Roots of a Genre – and Questioning Genre

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Happy Friday the 13th! (At least, that’s the date as I sit down to start writing – we’ll see what day I actually post – ok, now it’s Sunday) Whether or not one is a fan of that particular series, this always seems like a little horror holiday, worthy of some manner of observation.  Furthermore, these days summer is coming on, everything is in bloom, and there is this atmosphere redolent of the end of school, of vacation, of coming freedom. And so, I think it is appropriate to take a filmic holiday to a beautiful wooded hideaway, next to a serene body of water, where thirteen people happen to get skewered, hanged, speared, decapitated, burned, and just generally knocked off in all manner of gruesome ways. But today we’re not actually going to Crystal Lake (I’ve already covered my favorite of the F13 movies, part II); let’s take a little trip to Mario Bava’s A Bay of Blood. Warning – there are many twists that could be spoiled, so enter with care.

I imagine that this will also be a jumping off point for a few other things I’ve been thinking about, so please bear with me.

A Bay of Blood (1971)

Bava’s film was also released as Carnage, Ecology of Crime, Chain Reaction, Blood Bath, The New House on the Left, and the most excellently titled Twitch of the Death Nerve. Quite shocking at its time, I think its violence holds up pretty well today and can still elicit some real gasps from a viewer. Solidly within the giallo tradition, it also went on to deeply influence what would become the American slasher, most notably the first two Friday the 13th movies (which draw on its location and atmosphere, and even directly recreate a couple of its kills), and subsequently, their imitators. There had certainly been juxtapositions of the beauty of nature with human violence before, and I can’t say for sure that it’s the first “body count film,” but Bava does it so well here as to effectively codify many of what would go on to become the slasher tropes, just as Carpenter would further do seven years later with Halloween.

But it is a bit of an odd duck. At only 84 minutes, it is a tight little thriller that races along at a clip, but it’s also sometimes languid and pastoral. It is quite bare bones, more interested in setting up murder set pieces than fleshing out any of its characters, but it is also surprisingly complex, requiring the viewer to really pay close attention (there are at least six different killers, each working separately and at cross purposes). It relishes in mutilation and gore, but it is also beautifully filmed and artfully composed. The acting is stilted, the writing is strange, the dubbing is terrible (typical for Italian films of the era), but it is also captivating and exciting, and it still somehow comes off as a kind of masterpiece, superior to many of the copycats that would follow in its bloody wake.

The story, while riddled with double crosses, reversals, and shocking revelations, focuses on a simple MacGuffin: the property around a bay which could be developed at a profit, or preserved in its natural beauty (an interesting note on the nature – the filming location had only a couple of trees and they needed a forest, so Bava reportedly just bought some branches at a garden store and had them held in front of and behind the actors – and it’s totally effective – you’d never know it from what’s on screen). The film starts with the old woman, the owner of the land in question, being killed and her suicide faked, and then it’s off to the races with everybody and their surprise step brother killing each other to acquire the inheritance.  In fact, as soon as this matriarch is dead, the film delivers its first big twist. You might expect that, having seen the black gloved hands leave the fake note, that killer would slink back into the shadows so we might wonder at his or her identity for the rest of the film. You’d be wrong. We pan up, see his face, and then immediately see him stabbed in the back.  All apparent rules are out the window – anything can happen – anyone can die, and almost all of them (13 out of the 15 people that appear on screen) do.

While story is decentered, the rest of the filmmaking is creative, propulsive, and endlessly stylish, circling a visual theme of pristine nature balanced against avaricious humanity, corrupt and murderous. People don’t come off well here at all. If they aren’t egoistic killers, they are generally ineffectual, shrill, greedy specimens who will go wholly unmourned, the only exception being some young people who have the misfortune of happening upon the property and getting killed on the off chance that they might stumble onto some kind of evidence (but even there, just the two girls seem kinda decent – the guys, not so much). This pessimistic view of humanity is nicely encapsulated in a dialogue between Paolo, who collects and studies insects and Simon, who criticizes his hobby:

Simon: I don’t kill as a hobby like you do.

Paolo: Good lord, Simon. You make me feel like a murderer.

Simon: I’m not saying that, Mr. Fossati, but if you kill for killing’s sake, you become a monster.

Paolo: But, man isn’t an insect, my dear Simon. We have centuries of civilization behind us, you know.

Simon: No, I don’t know. I wasn’t there.

In all fairness though, I’m pretty sure that Paolo kills no human beings in the film and Simon is responsible for at least 5 deaths (maybe 6), so his moral superiority comes with a grain of salt. Regardless, neither of them are particularly nice guys. It is to Bava’s credit that the film can hold attention so well in spite of being peopled almost exclusively with unpleasant characters.

Perhaps this is the origin of horror films filling their dramatis personae with irritating, disposable youngsters who only exist to satisfyingly die (a trait I’m rarely a fan of – I rather appreciate when they avoid this very thing, but it works here). An effect of this is that the murders don’t horrify so much as thrill – they startle, they impress with their ingenuity, they attain a visceral quality, but it’s all in good fun and there is a streak of black humor running through the whole affair up to, and particularly including, the very last moment before the credits roll.

This is but one of the many links between this influential giallo and what would later become the slasher. We also have the degree to which it structures itself specifically around the kills, then showcasing the gore to the best of the effects artist’s abilities (sometimes with more success than others). Bava even has a group of young people with absolutely no connection to the plot show up just so that someone will go skinny dipping and the body count will be that much higher (and it’s their deaths that get directly borrowed in the first two Friday movies, notably the couple speared together while in flagrante). We even have the scene in the final act when a girl walks into a room only to find all of the people who had been murdered earlier horrifically arranged. This is all extremely familiar but is housed within the work of a giallo director working in high cinematic style.

For a fan of the genre, it’s really worth giving it a view. So much is clearly in its debt.

A Crisis of Genre

This preoccupation with genre (horror – thriller – giallo – slasher) brings me to a topic that’s been on my mind of late. I haven’t personally had a chance yet to see the new Dr. Strange movie, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, but I would like to. I enjoyed the first one and hey, Sam Raimi is directing (of Evil Dead, Evil Dead II, Darkman, The Gift, and the first three Spider-Man movies, among many others). In the lead up to its release, it was promoted in some circles as being Marvel’s first foray into horror. Tellingly, in other circles, it was not. And now that it’s out, it is being met with a) mixed reviews (too bad, but not what I’m interested in here), and b) a small crisis of genre classification.

I’ve seen a fair amount of headlines questioning whether it is horror or not and whether it’s too scary. Not having actually seen it, I don’t exactly have an opinion of my own, but I think the debate is interesting in terms of who makes which case and what their stake is in the matter. I think Disney is trying to both have and eat cake here. Before release, this was going to be a horror movie – the novelty was a selling point; after release, and being criticized, of course this isn’t a horror movie – you can bring your kids, fun for the whole family! There are plenty in the horror sphere making the distinction of ‘containing horror elements, but not being classifiable as a horror movie.’ Possibly when I finally see it, I may fall in this camp, but in such things, I always hesitate for fear of falling into a kind of snooty gatekeeping. Personally, Silence of the Lambs, a movie I really like and respect, doesn’t really feel like horror to me (as I wrote about here), but who am I to tell someone who considers it their favorite horror movie that they’re doing it wrong?

Most tellingly for me, a kid that I teach (English as a foreign language) saw it a few days ago and was fuming to me about it afterwards, during our class. He did not appreciate the horror of it. He had gone to a comic book movie and was angry at having been scared. He didn’t want to watch a horror flick and was offended at the intrusion of a genre he doesn’t like into “a cartoon for kids.” I’m not going to venture into whether it’s too scary or not (again – haven’t seen it) and I remember plenty of pretty horrific stuff from PG movies that I loved when I was little and really not into horror (the face melting in Raiders of the Lost Ark, the first ghost in the library in Ghostbusters, all of Gremlins, a movie that I LOVED). But it seems to me that if he and other young viewers receive it as horror, that’s what it is. Dismissing their experience seems inexcusably presumptuous. In a similar vein, a podcast I follow, Horror Queers, just did an episode on Who Framed Roger Rabbit – when I first saw that, I was puzzled, but both hosts remembered being disturbed by it when they were little in a way that felt just like a horror film – both by the rather intense and gruesome content of its climax (when the judge is slowly crushed by a steam roller, screaming till the end) and its simple, inherently uncanny mix of animation and live action.

Horror is a tricky thing to pin down. Is it about a set of featured tropes? Which tropes? How many? The net will inevitably be cast too wide or too narrow. Is it just about being horrified? That doesn’t work – a holocaust drama probably shouldn’t be thus classified. To be a comedy, it’s easy; a movie just has to make you laugh. With horror, we might not be able to do better than Justice Stewart’s definition of obscenity (“I know it when I see it”).

To a large extent, genre is just a marketing tool allowing producers to target sales of a product to the consumers who will most want to buy it. For academics, it can be an important tool for focusing a subject of inquiry, contextualizing it in terms of the history and features of similar works. For the rest of us, why is it at all important how we classify Doctor Strange or Silence of the Lambs or anything else? Are we just hungry for categorization? Is it an aspect of how we form our identity? I am the kind of person who likes these things and doesn’t like those things. I am different than the person who likes those and doesn’t like these. If I don’t know what kind of thing this is, if it can’t be clearly labeled, how can I use it to understand and thus, enact the kind of thing that I am?

This may be overreaching – I doubt that loads of people are thrust into existential crisis because they don’t know if Marvel just released a horror movie or not, but the fact that there is any controversy at all over something so seemingly trivial seems to reveal an investment in the matter that may speak to deeper significance.

But people are somehow still arguing about which two colors that dress was – so who knows?

Not Accepting a Life You Don’t Deserve – X

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So, starting this blog, it wasn’t my intention to be a ‘journalist,’ staying abreast of and giving my opinions on the most current developments in the genre, and thus I’ve focused on older movies which I’ve found interesting, or which I’ve felt deserve some more attention. But today, for the first time, I’d like to write about something relatively new, something still in cinemas (it actually just opened a week ago where I live), something I just got to see and loved: Ti West’s X. Now, I’m aware that I’m late to the party – it opened about 6 weeks ago in the States and a lot of ink has already been spilled on it, but I really liked it and I’ve successfully avoided reading any reviews so I could give my thoughts untainted by other opinions. I can’t promise, therefore, that those thoughts are novel, but if its characters can be so insistent on getting what they want, I can excuse myself for devoting some bandwidth to this today.

X (2022)

Especially given the fact that this is still a new release, be forewarned that herein lie spoilers.

In short, the film follows a group of young, aspiring pornographers into rural Texas circa 1979, where unbeknownst to the elderly couple from whom they’re renting a farmhouse, they plan to make a “really good dirty movie,” thus kicking off their respective futures of wealth, comfort, indie cinema, and fame. However, of course, this being a horror movie, they’ve come to the wrong farmhouse, and said elderly couple, driven by a resentment of the young flaunting what they feel age has unfairly stripped away, set upon them in pretty brutal fashion. It is a playful, gory, sexy, and surprisingly emotional outing, and it is also a satisfyingly cohesive piece, held together by the confluence of hopes, dreams, and flesh.

I think comparisons to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Boogie Nights are inevitable, justified, and limiting. It’s probably impossible to hack up young people in such gorgeous southern heat without bringing Hooper’s film to mind (and at least one sequence, in which Maxine is filmed looking through the screen door of the house from deep down the dark interior hallway before tentatively venturing inside, seems to be a direct visual nod to Pam in Chainsaw doing the same). That said, X has a totally different character than the earlier film. Whereas Tobe Hooper’s classic presents America as a pessimistic nightmare, West offers, in spite of the plentiful blood and guts, a disarmingly hopeful tone. This is a film explicitly about the American dream, and it is peopled with dreamers, chasing their own respective stars. Some have been soured by dreams that didn’t come true, and have thus, bitterly, turned to violent cruelty, but the film as a whole retains a rare and sincere optimism. And even the villains of the piece, who do some awful things, are sympathetic in their way.

This essentially humanist take on a group of young people, enjoying their own and each other’s bodies, unconcerned with society’s judgment, chasing success, does bring to mind Anderson’s opus of the porn industry at the turn of the 70s and the 80s, particularly in terms of both films’ central characters’ pursuit of stardom and their tendency to tell themselves in the mirror just how much of a star they are. But Boogie Nights doesn’t feature any eyes being stabbed out, nails through unshod feet, heads being chomped by swamp gators, arterial spurts (though it doesn’t lack blood – anytime a character is wearing all white, it just seems like something bad is destined to happen), pitchforkings, axings, or crushed heads, so that’s something different. Still, another similarity of the two films is their bravura cinematic style and their use of an ill-respected genre (adult film) to lovingly showcase independent filmmaking behind the scenes.

In further contrast to Chainsaw, which moves from a place of sinking dread to a point of sustained, shrill insanity, truly horrific to endure, X is perhaps closer to an 80s slasher, full of sex and violence, but ultimately made to entertain in a way Chainsaw seems unconcerned with. X can startle sometimes with some fun jump scares, builds suspense well and is playful with setting up and denying expectations, has great gory practical effect work, and is exciting, engaging, and even occasionally scary, but while it has thrills aplenty, it doesn’t exactly horrify (and I don’t think this is a failing – like the filmmakers within the movie, I think West really just wants to show you a good time). But neither, really, (in my opinion) did any of the Friday the 13th movies and that doesn’t mean they aren’t a hoot. Also, like an 80s slasher, it is preoccupied with sex, even featuring killers hunting the young explicitly for their sexuality (an easy read of many Reagan era “bodycount films”) but here there is a significant difference.

While films such as Pieces (1982), Blood Rage (1987), or Nail Gun Massacre (1985) may feature gratuitous nudity and a killer somehow obsessed with or haunted by sex (and can be fun in their unapologetically exploitative fashion – I certainly don’t mean to disparage them by comparison), X is actually about sex in a way they are not and, therefore, nothing here is gratuitous. Rather, it is essential to the story, to the thematic, to the emotional arcs of the characters. It is certainly at the core of The Farmer’s Daughters, the film within a film that has brought them to this ill-fated farm.

As experienced sexual performers, Maxine (Mia Goth) and Bobby-Lynne (Brittany Snow), both of whom presumably have been working as strippers for some time but have never made a film before, are defiant in their sexuality, in embracing and enjoying it and the work they do, unashamedly and proudly. Jackson (Kid Cudi), having filmed his first scene, feels he’s found his calling, standing before the window, naked and beaming. Finally, Lorraine (Jenny Ortega), the sound technician and girlfriend of RJ (Owen Campbell), the director of the Farmer’s Daughters, initially uncomfortable in this company, finds herself called to participate, allured by the inspiring sexual freedom, the infectious positivity, and the sense that they are, in fact, making something good that she wants to be a part of. This leads to a telling point of conflict with RJ, who does not want her in the movie, casting doubt on the possibility of actually being so free of hang ups as the group claims.

On the other side of things, Pearl (also Mia Goth, in heavy old-age makeup) and Howard (Stephen Ure), the old couple who are unknowingly providing the setting for this on-location shoot, have their own sexual hang ups to wrestle with. Their relationship is loving, but physically distant, and that distance takes a heavy toll on Pearl. Due to his heart condition, Howard is unwilling to approach intimacy, though he is apparently willing to occasionally chain up attractive young drifters in the basement to satisfy Pearl’s needs, or blow interlopers away with his shotgun. Pearl is pitiable in her physical loneliness, frail and desperate for affection, for touch, to be seen and wanted. It is creepy and invasive when she takes an opportunity to brush against Maxine’s uncovered ribs, even more so, when she strips down and climbs into bed with her as she sleeps; and the whole naked dead guy locked up in the cellar is certainly not ok – but she is really not unsympathetic and the film does not demonize her or present her as horrific merely by virtue of her age or the fact that she still has sexual desire.

The whole film turns on Maxine’s determination to parley her youth and beauty and sex into the life she dreams of and Pearl’s assurance that, “It’ll all be taken from you. Just like it was from me.” There is a bitterness turned violent in Pearl’s assertions, but also a wistful sadness that seems rooted in a life hard lived, in countless tragedies, failures, and disappointments that have atrophied the spirit. There is really nothing left for Pearl to lose and if she can find some satisfaction in the visceral execution of the young, in the physical satisfaction of bloodlust, if, covered in blood, she can finally dance again, following the ever present TV preacher, why should she accept a life she does not deserve?

Maxine (who, in a coda, we learn has a strong tie to said preacher), delivers the same line. She is young now, and strong, certain in the righteousness of her desire, the drive of her body. When she makes it through the night, doing what she has to do to survive, ultimately ruthless in overcoming her octogenarian assailants, her bloody victory inspires. Two dreams clashed and in the end, the one that has not yet gone sour triumphs. Maxine driving off into a glorious sunrise, followed by the comic epilogue of police investigating the blood drenched scene the next day, cements the hopefulness of the ending. For a very, very bloody flick, featuring killer alligators, broken dreams, and, one assumes, sex crimes in the basement, it is a really upbeat note to end on.

And past that, the whole film is just fun. Good editing is often invisible, but West fills his film with really showy cuts and absolutely beautiful shots, relishing the vibrancy of youth, nature, sun, sweat, and enticing danger (an overhead shot of an alligator effortlessly floating towards an unsuspecting skinny dipper typifies the balance of beauty and threat on display here – such a balance bringing us right back to Chainsaw – it’s really hard to escape).

From moment to moment, the film delivers. The comedy lands. The scenes filmed for the Farmer’s Daughters, though they play on a stereotype of cheesy porn dialogue, are coyly seductive with a real, tactile sensuality. And it does have some scares that work, all adding up to a tremendously satisfying, entertaining, and even touching bit of horror cinema. At the end of the day, it is a fun body count film, but one not without heart, and not without a mind at work.

Keeping the Wall Wet – my week in horror

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A core image of Jhonen Vasquez’s hilarious, disturbing, endlessly creative comic book, Johnny the Homicidal Maniac has always stayed with me. At one point, an intrepid surveyor is uncomfortably interviewing Johnny (or just “Nny” for short) about some local murders and notes that the police suspect a girl may have been killed by a vampire, having been totally drained of blood. This doesn’t end well for this interlocutor as Nny homicidally ejects him from his home, shouting how he never drank the blood, but he has to “keep the wall wet.”  See, there’s this wall, inky black in the monochromatic comic, that he continually has to coat with fresh blood as the color changes when it dries and that just won’t do to keep the Lovecraftian, tentacled horror contained within. Eventually, with Nny incapacitated, said beastie does in fact escape, wreaking havoc, but that turn of events wasn’t what’s kept it in my mind all these years. Rather, it always somehow felt like a metaphor about art, about the creative drive: the obsessive impulse to create, to produce, to perform – to satisfy a cruel, exhausting necessity. Sometimes, even when you’re totally burned out, when you lack inspiration, when you don’t even want to, you just have to keep the wall wet.

Which brings me to today’s post. I try to really put some degree of thought into what I’m going to discuss each week, but it can occasionally be difficult to settle on a topic to delve into. But in the interest of not letting that wall get dry, today, I’d just like to run through the horror content I’ve consumed this week. In a strange way, I‘m almost embarrassed that there isn’t more to report – I’m on a few horror groups on Facebook where some fans seem to watch at least one horror flick a day, and sometimes three or four – that’s a schedule I just can’t keep up with (life is pretty busy), but hey, I’ve got a few things here worth mentioning. These will all be first impressions, and some may be fairly short, but I hope to light upon some interesting thoughts along the way. Let’s see if I do.

100 Best Horror Blogs

First off – here’s a cool development. I’ve been listed on Feedspot’s 100 Best Horror Blogs and Websites (in the 69th position). I don’t know how the determination was made, but I’m honored to be in some great company, along plenty of sites that I occasionally visit.  With any luck, that might bring a few new people to these pages. Here’s hoping.

Two Short Films

Another first this week – I was contacted through the blog by a filmmaker who wanted to share her horror short, Mary, available currently on Vimeo. I can’t promise to promote everything that I ever get sent, but I was honored to have someone reach out.  Sometimes I feel like I’m throwing words out into a void every week and I’m happy that someone might find my output and want to share their own with me.

Mary (2022)

So, Jo Rou and Dan Riodan’s short presents an insurance agent, Rich, visiting an elderly woman (sharing the name of his mother, who recently passed) to discuss features of her plan. Taking place on the first anniversary of his mother’s death, this visit stirs up his deep feelings of guilt and, in turn, frustrated defensiveness and resentment. I think the emotional core of the piece lands – both his self-recrimination at having abandoned her to a home, and the way he felt boxed in by the burden of responsibility. This meeting with an alternatingly sweet/creepy elderly woman veers into a nightmarish mode wherein he is tormented by her saccharine assurances that he must have treated his mother very well and is taunted by her accusations of his failings.

Is this Mary some kind of Greek fury, haunting him for the blood crime of matricidal neglect? Is this all in his mind, this episode only triggered by the reminders of his mother which seem omnipresent in Mary’s home? This narrative question remains unanswered as this is more of a mood piece. I would say that some of this really worked for me (the simple, frustrating, guilt-ridden drama of the situation), and some elements (the more directly ‘horror’ based) didn’t quite click (there was an exaggerated stylization that occasionally distanced), but as a whole, I think it’s an effective, sad little film. And it’s only 13 minutes long, so maybe check it out.

The Strange Thing about the Johnsons (2011)

This second short, Ari Aster’s (of Hereditary and Midsommar) film school thesis, was recommended following my post last week on creepy kid movies. Promoting that blog entry, I’d asked about people’s favorite creepy children and one person responded with Isaiah, the son from this film. To be fair, this takes a different spin on ‘child’ as it is not about youth, but rather being-a-child-of-a-parent (a feature shared with Mary above). It’s on Youtube, so I gave it look.

Whooo-boy – this is one difficult watch. It takes a turn for “horror” late in its run time as there are some direct acts of violence, but throughout, there is a weight of dread, of being trapped – both by an abusive family member and by one’s own feeling of complicity with that abuse – the guilt and horror of what one has done, mixed with the terror of not being able to escape. This could be the material for a standard drama of familial abuse, but it distinguishes itself by reversing the players, presenting an adult son who sexually, physically, and emotionally abuses his father. Cringingly uncomfortable from the very beginning, like something out of a Todd Solondz film (Happiness, Welcome to the Dollhouse, etc.), Aster’s short builds to awful crescendos of brutality, terror, and grief. It’s a hard film to recommend, but it is interesting to see a talented filmmaker’s early work, and however unpleasant to watch, I think it’s doing what it set out to do.

Aster said that the impetus to make it was a discussion between himself and friends about the most taboo topics they could put into a film: “We were talking about topics that are too taboo to be explored, and so we arrived at taboos that weren’t even taboos because they were so unfathomable, and the most popular was that of a son molesting his father.” It is an oddly effective choice – perhaps by reframing the abuse in a dynamic that seems so unlikely, such a reversal, in which the victim is an adult, with full agency, who at least at the beginning of this abuse could have physically resisted his assailant – perhaps all of this makes the abuse freshly shocking, while casting its mechanisms into a starker contrast.

But perhaps it is also just a bit of what we now think of as ‘trolling’… I think these days, there is a little exhaustion with doing something just to irritate, just to get a rise out of someone, just to be as offensive, as shocking as possible. And in this case, Aster may be guilty of just that. Apparently, there was also some criticism at the time of release around Aster, a white Jewish filmmaker, centering this film on a black family—did he just do this just to intentionally stir more controversy, knowing that people can be pretty sensitive about who tells whose story, or was there a true artistic impulse behind it? For my part, I feel that while the story really has nothing to do with race, the demographics of the cast did feel surprising – which speaks to larger problems of representation – and the performances are painfully good, such that it would have been a shame if these actors weren’t playing these parts.  And on the question of “trolling,” I don’t know – I’m less interested these days in giving a lot of attention and hence, reinforcement, to that impulse, but at the same time, I think it can really be a necessary one in horror. Sometimes it is the absence of that mean drive to really bother the audience that causes a work of horror to underwhelm. How can you horrify if you balk at merely upsetting?

Three Full Length Films

I also managed to check out a few features that had been on my list for a while: a bit of small and indie, a bit of cheesy 80s, and a bit of classic French thriller. In short:

Caveat (2020)

The setup of Damian Mc Carthy’s debut feature is intriguing and peculiar: an amnesiac, Isaac, following some accident, is hired by a supposed friend to ‘babysit’ his mentally ill niece in a derelict house on an isolated island. She’s scared of strangers so he’ll have to wear a harness and chain which will prevent him from entering her room (also, as he later discovers, he can’t even reach the toilet). He hadn’t initially agreed to any of these conditions, but he is pressured to accept each new bad idea as it is revealed. Then over the course of one night, really creepy, ghostly, things go down, ultimately revealing details of the sordid history of this house, this family, and Isaac himself.

I must say I wasn’t quite taken with the direction of the narrative. Some elements didn’t track for me (Why does this creepy rabbit doll work as some kind of P.K.E. meter whenever something spooky’s about—it’s cool and creepy, sure, but why is it there? In what order did who kill whom and why?), and the way they didn’t track felt more like something was missing than a mystery by design. However, the unsettling atmosphere and the essential concept were strong. It is evocatively filmed and has a real momentum. And it does play out as a classic ghost story, the psychological and the otherworldly feeding into each other in enigmatic ways – sometimes satisfyingly and sometimes frustratingly. It is far from perfect, but the elements that work (particularly the first act discomfort and mystery) are great. It’s a solid first outing, and I’ll be happy to see what Mc Carthy does next.

Black Roses (1988)

Ok, this was just a ton of fun. John Fasano’s “heavy metal” horror is a delightfully cheesy outing, full of rubbery monsters, campy performances, and mixed messaging which packs all the nuance and entertainment of a 40s hygiene film or something like Reefer Madness. Made during the heady days of “Satanic Panic,” when parents groups lashed out at Dungeons and Dragons and Heavy Metal records, terrified at their corruptive, demonic influence, this film exploits the groundwork laid by these hysterical moralists with the story of a Metal band that comes to a small town and hypnotizes the local youth with their evil tunes (which are, in all honesty, about as tame as can be), causing them to run wild in the streets, kill their parents, and sometimes turn into voracious, fleshy, horny monsters.

A guy is sucked into a stereo speaker by a weird giant centipede thing, mesmerized teens turn into gummy skeletal puppets, and Damian, the lead singer of the purportedly Hellish band, shocks everyone by…pulling off his wig and laughing maniacally (I guess the point was he was about to transform into his poorly articulated, demonic true form and he didn’t want to damage his expensive wig, but it sure looks like his evil revelation was baldness).  Finally, the put upon English teacher, who just wants to have roundtable discussions about the American Transcendentalists between beers, saves the day by burning down the concert venue.

It’s certainly a B-movie (or lower), but it’s also genuinely fun, even if it does imply that the concerned parents of America were right to hate and fear this music. Honestly, I don’t think it has a position – this was just something people were talking about that they thought would make for a good, goopy, sensationalistic horror flick. And, distanced from that particular historical, censorious moment (as opposed to our current one), it does.

Diabolique (1955)

Henri-Georges Clouzot’s thriller is a captivating tale of calculated murder. An abusive schoolmaster (and I could not do justice to just how much of an unpleasant character he is) is murdered by his young, abused wife and his lover, whom he flaunts, but also beats.  Much of the film is quite procedural, following step by step in their plan to carry out the perfect crime, thoroughly covering all of their bases, and it is fascinating and deeply emotional from start to finish (that focus on process is intriguingly reflected in a sequence in which some morgue workers prepare a body for viewing). The wife, Christina, is very religious, having been raised in a convent, and is tormented by the sin they are contemplating and finally executing. The lover, Simone, a tough gal of a lower station, has to push and pull her along to carry out the plot, but in the end, she is finally successful.

And then, without going into any detail, one key thing goes wrong and we’re off to the races, until it all culminates in a chilling final sequence that is nothing if not horror. The film is frequently taut, sometimes funny, occasionally scary, and always totally engaging.  The web of dynamics between the three main characters is ever shifting – for example, these two women have no reason to like each other, and yet here they are, planning a murder of someone they do both have reason to hate; they have been set against one another as the husband, Paul, has made no secret of his dalliances, and yet there seems to be a strange affinity between them, which had me wondering occasionally if they shared a bed as well (I don’t think so, but an attraction seems to linger); Paul abuses them both and yet, for whatever reason, they have both been drawn to him. It is a rich and complex place to dwell, and in the end, it really does offer a solid, disturbing scare.

I had long heard of this as a classic to rival Hitchcock and I think it really lives up to its hype.

Three Short Stories

I’m currently working my way through a 2 tome omnibus of the 6 volumes of Clive Barker’s Books of Blood. He played a significant role in my becoming a horror fan way back when and these short stories were a huge part of that.  I’m planning on discussing his oeuvre in detail when I’m done with the re-read, so I’ll just barely touch on three stories I read this week.  The first was Hell’s Event, following a runner doing a charity event who finds himself at the center of a recurring contest between the forces of light and darkness to set the course of humanity for years to come. Demonic forces hound the human runners to ensure the victory of their infernal ringer, but this gory spin on the rabbit and the hare has the best laid plans of devils and dirty politicians foiled by the obliviousness of basic human mediocrity.  The second, Jacqueline Ess: Her Will and Testament, is a particularly Barker-ian tale of flesh reformed, identity transcended, and the intertwining of sex, torment, and worship. It follows a bored housewife who discovers her power to literally turn men inside out, and essentially becomes a goddess. It’s a trip. Finally, The Skins of the Fathers is a hot, dusty tale of dark god-monsters rising out of the desert for a kind of celebratory-destructive birthday party/auto de fé, ultimately seeking to make men better. 

I love the scale at which he writes, but also the way he revolves around certain ideas and images and obsessions: the body, transformation, permeability, the drive to story, etc.  I’m moving through these tomes slowly as I mostly just have time for reading in bed, am often tired, and don’t get too far in one sitting (or lying as the case may be), but I’m really enjoying the journey and once I come out the other end, I’ll certainly write at length about my take on Barker’s work. 

So, that’s been my week in horror. I remember I’d initially felt some degree of imposter syndrome, feeling like maybe I don’t consume enough horror material for anyone to care what I think about it, but now I look at my two shorts, three films, and three stories and I’m struck that I found so much time in the week, after all.

Good for me.

Threatening Innocence – The Bad Seed & Village of the Damned

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When you consider the things that scare people, some are obvious and some are not. Though most spiders and snakes won’t bite you, some can kill and it’s hard to know which is which. Though standing at a great height on a windless day, there is no reason to think you might fall, if you did, it would be fatal. Though most of us will probably never be stalked by a madman with a knife, that would certainly be unpleasant and we could be forgiven fearing such a thing. But then there are some fears that seem less rooted in realistic threat: open spaces, for instance, or public speaking, or a doll, or a clown.

I think films like Child’s Play or Puppet Master work because toys should be safe. They exist only to entertain children and therefore, carry a de facto innocence. They are in our homes, with our kids, and we trust them, but trust necessitates vulnerability and maybe that’s scary. So if they happen to carry the spirit of a serial killer or have been animated by an ancient Egyptian spell, and come to life in the middle of the night to prey on our children or ourselves, beyond just being a danger, the corruption of the trusted, innocent plaything lends an additional sheen of horror, of wrongness.

So, too with clowns, a common fear. Again, they exist to make kids happy, but their image inherently suggests that something else might lie beneath the façade of a painted smile. Thus, it’s not that surprising that, while most might be perfectly nice children’s entertainers, the monstrous clown, grotesque beneath the greasepaint, has become a common image of fear.

And if these markers of innocence, these things that become horrific because it’s wrong for kids’ things to be scary, if they can send chills down the spine, what about kids themselves? I doubt I’m alone in thinking they too can be eerie. They are human, but they’re not really like us – and are thus somewhat alien. They come from us and we try to “raise them right” to share our values and perspectives, but they retain their interiority and we can never really know what’s happening behind their eyes. We love and protect them, treasuring their innocence for as long as it lasts, but we also know that they can lie, and take, and act out of a wrathful, violent sense of having been wronged. I read somewhere that every two-year-old is essentially a psychopath, but that most of us grow out of it. I’ve never been a parent, but I can imagine it’s a terrifying thought that yours might not.

And so, with that, I’d like to look at two films today that offer iconic treatments of the creepy child: The Bad Seed and Village of the Damned. To really discuss them in some detail, there will be spoilers so I recommend seeking them out before going any further.

What Is It With Overly Mature Blonde Kids?

There are many currents that run through both works, some of which are surface similarities and some of which speak to a deeper resonance. In both cases we have creepy children with flaxen hair, who can be unnervingly adult in their demeanor, whose threat is linked to their heredity, who kill remorselessly to get what they want, and whose parent figures take it upon themselves to kill them.  I think in both films, the creep factor is linked with this sense of a maturity beyond their years. For a child to be cold and calculating, to enact its own gaze, declaring itself a subject of equal or greater prominence as the adults around it, can be unnerving. Rhoda is often praised for her maturity, but sometimes her mother seems uncomfortable with it as well. The children of the village are never demure minors to be watched by their elders – they look back and with their look, they actively use their power, controlling people’s minds and bending them to their will.

We also have an interesting treatment of sociopathy in both cases, but they do differ in significant ways. Rhoda is described as a “natural little girl” who “knows what she wants and asks for it – not like these over-civilized little pets that have to go through analysis before they can choose an ice cream soda.”  Unhampered by social mores, she unashamedly voices her desires and does what she needs to in order to realize them. If this means murder, that is no bother to her and she feels no guilt; after all, she wanted it, now she has it, and she’s not the one who drowned so why should she be upset? The children are also free from remorse, and it is there that their alien potency lies. In their words, “If you did not suffer from emotions, from feelings, you could be as powerful as we are.” It’s not only mental dominance, but rather this amoral freedom that gives them an edge. And in both films, their parent figure futilely tries to instill a moral sense, only to come up against a brick wall (though said wall becomes quite useful in the second film). Much of the horror of both films is the realization of the impossibility of that moral instruction. They are simply different and cannot be shaped by a ‘good upbringing.’

The Bad Seed (1956)

Based on a book, and later a play, of the same name, Mervyn LeRoy’s film is high family melodrama of the first order, and it is a treat. At its center is Christine Penmark, the mother of a young girl, Rhoda, the titular “bad seed.” Having grown up with loving and doting parents, and then loving and doting on a child of her own, Christine has always feared somehow that she was adopted. After noticing concerning behavior from her daughter, she presses the issue and learns that she had been born to a famous serial killer. Somehow this penchant for killing skipped her generation and has been planted in her beloved eight year old child, a child whom we know is responsible for at least three murders and by the end of the film is unashamedly planning a fourth. Christine poisons Rhoda and subsequently shoots herself in the head (in the first of three endings in the film – it had trouble with the Hayes Code and had to do some narrative gymnastics to secure a release). It is an emotional, intense film and the confrontation with a horrific truth, long dreaded and now impossible to deny, situates it in the genre even without the presence of a creepy killer kid.

Central to the story is the classic question of Nature vs. Nurture.  The film is peopled with psychologists, crime journalists, and writers, and they are generally all of the opinion that the results are in and that environment alone shapes personality – a child from a good home, well raised, simply could not become criminal – it is only the socially and economically deprived who fall into a life of crime. The idea that a child could be born with such murderous inclinations is simply beyond belief. Thus, as Christine comes to this reckoning, she is alone in it and her concerns fall on deaf ears.  I think in this, the story circles around issues of class in an interesting manner.  It is clear that Christine comes from money (particularly in contrast to the Daigles, the parents of Claude, the child Rhoda kills), and it is unthinkable that a child of her station could commit a crime – that is something that only poor children do. Now, is the film’s stance progressive in showing how this villainy can grow even in the richest soil, or is there an ugliness in the suggestion that ‘bad blood will out’? After all, it is because Christine’s mother was a killer (from lower circumstances) that her daughter is doomed to be one as well. It is of central importance that Rhoda’s moral deformity is not just a question of happenstance, but rather of heredity.

The main thing that distinguishes this from today’s other film is how emotional it is.  Christine is so distraught by Claude’s death and it is so shocking when Rhoda isn’t. Christine is confronted with the weight of that loss by Claude’s mother, Hortense (Eileen Heckart, who rather steals the show as the drunk, broken mother, with nothing left to lose, gasping for the truth). The juxtaposition of Rhoda happily banging away Au Clair de la Lune on the piano as Leroy burns to death on the lawn is chilling and the choice to focus solely on Christine’s face through the sequence is heartbreaking – she knows whose responsibility this is – hers. And ultimately, the revelation of Christine’s birth is a source of great trauma, and the degree to which she is tragically torn between the need to protect her daughter and to destroy the evil she has spawned is powerful. When she finally decides to give Rhoda an overdose of sleeping pills (which she happily gobbles up as a new vitamin), it is to protect her from a world which would hunt her as a monster. It’s all very effective and it’s a shame that the censors of the time forced the adoption of such a bizarre ending (which I won’t describe, but is fun in its sudden, out of left field, over-the-top ridiculousness).  

Even with this oddly tacked on final moment, the total effect is enjoyably melodramatic and tragic, and it’s got a real bite.

Village of the Damned (1960)

The second film is also concerned with emotion, but more as a study of its absence. While Rhoda can be calculating, she also has a psychopath’s rage. In contrast, the children of the village are totally distanced from emotion, and this remove makes them uncanny. Furthermore, taking an unemotional, scientific approach is what distinguishes the main protagonists as well.

The story begins with a strange and intriguing occurrence. One day, everyone within the border of Midwich, a small British village, falls unconscious. In response, a military team investigates methodically, setting up a perimeter, seeing what happens when someone new enters (they pass out as well), and testing everyone when all is said and done.  One moment sets the tone for the rest of the film. Major Bernard, unable to reach family in Midwich, goes to investigate. When nearing the town line, he sees a police officer enter to check out a crashed bus and immediately collapse. He doesn’t run in after him or try to help him at all, but immediately turns around and drives the other way to call in the authorities. What a reasonable thing to do.

It’s soon discovered that every woman of child bearing age is now pregnant (a fact resulting in some heightened emotion – both good and bad as some husbands have been away on work or some teens have never even kissed a boy) and those pregnancies develop rapidly, resulting in a batch of eerie, platinum haired babies all born on the same day, who can telepathically communicate with each other and have some power of command over others. We largely follow Gordon Zellaby, an older man with a young wife who finds himself the supposed father of one of these children. A man of science, he does not seem overly bothered by his lack of true paternity, but is thrilled at the possibilities the children may lead to: “they are one mind to the twelfth power. Now just think what it would mean if we could guide it…we cannot throw away this potential just because of a few incidents.”

Others in the town, in the government, or in other countries where this strange event also occurred are made uncomfortable by the kids, and in some countries we learn that the children, and even sometimes the mothers, were all killed (in the USSR, the whole city where they lived was nuked because they had taken control and there was no other way to stop them). However, Gordon defends their value to science and human progress, establishing a school that they will all be moved into, where he can try to teach them, instilling human values of empathy and kindness.

In the end, he comes to understand the threat they pose to humanity at large (planning to spread and start new colonies), he calmly sends his wife away under some pretense, and managing to block them out of his mind, he goes for his final lesson with a bomb in his briefcase and blows them all up. While The Bad Seed chews the scenery at every opportunity (delightfully so), this films plays it cool, and that is perhaps its central theme. The children’s lack of passion, of affect is both troubling and powerful. They are more open to Gordon than some others because he is able to approach them from a position of scientific curiosity and not outrage, and in the end, he defeats them by acting in a precise, calculated manner.  It’s even easy to miss his change from their defender to their killer, and when I first watched it, I found that to be a flaw – something was missing.

While the first half had been so intriguing, in the second half, as we moved towards the climax, it was all so cool – where was the drama of this final decision? But on reflection, it is fitting that his was the only possible solution. The angry villagers with pitchforks and torches were immediately rebuffed and/or burned to death. The scientist who has simply made a reasonable decision and who goes to carry it out in a dispassionate manner can successfully mask his intentions and carry them to completion, thus saving the town, and possible the world itself.  It is not that he lacks emotion (he seems to love his wife, had been initially quite happy at the prospect of parenthood, and played the piano wistfully waiting to go off and explode), but he can act without it, and thus triumphs.

What’s Worse – Fire or Ice?

While Rhoda lacks empathy or true tenderness, she experiences passions. She wants, and demands, and takes hotly, lashing out when not accommodated. The children of Midwich are rather the opposite, acting only out of a calculated biological drive to live and to spread.  They do not rage or feel wronged; they do just that which is necessary. And which of these is really the larger threat?

In both cases, morality and ethics are absent. Neither cares about how others feel or what they think. But one is hot, chaotic, and probably far easier to identify with – we all get angry sometimes, feel wronged, want to have what we want when we want it – and the other is cold, reasonable, and organized. For my part, Rhoda is scariest in a personal sense – we know that the world is full of jerks and egoists who only care about themselves, and we constantly have to interact with them (though hopefully none of them will burn us alive, drown us, or push us down the stairs). Furthermore, the horror of a child being so irredeemable is really awful. But the children of Midwich represent something much scarier on a larger, necessarily impersonal, scale. In their uniformity and cold, functional intention, they are the drive of progress, of power, of the future, of any system or machine that cares not who gets crushed beneath its wheels as it moves inexorably forward. Do they have a whiff of Nazism in their Aryan appearance and drive to power and domination?  Perhaps Rhoda is a more horrific person (because she is a person – a simplified perhaps, but well-drawn young sociopath), but the children of Midwich are a more chilling concept, especially since it probably can’t be forestalled by thinking of a brick wall: the future will come for us – it cannot be reasoned with – and it will break us.

But I’m sure your kid is great. A little angel. Nothing to worry about at all…