking all around, and shadows on the wall amidst the wavering reflection of light off the water. It really feels like we’re seeing a panther or something stalking around the room, but there’s nothing there, only shadows, until finally, as Alice is shrieking for help and workers for the building come running into the pool area, with a flick, Irena turns on the lights, standing there, innocently, but oh so threateningly. The sweeter and more benignly she behaves, the more intimidating she is. And it is a pleasure to see her strong, more herself. But we also know it’s not going to end well.

For all that the biggest stylistic influence of the film is probably its focus on the unseen, its refusal to show a “monster,” it is Irena’s story, as penned by DeWitt Bodeen – her fear of her own monstrousness, that lingers. In this, there are many layers of possible meaning, of possible readings. On the surface, in a story of supernatural/psychological horror, it is plainly awful to think that a person might never allow themselves to feel, to love, lest they become a violent killer. The next layer is one of assimilation. Irena is an immigrant in America (as was Lewton and his mother and aunt who raised him) and this can so easily be taken as a tale of a woman who has come from a far-away land, trying to deny her history, her culture, trying to become part of this new world where she doesn’t quite fit in. In a key scene, at their wedding party in a Serbian restaurant, a mysterious woman approaches Irena saying “Moja sestra” (my sister). It seems that this is another “cat person” from her village, and like recognizes like. Irena crosses herself against the woman who leaves into the cold night as the boisterous celebration resumes. Irena has denied her identity, trying to adopt another one, a modern, “American” self, free of old, embarrassing superstitions.

But of course the strongest reading here is the queer one. Irena has rushed into a marriage with this guy she barely knows and for whom we don’t see much evidence of real, strong feelings. He seems like a generally nice guy and she’s going to try to make it work. But on the night of their wedding, she explains that she can’t yet share a bed with him and begs him to be kind and patient as she desperately attempts to get over “this feeling that there’s something evil in me.” In this reading, the woman in the restaurant still recognizes a kindred spirit who is trying to hide her true self, and being thus seen threatens to out Irena – thus her fervent denial. Finally, while she is never moved to become a killer feline for love of her husband, her jealousy of Alice brings on the change. She seems more invested in following this other woman around than she is tempted by her husband sexually or romantically, and even if her relationship to Alice is only antagonistic, it is still easy to see an interest, a focus which surfaces as jealousy but evinces some depth of fascination.

Regardless of how you read it (and I feel these levels are in no way mutually exclusive), Irena’s arc is tragic. In the beginning, when we first see Irena and Oliver meet and strike up a relationship, she seems so sweet, so hopeful. She’s determined to commit to this pairing and leave behind the part of herself she fears, but she just can’t do it. It’s only after the wedding that we see her tortured by her inner impulses. When her emotions for Alice (anger and jealousy) free her true self, eliciting her animalistic side, it obviously upsets her, but she also grows more confident. I love when she’s revealed at the pool, sweet and deadly. It’s satisfying to see her coming into herself. And by the end, when the psychologist tries to push himself on her, it’s like there’s this little smile. She wants him to – because it will make her angry and release the beast, and she will take pleasure in shredding this jerk. Furthermore, she will savor this momentary freedom to be her true self. Sadly, though, this may also be a bit of a death drive – she still can’t fully accept who and what she is, and she knows this killing will bring her to her end.

All of these levels work together. One need not cancel another out. It is clearly a story of a woman worried she might be a monster, and the story of an immigrant trying to assimilate and leave behind her cultural identity is also right on the surface. The queer reading is just that, a reading. There are many elements that support it, and it’s only there for you if you see it, but I think its inclusion brings a depth to the sadness of Irena’s self-denial, self-hatred, self-refusal, and in the end, her self-destruction, which enriches the whole film; in its emotional specificity, it makes her repression all the more universal and grounded.

So, there we have it. This is just one of the best: A beautiful, sad, horrific story; top notch, low budget, high effect filmmaking, endlessly stylish, that succeeds in being really scary a couple of times while barely doing anything at all; a greatly influential work that laid the groundwork for where horror would go in the coming decades; and just a triumph of cinematic pleasure, so rich in its visual storytelling that it is a genuinely visceral joy to dwell in its space.

The Curse of the Cat People (1944)

Off the bat, it must be said that this really doesn’t feel like a horror movie and it is important to go into it with that in mind. While it does continue the story of the surviving characters of the first film, the two films are wholly different beasts (see what I did there?), with little to nothing in common when it comes to their respective vibes. Furthermore, I found it regrettable that Jane Randolph’s Alice, such a brassy, bold character in the original, is so subsumed into her role as housewife and mother that she all but disappears. That said, having recently watched this for the first time, I’ve got to say that I did really like it. If you go expecting anything like Cat People, you could be disappointed, but if you are open to its particular charms, I think there are rewards to be found.

Whereas the first film is a kind of mature thriller (aggression growing out of sexual self-repression), this is a story of the loneliness and magic of childhood. But it is still all to do with repression. At least six years after the events of the first installment, we pick up with Oliver and Alice. They’ve left the dark, shadowy city for the apparent safety of a small town upstate (Tarrytown, home to Sleepy Hollow and the Headless Horseman) and are bringing up their precocious 5 year old daughter, Amy. Their domestic idyll is disrupted, however, when the dreamy Amy befriends what seems to be the ghost of Irena. Concurrently, Amy also strikes up a friendship with an odd, somewhat demented older woman, Mrs. Farren, who is cared for by her embittered adult daughter – but in her dementia, Mrs. Farren doesn’t believe that she is her daughter, but is rather some sinister imposter. Oliver cannot abide what he sees as his daughter’s dangerous fancy, seeing a reflection of the madness he feels was responsible for his first wife’s death, and treats poor Amy abysmally, essentially forcing her to lie or be punished (including physical punishment). This leads to a climax where Amy almost dies twice over before Oliver finally pays the smallest amount of lip service to her experience in order to manipulate her back to “normalcy.”

Of the two, I think Cat People is clearly the more coherent, consistent film, but Curse is certainly rich in theme and feeling, if a little shambolic at times. It has a few touches of “horror cinema” (particularly in Mrs. Farren’s spooky old house), but it really isn’t trying to be a horror film at all. Reportedly, Lewton had originally titled it Amy and her Friend, and its more sensationalistic title (and accompanying marketing campaign) was imposed by the studio. If anything, I think it shares some DNA with films like Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), Tideland (2005), or The Fall (2006), all stories where a young girl, in the face of real life traumas, recedes into a world of fantasy, but where the line between reality and imagination is never clear and all may be mythic or psychological or both.

In this case, Amy was born into a house already haunted. Oliver presents himself as a friendly, “normal,” all-American, middle class dad, but he has never gotten over Irena’s death, or the circumstances that led to it. He keeps her photographs lying around and their bright, airy living room is dominated by a piece she had painted (actually, a Goya, but it’s attributed to her). The easy psychological reading of the film’s events (as articulated in the final act by Amy’s teacher) is that Amy, in her typical childhood loneliness, can feel that something is off, that some sadness lingers in her parents even if they never talk about it and never told her about how Irena had died. She finds Irena’s picture in a drawer and learns her name from her mother and the next thing you know, she’s imagining her, befriending this connection to her parents which they hide away and deny. A clue that Irena is a product of her imagination is the fact that she’s dressed as a fairy princess, her gown covered with sparkling stars, and she doesn’t behave at all like the Irena we knew and loved – because she is really built from Amy’s needs and imaginings. Oliver and Alice react poorly to Amy’s connection to this dark part of their past and try to force her into the same state of repression in which they reside, one necessary to live a “normal” life. This is all mirrored (the same, but reversed) in the relationship between the kooky Mrs. Farren and her very “normal” daughter – being denied so long by her mother, never able to win her recognition has made her into a bitter, broken, possibly murderous adult. Is this what awaits Amy?

A common reading I’ve found of Val Lewton’s films, particularly the early Horror is that they are all emotionally rooted in the war. While untold real-life horrors were happening overseas, on the home front, referring to that darkness and that loss was apparently quite frowned upon. One had to ‘stay positive,’ buy war bonds, support the boys abroad, and maintain a proper, good old fashioned American optimism. But of course, for most people, some son, father, brother, friend wasn’t coming home again. Of course there was loss and pain, and those who did return had seen and done things that would stay with them for years. But we don’t talk about that sort of thing, do we?

It’s quite easy to read this socio-emotional repression into this film. In this tale of grief denied, this child senses a loss, a powerful feeling – and she meets it where the adults refuse to. There is a lovely scene on Christmas Eve when carolers have come to the house and are welcomed in to have some drinks and sing around the piano. While Oliver, Alice, and their guests all gather near the instrument singing in the warmth of hearth and home, Amy hears faintly from outside, Irena singing a very pretty French song. I don’t think the song is particularly sad, but in the context, it feels ghostly, mournful, and lonely: it feels like a sadness kept out in the cold, not allowed to surface, and Amy is drawn to it. As I understand, Irena sings in French because Simone Simon was French and this is what she could sing (she didn’t know any Serbian songs I guess), but made in the spring of 1944, the fact that this melancholic moment occurs in this particular language seems to draw a line directly across the ocean to the beaches of Normandy.

That said, for all that this psychological reading maps very cleanly upon the film, I think it does a disservice to let it reduce the story and Amy’s experience to something so knowable and schematic. The film is frankly much weirder than that, and it takes clear steps to leave open the possibility that Irena’s ghost is truly present, allowing Amy’s experience to retain at least a degree of credence, her lived mystery allowed room to breathe. As with the original film, this is largely thanks to cinematographer, Nicholas Musuraca, and while it may not be as strikingly stylish, he is no less masterful in his use of light. The deep, unsettling shadows of the first outing are replaced with something subtler and more gentle, but still magical. A key setting is the backyard where Amy often meets her possibly imaginary friend. Actually a studio soundstage, Musuraca has complete control over the light and uses it to a very theatrical, lovely effect. Additionally, to helm the project, Lewton promoted Robert Wise from editor to director and he maintains a light touch throughout, allowing all possibilities to coexist (Wise would go on to have quite the career – perhaps most famous for West Side Story, he’s more known in horror circles for his 1963 Shirley Jackson adaptation, The Haunting, a film where it’s quite easy to see the legacy of Val Lewton’s tendency to imply but never quite show). Finally, DeWitt Bodeen, the screenwriter of Cat People also returned and deserves credit for the film’s successful walking of the line between fancy and reality, for the way the two fraught stories of parents and children counterbalance one another.

Twice, Oliver is in the backyard with Amy and asks if she can see her friend. The whole time, he never takes his eyes off of her, never deigns to look where she is looking, never doubting that his sense of what is real or possible could ever be false. The first time, her failure to answer as he desires leads to a beating – and while the movie really isn’t scary, this is the true horror of the piece. Amy (as her parents undoubtedly did before her) lives in a world where she is expected to be her daddy’s “good girl,” and that means behaving as the other children do and not being such a little weirdo, not dredging up feelings and stories best forgotten. It means smiling prettily and doing what she’s told, and not speaking the truth if it disrupts the agreed on stasis. It means training herself to repress her own sense of mystery and melancholy and learning to fit in, erasing her unique individuality in the process.

By the end of the film, after Amy survives almost freezing to death and being strangled, Oliver chooses to play along if it will bring her back to him, and so he once again asks if she can see her friend. When she says yes, he says he sees her too, but his eyes stay fixed upon his daughter. He still never even thinks to look, to see as Irena waves good bye and fades from view. He can somewhat pretend, but he can’t possibly open his mind enough to even just turn his head for a moment. You can understand where he’s coming from, but it is no less frustrating for it. Thus Amy feels somewhat placated and will redouble her efforts to be who he wants her to be. She will learn to be what he is and her magic will die. It is a terribly sad ending, even as it’s played for loving warmth. As with all tragedy, it stings with the sadness of destruction brought on by one seeking to do good.

—

And so that is Cat People and The Curse of the Cat People. I think that as long as one doesn’t expect the second to be like the first, they make an interesting and evocative double bill. Both circle around the tragic horror of self-repression, whether in terms of an adult woman wrestling with her sexuality and identity (and the disruptive, violent power it brings), or a young girl learning to ‘be normal.’ And they are both artful and evocative. The first is high style and its influence echoes still today, but the second is still a rewarding watch, melancholic and frustrating as it is. While they are notably different films, it is still clear that they’ve come from the same team, and are invested in the same ideas, though they present them in a different mood, almost a different genre. Notably, both films maintain a kind of plausible deniability when it comes to the supernatural, Schrodinger’s cat both alive and dead at all times, all fantastic elements both real and psychological, the box never opened, the tension unresolved.

With that, I am going to stop here for now, but I think in the coming weeks, I will periodically check in with the good Mr. Lewton and his oeuvre. I have seen a few others, but there are still many I’ve missed and I’m eager to finally fill this gap in my education. I’m looking forward to it…

Re-donning the Slasher Goggles: Don’t Fear the Reaper

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So this post is going up a little late. As I’ve much written about, it can be hard to choose my topic each week and this last one was no exception. I watched one early 80s folk horror about which I’d heard really good things, and while I appreciated aspects of its concept and enjoyed its madcap weirdness, certain weaknesses of its execution kept me at arm’s length and I just couldn’t get into it. I watched an absolutely gorgeous arthouse horror from a filmmaker I’d long had a blind spot for, but I need to rewatch it to order my thoughts before writing and while I loved it on initial viewing, watching it again immediately just felt a bit like homework (but I’ll do it soon – I promise). I even made it out to the cinema and saw Cocaine Bear, which I rather enjoyed, but don’t have sufficient thoughts about to fill a whole post.

Past that, I’ve been doing a bit of travel around Croatia, where I’m currently “workationing” (hooray for remote work), and that means lots of time sitting at cafes reading, and in the last couple of days, I burned through the end of a book and having enjoyed it so much, found myself going back to the beginning and almost re-reading the whole thing the next day. So let’s talk about that. Let’s return to Proofrock, Idaho for the second installment of Stephen Graham Jones’s “Lake Witch Trilogy,” Don’t Fear the Reaper.

Don’t Fear the Reaper (2023)

I think I’m going to have to do this in two parts. To do the book justice, it’s necessary to get into certain details which could rather spoil its reading. But at the same time, I really liked it and would like to offer some explication of its value to potential readers. Therefore, I will go into it first sans spoilers. And then, after a break, will discuss key elements and later revelations for a select readership that has already finished the book.

Last summer, during a few weeks of discussing the concept and some stand out examples of “the final girl,” I devoted a post to the first book of this cycle, My Heart is a Chainsaw. At the time, I had no idea that it was even part of a trilogy, so satisfyingly did it reach its conclusion (and from an interview I heard, I have the impression that it was written as a stand-alone piece, which the author later decided to return to and build on). When I heard this volume was coming out, I was even initially hesitant, feeling that the original hadn’t needed continuation (a sentiment that often arises when it comes to Slasher franchises), but I’m so glad I picked this up.  Graham Jones manages to really deepen and expand upon themes of the first work, very satisfyingly allowing characters to grow and mature, while also exploring how the effects of the first novel ripple through this town and the lives of its citizens, surfacing in a new explosion of violence.

And on top of that, the book just feels like a sprint. Whereas Chainsaw took its time, getting us behind the eyes of Jade, its narrator and eventual final girl, navigating us through a rich collection of characters and contexts that all set up possible causes of and motives for the deaths that were occurring, interspersed with her pontifications on Slasher theory, the lens through which she viewed her world, before Jade had to finally rise to the occasion, stepping into the shoes of the idealized role she’d never thought herself qualified for in a final act blood bath, Reaper just hits the ground running and doesn’t let up till it gets where it’s going. Full of intense, cinematic sequences, it is a page turner, as they say – an exciting, often gory, emotional roller coaster that left me pumping my fist in the air following its triumphant last sentence. In the lead up to releasing Reaper, I started seeing t-shirts with the slogan “Jade Daniels is my final girl” popping up on social media – for good reason. She’s an easy character to rally around.

Official shirts available here.

In many ways, this functions as a Slasher sequel, and it’s a good one. As Randy enthuses in Scream 2, there’s a bigger body count and it’s gorier with more elaborate death scenes. But in other ways, it gives space to elements that wouldn’t ordinarily be focused on (not to mention hosting characters with a degree of self-aware genre knowledge that puts poor Randy to shame). Four years have passed since the events of the first book and their weight hangs heavily on all those who survived. The town has generally recovered since the Lake Witch slayings and subsequent fire and flood, but beneath the surface, the town of Proofrock is haunted by those who were lost, by the horrors the survivors witnessed, by wounds that linger, both physical and otherwise. Into this space, Jade returns, having been subjected to a lengthy trial following her heroic and cathartic turn in the climax of the first book. No good deed goes unpunished.

Notably, Graham Jones has allowed her to change, to grow up a bit. Throughout the first volume, she sees everything through her “Slasher-goggles,” having embraced slasher films and tropes as a kind of coping mechanism to deal with a slate of traumatic experiences she’d been subjected to. In seeing things through as she does in the first book, she is allowed some personal resolution – some things are laid to rest, or at least are contained at the bottom of the lake. Though it is so unfair that she alone was prosecuted (unsuccessfully) for her actions, the fact that the trial took her out of her once toxic context seems to have been good for her. She is in a more stable place. She doesn’t need to lean on the mythic resonance of her favorite films as she once had.

Ironically though, other characters have now done their homework, having lived through their own real life slasher film, and Jade (or Jennifer as she would now rather be called) is no longer the only one so versed in the lore of the sub-genre. In fact, she would rather not dwell on the material she once depended on, and resists others’ attempts to make her view new events through her old lens. Fascinatingly, these others each have a different relationship to the material. For one, it is research for survival – determined to endure whatever is thrown at her, she has obsessively worked through every slasher and tawdry thriller she can find. Another seems to have shared a similar history with Jade, living through childhood trauma and mythologizing the figures of slasher cinema, but whereas Jade was destined for the heroic, he has become a sleazy predator. Finally, a third character seems to have studied these filmic texts as models for their own cycle of murders – the movies, as Billy Loomis once said, not making psychos, but making psychos “more creative.”

Into the mix as well, comes the nigh-mythic serial killer, Dark Mill South, a hulking silent butcher right out of a later installment of Friday the 13th, Halloween, or Hatchet. He is an intimidating figure and the scenes in which Jade confronts him are some of the most gripping in the book. Also, just as her Native American (Blackfeet) heritage has done so much to shape (and sour) her relationship with her community and family, his has also contributed to the shadow he casts, particularly the implication that his many, varied, horrific killings are all to be taken as vengeance for the mass hanging in 1862 of 38 Sioux warriors, ordered by Lincoln. Dark Mill South is clearly a monster – he has done horrific things (and the time we spend inside his perspective does nothing to soften that view), but the sense that he could be enacting a kind of vengeance for such a violence of the past, that his crimes are in fact a form of justice, as brutal and implacable as an act of nature, helps contextualize him as a Slasher killer in a classic-mythic sense.

Thus, though she has successfully moved on in a number of ways, when high school kids start showing up dead all over town, just as she’s getting home, Jade is pulled back in, and will once again have to wade through a river of gore to protect those she cares about. But that is one thing that’s different this time. Four years earlier, she’d been so isolated, the weird horror kid from a “bad family” crying “slasher” to deaf ears, her relationships mostly antagonistic. This time, she does have a small community around her. Most of the town still may view her with suspicion at best, but she is now tied to some other survivors of the last massacre. She actually has a couple of friends and loved ones who she does not want to lose, for whom she will fight.

And perhaps at this point, before we get into any discussion of later developments, it’s a good time to stop if you haven’t read the book and think you might at all like to. If so, do start with My Heart is a Chainsaw. Enjoy.

This is Graham Jones – horror folk always seem so nice.

Ok, I’ll assume if you’re still here, you’ve either read both Chainsaw and Reaper or never will. So now I’m just going to geek out a bit. One thing I really appreciated was how in her roaring death cry to pierce Dark Mill South and “find the off switch,” I flashed on the mama bear at the end of the first book. Jade spent her young life failed by her family (and worse), but in this moment, she can do for her chosen family what wasn’t done for her. It’s a lovely moment. As is the denouement regarding Sheriff Hardy and Melanie. If only that meant the actual killer had been brought down.

In the first book, there is much discussion of red herrings in the Slasher genre, particularly in those that revolve around the mystery of the killer’s identity (which I’d hazard to say is actually most of them – the silent, named, masked killers cast a long shadow, but far more are unseen murderers waiting for a final act reveal).  The first time around, Jade, through her goggles, was endlessly trying to figure out what was going on. Theory after theory fell flat though because life isn’t a clean story and, well, there were actually a few killers to reckon with (in both cases, these elements are repeated). This time, even though clues are littered throughout the book, and Jade and Letha even have an extended discussion about “final girls who are actually the killer,” it’s still so easy to get distracted by the looming figure of Dark Mill South, who does, in fact, finish some kids off, but otherwise is a minor contributor to the mayhem, a convenient cover story who just happened to be brought in by the storm at just the right time. This misdirection begins before the story does, with the quote from Carol J. Clover about how the killer is invariably male.

In contrast, in both the Melanie/Spirit Elk and the Cinnamon/Ginger (or was it always only Cinnamon?) storylines, the past is coming to bear and revenge is being dealt, whether for complicity in one death many years ago (classic slasher stuff) or rooted in a twisted sense of balancing the scales following the last slaughter and a misplaced blame for the one person who actually managed to stop it last time. And while Dark Mill South is in the ground and Hardy and Melanie are reunited beneath the ice, Cinnamon is still out there, free and unaccused. It leaves things intriguingly open for the final volume. While at the end of the first book, I felt everything had been quite wrapped up, this time, I am rather waiting for the final installment, and wondering what new repercussions will follow from this one. Also – how much of a time jump will there be this time? It seems unlikely that Jade will avoid at least some length of a prison sentence.

I loved this book for many of the same reasons that I so enjoyed the first. It is both a successful, interesting, fun thriller, and at the same time, such a love letter to a much maligned genre that so many of us take so much pleasure and find such deep satisfaction in. I love how through Jade, and now also through Letha, Armitage, and Cinnamon, these “dead teenager pictures,” are revealed as emotional texts, as therapeutic, as inspiring, as art, as important. How many movies have shown some variant of sportsball as a metaphor for life, as a vehicle for a mythic hero’s journey, as the crucible in which identity is formed? We all find meaning where we do, and in finding it, create it.

And that is what we have here. It is so satisfying seeing a character like Jade, who has latched onto these works of fiction (which the general public and ‘reputable critics’ would scorn) for survival, go through so much, suffer but still be compelled to investigate, fight but also be driven to understand, and ultimately grow into a powerful woman who can and will do what is necessary, whether that means killing the killer with an appropriately phallic weapon, helping a loved one find peace, or taking the fall for a friend. It’s moving to go on the journey with her, to witness her becoming.

It’s also really fun.

Spiritual Home Invasions: A Double Feature

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So after the last couple of weeks of artistically worthy, but at best “horror-adjacent” fare, this time, I really wanted to tackle some work that was clearly and unabashedly horror. I also thought it would be nice to take in something older, something I’d heard about, but had never gotten around to – to fill some gaps in my horror education. And so I’ve chosen a double feature, which I think makes sense, of The Sentinel (1977) and The Entity (1982). Right now, I don’t know too much about either, but have heard them spoken about with both a sense of admiration and infamy. I understand both films feature a woman experiencing horrific things in her home and not being believed, and that seems sufficient to pair them in this “Spiritual Home Invasions” double feature.

I don’t know how much there will be to say about each, but I hope to find something worth digging into. Let’s find out, shall we?

The Sentinel (1977)

Hmmm. What do you do with a film like The Sentinel? I mean Michael Winner’s film has a lot going for it – some scary sequences with high creep factor, a tremendous cast, a sense of mystery, paranoia, and intrigue, a chilling, downbeat ending, and it is just so very, very, very strange, with quirky inclusions that make it an easy film to love. It’s also derivative, plodding, steeped in a vein of religious horror that’s a turn off for me, and at one point feels quite mean in how a certain scene is cast. It also has some weird sexual hang ups that feel oddly regressive (and hence unpleasant), but at the same time, the way they surface are so gloriously bizarre as to elevate the whole film. It feels at once like a respectable, big studio horror picture and like a down and dirty bit of enjoyable trash that is just pulling out all the stops to shock and disturb. I loved it. I was bored. I rolled my eyes. I got unsettled. I enjoyed some jumpscare thrills. I put up with some distasteful religiosity. I clapped my hands with glee. I both appreciated and was bummed out by where it ended up. It was a peculiar 92 minutes.

Following the success of Ira Levinson’s tremendous work of Satanic paranoia and social horror, Rosemary’s Baby, and Polanski’s subsequent, pitch perfect adaptation (I don’t think I could oversell the value of either work), there was a boom through the 70s of novels, films, and novels adapted into films seeking to capitalize on a resurgent American terror of all things Devilish, often with a specifically Catholic bent (interestingly, Levinson, an Atheist, reportedly deeply regretted kicking off this trend citing how it often felt like an advertisement for the Church). Based on Jeffery Konvitz’s 1974 novel of the same name, The Sentinel is clearly one of these.

Model, Alison Parker (Christina Raines), wanting a more independent life for herself, moves out of the apartment she shares with her seemingly pretty nice, albeit warmly domineering lawyer boyfriend, Michael, and gets her own place in a beautiful, ivy covered Brooklyn brownstone. We learn of the difficult relationship she’d had with her father and the abuse and neglect her mother had suffered at his hands, and we understand how important it is for Alison to have her own space, her own career, her own life, separate from Michael, even if it means staying in a flat that might be haunted, where creepy banging sounds keep her up at night, overly friendly neighbors (who might not exist, might be dead, and might be evil) don’t respect her personal space, and the ghost of her father lurches out of shadows in the night.

Through all of this, Alison struggles with issues of trust between herself and Michael (who the police suspect had his first wife murdered), her history of suicide attempts, and a lapsed faith that she finds herself compelled to return to. Behind it all, a secretive cult within the Catholic Church, tasked with guarding the gates of Hell on earth, is trying to manipulate Alison into a responsibility and a burden she couldn’t possibly foresee, and which she doesn’t have the mental wherewithal to consciously agree to (oddly, this cult uses a bit of “Paradise Lost” as their mantra, despite the fact that Milton was a Protestant who was no friend to the Church). She has scary visions. She starts to lose her strength and collapse in public. She relives horrifying scenes from her childhood. She seems haunted at night, and maybe even kills someone, but nothing is quite clear. By its conclusion, all is revealed and resolved, but you’d be hard pressed to call the ending happy.

It’s a bit of a hard work to read. In many ways, it presents itself as a mainstream, reputable occult thriller. There are forces of good and forces of evil. We follow this struggle and empathize with this woman caught up in the middle of it all. When looking at the film wearing this mask, it all feels kind of reactionary. It’s when this woman strikes out to establish her independence that she is set upon by these terrors and when she is brought under the wing of the Church, safety and stasis reassert themselves. Furthermore, the horrors she encounters are often tied up in a presentation of sex and sexuality as something grotesque or threatening. A flashback to her childhood features a discovery of her father in a shocking sexual tryst, and one of the off-putting interactions with her new neighbors, a lesbian couple on the first floor, rests on their seemingly aggressive displays of sexuality in her presence. Beyond all that, as with much of the religious horror of the time, there is a meta-message inherent in showing these infernal horrors and understanding how the Church and faith are all that stand between them and our endangered souls.

But on the other hand, when viewed as an exploitation flick, cheaply ripping off other successful works to crank out popular entertainment, and those tropes of its particular subgenre are elided, in its commitment to the scare, to titillation, to gross out moments, and to absolute weirdness, this film rather sings and it feels easy somehow to look past the problematic politics of its form. Michael Winner, the director of, among other things, Death Wish I, II, and III, was no stranger to sensationalism, and boy does he bring that to this picture.

All of the scenes of hauntings/night time disturbances really succeed in being spooky, and at one point, surprisingly gory. A door opens and a shadowy figure appears behind it. It’s her decrepit, nigh skeletal dead father, his greying skin hanging off his bones. He attacks her and she lashes out, stabbing his side, slicing open an eye, and roughly hewing off his nose. Later, no one can find a body, but there’s blood on her clothes and when she returns to the room where it happened, it seems the carpet’s been changed and the furniture’s been moved. Who would do that, and why? Is she going mad? Is any of this happening? The paranoia and confusion land soundly.

The movie’s also helped by a rather impressive cast. There are lots of big names and faces of an earlier era of Hollywood stardom: Ava Gardner, John Carradine, Burgess Meredith (who is a hoot in this role), William Hickey (a treat as always), and many others. But it also features early performances from lots of recognizable up and comers: Jeff Goldblum, Beverly D’Angelo (who steals the show in her featured scene), Chris Sarandon (who plays Michael), Christopher Walken, and Jerry Orbach all make appearances. They aren’t all given that much to do exactly, but it is one of those movies where you’re constantly going, “hey – I didn’t know he was in this!”

But where the movie is really special is in its much referenced peculiarities. And they are both myriad and spectacular. Attending her father’s funeral, Alison relives a horrifying event from her childhood where she inadvertently walked in on her bony father having a threesome with two larger older women while they all eat cake, naked, in bed with their hands. If it were just the sex, that would be one thing – she found her dad openly fooling around in a way that her mom just had to know about and be shamed by. But the cake? It’s such a specific, fetishistic element to bring in that suddenly makes it jaw droppingly odd and grotesque. And then, to top it off, her father reacts to the intrusion by being infuriated to see Alison wearing a crucifix so he hits her and rips it off.

There is of course the scene where she is trying to get to know her neighbors and visits Gerde and Sandra (Silvia Miles and Beverly D’Angelo, respectively) who are both dressed in dance leotards. Not an odd question, Alison asks if they do Ballet, and when they don’t really respond, what they do for work.  Gerde responds that they “fondle each other” for a living and then leaves to make coffee. While she’s gone, Sandra, who seems mute, stares Alison down as she ferociously masturbates in front of her through her leotard. Alison sits there uncomfortably before finally passing on the coffee, extracting herself, and offending Gerde. It is, to say the least, a very strange sequence.

There is a climactic scene where demonic presences are closing in on Alison, and rather than any horns or bat wings, Winner just cast a crowd of people with real life physical deformities, mostly sourced from freak shows. He didn’t put any makeup on them or somehow dress them devilishly, so much as just strip them down to their shorts and send them shambling after her. On one level, it is a well-filmed scary sequence that avoids obvious, clichéd, overused infernal imagery. On another level, even though these are all adults, cognizant of what they were doing and paid for their services, it feels exploitative and not in a fun way. It feels gross having these real people with real physical issues displayed for their monstrousness to shock and horrify. I guess if they were all working in sideshows at the time, this is no different from their day jobs and probably gave them a good pay day, but with contemporary eyes, it doesn’t feel good.

But for my money, the most delightful weirdness of the whole film is when Alison’s neighbor, Charles invites her in for a surprise birthday party for his cat. It’s wearing a little hat and everything. And everyone in the building is there for this absurd, slightly eerie celebration. It’s all just on the other side of believable, but feels concrete at the time. And somehow, whenever we cut to the cat, it feels like it’s supposed to feel wrong, even evil somehow. But it’s just a cat wearing a party hat, and probably not so happy about the fact.

Many things about this film didn’t click for me – but there were also so many moments where I just sat in puzzled wonder, genuinely surprised by what I was looking at, and those little weird morsels of specificity all supported the horror, helped establish a very real sense of wrongness, of unreality, all of which really does pay off in a sad, disquieting ending where “good” wins, but it still feels like a loss. I don’t think I’m going to watch it every Christmas or anything, but I’m glad to have finally seen it.

The Entity (1982)

Wow. Off the bat, I‘ve got to say this was great – one of the best “new” films I’ve seen in a good while. I’ve also got to say it is not for everyone. The obvious content warning here is that the entire premise of the movie is a woman being tormented, assaulted, and raped by an unseen presence; hence if you just cannot bear to watch depictions of sexual violence, skip this one. If that isn’t an immediate deal breaker, seek it out because it is a great, worthy, scary, and I would venture, significant piece of work.

While not in any way explicitly demonic, I feel this grew out of a similar moment as the first film today as it was adapted from a novel that would seem to have been riding the coat tails of The Exorcist. Both this and Blatty’s novel claim to have been based on documented paranormal occurrences.  Both feature single mothers. Both center on a question of scientific analysis vs lived experience. But other than those superficial characteristics, this is entirely its own film. And what a film! Also, whereas The Exorcist is the poster child of religious horror pedaling faith rooted in the terror of radical evil, The Entity is a scathing, depressing, feminist excoriation of the banal ubiquity of gender-based violence in modern life. (Spoiler warning: I don’t think this is a piece that can be ruined by reading about the plot, so I will be discussing it in detail – but if you’d like to avoid that, go find it – I guess it streams on Starz in the States.)

Barbara Hershey delivers a powerful turn as Carla Moran, a single mother of a teenage boy and two young girls, who is systematically assaulted and abused over the course of the film by an unseen, but undeniably male, presence. It attacks her repeatedly in her home; it crashes her car while she’s driving; it wrecks the apartment of her friend, Cindy, in whose home she seeks asylum. Her psychiatrist is sympathetic but his certainty in the psychological, interior root of her experience contributes to a kind of gaslighting cruelty – as he tries so hard to help her, he only succeeds in making her feel like she’s going mad – denying what she knows she has experienced, telling those who have witnessed her attacks to stop playing along and enabling her delusions. Her masculine, older boyfriend, who is always travelling for work, can’t handle the reality of what’s happening to her (when he finally experiences it, he runs away and we never see him again). A team of Parapsychologists do believe her, but they are more excited at the prospect of their own legitimization than they are invested in ensuring her welfare. Her kids have seen horrible things (and her teenage son is injured by the entity while trying to rescue his mother) but no one believes them, and Carla needs to take whatever steps she can to see to their safety, and shelter them from witnessing more horrors.

Early on, after the first evening’s attacks prompt Carla to take her kids and flee her home, taking shelter with her friend Cindy, it is clear that Cindy’s husband isn’t going to accept visitors for more than one evening (he’s a gem) and thus stranded, Carla finds herself parking at the beach all day with her children. She clearly has nowhere else to go. Family isn’t an option (we learn later of abuse, possibly sexual, that she endured growing up). She doesn’t seem to have any more of a support network. Finally, the sun setting, her little girls baffled by the events of the last 24 hours, and her teenage son frustrated at being kept in the dark, she gives in and takes them home. She doesn’t seem to have any other options. And when the next day the mysterious force takes control of her vehicle while she’s driving and crashes her car, it is evident that she can’t just move, leave the house, and start over. This trauma, this violation will follow her unless she can somehow resolve it. And like a more run of the mill abuser, it will try to separate her from her friends, restrict her ability to move, try to isolate her, and break her spirit.

This is a great, compelling horror movie, but it is not what you might call a fun watch. Though no one is killed throughout the whole piece, the scenes of assault are truly horrific and incredibly heavy (that weight only slightly lessened by cinematic appreciation for the technical prowess with which it’s all executed – stellar acting, in camera effects, and a bravura practical gimmick involving Hershey’s head on a mannequin of Carla’s body with suction cups inside to give the impression of invisible hands pressing on her assaulted flesh). Furthermore, there is a growing dread that there may be no solution, that this is just the world that Carla is stuck in, that no one is willing to, or even can, help her, and that she is totally alone in suffering through this recurrent nightmare. It is bleak and shocking and it has stayed with me long after the credits rolled.

On those scenes though, I do think they are very well handled. On one level, they are very direct – there is no skirting around the issue or sugar coating what is going on. This is a film about rape, about abuse, and it starts in the first ten minutes. At the same time, I feel it is all filmed in a non-exploitative manner. The camera never leers. You never feel that there is a sleazy interest in titillation (which can be found in, for example, many “rape-revenge” movies of the 1970s). Even when clearly displaying assaults on her naked form (such as the above mentioned mannequin effect), I personally don’t feel she is objectified, or that her suffering is exploited for cheap thrills. It all feels awful, but also serious minded, and the camera always takes Carla’s perspective, is on her side. This is her experience, and we are with her throughout it.

And that experience is absolutely one of horror. Sure – on one level, there’s well done spooky haunted house stuff. There is a really scary sense of the malevolence and violent power of this unseen and unknowable presence. The horror movie of it all works great and the filmmaking is propulsive – there isn’t an angle that can’t be Dutched – focus that can’t be deep – and Charles Bernstein’s score is abrasive and compelling. But beyond that, it really deals with Horror with a capital H. (This will rather get into spoiler territory if you want to avoid that sort of thing.)

Worse than the brutality of any given assault on screen is the sense of inescapability. The person trying the hardest to help her is her therapist (Ron Silver brilliantly walks a line between help and harm), but he is really only making things worse. Fueled by knowledge of her abusive childhood, he is blinkered by a Freudian reading of her current experience, and though he is desperate to help her heal, he consistently does everything in his power to rob her of agency, to break her. The team of parapsychologists don’t deny her experience, but they happily risk her life to further their careers, while still failing to contain the threat. The only person who gives any real comfort is her friend Cindy when she witnesses an attack and confirms Carla’s sanity.

But by the end, it is really clear that there is no way to bust this ghost, to cleanse this house, to rid herself of this assailant. She can’t run from it. It won’t let her drive away. Science is helpless in fighting it. This, this sexual violence, this demeaning, masculinized brutality, is just what the world is, and there is no way out if she plans to keep drawing breath. Herein lies the true horror – the revelation of and reckoning with an unbearable truth. It is exhausting and grim and infuriating, but it is. And thus, the only solution available to her is to choose survival and endurance, because the alternative is unacceptable.

Two striking, significant moments come quite late in the film. First, working with the parapsychologists to trap the entity, Carla serves as bait in a simulation of her home which they have rigged to protect her in a safe chamber while trying to freeze the spirit with liquid helium. It doesn’t work, and as their plans are falling all around them, the presence corners Carla, forcing her against a wall, and she finds the power within to defy this thing, and to live. With recourse to nothing but her own will, she stares down her invisible assailant and has a few short but powerful lines:

All right. All right, bastard. I’ve finished running. So do what you want.
Take your time, buddy. Take your time. Really, I’m thankful for the rest.
I’m so tired of being scared. So it’s all right, it really is. It’s all right.
You can do anything you want to me. You can torture me, kill me, anything.
But you can’t have me.
You cannot touch me.
That’s mine.

Then, in the final scene, we see her return to her now empty house, taking one last look before leaving to try to build a better life elsewhere. The door slams shut and the entity utters its sole, crude, assaultive line of the whole film, “Welcome home, cunt.” With a small, resigned smile, she opens the door and leaves. We then read that after moving, the attacks continued, but lessened over time.

It’s a bit of Nancy Thompson turning her back on Freddy and taking back whatever power the fear she’d felt had granted him. It’s a bit of Nolite te Bastardes Carborundorum, as used in The Handmaid’s Tale a few years later. Sometimes the horror just is – the world is not just – the worst things happen to people without cause. Sometimes things can be changed. And sometimes they can’t. In the face of that absolute and insurmountable wrongness, one can be destroyed or one can find a way to keep going. Carla continues, and chisels out for herself a modicum of freedom, of life. It is a chilling, depressing, and yet, in its way, empowering conclusion to a difficult, moving, significant film.

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So in the end, these were not particularly similar movies, though they do have some overlap: not being believed, an invasion of the home, a kind of victory which still feels terrible. Of the two though, The Entity really impressed me – I think it deserves far more acclaim as a kind of classic – but I suppose the extent to which it’s a difficult watch keeps it off many people’s lists. The Sentinel, on the other hand, isn’t exactly a great film, but it is rather a hoot – more of a trashy, spooky good time, somewhat soured by religiosity and exploitative stunt casting.  But while my ‘double feature’ may not have quite clicked, I’m happy to have finally seen them both.