Category Archives: Personal

Horror Diary Recap

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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.

La Folie Halloween Show 2024 and a Recent Film Roundup

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As a horror blogger, I have long read other horror blogs and I think one of the most common sentences has to be “sorry I haven’t posted in a while,” or at least I like to think it’s that common cause, boy oh boy, does it apply to me! And to make matters worse, I missed all of October – “spooky season,” the lead up to the high holiday of the horror calendar, Halloween. All over social media, I saw people posting their movie-a-day watchlists, with fans around the world marathoning through the month, and as I check my Letterboxd, I find that I only managed 8 movies, horror or otherwise, for the whole of October.

But I like to think I have an excuse. As I’ve posted about previously, outside of blogging, one of my main pursuits is working with a retro cabaret group here in Kraków, Poland where I live, and every year we do a Halloween show – it’s always one of our biggest and most popular, as the holiday really brings out new, fun, creative ideas. And this year was no exception – so, sure, I didn’t write about any movies last month, but it’s because I was busy making my own Halloween, and even, to some extent, horror content. And if you will all indulge me, kindly strangers of the internet, I’d like to share a bit of what I’ve been working on.

La Folie Retro Cabaret Show – Halloween

Graphic by Klaudia Drabikowska

This was a big show, with a wide range of Halloween-y variety acts, and the vast majority of it was brand new. Ghosts and vampires, mad scientists and mummies, black widows and boogie men – singing, dancing, aerial arts, burlesque, and comedy – funny, sexy, thrilling, and hopefully, once or twice, even a bit scary. We had ballet, swing, and Irish dance, we had big Broadway style show stoppers, we had loads of comedy sketches, and games with the audience – we even had a fair amount of special effects for the stage – tricks with powerful magnets, specially prepared candles, and blood pumps – neat stuff, if I do say so myself. And I do.

Photo: Jakub Mrowiec

Honestly, there were too many numbers to detail each here (and I worked on them to varying degrees – e.g., if something is mostly dance, I’m no choreographer and I don’t play a big part in giving it shape), so I think I’ll just focus on a couple that I was particularly involved in, which were more ‘horror’ focused, and which I feel presented something new for our stage.

Haunted Theatre / Séance

Ours is a variety show made up of a series of discrete acts and we don’t tend to force much in the way of larger narrative onto the proceedings, but this time, we did add a bit of framing and in that, we had opportunities for some real Halloween-y fun, spooky atmosphere, and at least one solid jump scare. Before starting, the MC came out to explain that in the days leading up to performance, odd things had been happening and that we thought the theatre could be haunted. Of course, then the lights went out on him and, as technicians struggled to get them working again, while a ‘spooky’ version of our theme song played, he turned on a flashlight and was subjected to a series of creepy sights – a jump scare with a werewolf (that I think landed), a creepy little girl on a rocking horse, a Blair Witch-esque woman standing in a corner, tentacles grabbing at his face and a skeleton clutching at his legs, and finally, a bag headed figure approaching him with a knife as his flashlight flickered on and off before he was lost to the darkness and a scream rang out though the theatre.

Screen shot: Jakub Mrowiec

This was such a simple little introduction – besides a considerable amount of time taken engineering the ‘creepy theme,’ the action was simply conceived and it did not take long to stage and rehearse it a few times (all told, it was only about a minute long), but I honestly think it worked great, setting up the night with a totally different vibe than we usually offer. More things this effective should be this easy to do.

Photo: Jarek Popczyk

This then led into our first number, which also functioned as a kind of secondary frame. Choreographed to the tune, “Swinging at the Séance,” this was set in an old abandoned house where we see two ghosts in Victorian wedding costume moving slowly and forlornly through the space, unable to connect with each other. Then a crowd of young people burst in with their loud music – laughing and drinking and carrying on, and finally, starting to dance. Through the tumult and boisterousness, the two spirits glide, each focusing more and more on a pair of dancers at the front of the stage until after a small lift, each dancer, unaware of the lurking ghostly presence, momentarily stands in front of one of the apparitions, who subsequently grab them from behind. Blackout.

Photo: Jarek Popczyk

The lights rise on the two dancers moving slowly and romantically, possessed by the spirits who can no longer be seen, able to hold each other once more in their borrowed bodies. The lights go cool and the other dancers slowly freeze as we watch the dead lovers embrace until the bodies seize up and fall to the floor, the party roaring back to life behind them. Eventually the others notice the forms twitching on the stage and react with a comic terror, finally running away.

Photo: Paulina Kowalczyk

While the dancing was in our typical wheelhouse (but no less fun), I think we managed something different with the mix of tones – light and comic, but also melancholic and lovely – underlined with a difference of movement styles, focus brought to the ghosts (as themselves or in possessed bodies) by virtue of their slow, steady glide through a churning sea of quick, bouncing bodies.

Photo: Jarek Popczyk

Then, at the end of the night, seventeen numbers later, we closed both frames by returning to the abandoned house in a straight horror scene. In the five years of giving cabaret performances, this is the first time that we included something that didn’t feature a song or dance or comedy or acrobatics or magic or burlesque, but was simply a dramatic bit of stage action.

A test of my moving planchet.

All of the dancers from the first act return with a medium to communicate with and hopefully pacify the spirits. They gather round a table with candles and a Ouija board (hand painted by me) and invite the ghosts to speak. The phantasms return, once again taking control of the same bodies as earlier, borrowing text from Adam Mickiewicz (a significant Polish poet of the Romantic era) to share a heartfelt love scene before something seems to scare them away. The lights flicker, the Ouija planchet moves on its own (a special effect of which I’m proud), the candles go out one by one (another effect I’m proud of, and one that I’d first imagined doing more than 20 years ago and finally, for this, puzzled out how to accomplish), and the medium is taken over by a different, angrier, more dangerous spirit.

Photo: Jarek Popczyk

At first it seems that she is speaking to those in the scene – of their disrespect and inability to heed a warning, but it eventually becomes clear that she is actually addressing the audience, that this hateful spirit is present in the theatre itself, raging at all in attendance and promising to enact a bloody vengeance. It warns the spectators that it will choose one of them to follow, to haunt, to take as payment for their collective transgressions, and then the actress playing the medium screams and collapses, and in the dark (the lights can’t be turned on), it is clear that the performers are freaked out, that this wasn’t in the script, that something scary has actually happened.

Then we do a big finale song and dance to The Monster Mash (for which I sang).

Photo: Jarek Popczyk (that’s me without a pumpkin on my head)

I haven’t surveyed viewers, but I hope this worked for them. I’m really happy with both my self-engineered special effects for the stage and with making a little scene that I think got reasonably creepy and even, hopefully, a bit scary. We’ve done past Halloween shows, but never actually attempted a real scare, so I hope it landed well for people. But hell, even if it didn’t, I was thoroughly happy to try, and I think we stretched creatively in making it.

Night of the Vampires

And this brings me to another piece which was at least a bit out of character for us. Since the very beginning, we’ve had burlesque in the show, and over time, its presence has expanded in the work that we offer – sexy stuff to be sure, but also glamourous or absurd or otherwise creative: classic fan dance or silhouette numbers, a half-and-half Dance with the Devil, a “Sexy Salad,” a three girl strip poker with death scene, a super cute number with two competing 50s housewives accidentally losing their clothes until they finally stop feuding long enough to discover that they’re into each other and who then leave together before their confused husbands come home.

Photo: Paulina Kowalczyk

But this was something different. This piece, loosely inspired by Le Fanu’s Carmilla (and thus in quite good company) was easily the most directly ‘erotic’ piece we’ve yet done – with a much more sexual tone and vibe than we generally adopt. Even if a performer is getting down to pasties and a g-string, all in a mood of ‘fun with sexiness,’ that doesn’t always mean that it is exactly “erotic,” but I like to think this time it was. Now, I don’t know how this increased eroticism was received by the whole audience. At least one friend was really excited by it and gave great feedback, and I’ve heard tell of one person for whom it was too much, but as with the last piece discussed, I was so very happy to make it, and I feel so good about what it was that I’m genuinely less concerned with its reception. Maybe that’s greedy and short sighted of me, but if you can’t make what you, yourself, want to see, how do you do anything at all?

Carmilla – the first literary lesbian vampire, predating Dracula by 25 years.

Any regular reader of this blog knows that I am a fan of the ‘Lesbian Vampire’ subgenre of horror and have written extensively about it here, here, here, here, and here. And in this case, that’s just what I got to make – a short scene for the stage, only 5 minutes and 40 seconds long, that is its own little Lesbian Vampire piece – with nods to Hammer Horror, Jean Rollin, and Jess Franco – with saturated color and flowing gowns and nakedness and doubling and desire and seduction and blood (with DIY blood pumps and hidden tubes to make the red stuff flow, masked in the bedsheets and under a corset – which I wish I could say worked perfectly, but at least worked reasonably well and next time, we’ll nail it) – what a joy! My horror fan heart was all the more warmed to score it with bits of the soundtrack to Hellraiser and Daughters of Darkness, as well as an awesome Roky Erickson song that I’ve written about here before called ‘Night of the Vampire.’

Photo: Jarek Popczyk

I wish I could say it had originally been my idea, but if it had, I might not have proposed it. Instead, I must give credit to Madeline Le Blanche, with whom my wife and I produce the cabaret, who thought up a three girl vampire burlesque act featuring Carmilla, Mina from Dracula, and an S&M Lady Van Helsing and asked me to flesh it out. So I went off and wrote a script which, though I felt it was a different direction for us, and could be too explicit for some, I was nonetheless thrilled to craft and was grateful that she’d commissioned it.

Photo: Jakub Mrowiec

We start with a proper young Victorian lady sitting on the edge of her bed and reading a book. The music is the romantically dark and dramatic main theme to Hellraiser. Behind her, a shadow appears in the window and a hand touches the glass. The young lady looks up, feeling that something is strange, when the hand in the window extends and the damsel’s hand does the same. The silhouetted figure controls her and we see them mirror each other. The young woman’s hand caresses her own face and slides down her bodice before she pushes it away, then her other hand is controlled to do the same – and again she shoves it from her, mystified by what is happening. Both of her hands are made to reach behind and unclasp the ribbon from which a small cross hangs, allowing it to fall to the floor. Finally, the shadow causes one hand, after a final caress, to sharply turn her head to look back and see the darkened figure standing on the veranda. She recoils, but is pulled closer and closer to the door. When finally she reaches it, she pulls open the curtains to reveal the glamourous woman outside, looking in at her with red, hungry eyes. She opens the door.

Photo: Jarek Popczyk

Fog and moonlight pour in as Carmilla glides downstage, before turning to the young woman who is fearfully backing away and, with a wave of her hand, mesmerizing her and summoning her closer. The music shifts (to a bit from Daughters of Darkness) and a mirrored striptease begins. Their bodies copy each other perfectly – Carmilla enjoying her control over her prey, and, let’s call her Mina, or possibly Laura (more fitting for Carmilla), at first shocked to witness her own actions, but clearly enjoying them more and more. All in mirror, gloves come off, and then dresses (this mirror motif, in my mind at least, referencing the cabaret performance in Jess Franco’s Vampyros Lesbos – it is a rather different action, but there is a thematic resonance). The mirror is dropped and Carmilla comes behind the younger woman to remove her corset, leaving her in the requisite diaphanous gown, before presenting her own corset for Mina/Laura to undo. Finally, down to pasties, a g-string, red contacts, and fangs, Carmilla guides her to the bed and lays her down, head towards the audience.

Photo: Jarek Popczyk

Initially, the ingénue is shy and covers herself somewhat with a bedsheet (which hides a tube connected to a blood pump, allowing her to position it for the blood effect), causing Carmilla to pause in her climb over the supine body as if to ask if she actually wants this. Mina/Laura acquiesces, lowering her shift to reveal her pastie adorned breast as Carmilla lowers her head to bite (and the performer compresses a large syringe, causing the blood to flow). It is sensual and bloody and Mina/Laura’s body seems to seize in tortured ecstacy before finally giving out and collapsing as her life’s blood drips down her neck and hair, pooling on the carpet (which we laid down to aid in rapid cleanup).

Photo: Paulina Kowalczyk

Then suddenly, with another change in the music, shifting to a driving rock sound, Carmilla looks up, hissing, and we see Lady Van Helsing enter on a higher level and descend the stairs to do battle. Carmilla greedily clutches her victim’s body, pulling it back to drop on the floor as she rises to face her crossbow wielding adversary. Again, she employs the mirroring power, leading Van Helsing to give up her weapon, knock off her own hat and undo her flowing cape. Lady Van Helsing draws a golden dagger to hold up as a cross, and after, lashing out, Carmilla claws at her, ripping off her skirt in the process, Van Helsing holds the cross to her head, eliciting a hiss as Carmilla loses consciousness.

Photo: Paulina Kowalczyk

Lady Van Helsing moves Carmilla on to the bed and, securing her in place by laying the cross on her bared breast, chains her hands and begins to remove her own gloves as a surgeon might don them. After a walk round the bed undoing her corset (among other things, making the blood syringe strapped to her back accessible, though still hidden from the audience), Lady Van Helsing draws from her bag a bottle of Holy Water and proceeds to lash Carmilla with it. Carmilla writhes in a mix of pain and pleasure as if in play with hot wax. Van Helsing then draws a stake and trails it up and down Carmilla’s body, teasingly, before raising it high to drive it home, when she realizes that Mina/Laura has risen behind her.

Photo: Jarek Popczyk

Gently taking her wrist, Van Helsing is made to drop the stake, as Mina/Laura moves her hair aside and comes in to bite (with her other hand, beginning to squeeze the pump). After a moment, she pulls back and looks to Carmilla, bound on the bed below, and then bites again, lowering the vampire hunter down so that her blood falls onto Carmilla’s body and into her waiting mouth. They both feed as the lights begin to fade. All three look out to the audience, lost to sensation as darkness engulfs all.

Hot, huh?

Again, I don’t really know how it was taken in by most of the audience, but I was so gratified to have this opportunity to make a bit of vampy erotic horror. I think the intersection of those two elements can be really fruitful – both absolutely to do with, and eliciting reactions from, the body and the mind – the hunger and the desire for the other being both mental and physical – sexual and violent, of the flesh and of blood. There is attraction and need and complication – all essential human experiences. This is a big part of what I really appreciate in Lesbian Vampire movies, wherein there is often a focus on desire and pleasure and it’s not simply about, as can often be the case in sexually explicit content, unveiling “boobs” for a presumed male viewership (though it can’t be denied that’s often present as well), and I think we offer that in this number. I’m immensely proud of this piece and I hope someday to be able to share it here (there’s been discussion of filming it for posterity, so who knows – it could happen).

Photo: Jarek Popczyk

So yeah, that was my Halloween (and of course, there were loads of other cool acts that I’m not even scratching the surface of here: 2 masked “boogie men” competing over who can best frighten a little girl, a Black Swan/White Swan ballet number complete with heart ripping, an Irish burlesque – dancing widdershins on the barrows by moonlight to gain gold, finding it hidden in the layers of clothes until an inner fey is unveiled, a skeleton doing aerial silk work, an audience interactive dating game show where all the contestants are monsters, and much, much, much more). I didn’t write about any movies last month, but my horror fan brain was still appropriately occupied I think.

Photo: Jarek Popczyk
Photo: Jakub Mrowiec
Photo: Jarek Popczyk
Photo: Jarek Popczyk

But Also, Some Recent Watches

Finally, I just wanted to share some thoughts on a couple of movies from this year that, with the show in the rear view mirror, I recently had the chance to catch up on. It’s really rare that I manage to watch anything new, and so it’s always exciting when it happens. First, the other day, I got to check out a double feature of Immaculate and The First Omen. So-called “Twin Films” (such as Dante’s Peak and Volcano from 1997) are nothing new, but it’s a while since I’ve been so aware of two coming out so close to each other with such parallel plots. Of the two, I definitely preferred Immaculate – the atmosphere and performances just pulled me in and it even had some fun jumps and gross out moments – and a climactic sequence before cutting to the credits that was so satisfying, and so nice to see that it got to “go there.”

But while I think The First Omen suffered somewhat both from being a prequel, and thus in service to a pre-existing story while also setting up a new series that can grow out of it, as well as having a very predictable turn that I felt was intended to be a ‘big twist,’ but which was obvious from the very beginning, it did do something really interesting. My understanding of the conventional wisdom surrounding the Satanic threat books and films of the 60s and 70s, such as The Omen and the Exorcist, is that they represented a pushback against a secularizing counterculture moment in which society was turning against all authority, including that of faith, and especially a hierarchal institution like “The Church.” These works are all predicated on discovering the truth of radical evil – there is a devil, he is real and dangerous in our lives, and the only possible solace and protection comes from faith, from God, from the Church. Whether their creators directly intended this or not (for example, I read that Ira Levin, an atheist Jew, regretted that his excellent, feminist, cultural paranoia novel, Rosemary’s Baby had inadvertently participated in this reactionary moment), many of these works served to scare a reading/viewing population back to the pews. It’s the main reason that I’ve often found myself turned off by such content, especially exorcism films – they so often feel like proselytization.

But in this little, modern prequel – a really fun scary movie that takes great pleasure in delivering some reasonably shocking imagery of its own (with one much discussed moment that I had not seen on film before) – there is such an interesting angle taken. This brings me to a big spoiler that wasn’t obvious, so be forewarned. In this case, the sinister cabal within the church that is pulling all the strings to trap our protagonist into birthing the antichrist isn’t actually “Satanist.” Rather, they are an ultraorthodox wing of the Catholic Church, worried about the secularizing counterculture moment of the 60s/70s, who decide that they need to scare the population back into the pews by birthing the Antichrist (sound familiar?). The villain of the prequel is effectively the personification of the actual cultural soil out of which the original book and film grew. In this way, the film makers have their cake and eat it too – able to make a spooky antichrist movie with all the fixins, and still not turn off a loyal horror viewer such as myself who is otherwise loath to engage with such content. Neat.

And then last night, I finally got myself out to The Substance. I’d intended to do so more than a month ago, but with the Halloween show underway, it was just impossible to take an evening to go watch something for my own pleasure (I remember a good friend having the saying that “you can see the show or you can be the show”). But what a pleasure! Easily the most fun I’ve had at the cinema in a good long while – and I even got a few people walking out in the final act, which made it all even better (I’d heard it likened to Brian Yuzna’s Society, and I think it delivered). The intense style, the driving energy, the performances, the campy streak of black comedy and social satire, and the goopy, bloody, bizarre practical effects – everything about this movie was a blast and I love that this weird flick is getting so much mainstream attention (also, I cackled at the Act III title card). But what I think was most interesting about it of course requires spoilers, so beware.

Obviously so much of the thematic is all tied up in gender and youth and beauty – that’s clear from the outset, it is so present in the satirical, ironic gaze of the camera, and it narratively explodes in the final reel in a fashion at once emotionally cathartic, hilariously absurd, and honestly sad. But it is also quite on the nose and I can see someone taking issue with its bluntness (kind of like the big speech in the Barbie movie, but with considerably more body horror). But I feel there was so much to the movie. Ultimately, I think there was a larger exploration of people’s inability to share, to love the other as oneself (which includes the edict to love oneself) which surfaces in self-hating, self-destructive tendencies on both personal levels and for society as a whole. The Devil’s bargain that Elisabeth makes is one for which most of us would fail to follow the rules, and there is a satisfying horror in seeing it destroy her and feeling it cut close to home. One need not specifically “be an older woman in Hollywood, subjected to cruel double standards that serve to shape girls into objects for male pleasure when they’re young and then forget them when they age” to identify with the toxic impulse to wish oneself away (and then make it happen with compulsive, self-erasing behavior) in favor of some ideal, some wished for version of oneself, the “better” person who would garner the approval of not just others, but more importantly, yourself. This theme (we greedily neglect to take care of each other just as we fail to take care of, or love, or even just not hate ourselves), I found particularly effective and well handled – and it was served up with wicked humor, cinematic verve, and bubbling, fleshy, gory glee, presenting a harsh, bleak notion in a manner that is simply fun. I thought it was rather something special.

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And that brings us up to date. I hope you’ve all had a good spooky season. I have a plan for November, but it is ambitious, so we’ll see how that goes. It might come early December. Wish me luck!

Ten (more) Great Horror Songs

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Sometimes I’m not looking for some “great classic work” to analyze and I don’t feel like pulling the trigger on something new that I may or may not enjoy or otherwise find value in. Sometimes, I just want some of the (perhaps ironic) comfort that comes with horror vibes in musical form. There’s just a specific pleasure to be found in music that somehow connects with the genre. Maybe it’s a rocking song based on some bit of horror film or literature. Maybe it’s a theme from a favorite movie. Sometimes, it’s even just a tune that features in a key sequence of a film that you don’t even exactly love, but the fact that it’s from a horror movie elevates it to a kind of beloved status. These songs can just be a lovely, familiar place to hang out, a warm blanket on a rainy November day, or a kick of energy to get in a party mood or get stuff done. Maybe it’s just because I’m a fan of the genre and they bring to mind remembered satisfaction, but I think there’s also some rich juxtaposition of dark and light at work. Here’s a fun song that plays while terrible things happen. Here’s a catchy dance song about death and destruction. It’s just easier to get into some upbeat number when it has a dash of murder to cut what could otherwise be saccharine – to entirely mix my metaphors, it’s the spoon full of sugar that makes the pop tune go down.

I’ve done a few such lists before, often with more stringent rules. Here you can find a list of some of my favorite horror scores. This is a list of treasured songs found in horror movies. And here is a list of groovy tunes that aren’t from films per se, but all have horror themes. That said, this week, I’m casting a slightly wider net. Some of these will be the title theme to a movie. Some will just feature in a particular scene. Some will be about a horror topic or will reference a horror work. But they all rock.

Killer Klowns – The Dickies (1988)

Killer Klowns From Outer Space - Music Video

I just mentioned this back in September when discussing the classic for the ages, Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988). It is a deeply silly movie with a theme to match. Building on Fucik’s “Entry of the Gladiators,” (the first song that comes to mind when you think of clowns or the circus, which I just learned was composed as a military march – wild), The Dickies get the party started during the opening credits with this bopping song. I read that they wrote it knowing very little about the movie other than the title, but it somehow strikes exactly the right tone. It’s bouncy – it implies circus – and it has just a bit of an edge, a note of something threatening, even sinister. It sets up what the movie is going to feel like: silly and playful, but with a bite.

No Vampires Remain in Romania – King Luan (2019)

King Luan - No Vampires Remain in Romania

Apparently this plays during the credits of s01e02 of What We Do in the Shadows, a show I love, but I can’t claim to have discovered it there. Rather, the Spotify algorithm just knew this was a song for me, and boy is it. Not actually connected to any particular horror work, it is just a great vampire themed disco song. Or maybe it’s a lack-of-vampire themed disco song, to be precise. What is it about actually? I’m not sure – maybe it’s just a bunch of random stuff that rhymes, but it feels vampirey, and it sounds cool and it’s the sort of thing that you can jump around the kitchen to or shout along with in the car. Seriously, I don’t really understand what’s going on here, but it makes me get up and boogie. And it’s got vampires and a video that for some reason features a lot of Nikola Tesla. Sure – why not?

Nosferatu – Blue Öyster Cult (1977)

Blue Oyster Cult - Nosferatu (lyrics)

Wow – I just discovered this one a couple of months ago, but it is tremendous. A quiet creeper with a bridge that just stomps, it is entirely about Murnau’s 1922 masterpiece, focused on Lucy and her death as an act of self-sacrifice. In this, it only touches on one aspect of the story, but I feel it does so richly and effectively. It hangs out in a seventies rock groove – maybe not the place you expect to really feel a German silent film from the 20s about a particularly ugly version of Dracula, but I think Blue Öyster Cult rather nails it. I feel the mood, the atmosphere, the drive of the story, and when it opens up into a full out rock song, the sustained tension of the beginning pays off with a real release. I’ve always loved their Godzilla – do they have other songs based on horror greats? Something to check… Also, one note of interest – to avoid issues with copyright (unsuccessfully), Murnau changed all the names from Stoker’s novel, changing the name of Mina Harker, for example, to Ellen Hutter. Yet, in the song, it does reference the character as “Lucy” (Lucy, of course, being Mina’s friend in the novel). Interestingly, two years later, in his remake of Murnau’s film, Werner Herzog names the character “Lucy” as well. With some rudimentary googling, I’ve not been able to find the story of how the name was changed thus, but I am so curious – was there some source that both the band and Herzog took the name from? Was Herzog just a fan of Blue Öyster Cult? (I wouldn’t expect it, but who knows.) If anyone out there has info on this, please leave a comment!

Howling – Steve Parsons and Babel (1985)

Howling II Soundtrack / Steve Parsons & Babel - Howling Club Mix (1985)

So, The Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf (1985) is famously a “very bad movie,” a judgment that may be earned, but I’ve got to say, I think it’s a pretty good time, and in its defense, I feel it knows what it is, and that its failings as “cinema” are balanced by the degree to which its tongue remains firmly planted in cheek. But beyond camp value, one standout element is its main theme, simply titled “Howling,” by Steve Parsons and the New Wave band, Babel. The band is featured in a club scene playing the song, but otherwise, the song seems to play constantly throughout the film and somehow, for me, it never gets old. It’s got a cool, eighties erotic-pop sound, lyrics that all give solid werewolf vibes, and it unabashedly keeps repeating the title of the film (at least the “howling” part of it – the actual line “Your sister is a werewolf” is left to the great, unfortunate Christopher Lee to have to utter – this was reportedly not his favorite film appearance).

The Cask of Amontillado – The Alan Parson’s Project (1976)

The Cask of Amontillado by The Alan Parsons Project

The Alan Parson’s Project’s debut album was an ode to the works of Edgar Allan Poe, titled “Tales of Mystery and Imagination.” I don’t know how much it really feels like Poe to me, but it was obviously made with great love of his oeuvre, and it was a real nail biter for me to choose only one song to recommend. It all, as I understand the “kids” were saying a few years ago, “slaps.” Let’s just link the whole album – give yourself 40 minutes some time to check it out – it’s worth it. Alternatingly orchestral and proggy, every track is interesting and fun and at least Poe literate. The fourth song, “The Cask of Amontillado,” walks the line between the two poles of the album – about half of which takes the form of seventies prog-rock jams and half of which is a symphonic suite circling around “The Fall of the House of Usher.” This track certainly rocks, but also has an older kind of atmosphere as it tells the tale of a man slowly dying, having been walled up in the cellar.

The Blob – The Five Blobs (1958)

The Five Blobs - The Blob (Burt Bacharach and Mack David)

Somehow I’d never seen The Blob (1958) before last spring. I don’t know how this iconic 50s teens vs aliens monster movie had so long eluded my attention (I mean, I knew about it, but just never watched it), but I’m glad I finally checked it out. Here we have another super fun theme that plays during the opening credits and alerts us to the good times we have in store. The song is lively and playful, and so is the movie, though it does also have some real threat and weight and loss along the way, not to mention, pretty cool goo-based special effects. Never having seen it before, I’d somehow expected a more self-serious affair, but as the credits rolled, hearing this, I realized I was in for something a great deal more fun.

Also, I think it’s interesting how this theme, playing in the beginning, functions in such a similar manner as the above praised “Killer Klowns,” given the degree to which that later film is so clearly modeled on the skeleton of, if not The Blob, per se (blobs don’t have skeletons after all), then films like it, to be sure.

Prom Night – Paul Zaza, Gordean Simpson (1980)

Prom Night (1980) Disco dance

Prom Night, the 1980 slasher set on, you guessed it, prom night, is a pretty good time, if not groundbreaking. There’s a terrible prank gone wrong, a series of vengeance killings of teens out to have fun, a perfunctory but ultimately satisfying mystery as to the identity of the killer and a solid, downbeat ending. It’s also got Jamie Lee Curtis lighting the dance floor on fire in a disco sequence at the eponymous school dance (to a song that bears the title of the movie) that goes on way too long for narrative value, but who cares? It’s one of the best parts of the flick. She and her dance partner (Casey Stevens when he could pull the moves off, a dance double when he couldn’t) really bring the party to life. And it’s generally a groovy song to boot. Generally here, I’m sharing Youtube clips of the songs themselves, but in his case, I’ve gotta share the clip from the movie even if the song isn’t complete. This is probably one of those cases where if this song weren’t from an early 80s slasher, it would just fade into other disco of the era, but since it comes from a movie that features a severed head, I’m there for it!

Gangster Rock – Felony (1981)

Felony "Gangster Rock" from Graduation Day

So, following the last entry, I just have to include another clip from a different early 80s slasher, in this case, Graduation Day from 1981. Once again, we have a scene from a school dance that goes on so much longer than you ever might expect it to. But in this case, it is interspersed with footage of two teenagers (one of whom is scream queen, Linnea Quigley) slipping out to the woods to have sex and get murdered by a sword wielding maniac (the killer’s a bit less creative here – one person in this movie gets killed by a football with a blade attached to it). In the beginning, the song didn’t exactly grab me, but after it had been playing for like 8 minutes, and after being so integrally tied to a pretty fun golden age slasher kill/chase scene, this energetic, keyboard slamming rocker wormed its way into my heart. And honestly, I think the whole sequence is really buoyed by the music. In this era, you can see so many similar scenes that play out in such similar fashion, but setting it all to this party sound and cutting back and forth with such energetic editing gives the whole bit a real kick. It’s great. The bladed football is great. The movie has a great final girl. Honestly, this movie which might be deemed ‘objectively bad’ by some, which Linda Gross of the Los Angeles times called, “an insinuating and lecherous movie with many hokey effects and poor-quality acting,” has a surprising amount to love in it.

Also, I would be remiss if I didn’t link to Stacie Ponder over at the Final Girl blog and her observation about this party scene. I’d seen the movie a couple times before and had never noticed this detail, but once she pointed it out, it’s the only thing I can see, and it’s pretty special.

The Hell of It – Paul Williams (1974)

Phantom of the Paradise - The Hell of it

Playing over the closing credits of Brian De Palma’s epic, weird, wonderful flop of a horror rock opera, Phantom of the Paradise (1974) (starring, among others, Jessica Harper – most known to horror fans as Suzy Bannion from Argento’s Suspiria), this searingly cynical song is just so tight and mean and glorious. Apparently, it was written to play at Beef’s funeral, but the scene was cut, but as I think it might be the best track on the soundtrack, it’s a great way to close out the picture. The movie itself is odd, but really distinctive, and I do recommend it if you ever have the chance. De Palma throws “The Phantom of the Opera,” “Faust,” “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” and a particularly sour view of the 70s music industry into a blender and pours out an utterly unique film. It’s not for everybody, but I kind of love it, Harper has an amazing, deep singing voice that you might not expect from her slight frame (she’s also great in Shock Treatment (1981), Richard O’Brien’s follow up to Rocky Horror), and the music, all by Paul Williams, who also stars as the Faustian record producer, is uniformly fantastic, with this song being, in my opinion, the standout hit.  

Rock Until You Drop – Michael Sembello (1987)

Rock Until You Drop (Remastered Version)

From Michael Sembello (who also gave the world the Flashdance song, inspired by William Lustig’s gritty, scalp collecting killer film, Maniac (1980)), this up-tempo 80s inspirational jam plays during the montage in The Monster Squad (1987) when all the kids are spending the day gearing up to do battle with the, you know, monsters: carving stakes in shop class, riding bikes somewhere in a hurry, playing dress up with Frankenstein’s creature, writing a letter in crayon to the “army guys” to “come quik” cause “there are monsters,” making silver bullets and also business cards, consulting maps, and stealing archery equipment – the kids all get ready in their own way. This was a movie that I loved well before I was actually into horror (I saw it in the cinema when I was nine and I remember coming out at the end just so stoked – ready, myself to fight the forces of darkness). Generally I think it holds up as one of the essential ‘kids vs monsters’ flicks, though it hasn’t been one that I revisit often as an adult, and this has got to be one of the all-time-great 80s ‘preparation montages’. Even if I don’t often watch it, the movie will always hold a special place in my heart – it’s just a shame that it features some homophobic slurs, and that really hasn’t aged well (sure, it’s how kids really talked – and probably still do – on the playground, but it’s still a turn off).

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And there we have it – ten more great horror songs. It’s interesting to me how many of them are dancey disco tunes or seventies rock grooves – not something I expected when I first sat down to brainstorm what I wanted to include in this list. It is a specific sound, and one not always associated with horror, but all of these immediately give me a taste of the genre, if not instant associations with some specific horror work.  May they keep you bopping through the night as well.

Horror and Tragedy Pt.I – The Bacchae and The Wicker Man

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I so often say this (and it doesn’t come true), but my intention is for this to be a short post. I just got back from a two week vacation in Greece (fancy, huh?) and I really want to get some quick thoughts down on paper and return to them later to go more in depth (hence, “Pt. 1”). We’ll see how that works out…

I particularly enjoyed in Greece periodically being at some ancient site where it was possible to ignore the modern world and let my imagination spark. To be fair, this was not always the case. So often, significant ruins exist amidst the hubbub of a modern city and it’s hard to visualize the significance of what would have been a grand temple to a god people fervently believed in when you’re looking at two pillars standing bare, next to a busy, noisy street. But there were a few locations where I was able to make the imaginary leap, and in that, there was a special kind of magic. I’ve long been a fan of mythology (for a great retelling of the Greek stories, I highly recommend Stephen Fry’s three volumes of Greek myths and legends, written in a very modern, engaging, exciting, and often funny idiom: Mythos, Heroes, and Troy), and so, frequently it was the mythological significance of a given location that ignited my fancy, but more often it was a link to ancient drama.

The gate at Mycenea, the seat of Agamemnon and hence, the setting of many tragedies.

I came up in the theatre and the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides loom large in my understanding of dramatic forms and structure. Walking up the hill to the palace complex at Mycenae, there was a delicate frisson of magic in visualizing Agamemnon returning victorious, Cassandra in tow as a spoil of war, having been stolen away from what had been the richest, most opulent city in the Greek world (Troy) and dragged to this politically and militarily powerful, but otherwise remote, strange land, screaming all the way about how her captor was doomed to meet his death at the hands of his wife and her lover (in revenge for sacrificing their daughter so the Greek ships could set sail), her cries of warning falling on deaf ears, all this more than 3000 years ago. Driving from Corinth to Thebes and then to Delphi, a trip of 200 km, often through craggy mountains, it was fascinating to consider Oedipus making such a journey on foot to learn the disturbing prophecy concerning his parentage, leading him to take every step to prevent it from coming to pass, which of course only hastened its fulfillment (Greek tragedies often prefigured time travel movies, teaching us that you can’t – and really shouldn’t try to – mess with a timeline).

From a 19th century Dutch production of Oedipus Rex, shortly after he stabs his own eyes out.

But this is a horror blog – why am I going on about old Greek plays?

Well, I’ve long had it in mind to dig into the notion of ‘tragedy’ (as an aesthetic concept – not as merely a very sad thing that can happen to someone) and how it relates to ‘horror,’ as I feel there’s a connection and that, in fact, the latter may be the true modern inheritor of the former. For a long time, tragedy was one of the very few genres of dramatic art (in the European context at least). From the Greeks, to the Romans, to Shakespeare – for millennia, we didn’t divide narrative entertainments into westerns or war films or horror, but generally into comedies and tragedies (sometimes histories, morality plays, or sex farces too, but the point is, tragedy was one of the biggies).

Now, in our modern times, perhaps thanks to the advent of nuanced naturalistic performance and writing, more focused on ‘normal people’ rather than larger than life ‘heroes,’ tragedy as a genre has fallen out of vogue. The old ones are still performed, but I think they now more often fall under the umbrella of ‘drama.’ However, I do find it striking that in the horror genre, a critically underappreciated field of artistic endeavor, certain key elements of tragedy live on today.

So I’d like to examine this. I think this first text will be on the short side, as I’ve been away on vacation and my mind is fuzzy, but I hope to return to this idea over the next months a couple more times to flesh it out more fully.

Pity and Fear

I love horror (or I wouldn’t pay for hosting this blog) and I also love tragedy – two genres calibrated to make the viewer “feel bad.” But while tragedy is overwhelmingly associated with ‘high culture,’ horror tends to be viewed as ‘low.’ Still I think they go on a similar journey: In classical tragedy, the protagonist is often given cause for at least concern, if not full on dread – they operate for much of the run time of the play under this pervasive sense of doom – they push on, true to their character, until they recognize what is often a terrible, unbearable truth (what Aristotle termed “anagnorisis”) – which ultimately drives them to a final, heroic, self-destroying (but possibly also defining act) act. Aristotle argued that all of this should come together to inspire pity and fear, calling them the “proper pleasures of tragedy.” By subjecting themselves to this terrible, though fictional experience, the audience can exercise their deepest, most unsettling emotions and in the end, exorcise them as well, undergoing a cleansing “catharsis.” While not every detail maps to every modern horror film (honestly, they didn’t really map to every tragedy in Aristotle’s time either), I think this concept should feel familiar for any horror buff.

Horror fans understand that pity and fear can be a source of great pleasure. We choose to watch, and are able to enjoy, fictional matter intended to be terrible, intended to inspire at least terror, but often much worse. We know the peculiar pleasures of sitting through cringe inducing, gasp eliciting horrors, knowing the laughter that can often follow a good scare or moment of revulsion, knowing how when horror really works, it can leave you feeling fresh, alive, perhaps “cleansed.” Wes Craven is quoted as saying that horror is “like a boot camp for the psyche” and that “horror films don’t create fear – they release it,” and I think for horror lovers, that’s true (mileage may vary – there are people in my life, people I love, who just can’t do horror – for them the tension is never released, catharsis doesn’t occur, and rather than being cleansed, they just continue to feel bad for a long time).

But for those who partake, when it works, it really sings. And I feel I’ve experienced very similar feelings at the culmination of good tragedy and good horror. I love what I think of as the ‘tragic pinch’ – the moment when a tragedy all comes together and just hurts so good – when all that is good and all that is terrible is somehow thrust together and something in the soul cries out in response to unbearable beauty  – the drama revealing some terrible truth. This brings to mind my favorite definition of tragedy, coined by the 19th century German philosopher, Hegel, who described it as “the conflict between two mutually exclusive goods.” For example, both Antigone and Creon act out of unyielding moral purpose and are thus thrust into irreconcilable conflict. Whereas the action of the play may lead to their downfall, for the audience, a kind of reconciliation of moral impulses can occur. Personally, I don’t know about what reads as a prescriptive call for “a new moral synthesis via the dialectic of the drama,” but his descriptive analysis of effective tragedy living in the conflict of two “good” things really rings true for me.

And finally, to once again bring this back to our genre of choice, this particular juxtaposition of conflicting goods that both lead to bad, I contend, can be found in so much horror work, delivering the horrific shudder of something quite akin to my “tragic pinch.” When at the culmination of The VVitch, Thomasina signs the devil’s book and rises, laughing, into the night, she is finally free from unbearable deprivation, hardship, and puritanical oppression, but to get there, her whole family had to die and she had to sign away her soul. At the end of The Cabin in the Woods, forced to choose between the good of her own life and that of her friends and the good of the whole world, Dana chooses to value her friends most, and the world is lost. For a very common example, so much horror turns on the notion of “yes, you’ve made it through the night, but at such cost”; watching Sally ride away in the back of that pickup at the end of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, covered in blood and laughing maniacally, one doesn’t have much hope for her future – she’s still breathing, but what remains? Like the poster says, “Who will survive and what will be left of them?”

Or furthermore, how many movies feature a character become truly monstrous in order to survive? In 28 Days Later, Jim seems to embrace his own rage (sans viral infection), dropping from the rafters to brutally gouge out the eyes of a rapist soldier, to rescue Selena –and in doing so, something of his humanity seems to be sacrificed.  Sarah’s turn to the monstrous, rising out of a pool of blood with death in her eyes and leaving Juno to die in The Descent follows a similar track. In all of these cases, and so many, many more, the height of not just simple scariness, but full on ‘horror’ consists in this moment of excruciating, exhilarating moral tension. I root for Thomasina and glory in her emancipation; I love Dana’s vengeful decision; I want Sally to escape; and I can roar along with Jim’s and Sarah’s animal rage – and at the same time, I feel the weight of loss and sacrifice and madness that accompany all of these ‘goods.’ Even as I cheer the choices, there is a clench in my gut as well – the dark consequence/cost still lands. And it is often the movies that give me this “horror moral tension” that I love the most.

Don’t mess with a god

Back to the Greece trip, I was particularly happy to make it to Thebes. Little remains at the archeological site of the palace – just a hole in the ground in the middle of a small, contemporary Greek city, but at their rather well organized historical museum, I was struck to be at another site where so many of the old tragedies took place – Oedipus Rex and Antigone are two prominent example, but most notable for me is one of my favorites, The Bacchae by Euripides. And while we were there, I was struck with the realization of how well that play parallels one of my favorite horror films, The Wicker Man. So I think it could be interesting to go through them to see how they both manage to land that moment of the “tragedy pinch,” or the “horror moral tension.”

I’ll start with what may be the more unfamiliar work for the horror crowd. The Bacchae is all about the cult of Dionysus (a new god at that time, not yet established in the pantheon) coming to the city of Thebes. In a way, Dionysus was from Thebes. His mother, Semele, was a Theban princess and a lover of Zeus, compelled by a jealous Hera to beg him to reveal himself to her in his true form. Reluctant, he acquiesced, and thus struck by a lightning bolt, she exploded. Zeus found the fetus of his new child amidst the charred wreckage of his lover and sewed it up in his thigh to grow to term – this grew to be Dionysus, the god of wine and theatre, of wild frenzy and orgiastic abandon. His new cult developed in the east and he eventually brought it to his home town where his cousin, Pentheus was now in charge. 

Vase showing the birth of Dionysus out of Zeus’s thigh.

When the play begins, the cult of Dionysus has been gathering in the nearby mountains for some time, drawing the women of the city out into the wilderness to get wasted and act all mysterious and wild – Theban society is totally disrupted by this and there is a conservative moral panic – what should be done about this hedonistic, new, drunken orgy cult? Won’t somebody think of the children! Pentheus isn’t having any of it and has Dionysus apprehended, humiliated (for example, cutting off his long hippy hair), interrogated and imprisoned. Refusing to accept the claimed divinity of this new presence, Pentheus is tricked by Dionysus into dressing up as a woman and going off to infiltrate the Bacchae (the female followers of Dionysus) in the mountains to see what’s actually going on. While he’s there, the worship grows more and more fevered until, caught up in an inebriated trance, the women go all bloodthirsty, tearing apart goats and cows with their bare hands. Finally, they turn on Pentheus, and it is his own mother, Dionysus’s aunt, Agave, who rips off his head and carries it triumphantly back into the city of Thebes.

Pentheus about to be pulled apart.

And here comes the horror. When she arrives, she’s still kind of worked up, high on the rush of the kill, of the lust, of the wine. She proudly approaches the chorus, declaring how she’s brought back the head of a lion that she, an old woman, managed to kill, as proof of the power bestowed upon her by her new deity, and she demands that her son be brought to her so that she might show him this glorious evidence. There is a solid scene of the chorus trying to get her to really see what’s in her hands before the horrific realization finally dawns on her. And when it does, it is terrible.

Image of Agave carved on an ancient jewel.

Something I love about this play is how for the vast majority of it, Pentheus just comes off as a dick. He is a prude, a moral scold who doesn’t like long haired hippies and is just trying to be a massive buzzkill for everyone else’s fun. Both the chorus and some of the city elders try to get him to see the light, warning him that you shouldn’t mess with a god, and going on to praise the wonders this new god has bestowed on them – inebriation, drunkenness, the ability to find respite from the endless troubles of life in the sweet forgetfulness of the fruit of the vine. And yet, in the end, those elders and that chorus are uniformly horrified at what comes to pass. They want to look away. While Pentheus was an unreasonable jerk, and Dionysus was a real cool guy, and everyone was having a really good time, the power of the god is also terrible and inhumane and unforgiving. The play ends with that horrific tension I love of getting what we want to see, but it’s awful. We had an amazing time last night at the party, but in the cold light of day, with a terrible hangover, we don’t like ourselves anymore. Maybe we have a problem.

The Wicker Man

Which brings us to The Wicker Man. Like Pentheus, Sergeant Howie is an unbearable, puritanical moral scold who cannot accept the pagan ways of the community he finds in Summerisle. We can go along with him in trying to find a missing child who may have been murdered, but he is constantly a jerk to the seemingly fun folk he encounters in this small, Scottish island town. Everywhere he turns, he brings the supposed authority of the Church and the State to bear, shouting at teachers, children, librarians, and people hanging out in a de-consecrated cemetery or singing in a raucous pub about how wicked they are. For the audience, the people of Summerisle come off as rather lovely – lusty, earthy types whose faith isn’t really any weirder than Howie’s Christianity. They seem a fun lot – hearty and having a really good time, with a nice, sex-positive attitude and catchy, bawdy folk songs. Like Pentheus, Howie meets their wild reveries with a moralistic, judgmental attitude. They are both difficult protagonists to like.

But at the end, when the penny finally drops and, after going in disguise to infiltrate their revels (remember, Pentheus largely did the same), Howie is captured, put in a giant, wicker man (we have a title!), and burned alive as a sacrifice to recover the island’s failed apple crop, it is suddenly horrific. As he screams from within the burning effigy, calling out to his Christian god, the people sway in colorful costumes on the cliff side, belting out a joyful hymn, celebrating their sacrifice. It is still beautiful. They are still lovely. But the very thing that makes them so lovely, also makes them premeditated murderers, who have lured this man to their little island with the express intention to kill him in such a terrible fashion.

I’ve never felt The Wicker Man is at all a scary movie, but it stands as one of my all time absolute favorite horrors. The horrific tension of this final moment is just so rich – such overwhelming warmth and loving ‘good’ so inseparably linked to such implacable, cold-blooded ‘bad’. It sings. It screams. It pinches. It is what I want from horror. And tragedy. And, interestingly, its final moments resonate quite loudly with those of The Bacchae.

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So this is a start. Thanks for bearing with me as I try to order my thoughts about this meeting of two artistic loves of mine. Focusing on my recent Greek vacation or 5th century BC Athenian dramatic literature are both perhaps odd choices for a horror blog during “spooky season,” but these ideas have been scratching at me for a while and I’m itching to birth them into the world. Like a fetus stuck in my thigh. Next post, I imagine I’ll hit something more classically “Halloweeny,” but in the future, I hope to dig into this further…