Catching Up With Christmas Horror

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Tis the season and all that. Thanksgiving’s behind us (though I still haven’t seen Eli Roth’s new movie) and we are therefore past the firewall that stops us from getting into holiday horror too soon and just ruining our appetites. So with December underway, I thought I might glut myself on killers in Santa suits, murderous toys, cannibalistic elves, and awkward family meetings – you know – Christmas!

There have got to be more horror movies set at Christmas than any other holiday, including Halloween. Maybe it’s due to the perverse pleasure taken in souring something oversweet, or the endless parade of symbols, decorations, traditions, and songs this holiday offers up to be wickedly repurposed, or the idea that it happens at the darkest time of the year – the longest night – with just a bit of light to get us through, or possibly the fact (and I am far from the first to observe this) that it is inherently creepy to tell children that there is a huge old man in a red suit watching them all year long, judging their every action, and on the darkest night he will break into their house and… do stuff. Naughty or nice, that’s scary.

Anyway, I do enjoy a good Christmas horror movie and have written about a few in the past. A couple years back, I touched on a couple of great Santa Slashers as well as one of my absolute favorite horror movies ever, Bob Clark’s Black Christmas (1974), and last year I revisited, for the first time in far too long, Joe Dante’s devilishly fun and surprisingly scary Gremlins. But as mentioned above, there are so many more that I haven’t seen. So I think I’m going to do a run through as many as I can watch in the next week or so. There will probably be spoilers – enjoy!

Blood Beat (1983)

Wow. I’d heard that Fabrice-Ange Zaphiratos’s one and only film was worth my time, but when I first tried watching it maybe half a year ago, I just couldn’t get past the non-professional acting, but I am so very glad that I gave it another chance. It’s not what many would call a “good” movie. But it is kind of amazing, and I think I love it.

To give a short, superficial description – Sarah accompanies her boyfriend and his sister to do Christmas at his home in rural Wisconsin with his reclusive, psychic, abstract painter mother and her deer hunting boyfriend. On first meeting, Sarah and the mother experience some mutually unpleasant mental connection, immediately taking against each other, and you know this is going to be an uncomfortable holiday. There’s an immediately unsettling, ominous atmosphere (accomplished via a combination of surprisingly capable cinematography, a blaring soundtrack of weird, warbling synthy twangs and overwhelmingly loud and constant classical music – the climax is set to Carmina Burana – as well as ceaseless wind and nature sounds, and periodic disorienting editing and shots that suddenly appear in negative). This eerie, uncanny vibe builds and builds until the one thing this movie is famous for finally appears – that’s right, a blue, glowing samurai ghost that starts hacking up friends, neighbors, and ultimately, the family itself – seemingly linked to Sarah writhing about on the bed orgasmically. Fortunately, it seems everyone in this family is also psychic – or at least has the ability to make their hands glow and zap samurais with laser blasts – like you do, and in the end, the brother and his sister (who spends an inordinate amount of time running around in the Wisconsin woods at Christmas time in a sleep shirt and leg warmers – give this girl some pants) walk off into the morning light, the threat having been vanquished, if certainly not understood, and Sarah apparently dead under the samurai armor – Merry Christmas everybody!

But that doesn’t do justice to the experience of watching this odd masterpiece, so let’s just boil it all down: a freaking samurai, lasers, Christmas, psychics, abstract painting, an oppressive soundtrack, negative shots, eerie nature photography, peculiar psycho-sexual content, early eighties visual effects that have aged poorly and probably looked bad in 1983, amateurish acting, strained dialogue, a really uncomfortable family visit, bad romantic relationships with pushy, petulant, shouty men, an all-out assault on the notions of logic and causality – maybe that begins to communicate the film slightly better.

Now all of this may sound like “so bad it’s good” territory – and I can see how one might view it as such. It is not, by any means, a “well-made film” and I think people could have a really good time laughing at its faults, non-sequiturs, and absurdities – for all that it is weird and confusing as a summer day is long, I was never bored. My jaw was often hanging open in shock, but I was never less than fully engaged. What’s more, I found it to be so much more than just a “great bad movie.”

Honestly, and I imagine this was largely by accident, I felt it was kind of a great movie in its own right. Watching it, I had such a strong sense of a kind of folk horror – the setting and the atmosphere and the mysterious events all worked for me – and on top of that, I read it as a sort of captivating “naïve art.” Clearly, most of the people involved were not professionals in their positions – many of the actors never performed in anything else before or after this project. The writer-director-composer-editor had written one other film (directed by his dad), but this was his only directorial effort (produced by his dad). The cinematographer, Vladimir Van Maule, was actually quite proficient, but still, through a miscommunication early in the project, he’d thought they were shooting the film for TV and so he filmed it all in 4:3 instead of a more cinematic widescreen, so let’s say there were issues. But all of this lack of experience somehow allowed something weirdly pure to slip through. I think they stumbled backwards and blind into ‘art.’

Sure, these may not have all been professional film workers, but there were strong (sometimes nonsensical, but strong) ideas, there was a real feeling that connected, and there was an odd talent or drive or spirit at the heart of it all that got its hooks into me. And this somehow worked on all levels. For example, when I’d first tried watching this, as mentioned above, I just couldn’t get past the non-professional acting, but on this viewing, it all just seemed so naturalistic and unpretentious. Sure – not every acting choice was the most interesting, but it was so simple, unadorned, and earnest – and it got to me.

On a filmmaking level, it takes some big swings, working with a stylistic freedom that “better” films wouldn’t allow themselves, and there is clearly an eye there. There are very attractive shots and evocative staging that lets the characters speak for themselves, just by inhabiting space, such as one set up in the living room – everyone has something going on and the framing allows it to breathe. Other sequences really sing, such as the first appearance of the samurai, who shows up to slaughter some neighbors as Sarah twists and turns on the bed, panting and moaning. Why is there this sexual connection? Who knows? Why is the husband in the neighbor couple such a jerk to his wife, and why does she put a tray with tea service on the squishiest, least stable waterbed I’ve ever seen – doesn’t she need to sleep there later – is she a fan of sleeping on wet, tea-stained sheets? Their relationship is strained and strange, but still actually believable – sometimes relationships are weird (and these little odd details give their marriage a surprising degree of verisimilitude). The linking of Sarah’s orgasms with the samurai’s violence is utterly bizarre, but it clicks in the moment, and as the editing feverishly jumps back and forth between her arched back and the middle aged husband next door fleeing in his saggy, once white briefs from this mysteriously exotic, eastern killer, it just feels right – strange and baffling, but right.

In the end, it all felt more like successful, if impenetrable, “art” than a ‘bad horror movie.’ But this wasn’t art to communicate meaning. I don’t think there is something to be interpreted in this piece and any discussion of what it all means, for me, is pointless. But it worked – it did  something. My mind was enjoyably cracked open by the weirdness, but not so much that I lost interest. Was I moved? Maybe a little. Did I think? Maybe just “why?” But I did clearly have some kind of art experience – let’s say I was transported. Where to? I have no idea, but for a little less than 90 minutes, I was in for the ride and I’m so happy that I took it. It was a worthwhile, totally non-cerebral aesthetic encounter.

Now, as I’m including this as a Christmas movie, just how Christmasy was it? Not a ton perhaps, but it does all revolve around something that can be such a common holiday experience – going with your partner to their family home and not feeling right there. His family has different traditions. You feel his mother is judging you. Your boyfriend ignores your discomfort because for him, all of this is normal, and he keeps trying to initiate sex even though you can feel his mother’s weird psychic presence in the room, watching, thinking the worst – deeming you a tramp, or possibly the reincarnated spirit of a vengeful samurai. And of course, it all ends with katanas, lasers, howling wind, and Carl Orff. You know, Christmas…

It’s a Wonderful Knife (2023)

This delightfully titled Christmas-movie-cum-slasher has oodles of pedigree. It was written by Michael Kennedy, the screenwriter of the playful and moving Freaky (2020), and directed by Tyler MacIntyre, the director of the rather cynical, razor sharp Tragedy Girls (2017). It’s got a great cast, including Joel McHale (Assassination Nation), Justin Long (Barbarian), and Katherine Isabelle (Ginger Snaps). And it’s got a clever, impish, high-concept premise – shuffling together the tropes of a Christmas movie, particularly of a Hallmark channel variety, with those of a masked-killer slasher. It’s a great collection of elements, and it all comes together to be a rather good time, if not particularly groundbreaking or life changing. That said, off the bat, I feel like I’m damning with faint praise, but I did genuinely like watching this movie, even if I do have my criticisms.

I have written before on the emergence of a newish sub-genre/approach – that of the “meta-modern slasher.” Working with a high degree of genre-awareness, these contemporary ‘dead teenager movies’ tend to consciously build on tropes and forms much as “postmodern slashers” such as Scream have done, but with new degrees of both genre play and emotional sincerity. In all cases that I’ve seen, there has been a ‘big idea’: what if Groundhog Day were a slasher? Or Freaky Friday? Or The Purple Rose of Cairo? Or Back to the Future? Or, in this case, a made for TV movie riffing on It’s a Wonderful Life? Working within both the forms of the slasher flick and whatever the given cinematic inspiration was, there is a lot of room for both knowing comedy and brutal kills, and at their best, the two genres complement each other, each bringing out the best in its unlikely counterpart. But what really distinguishes these movies is not the cute idea of pairing two seemingly opposite types of films, but rather, their glowing warmth and good heart. These works tend to offer the thrills of a violent slasher, but the end effect is really never one of horror; rather, they are ultimately stories of reconciliation, of family, of loss and love.

In the case of It’s a Wonderful Knife, I can’t exactly say that both the slasher and the Christmas film are perfectly served by the pairing, or that they are both executed to perfection, but they are both clearly present. Most importantly though, even if there are narrative lapses, unearned character turns, or moments that just didn’t add up for me, I can’t deny this film’s big, loving heart. I’d be lying if I claimed not to have cried by the end of this movie that sees sharpened candy canes shoved through people’s heads, beheadings, impalements, electrocutions, and lots and lots of stabbing (though I admit I was disappointed that at no point did someone pick up the killer’s signature blade and say something like, “I wish he’d stop killing townspeople, but I gotta say, it really is a wonderful knife! (Look at the camera with raised eyebrows! Freeze frame! Roll credits!)

We start with the Hallmark movie – in the picturesque small town of Angel Falls, an unscrupulous real estate developer is making Winnie’s dad work on Christmas Eve as he tries to buy up the last piece of land standing in the way of his new giant shopping center/condos/fill-in-the-blank tower of greed. Winnie and her family are sad about this, but for years, it’s been the norm. Ok – so now we add the slasher: Winnie finds herself facing a masked white angel who has already murdered a couple of her friends, and she unmasks and kills him. Merry Christmas! One year later, everyone in the town has progressed from the dark events of last Christmas and is trying to just dive into the holidays and commit to being happy. Winnie seems to be the only person incapable of moving on (I mean, she is also the only one who had to kill someone last year).

Thus, so distraught in her trauma, so isolated by everyone else’s carefree gaiety, she makes a Christmas wish to have never been born (for me – I believed her misery, but the leap to “everyone would be better off without me” seemed more than a little abrupt – almost perfunctory – to hurry up and get us to the premise – in It’s a Wonderful Life, I’m sure George doesn’t decide to kill himself until well after the 2/3 mark, and in this case, Winnie does so before a third of the movie has passed – and this makes a difference). And suddenly, before any bells ring or angels get their wings, no one in Angel Falls knows who she is anymore, and the no-longer-killed-a-year-ago masked angel slasher is back (since she never dispatched him, he has apparently been killing someone every couple of weeks for the whole last year). What’s more, the town has fallen fully into the grasp of the evil developer – now the mayor, and everything has just gone utterly to hell – like Pottersville on crack – literally – now many of her friends (who no longer know who she is) are junkies – maybe this is all a reference to Community, the show where most first saw Joel McHale – this is the darkest timeline. In an uncharacteristic turn for a whodunit slasher, she knows the angel’s identity, but no one believes her of course, and she has to team up with Bernie (a social outcast with whom she shares some chemistry) to try to set everything right. Along the way, the two girls both learn to value their place in the world, each playing Clarence to the other, as they furthermore fall in love.

Of this recent wave of heartwarming, genre bending, comic slashers (such as The Final Girls, Freaky, Happy Death Day, or Totally Killer), sadly, I can’t call this my favorite, but I did very much enjoy it. It takes some unexpected turns here and there, though so much of it depends on us already knowing how a certain kind of story must progress; many of the characters have a spark, and I just enjoy spending time with them; and the Christmas movie of it all generally lands (as I mentioned, it did get me to cry by the end – though I’m an easy mark) – but if at any time it didn’t, I knew it was ok cause someone was going to get stabbed soon. Also, I did connect with the central romance – there wasn’t necessarily a lot of story to hang it on, but the two lead girls did spark, and it was affecting seeing them connect.

And there were problems as well. Many beats don’t track, some moments left me really scratching my head (glowing eyed hypnotism – huh?), and it often felt rushed. I think the story could have benefited from even an additional ten minutes. It clearly combines the slasher not with Capra’s classic film, but instead with a more superficial spin on it, as get churned out every year for TV or now streaming (I heard in an interview with the director that it was even filmed in a town used for a great deal of Hallmark Channel movies and that much of the crew had worked on such films previously). And yet, I find myself pre-disposed to like it – I want to like it – it is likeable (if clearly flawed) – and so I do like it. Of course, if all of its elements worked a bit better, it could be really special. As it is, it is merely a frolic – a light entertainment that passes a dark, cold December evening with a bit of frothy warmth – an imperfect, but highly watchable 87 minutes, full of character, tons of positive representation (a surprising percentage of named characters being gay and/or people of color and/or people with some physical difference – it’s a very open film in that way), a ticklish idea, and, again, a whole lot of stabbing.

Will I watch it every year? Maybe not – but if it’s on some Christmas time, I wouldn’t object to watching it again.

Black Christmas (2006)

So, I know this was a much beloved and critically praised film when it was released back in 2006… by which I mean, people HATED it. Made right in the middle of the 2000s remake boom, it was everything that the original was not. Whereas the earlier film had been a character driven exercise in building suspense and terror while showing very little, following a group of girls you love spending time with, whose deaths you fear for and mourn, with a killer who is never more than an eye through a crack or a deeply off-putting, horrifically unhinged voice or set of voices on the phone, who we never know or remotely understand (and is all the scarier for it), the remake was a gorefest with thinly drawn, disposable characters who were sometimes difficult to tell apart (even if a few were recognizable, known actresses), filled with drawn out exposition, detailing every moment of the killer’s development, eliciting some gasps of shock or revulsion, but ultimately too incoherent to actually be scary. It was… not loved.

And yet, over the years, I’ve seen it experience a kind of reappraisal. With the distance of time, people have been more willing to look past the comparison with its superior namesake and find value in what it is rather than just slamming it for what it isn’t. Now, I never watched it back in the day, and thought this Christmas horror run down was a good opportunity to finally check it out. So what did I think?

Well, the criticism is not wrong. But neither are the people who adore it.

First of all, I would love, if I had the power, to issue a rule that people must stop naming movies Black Christmas. Bob Clark’s 1974 film is simply too good and anyone naming their new film after it is just shooting themselves in the foot (kind of a horror version of naming your movie Citizen Kane). That was true with this flick, which was actually a remake, taking and repurposing many iconic images, names, and elements from the earlier film (sorority house, Christmas break, weird phone calls, crystal unicorns, snow globes, drunk girls being put in bed to sleep it off, a killer named Billy/Agnes, Andrea Martin, etc.), but it was also true for the 2019, much derided, “remake” in name only – which seemed like a completely different story that some executive had slapped the name Black Christmas onto in order to make a couple extra bucks from name recognition. For the record, I did actually rather enjoy the 2019 film – probably much more than this, but I believe the name really hurt it – and it was so unnecessary given how if it’s actually remaking anything, it’s not Clark’s film, but rather S02E05 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer  – “Reptile Boy.” Watch them both and tell me I’m wrong.

But about this movie, I can’t say that I loved it, and I can’t say that its structural issues are insubstantial (there were moments late in the film when I really couldn’t follow what was happening from one moment to the next and it feels like almost a third of its runtime is expository flashback), but amidst what might honestly be deemed a total mess, there is some enjoyable horror to be had.

A classy film this ain’t. Rather, its dubious strengths lie entirely in outré moments of utter, shameless excess, whether in terms of gore, gooey gross outs, or sexual taboo. An incestuous, murderous mother, crispy Christmas cookies made of human skin – disgustingly dipped in a glass of milk before being munched upon, and so, so, so many eye balls pulled out of their sockets and squished or eaten or hung on a Christmas tree as festive ornaments – this movie cannot be accused of gently beating around the bush, too scared to commit to its horrors – advisable or not, it is always willing to “go there.”

And that can be fun. Even if it is often weighed down by its failings as a film writ large, this Black Christmas is an absurd, gross, cringe inducing good time that succeeded a couple of times in making me squirm in my seat when I wasn’t scratching my chin, wondering what on earth was going on. Furthermore, I don’t think it’s a film that could have been “better.” It very much is what it is. For example, the amount of time spent in flashback, giving us a backstory for the killer feels just deadly – how could this interminable exposition possibly go on so long? And just when it seems to have finished, a new character starts it up again and we’re back to another ten minutes of flashbacks. But, honestly, some of the best, most awful stuff is in those overlong flashbacks, so I wouldn’t want to cut them. Babies, bathwater, and such… It’s like the song says, “you take the good, you take the bad, you take them both, and there you have” an abused child growing up to eat his mother and subsequently murder sorority girls for some reason…

So yeah – it’s not great – but there is fun to be had if you’re open to it. I’m not offended that it exists, and it does have some memorable moments of excess – which I always have a warm place in my heart for.

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So maybe that’s a good start on the season. These have been three very entertaining watches, even if none is exactly a classic for the ages. But having covered them, there are so many more seasonal films I still haven’t seen, so I think we’re going to stay on this train for at least one more post. Stay warm out there.

In Defense Of #1: Halloween Ends

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I’ve mentioned before my ambivalent relationship with horror fandom. On one level, it is great how the internet makes it possible to connect with others who share your interests, who have seen what you’ve seen (and frequently much, much more – providing a font of good recommendations), who can, by posting their own thoughts and responses, help you better articulate your own (something I’ve valued from other film writers that I hope my writing can, in turn, offer my readers). So many great blogs and podcasts have filled my watchlist with an endless selection of hidden gems. Via Facebook groups or Twitter, I’ve communicated with loads of knowledgeable aficionados of the genre – and that can be really enriching.

But sometimes it is just so negative out there.

As I understand it, the algorithms of social media always favor a biting critique over gentle equivocation. Fan spaces overflow with complaints that “(insert new release here) is the worst movie I’ve ever seen.” (Seriously, the worst? These statements made about capably constructed films – even if they’re not good, they at least look like a real movie – always make me wonder if these writers have ever seen an actual bad movie). Even very thoughtful, respectful writers and podcasters can really hate something and go on at length about just that. And don’t get me wrong – I can enjoy a good rant, very negative reviews can be good fun, and a bit of snark never really hurt anybody, but for me it just gets to be a bit too much. While twenty something years ago, I could get enraged about how offensive it was to remake some classic horror work in an obvious, soulless cash-grab that either missed the point or even directly flew in the face of what had made the original so significant, now I find that the longer I inhabit fan spaces, the lower my tolerance has become for such vitriol.

And nothing inspires fans to vent their spleens more than a much anticipated, high profile release – such as an entry in a long running franchise, or anything new that’s getting a lot of buzz and critical praise, which therefore needs to be knocked down a peg (often works assigned the title of ‘elevated’ horror). And so, I’ve had it in mind for a while to start a new series (which I will hopefully add to with more regularity than some that came before it – Polish Horror Series, I promise to get back to you someday…) wherein I take some film reviled by fans that I actually enjoyed, at least on some level, and go into what I found in it to value. I can’t claim to love all of these, but I can’t discount them either.

So to kick this off, I thought I’d pick up a relatively recent film that came in for heavy fan hatred on release last year, but which I was surprised to find myself rather enjoying when I finally checked it out a few months back – David Gordon Green’s Halloween Ends (2022). It should be obvious, but I’ll say it anyway – this discussion is not possible without near total spoilers, so be forewarned.

Halloween Ends (2022)

Poster for Halloween Ends
Is it just me, or does the poster look like it could be advertising a buddy-cop movie?

The third and final entry in this recent revisiting of the franchise, I think Halloween Ends drew venom for much the same reason that the original Halloween III did – a surprising lack of Shatner faced slasher, Michael Meyers. But whereas the 1982 film had set out (and failed) to anthologize the Halloween series, making each subsequent entry a new standalone story (Carpenter had reportedly never intended to start a Michael Meyers film series), “Ends” purports to bring both this contemporary trilogy, as well as the Halloween franchise as a whole, to a close – finding a satisfying conclusion for both the iconic masked killer and Jamie Lee Curtis’s Laurie Strode. Given the way this was marketed as such, it is not terribly surprising that audiences turned against this film, which out of its 111 minute run time features less than 11 minutes of the fan favorite slasher. Now, to be fair, a great many horror films, including the 1978 original, barely show the killer or threat, but their presence is often felt – always there, looming, just out of sight, around the corner, watching, waiting, creating a sense of ever-present danger – and in this case, the film instead just tells a completely different story for most of those other 100 minutes. A bold choice, but apparently not one destined to win over many fans.

But I have to say, I really liked it – more than the 2018 film, and certainly more than 2021’s Halloween Kills, which I really did not love, but also more than most of the sequels. I mean, I’ve never really been a franchise kid, but I have watched most of the Halloween films (one day I’ll catch up with Rob Zombie’s efforts, which I still haven’t seen) and, while I love the original and might even watch it about once a year (and I am a big fan of Part III, which has happily experienced a popular reappraisal in recent years), I can’t say I’m really a big fan of the series, per se. Even when there’s a new addition to the lore, such as the Cult of Thorn in part 6, it all feels more than a bit samey to me. There is often a ominous weight of seriousness hanging over it all, but at the end of the day, we are back to the faceless killer, embodying evil, slashing his way through town. Each film has something to enjoy, but though I always end up watching a new one on release, I’m rarely that excited. Nor am I particularly disappointed. They’re fine.

And so, the fact that this tells a new story, that it is barely a Michael Meyers film at all, is a definite reason for greater interest on my part.

Most of the film circles around another troubled young man, Corey, the same age when the film begins that Michael was in ’78, who does not begin as a deadly child psychopath, but rather just has one really bad Halloween night, resulting in the accidental death of the kid he’s babysitting (in one of the best scenes of the movie – tense, playful, and shockingly awful). This unsurprisingly results in him becoming a pariah in Haddonfield, until the hatred directed at him metastasizes to the point that he snaps and actually become the monster he’s already believed to be.

Along the way, he strikes up a relationship with Allyson, Laurie’s granddaughter, who’d lost her boyfriend, both of her parents, and most of her friends to Michael’s knife four years earlier when the killer resurfaced. She is just as burdened by the past as he is, though she’s doing a better job of functioning in public (and, as he points out, it is quite different to be viewed as a trauma survivor than a child murderer). Finding a kindred spirit in Corey, she is immediately drawn to him. Furthermore, this attraction doesn’t diminish as he tips over the edge and begins to copycat Michael’s killings, even donning the mask as he does so. Rather, the darker he goes, the more confident, defiant, and magnetic he becomes, and she is ready to blow town and go start a new life together somewhere else, far from the accursed place they’ve both called home. Those plans go up in smoke, however, when his killing spree gets out of hand (as if there’s such a thing as a killing spree that hasn’t), culminating in an attack on Allyson’s grandmother – not the sort of thing one expects to end well.

On paper, this reads as melodramatic, and I suppose it could have played that way for some, but it genuinely worked for me. I felt for Corey’s plight and enjoyed this slower, emotional exploration of a broken young person backing into a corner of violence and cruelty and power and freedom. I appreciated time given over to looking at how many characters, not only Laurie and Allyson, are trying to move on with their lives, even finding peace and new direction, but how some just can’t successfully take that step. I liked how sidelined Michael Meyers is in what some might call ‘his own’ film. While he is terrifying in the first movie, and still scary in the second, for me, there is a law of diminishing returns and after a certain point, I just stopped finding his brand of blank, unexpressive ‘evil’ all that interesting anymore.

I mean, what is ‘evil’ anyway? As a non-religious person, the notion of a character simply being ‘evil’ in this kind of essential way just falls a bit flat for me. Now, that has always been a core aspect of Michael, as officially diagnosed by Donald Pleasence’s Dr. Loomis (a deeply enjoyable performance and character – but seriously, NOT a good child psychiatrist) – and that’s all well and good for a while (one, two, maybe even three or four films), but if you talk about it too much, let us just say it strains credulity (this is the 13th entry). That said, shifting focus to a study of one young person who experiences a terrible, accidental event, is then blamed for it, is treated as a killer, as a ‘bad person,’ is bullied and harassed and almost killed, before discovering the power and freedom that comes with actually choosing to be the monster, coming to feel how freeing, how empowering it is to rise up, to be willing to cause harm, to kill in cold blood – that is interesting. That is moving. That is exciting and troubling and scary and feels ever-relevant (how many dangerous young men are there out there, ready to snap?). And on top of that, I bought the central relationship – I believed the attraction, the way that as Corey becomes (unbeknownst to Allyson) a killer, he grows more charismatic – and she finds kinship and emotional release with him.

This movie is filled with unpleasant people who cannot forgive, and who assign blame unfairly and capriciously (seriously, why do so many people blame Laurie for Michael Meyers’s crimes when all she ever did was rave about how dangerous he was and try to kill him when given a chance – why does no one seem to remember Michael’s doctor from the 2018 film who worshiped him and arranged for his escape?), but it is also full of people who are trying to help each other (Corey’s boss at the scrapyard/stepdad? seemed like a really good guy – it’s a shame he didn’t make it), even if they don’t really know how, who are just trying to get through life, making mistakes, sometimes with terrible consequences, and who sometimes find their way to doing evil as they walk their troubled path. I think that is a much more engaging and fascinating kind of horror than simply another affectless masked killer.

So that is Halloween Ends. Is it my new favorite movie or, for that matter, a satisfying conclusion to this ‘trilogy’? No, of course not. But did I really enjoy it? Absolutely. I was engaged throughout, often in suspense, emotionally invested in the characters, and digging on the vibe. Of course, I can’t claim it’s perfect (for example, I’ve not gone into how Corey finds Michael living in a sewer like some kind of Pennywise the clown, infecting the town with his evil and is somehow recruited by him to go kill; I don’t feel like detailing just how much voiceover Laurie has, reading from her book about the horror of Michael’s radical EVIL; nor do I want to spend much time on the final confrontation between Laurie and Michael that feels almost from a different movie (probably the movie most people thought they were going to see) before she leads the town on a procession to the local junkyard so that they can all see her destroy his body in an industrial shredder and thus rest easy knowing that !!!EVIL!!! has finally been destroyed and that Halloween has really and truly ended), but I’m sure I’ll forget its more regrettable aspects and it’s the other elements that will remain. Truly – I watched this for the first time back in June and really only remembered loving the emotion and horror pinch of the Corey storyline, and I was quite surprised when I rewatched it last night and discovered just how much silly stuff I’d forgotten.

There sure is a lot of talk about evil…

And that does somewhat bring me back to why I wanted to do this “In Defense Of” series. It’s so easy to jump on a work’s faults, but life is full of faults. I just don’t have the power to detail every failure I see, to get worked up about a misjudged artistic choice (or an unfortunate economic one). I find it much more interesting to consider instead what did land, even in an imperfect project (and, by matters of degree, there is no other kind). Often that reassessment comes much later (for example, see how Halloween III has become a beloved cult classic), but one doesn’t really need to wait 20 years to decide that maybe this new flick isn’t actually “the worst movie ever,” and that there can be something of value to take away from it. That’s what I’ll try to do with this series…

Ten (more) Great Horror Songs

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

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

Killer Klowns – The Dickies (1988)

Killer Klowns From Outer Space - Music Video

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

No Vampires Remain in Romania – King Luan (2019)

King Luan - No Vampires Remain in Romania

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

Nosferatu – Blue Öyster Cult (1977)

Blue Oyster Cult - Nosferatu (lyrics)

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

Howling – Steve Parsons and Babel (1985)

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

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

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

The Cask of Amontillado by The Alan Parsons Project

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

The Blob – The Five Blobs (1958)

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

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

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

Prom Night – Paul Zaza, Gordean Simpson (1980)

Prom Night (1980) Disco dance

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

Gangster Rock – Felony (1981)

Felony "Gangster Rock" from Graduation Day

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

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

The Hell of It – Paul Williams (1974)

Phantom of the Paradise - The Hell of it

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

Rock Until You Drop – Michael Sembello (1987)

Rock Until You Drop (Remastered Version)

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

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

Spooky Season Ghost Movies

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I’ve recently realized that in two years of writing this blog, I’ve covered very few ghost stories. I don’t know why, but I just don’t find myself watching a lot of haunted house flicks. I mean, there are some classics that I love, and haunted houses do spooky so well, and yet, I relatively rarely check out a new one on release. So I thought that as it is a busy month for me and it will be difficult to write a lot of posts, maybe I could just set the rule that in the limited time I have, I will mostly watch ghost movies that I haven’t seen before (haunted houses if possible, but not exclusively), and try to write about all that I see.

You may or may not have noticed, but as a rule, I only write positive reviews here. I figure if a movie doesn’t do it for me, it’s no skin off my back, and I have better things to do with my time than write about it, so I try to only discuss work that I actually find interesting, about which I have something to say. I figure it’s not my job to say if something is good or bad, but to give some consideration to whatever in it piques my interest. That said, this may be a bit of a challenge since I don’t know what my response will be to each of these. I hope that even in cases where I don’t love a given movie, there will be something worthwhile to discuss. Let’s see…

Haunted Mansion (2023)

This has got to be the first Disney movie I’m reviewing on this blog, but it showed up on Disney+ recently, and a kid’s haunted house movie just felt like a perfect way to get into the Halloween mood. Will it be the scariest movie you’ve ever seen? Certainly not (I’m assuming none of my readers are five – prove me wrong)! But is it a solid horror movie for a young crowd? I really think so.

Now, I don’t have kids and it’s been a while since I was one, but I felt this was a really fun haunted house ride for young viewers. I’ve also never been to Disney Land and ridden the ride, so I can’t speak to comparison, but I rather got a kick out of this. It’s big and funny and quite silly, with some over the top performances here and there, loads of comedy – both slapstick and sardonic, and a main villain who’s quite cartoony, but it’s also surprisingly well grounded in a palpable sense of grief, it’s got some fun spooky atmosphere and play with scary-not scary ghost moments, and one jump scare that I think would be pretty startling for the target audience, as well as a very likeable cast (I was very impressed with 14 year old Chase Dillon – that kid’s got timing and a great dry delivery). Plus, it takes some rather dark turns, such as a third act plot point centered around suicidal ideation, both from the main protagonist and from a young child.

I have no idea how this was received upon release this summer (I didn’t follow its reviews), but I could imagine some finding fault in its blend of disparate tones – from zany to serious, from cartoony, playfully executed ghost gags to real threat involving a young kid. However, I really like how it blended these elements. Looking back, I feel one of the things that’s so much fun about Halloween when you’re little is that it features the kinds of things that entertainment marketed towards you usually avoids – death, weight, sadness – and it makes it fun (though, to be fair, all the old Disney movies, Halloweenish or otherwise, feature dead mothers, so plenty of stuff for kids has dark elements – but those other kids movies don’t play with death in the same way – allowing sadness, but also showing that spooky, sad, scary things can be a blast). I think that’s the case with this film. It made me laugh, it got one jump out of me, and I was connected to its emotional center (I assume I cried – but I’m an easy mark – I cry at coffee commercials). Plus, it’s set exactly at Halloween, has some cool New Orleans vibes and is a visual treat. I hope some kids liked it – I did.

The Amityville Horror (1979)

My first time watching this, though it is a big movie of its era (and I love me some 70s horror). Honestly, I found this one a mixed bag, but its strengths more than justified the watch. It’s the not unfamiliar story of a family moving into a ‘bad place’ where odd and threatening things start happening and the father starts cracking under the pressure, poisoned by the house until it seems he might take an axe to his wife and three kids, at one point, chopping down the bathroom door behind which they’re hiding (ring any bells?). Along the way, flies fill empty rooms, a friendly neighborhood priest suffers cardiovascular distress and goes blind, a pit of blood opens up in the basement, and quite iconically, the walls bleed and a raspy voice shouts to “get out!”

I’ve never read the book, but as I understand, certain key elements are, in fact, based on a true story. In 1974, a man did murder his family in a house on the south shore of Long Island, and one year later, the Lutz family did move in, only to leave a few weeks later, claiming to have experienced paranormal horrors during their short tenure. I assume that everything else is an invention of Jay Anson, the author of the novel, or Sandor Stern, the screenwriter. And from the paragraph above, one other influence seems evident. I can’t help but note that that Stephen King published “The Shining” in ’76, Anson published his novel in ’77, the film of The Amityville Horror was released in ’79, and The Shining was released in ’80. There is surely a bundle of similarity to be found amidst the works. That said, the points at which the stories overlap were the strongest of the film for me. I can’t help but feel that, given King’s objections to Kubrick’s film, he probably would have liked to steal away James Brolin and Margot Kidder from Amityville. They are great, really carrying the film, and maybe would have given him versions of the Torrences closer to what he’d imagined (I personally do love Kubrick’s film and think Shelly Duvall knocks it out of the park, though her performance was unfairly derided at the time).

But though many things land, I’m not sure I understand everything in this movie – is this house a gate to hell? Is it haunted? Are there problems because it was built on Indian burial ground or because it was built by a Satanist, expelled from Salem? What’s up with the flies? The menacing presence sure seems to hate priests and there’s a strong current of religious horror in the foregrounding of Catholic faith (perhaps still riding the coattails of The Exorcist as so many other books and films did in this period), but that faith never seems particularly efficacious – no demons are cast out; the priest never actually does anything. Does the father really bear an uncanny resemblance to the killer from one year earlier or is this just a dark vision hoisted on his wife to freak her out (but the police sergeant sees it too)? What was that blue, pig headed monster that we see for a flash in the upper window? Are all of these questions supposed to remain unanswered and we should only understand that this is a terrible place and that they should hurry up and leave? Are we just throwing everything and the kitchen sink at the screen and hoping for the best?

At the end of the day, the one thing I really connect to, that feels genuinely solid, is the central relationship. I buy the love between the Lutzes. I believe that James Brolin’s George really cares about his wife and her kids, enough to take a big financial risk in buying this money pit that he can’t afford, enough also to have apparently ‘changed his religion’ as is mentioned by a friend of his – making the scene where he tries to cleanse the house with Catholic prayer kind of moving even if I’m otherwise turned off by such things – he is doing the thing that is important to the woman he loves, he is acting on her belief to try to respond to the very real terrors they’ve experienced at this point. I also absolutely believe the threat he represents. The way he gets closer and closer to the edge is scary. Is an evil force acting on him or is he just under so much stress that he is becoming dangerous, even to those he loves? Or, perhaps most frighteningly, did Margot Kidder’s Kathy just marry a dangerous, angry man, and the house just reveals his true character? The film, and Brolin’s performance, walk a line where all of these could be true. Either way, he gets pretty terrifying (but he goes back for the dog at the end, so I’m gonna say he’s still a good guy). And who couldn’t love Margot Kidder? Seeing how strong and tough and full of life her character begins, but having the sense that she’s been through it (we never learn about what happened with her first husband – did he die? Was he abusive and she had to get away with the kids? What does that mean for her as she watches her new husband fraying around the edges and snapping at them?), when she crumbles under the weight of the house, it’s awful.

So, I can’t say that this is my favorite haunted house film (if it’s even haunted – maybe it’s possessed), but I am glad to have finally seen it. It looks great, the acting is top shelf, there is solid unsettling atmosphere, some very effective filming (the close ups on the flies stand out), and it’s got a memorable, lilting, creepy theme. Plus, I grew up in Massapequa Park, only one stop over on the Babylon line of the Long Island Rail Road from Amityville, so there’s even a small, personal connection.

Brooklyn 45 (2023)

This one is interesting. I appreciate its willingness to be its own thing – less a modern horror movie than a chamber drama revolving around a séance, literal ghosts demanding that characters carry out actions which perpetuate roles they’ve played in the past, roles from which some strive to be free. It is a unique piece, even if I can’t say that I totally fell for it.

Set in December 1945, a few months after the end of the war, a group of old friends meet to comfort one whose wife has recently committed suicide. Though he’d never been religious or spiritual, he has become obsessed with reaching out to her and making contact. Reluctantly, they all agree to try the ceremony. Without going into detail, as there are emotional outbursts, and character revelations aplenty, the night takes a dark turn and everyone in the group is forced to confront the metaphorical ghosts of their pasts – actions they took during the war, identities they’ve forged for themselves, pain and rage and recrimination that they all have trouble letting go of.

The story feels very much like a theatrical play – like “12 Angry Men” with ghosts and war themes – this small group essentially locked in a room in real time, confronting each other and themselves. This is both the strength of the piece and an element that could turn off certain viewers. There is something a bit stagey about it all. They are all very much “characters” – while they are all played very well, and fully inhabited, each is so clearly drawn that it actually feels a bit artificial (at least it did for me), as if each character must hold certain views and perform certain actions so the themes and issues of the piece can be seen in stark contrast, each one not only a person, but also a representative idea.

This may sound intriguing to you, or it may seem like I’m coming down on it, which I don’t want to do. For all that I remained at a bit of arm’s length, I was also thoroughly engaged the whole time, and the play of ideas has moving resonance. Right now, the news is full of the conflict in Israel (sadly, regardless of when you read this, that will probably always be true – now, or in ten years) – and a piece that is all to do with people incapable of letting go of a cycle of past wrongs, people who will never feel the war is over, people forever driven to hate and fight and, in understandably defending themselves, inevitably ignore the perceived enemy’s humanity, and thus do horrible things out of a drive to see justice done – a piece that brings the tensions of such themes to heart feels urgent and meaningful and good.

Also, while it doesn’t do a lot of “spooky,” when it decides to get ghostly or brutal or horrific, this emotional drama is willing to be pretty rough. It is definitely a horror piece and I think it’s a good example of how horror can target complex emotion in a particularly effective manner.

So, if this sounds like something you’re up for, I do suggest giving it a try. It won’t be for everyone, but it is a special little piece and I’m glad it’s out there.  

The Uninvited (1944)

Well, this was just a delight. There is something so appealing to me about the old fashioned wit and charm you get in movies from the 40s and this delivered both qualities in spades. And on top of that, it really offers a solid, spooky ghost story with an engaging, emotional mystery. Apparently, The Uninvited stood out at the time of its release because it was a haunted house movie in which the house was, you know, actually haunted and not just the manifestation of a Scooby-Doo-esque  prank. I haven’t seen enough of its contemporaries to compare, but it navigates the classic ghost elements capably – flowers suddenly wilt in strangely chilly rooms where household pets refuse to go, if they don’t just run away altogether, eerie sobbing echoes though darkened hallways just before dawn, and a young woman is thrust into a trance in which she’s compelled to run heedlessly towards the cliff’s edge where she believes her mother had fallen to her death years before. There is a strong sense that something really does inhabit this space and that it has what might be both affection for and deadly designs on the above referenced young lady.

Much of the haunting is carried out with a light touch, often accompanied by levity (such as when the leading man comforts his sister that everything is alright before running to his room and hiding under the covers), but for all that, the drama of the ghost story proceeds in deadly earnest. There is a dark, sorrowful secret to uncover, and moments of real weight and threat, all of which come to bear in the ghostly presences that fill this old, candle lit house, perched above the crashing waves.

In short, Rick and his sister, Pamela, while vacationing together in Cornwall, come upon a beautiful old manor by the sea and buy it for a song from an elderly man eager to be rid of it. His granddaughter, Stella, is distraught as it had been her mother’s house and the place where she’d died. As the embers of romance are kindled between Rick and Stella, they come to realize that the house is haunted, and that it is very dangerous for Stella to be near it as it seems to drive her to run for the cliff’s side, leading everyone involved down a spooky rabbit hole, investigating the truth of how and why Stella’s mother really died.

Along the way, we get séances, no shortage of things going bump in the night, and a nurse character eerily reminiscent of Mrs. Danvers in Hitchcock’s Rebecca (I do wonder how the overt lesbian subtext was read at the time by contemporary audiences – it is certainly not positive representation, but it is, rather strikingly, such obvious representation…), who is similarly devoted to a long dead woman whose presence so hangs over the house and drives the emotional action of the story. We also get moments of lightness and romance that really worked for me (it’s 1944 – you just have to choose not to be bothered that the adult Rick is falling in love with the 17 year old Stella). There is something so gentle and warm and genuine about the relationships – romantic or otherwise. Neither Stella nor Pamela come across as silly little things, and therefore, seeing love spark (in Pam’s case, with the local doctor) plays out quite movingly. And the degree to which this is really not a “love story,” but rather a story of murder, recrimination, and the weight of the past means that the romance just brings some refreshing life into the proceedings without ever becoming saccharine.

I can’t claim that it scared the pants off me, but it did offer pleasant, gentle chills and spooky seaside atmosphere, I was fully invested in the emotion of the central mystery, I really liked how essential the supernatural was to the drama (a rarity at the time), and I was quite taken with both the comic relief that didn’t undercut the seriousness of the ghost story and the romance that somehow clicked in such a satisfying manner. Just a lovely picture. To be fair, I expect few modern horror fans are probably looking for something that might be described as ‘lovely,’ but if you are open to its old timey charm, I think you may find it rewarding.

Hell House, LLC (2015)

Ok, this will be a little tricky to navigate. Thus far, in this run down of Haunted House movies that I’ve not seen before, I’ve covered a number of flicks that, at least from a modern horror perspective, aren’t exactly suuuper scary – and I wanted to remedy that with this next entry. I’d long read that Hell House, LLC is a properly scary found footage piece that seemed like it would deal with a haunting – it would cover some different ground for this post: more modern and really frightening.

The problem is… that I’m really not a fan of found footage… One of the features I most enjoy in film and certainly in horror is the cinematic pleasure that comes from something beautifully and atmospherically filmed, especially when that beauty is applied to something ugly, scary, or otherwise horrific (the juxtaposition of opposites yields such aesthetic satisfaction. So the vérité style of found footage isn’t that appealing for me, and can honestly be a turn off. The shaky camerawork, the “realistically” shrill presentation of often irritating characters, the attempt to present something as real, thus avoiding, or hiding a tighter dramatic structure, the suspension of disbelief required to accept that the camera is still running at all times. It’s just not my favorite.

That said, this movie did have scares. There were some moments that were certainly quite creepy (the camera looks at a scary clown mannequin, then looks away, then looks back and it’s head has turned – that sort of thing). I was often engaged, watching the whole frame, waiting for a shadow to move in the background or a face to suddenly appear. There is a perfectly enjoyable set up – a haunted house crew prepares a haunt in an abandoned hotel which is actually haunted and terrible things happen, and that dramatic context yielded plenty of creepy atmosphere – the fact that the place is always decorated to scare means that when characters move through it, there are so many things that could somehow activate and do something wrong. A lot of it works very well. And I always appreciate seeing creative people do so much with so little: a house, a small cast, a camera, some scary decorations – it is a low budget, big effect affair – kudos to all involved.

But it was hard for me to get past the basics of its form. The found footage of it all was just a hurdle too high that made it hard to appreciate its strengths (which ironically enough, were mostly products of it executing found footage tricks rather well). But I feel torn writing this – I always hate when some highfalutin film critic who clearly hates horror movies writes critically about a horror movie for doing the things one does in a horror movie – that kind of movie they clearly don’t like (so often true of Roger Ebert – often a good voice on cinema, but he was no friend to the genre). Not everything needs to be for everybody, right? If you like these kinds of movies, you’ve probably seen this already. If you haven’t, check it out – it’s scary. If you don’t have the stomach for the camera constantly being jostled about, maybe steer clear… I guess I’m glad, at least, to have finally scratched it off my watchlist as I’d long heard it praised – and rightly so (if you’re into that sort of thing).

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And maybe that’s all I can squeeze in. To be fair, these aren’t all of the horror movies that I’ve watched this month – I broke that rule pretty quickly, but I do think these five covered a wide spectrum of the genre – from stagey, thoughtful drama, to over the top, seventies, religiously inflected excess, to playful children’s entertainment, to classic, classy old spooky-romance, to solidly scary, modern found footage. Otherwise, the cabaret I work with has been preparing our Halloween show (as I wrote about last year) and I happily enjoyed a steady stream of old favorites to keep me company as I sewed or Papier-mâchéied or painted or what have you (it’s always nice to be kept company by the likes of fun, oft watched fare like Return of the Living Dead, Fright Night, Halloween III, Friday the 13th Part II, Child’s Play, or The Vampire Lovers – all movies I can have on in the background as I accidentally stab myself with a needle – my hand stitching leaves much to be desired).

But as for the hauntings, I’m glad to have seen these all. Each has its own specific charms and excels in its specific fashion. They may not top the lists of ghost movies out there (there’s a reason I hadn’t gotten around to seeing them yet), but it is a pleasure to dig a little deeper and experience what they have to offer.

Also, as I’m just barely squeaking this in under the line before the month is out, I hope you all have (or had) a Happy Halloween!

Me at a Halloween party last night, rocking the creepy burlap mask I made, in my shiny new Faculty of Horror t-shirt.