Category Archives: Review

For Easter – Jean Rollin Zombies: Grapes of Death and Living Dead Girl

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It’s always nice to do something seasonal. Christmas has endless options of festive horror to choose from. We’ve had plenty of Leprechaun movies, My Bloody Valentine, April Fool’s Day, The Wicker Man for May Day, Jaws for the 4th of July, Blood Rage for Thanksgiving, and who knows how many countless movies that take place on Halloween (all of this merely scratching the surface of holiday themed horror). But for Easter, nothing’s all that prominent. I know there are some killer Easter Bunny flicks out there, but none have a high profile, so I thought that it could be fitting to mark the celebration of a fellow rising from the dead with a couple of zombie films (while somewhat thematically following on from last week’s I Walked with a Zombie). And while I’ve written about one of his films before, and have watched a couple others, I still feel woefully uneducated when it comes to the work of Jean Rollin; therefore, this seems a perfect time to check out his two (reportedly good) zombie flicks: The Grapes of Death (1978) and The Living Dead Girl (1982) (from all that I’ve read, I doubt we need to examine Zombie Lake (1981)).

I’ll be discussing them in detail, so if you’d like to see them first and avoid spoilers, I watched them on Kino Cult. They’ve got a great collection of Rollin’s films (among others) and you can watch them free with commercials.  ***Also, as a side note, if you’re looking for a good Passover movie, how about The Abominable Dr. Phibes? Not many explicitly Jewish characters, but it does feature Vincent Price carrying out an excellent series of murders inspired by the Ten Plagues.***

The Grapes of Death (1978)

Released in France as Les Raisins de la Mort, this is regarded as France’s first “gore” film. While the makeup work is a little ropey by today’s standards, it is still effective enough, and even if every application might not come across perfectly realistically, the film is not shy about going for the gross-out (I’ve read that it was so cold at night that the latex was hardening and falling off the actors – which gives you a vicarious shiver for Brigitte Lahaie during her outdoor nude scene). I understand this was a departure from Rollin’s typical lyrical-symbolic style, given the degree to which it really delivers the horror, as opposed to being more of an art-house meditation on eroticism and the death drive. And I must say, it is scary – much more so than other works of his that I’ve thus far seen. One of his biggest commercial successes, he referred to it, perhaps disparagingly, as “conventional,” with its financial returns breathing fresh life into his film career and helping him to move beyond the pornographic films he’d been making at the time to get by.

However, while it may be more “conventional” than many of his other works, and is certainly an effective, scary horror film, I think it is no less artistic, oneiric, or unique. This is a gorgeous and disturbing nightmare that flows with the slow but inevitable momentum of a terrible dream, its straightforward narrative actually contributing to its surreal power. Drenched in melancholy, paranoia, and a deep, sustained dread, this isn’t as superficially ‘weird’ as much of Rollin’s other output, but it is absolutely obvious that it came from the same creator, rich as it is with his recurring preoccupations, and filmed with a characteristic beauty.

Before anyone can object, I will admit that these aren’t exactly “zombies” as we generally understand them, so much as a kind of ‘infected’ – people exposed to a substance which makes them alternatingly placid and murderous as their still living bodies begin to rot. But hey – close enough. I’m happy to embrace a big-tent zombieism – from Voodoo to shambling corpses to rage infected Londoners to leprous, rural, Gallic killers – I don’t feel that splitting hairs in this case enriches the conversation. Do we have a mass of rotting, generally dead-eyed killers and a vibe of the inescapability of creeping death? Yup. Good enough. Zombie movie.

The story is uncharacteristically direct. A young woman, Élizabeth (Marie-Georges Pascal), is travelling to visit her fiancé, the manager of a remote French winery. Having befriended another girl on the train, they accompany each other to the bathroom to freshen up before arriving at their respective locations, noticing along the way that they seem to now be the only passengers. This mysterious emptiness and their sudden realization of their isolation immediately unsettles, but they continue to chat excitedly about where they are going and who they will meet. Once she’s brushed her teeth, Élizabeth returns to her compartment, leaving her friend to get ready. It takes longer than expected and soon, a new passenger takes a seat and begins staring her down, a young man with a bit of a skin condition – that is rapidly growing worse – that bulges, bleeds through, and bursts. She runs for the exit, where she finds her compatriot dead in the bathroom, but he follows. She pulls the emergency brake and disembarks, finding herself stranded in the middle of nowhere. Finally, she runs off into the surrounding greenery, not noticing that the killer just sits down on the tracks, looking exhausted and broken, not giving chase.

Over the course of the rest of the film, Élizabeth will constantly run from one terrifying situation to the next, no location actually safe, no person able to fully be trusted. There’s the remote farmhouse where the father, his sanity decomposing to match his flesh, impales his also infected daughter with a pitchfork before she and Élizabeth can escape. There’s the man with the putrescent forehead who rubs his yellow pus all over the window of Élizabeth’s stalled car, smashes his head against it repeatedly, and shatters it before she shoots him. There’s the blind girl Élizabeth encounters and walks home across a desolate expanse, who refuses to stay indoors and is subsequently crucified and beheaded by her lover.

And there’s the offputtingly overfriendly blonde woman (Brigitte Lahaie in her first “mainstream” role – she’d previously been in one of Rollin’s pornographic features and would continue working with him, notably in his striking Fascination (1979)), who conceals her bloodlust beneath a mask of sanity and gleefully tries to hand Élizabeth over to the crowd before blowing herself up, her calm composure and the intensity of her happiness, in the face of such horrific events,  ironically suggesting the madness beneath.

It reads like a wild list of disparate events, but like a bad dream, every step leads inexorably to the next. We’re on a train that won’t stop, and we have no emergency brake. There’s plenty of dialogue along the way, but it almost feels non-verbal, like Élizabeth is running through a nightmarish haze, narrowly evading one terrible, logic defying threat, only to encounter the next. Surprisingly straightforward, the film more or less follows the Aristotelian unities: there is really one central action – discovery of, running from, and uncovering the awful truth behind the infected; there is this one stretch of rural countryside, though she moves throughout it; and the events basically unfold over the course of one day – we move into night as things get progressively worse, then must survive that darkness, and in the new light of day, make new, terrible discoveries. Set in bucolic farmland, it’s ‘daylight horror’ at its best.

And also like a dream, nothing actually feels weird when we encounter it. Each moment is true to its own necessity, and what could play as absurd, instead just feels scary, the whole piece suffused with inescapable dread. And sadness. There is a tragic, mournful vibe running through it all.

The infected are not mindless, but seem still aware of themselves and their actions. The farmer pitchforking his daughter looks down at her bloody corpse, asks “What’s happening to me? What have I done?” and calls on Élizabeth to kill him. The lover (and murderer) of the blind girl, who’d stripped her, nailed her to a door and chopped off her head, carries that head everywhere he goes for hours before finally kissing it sensually on its dead, bloody lips, and cradling it, lying down to die himself. And, ultimately, Élizabeth’s fiancé, the one it turns out was responsible for all this (thanks to a new pesticide he’d developed for the grapes, exposing his unprotected immigrant workforce, as well as anyone who tastes the new wine, to infection), knows what he now is and what he has done – he tries to send her away, but she refuses and he dies in her arms. The final shot of the film, with almost everyone else dead or dying, is of Élizabeth, infected herself, looking up at his now lifeless form as his blood drips onto her face – an image of mourning and love and physical need.

The whole film is similarly striking. While it is quite scary, consistently unsettling, and run through with sadness, it is never less than beautiful. The locations, the light, the sense of texture and the presence in the eyes of the actors – every moment is captivating. While it’s still assembled with Rollin’s trademark lack of interest in the traditional rules of a ‘well-made-film’ (notably, in terms of the lack of continuity in editing – at one point, a character walks around a corner and her costume changes – that sort of thing), Claude Becogné’s cinematography is just jaw-droppingly gorgeous. There is a tactile quality to it all, every moment compels you not to turn away, and again, there is a unique quality to the performances. Pascal and Lahaei both stand out in this regard – the former the trembling heart that holds it all together, and the latter a spellbinding emblem of the uncanny.

It’s really a little masterpiece. If you have the patience for its shaky effects, gloomy dreaminess, and inconsistent editing, it is both emotionally and artistically rewarding, as well as legitimately scary and haunting.

The Living Dead Girl (1982)

Released in France under the superior title, La Morte Vivante (simply “the living dead” but with feminine endings), it feels that we’ve come quite a long way stylistically from Rollin’s early, surreal vampire films. If he’d considered our first film today “conventional,” this is actually much more so, unfolding like a “standard” horror film, or even an dramatic art film. With an air of tragic romance and far more realistic gore work than Grapes of Death, this could pass as a straight horror-drama. But don’t let that fool you. While this might not be so dream-like or overtly symbolic, The Living Dead Girl taps into Rollin’s recurring preoccupations with the intersection of the erotic and death, exploring the spectrum between all the consuming need of life-sex-hunger-love-possession and the cessation of all of those things in the peaceful stillness and complacency of mortality.

And in an odd way, in sublimating his ongoing artistic impulses into something so, for lack of a better word, “normal,” Rollin crafts what might be a more moving and disturbing meditation on those themes than in some of his his earlier, more poetic and abstract (and also, to be fair, more fun) work. Unlike “Grapes,” it’s never exactly scary, but the Horror is strong in this one.

When some factory workers/grave-robbers store chemical waste in the crypts below an abandoned chateau, where the 2 years dead Catherine (Françoise Blanchard) is interred, she is revived, and they are summarily consumed. No decomposing corpse, she rises from the grave in the full bloom of youthful beauty, though her mind has clearly not recovered. With arresting impassivity, she goes upstairs and, with her long fingernails which presumably continued growing after death, pierces the throats of a young estate agent and her boyfriend who are using the chateau for a tryst, leaving their naked, rent bodies littering the premises, after stopping at an old photograph of two young girls which sends her into a reverie.

In flashback, we see Catherine and her best friend, Hélène (Marina Pierro), in the passion of childhood, declaring their eternal love for one another, cutting their palms to mix their blood, and swearing to follow one another even to the grave. In the present, though unable to speak, and barely able to order her thoughts, Catherine manages to dial the number of her old friend, opening a music box Hélène had given her as a child. Hearing the music, Hélène knows her friend must not actually be dead and comes running. She washes away the blood from Catherine’s flesh, gently puts her to bed, and hides the ravaged bodies.

Over time, Hélène nurses Catherine back to a greater semblance of life, feeding her new victims to sustain her. Finally, Catherine is aware enough to be horrified of her state and her actions and begs Hélène to let her die, to kill her if necessary. This Hélène cannot do and she practically force feeds her friend, the newly dead piling up in the crypt below, until finally Hélène feeds herself to the object of her affection. The final moments of the film are of Catherine devouring her friend, her captor, her tormentor, her sister, her lover, unable not to, howling and screaming in horror and grief as she does so.

It’s pretty heavy stuff, by turns, tragic and horrific. Hélène fights to do right by her friend, to help her, to love her unconditionally, to follow through on her solemn, if naïve, vow. But in doing so, she traps Catherine in her monstrous state, forcing her to harm innocent people. I had the impression that when Hélène was first called by the recently risen Catherine, she was struck by guilt. Her childhood  love had died two years earlier and she hadn’t followed her – she still lived, and it seems may have not even attended the funeral. Perhaps she just couldn’t face the grief. Or perhaps over the years, the two had just drifted apart, and now that she’s back in her life, Hélène has a second chance to do what she’d sworn.

Catherine, however, only seems to suffer more as she’s brought further back to the world of the living. At first, she is distant, quizzical to find herself breathing, puzzled by her new-found life. It’s as if she doesn’t understand life yet, or herself, and certainly not what she is. The more self-aware she becomes, the more she knows that she does not want this. But Hélène won’t let her go. Late in the film, Catherine tries drowning herself, but Hélène pulls her back, reviving her with her own flesh and blood. It all feels like a parable of the necessity of letting things pass, letting death be. Nothing lasts forever; nor should it. Extending life thus is not only unnecessary, but a kind of evil, a form of cruelty.

Though it begins in a death-like stillness, Catherine’s experience grows only more horrific until she is pressed to destroy her only friend, descending into madness as she does. In the end, she’s left alive, cursed to continue, to carry on as this now animalistic monster – so emotionally and mentally broken by what she’s just done that it’s hard to imagine she might recover. Hélène has sacrificed herself only to doom her paramour to an eternity of hunger, violence, and misery. She only ever acts out of love and loyalty and in so doing, only causes pain.

This was a fascinating film. Considerably more of a traditional narrative than other Rollin works I’ve seen, but uniquely haunting in the way its themes play out, death hangs over it all in both its threat and its lure. And there is a deeply erotic undercurrent, although there’s rather little that’s actually explicitly sexual. Admittedly, there is rather a lot of naked flesh, but it rarely feels sexualized. Rather Eros suffuses the obsession, the devotion, the sense of being in the physical presence of the lover, but not physically acting on that love – all this juxtaposed with the frisson of danger that comes from one’s lover being a bloodthirsty ghoul.

Interestingly, Catherine and Hélène never so much as kiss (not counting a chaste peck on the cheek when putting Catherine to bed). We see them declare a child’s love for one another, and as adults, a romantic attraction is evident, but until the end, they only ever share the physical intimacy of a caretaker and an invalid or a child. Perhaps the sense is that this desire has always been repressed, that Hélène had to keep herself away, and now that Catherine has returned, she has the opportunity to see her desire fulfilled. In the end, she experiences the most complete expression of love and lust imaginable as she is literally consumed by her lover. For her, the promise of passion is met. Sadly, her drive towards romantic-erotic-tragic satisfaction is actually an expression of total greed which only does harm to the one she purportedly “loves.” Revived by chemical waste, you could call this a toxic relationship.

And along the way, of course the film is a visual pleasure, rich in atmosphere (even when things don’t quite make sense – like how are there always torches burning in the crypt – how long do those things last?), and endlessly evocative. Images exist in a more naturalistic vein than Rollin’s earlier work has led me to expect, but they still press themselves into the subconscious, languorous and melancholic, if not feverishly burning, crying out for relief. Sure, there are still some odd edits and a subplot with an American couple that didn’t do much for me, but if you are in the mood for its unhurried pace, artistic aspirations, and characteristic idiosyncrasies, this is a really striking, moving, disturbing work of horror.

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And so there is a bit of Rollin for you. It had been kind of a joke to choose a couple zombie movies for Easter, but these two, set in this rustic, verdant French countryside do feel appropriate for spring, for a time when nature brings fresh life. Neither of these are actually to do with such a natural and positive return, mind you. But their sad beauty still feels fitting in this often dark, rainy season as trees begin to bud with color, and the air feels fresh in its dampness (when we aren’t getting unseasonable snow from a winter threatening never to leave). I’m still no expert in his oeuvre, but in my limited experience, Rollin consistently delivers such a heady mix of beauty and sadness, touching something so full of life, but therefore also feeling it move towards death. I’m so glad to finally be working through his catalogue and I’m sure I’ll write about him again before too long.

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…

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.

—

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.