As a horror blogger, I have long read other horror blogs and I think one of the most common sentences has to be “sorry I haven’t posted in a while,” or at least I like to think it’s that common cause, boy oh boy, does it apply to me! And to make matters worse, I missed all of October – “spooky season,” the lead up to the high holiday of the horror calendar, Halloween. All over social media, I saw people posting their movie-a-day watchlists, with fans around the world marathoning through the month, and as I check my Letterboxd, I find that I only managed 8 movies, horror or otherwise, for the whole of October.
But I like to think I have an excuse. As I’ve posted about previously, outside of blogging, one of my main pursuits is working with a retro cabaret group here in Kraków, Poland where I live, and every year we do a Halloween show – it’s always one of our biggest and most popular, as the holiday really brings out new, fun, creative ideas. And this year was no exception – so, sure, I didn’t write about any movies last month, but it’s because I was busy making my own Halloween, and even, to some extent, horror content. And if you will all indulge me, kindly strangers of the internet, I’d like to share a bit of what I’ve been working on.
La Folie Retro Cabaret Show – Halloween
This was a big show, with a wide range of Halloween-y variety acts, and the vast majority of it was brand new. Ghosts and vampires, mad scientists and mummies, black widows and boogie men – singing, dancing, aerial arts, burlesque, and comedy – funny, sexy, thrilling, and hopefully, once or twice, even a bit scary. We had ballet, swing, and Irish dance, we had big Broadway style show stoppers, we had loads of comedy sketches, and games with the audience – we even had a fair amount of special effects for the stage – tricks with powerful magnets, specially prepared candles, and blood pumps – neat stuff, if I do say so myself. And I do.
Honestly, there were too many numbers to detail each here (and I worked on them to varying degrees – e.g., if something is mostly dance, I’m no choreographer and I don’t play a big part in giving it shape), so I think I’ll just focus on a couple that I was particularly involved in, which were more ‘horror’ focused, and which I feel presented something new for our stage.
Haunted Theatre / Séance
Ours is a variety show made up of a series of discrete acts and we don’t tend to force much in the way of larger narrative onto the proceedings, but this time, we did add a bit of framing and in that, we had opportunities for some real Halloween-y fun, spooky atmosphere, and at least one solid jump scare. Before starting, the MC came out to explain that in the days leading up to performance, odd things had been happening and that we thought the theatre could be haunted. Of course, then the lights went out on him and, as technicians struggled to get them working again, while a ‘spooky’ version of our theme song played, he turned on a flashlight and was subjected to a series of creepy sights – a jump scare with a werewolf (that I think landed), a creepy little girl on a rocking horse, a Blair Witch-esque woman standing in a corner, tentacles grabbing at his face and a skeleton clutching at his legs, and finally, a bag headed figure approaching him with a knife as his flashlight flickered on and off before he was lost to the darkness and a scream rang out though the theatre.
This was such a simple little introduction – besides a considerable amount of time taken engineering the ‘creepy theme,’ the action was simply conceived and it did not take long to stage and rehearse it a few times (all told, it was only about a minute long), but I honestly think it worked great, setting up the night with a totally different vibe than we usually offer. More things this effective should be this easy to do.
This then led into our first number, which also functioned as a kind of secondary frame. Choreographed to the tune, “Swinging at the Séance,” this was set in an old abandoned house where we see two ghosts in Victorian wedding costume moving slowly and forlornly through the space, unable to connect with each other. Then a crowd of young people burst in with their loud music – laughing and drinking and carrying on, and finally, starting to dance. Through the tumult and boisterousness, the two spirits glide, each focusing more and more on a pair of dancers at the front of the stage until after a small lift, each dancer, unaware of the lurking ghostly presence, momentarily stands in front of one of the apparitions, who subsequently grab them from behind. Blackout.
The lights rise on the two dancers moving slowly and romantically, possessed by the spirits who can no longer be seen, able to hold each other once more in their borrowed bodies. The lights go cool and the other dancers slowly freeze as we watch the dead lovers embrace until the bodies seize up and fall to the floor, the party roaring back to life behind them. Eventually the others notice the forms twitching on the stage and react with a comic terror, finally running away.
While the dancing was in our typical wheelhouse (but no less fun), I think we managed something different with the mix of tones – light and comic, but also melancholic and lovely – underlined with a difference of movement styles, focus brought to the ghosts (as themselves or in possessed bodies) by virtue of their slow, steady glide through a churning sea of quick, bouncing bodies.
Then, at the end of the night, seventeen numbers later, we closed both frames by returning to the abandoned house in a straight horror scene. In the five years of giving cabaret performances, this is the first time that we included something that didn’t feature a song or dance or comedy or acrobatics or magic or burlesque, but was simply a dramatic bit of stage action.
All of the dancers from the first act return with a medium to communicate with and hopefully pacify the spirits. They gather round a table with candles and a Ouija board (hand painted by me) and invite the ghosts to speak. The phantasms return, once again taking control of the same bodies as earlier, borrowing text from Adam Mickiewicz (a significant Polish poet of the Romantic era) to share a heartfelt love scene before something seems to scare them away. The lights flicker, the Ouija planchet moves on its own (a special effect of which I’m proud), the candles go out one by one (another effect I’m proud of, and one that I’d first imagined doing more than 20 years ago and finally, for this, puzzled out how to accomplish), and the medium is taken over by a different, angrier, more dangerous spirit.
At first it seems that she is speaking to those in the scene – of their disrespect and inability to heed a warning, but it eventually becomes clear that she is actually addressing the audience, that this hateful spirit is present in the theatre itself, raging at all in attendance and promising to enact a bloody vengeance. It warns the spectators that it will choose one of them to follow, to haunt, to take as payment for their collective transgressions, and then the actress playing the medium screams and collapses, and in the dark (the lights can’t be turned on), it is clear that the performers are freaked out, that this wasn’t in the script, that something scary has actually happened.
Then we do a big finale song and dance to The Monster Mash (for which I sang).
I haven’t surveyed viewers, but I hope this worked for them. I’m really happy with both my self-engineered special effects for the stage and with making a little scene that I think got reasonably creepy and even, hopefully, a bit scary. We’ve done past Halloween shows, but never actually attempted a real scare, so I hope it landed well for people. But hell, even if it didn’t, I was thoroughly happy to try, and I think we stretched creatively in making it.
Night of the Vampires
And this brings me to another piece which was at least a bit out of character for us. Since the very beginning, we’ve had burlesque in the show, and over time, its presence has expanded in the work that we offer – sexy stuff to be sure, but also glamourous or absurd or otherwise creative: classic fan dance or silhouette numbers, a half-and-half Dance with the Devil, a “Sexy Salad,” a three girl strip poker with death scene, a super cute number with two competing 50s housewives accidentally losing their clothes until they finally stop feuding long enough to discover that they’re into each other and who then leave together before their confused husbands come home.
But this was something different. This piece, loosely inspired by Le Fanu’s Carmilla (and thus in quite good company) was easily the most directly ‘erotic’ piece we’ve yet done – with a much more sexual tone and vibe than we generally adopt. Even if a performer is getting down to pasties and a g-string, all in a mood of ‘fun with sexiness,’ that doesn’t always mean that it is exactly “erotic,” but I like to think this time it was. Now, I don’t know how this increased eroticism was received by the whole audience. At least one friend was really excited by it and gave great feedback, and I’ve heard tell of one person for whom it was too much, but as with the last piece discussed, I was so very happy to make it, and I feel so good about what it was that I’m genuinely less concerned with its reception. Maybe that’s greedy and short sighted of me, but if you can’t make what you, yourself, want to see, how do you do anything at all?
Any regular reader of this blog knows that I am a fan of the ‘Lesbian Vampire’ subgenre of horror and have written extensively about it here, here, here, here, and here. And in this case, that’s just what I got to make – a short scene for the stage, only 5 minutes and 40 seconds long, that is its own little Lesbian Vampire piece – with nods to Hammer Horror, Jean Rollin, and Jess Franco – with saturated color and flowing gowns and nakedness and doubling and desire and seduction and blood (with DIY blood pumps and hidden tubes to make the red stuff flow, masked in the bedsheets and under a corset – which I wish I could say worked perfectly, but at least worked reasonably well and next time, we’ll nail it) – what a joy! My horror fan heart was all the more warmed to score it with bits of the soundtrack to Hellraiser and Daughters of Darkness, as well as an awesome Roky Erickson song that I’ve written about here before called ‘Night of the Vampire.’
I wish I could say it had originally been my idea, but if it had, I might not have proposed it. Instead, I must give credit to Madeline Le Blanche, with whom my wife and I produce the cabaret, who thought up a three girl vampire burlesque act featuring Carmilla, Mina from Dracula, and an S&M Lady Van Helsing and asked me to flesh it out. So I went off and wrote a script which, though I felt it was a different direction for us, and could be too explicit for some, I was nonetheless thrilled to craft and was grateful that she’d commissioned it.
We start with a proper young Victorian lady sitting on the edge of her bed and reading a book. The music is the romantically dark and dramatic main theme to Hellraiser. Behind her, a shadow appears in the window and a hand touches the glass. The young lady looks up, feeling that something is strange, when the hand in the window extends and the damsel’s hand does the same. The silhouetted figure controls her and we see them mirror each other. The young woman’s hand caresses her own face and slides down her bodice before she pushes it away, then her other hand is controlled to do the same – and again she shoves it from her, mystified by what is happening. Both of her hands are made to reach behind and unclasp the ribbon from which a small cross hangs, allowing it to fall to the floor. Finally, the shadow causes one hand, after a final caress, to sharply turn her head to look back and see the darkened figure standing on the veranda. She recoils, but is pulled closer and closer to the door. When finally she reaches it, she pulls open the curtains to reveal the glamourous woman outside, looking in at her with red, hungry eyes. She opens the door.
Fog and moonlight pour in as Carmilla glides downstage, before turning to the young woman who is fearfully backing away and, with a wave of her hand, mesmerizing her and summoning her closer. The music shifts (to a bit from Daughters of Darkness) and a mirrored striptease begins. Their bodies copy each other perfectly – Carmilla enjoying her control over her prey, and, let’s call her Mina, or possibly Laura (more fitting for Carmilla), at first shocked to witness her own actions, but clearly enjoying them more and more. All in mirror, gloves come off, and then dresses (this mirror motif, in my mind at least, referencing the cabaret performance in Jess Franco’s Vampyros Lesbos – it is a rather different action, but there is a thematic resonance). The mirror is dropped and Carmilla comes behind the younger woman to remove her corset, leaving her in the requisite diaphanous gown, before presenting her own corset for Mina/Laura to undo. Finally, down to pasties, a g-string, red contacts, and fangs, Carmilla guides her to the bed and lays her down, head towards the audience.
Initially, the ingénue is shy and covers herself somewhat with a bedsheet (which hides a tube connected to a blood pump, allowing her to position it for the blood effect), causing Carmilla to pause in her climb over the supine body as if to ask if she actually wants this. Mina/Laura acquiesces, lowering her shift to reveal her pastie adorned breast as Carmilla lowers her head to bite (and the performer compresses a large syringe, causing the blood to flow). It is sensual and bloody and Mina/Laura’s body seems to seize in tortured ecstacy before finally giving out and collapsing as her life’s blood drips down her neck and hair, pooling on the carpet (which we laid down to aid in rapid cleanup).
Then suddenly, with another change in the music, shifting to a driving rock sound, Carmilla looks up, hissing, and we see Lady Van Helsing enter on a higher level and descend the stairs to do battle. Carmilla greedily clutches her victim’s body, pulling it back to drop on the floor as she rises to face her crossbow wielding adversary. Again, she employs the mirroring power, leading Van Helsing to give up her weapon, knock off her own hat and undo her flowing cape. Lady Van Helsing draws a golden dagger to hold up as a cross, and after, lashing out, Carmilla claws at her, ripping off her skirt in the process, Van Helsing holds the cross to her head, eliciting a hiss as Carmilla loses consciousness.
Lady Van Helsing moves Carmilla on to the bed and, securing her in place by laying the cross on her bared breast, chains her hands and begins to remove her own gloves as a surgeon might don them. After a walk round the bed undoing her corset (among other things, making the blood syringe strapped to her back accessible, though still hidden from the audience), Lady Van Helsing draws from her bag a bottle of Holy Water and proceeds to lash Carmilla with it. Carmilla writhes in a mix of pain and pleasure as if in play with hot wax. Van Helsing then draws a stake and trails it up and down Carmilla’s body, teasingly, before raising it high to drive it home, when she realizes that Mina/Laura has risen behind her.
Gently taking her wrist, Van Helsing is made to drop the stake, as Mina/Laura moves her hair aside and comes in to bite (with her other hand, beginning to squeeze the pump). After a moment, she pulls back and looks to Carmilla, bound on the bed below, and then bites again, lowering the vampire hunter down so that her blood falls onto Carmilla’s body and into her waiting mouth. They both feed as the lights begin to fade. All three look out to the audience, lost to sensation as darkness engulfs all.
Hot, huh?
Again, I don’t really know how it was taken in by most of the audience, but I was so gratified to have this opportunity to make a bit of vampy erotic horror. I think the intersection of those two elements can be really fruitful – both absolutely to do with, and eliciting reactions from, the body and the mind – the hunger and the desire for the other being both mental and physical – sexual and violent, of the flesh and of blood. There is attraction and need and complication – all essential human experiences. This is a big part of what I really appreciate in Lesbian Vampire movies, wherein there is often a focus on desire and pleasure and it’s not simply about, as can often be the case in sexually explicit content, unveiling “boobs” for a presumed male viewership (though it can’t be denied that’s often present as well), and I think we offer that in this number. I’m immensely proud of this piece and I hope someday to be able to share it here (there’s been discussion of filming it for posterity, so who knows – it could happen).
So yeah, that was my Halloween (and of course, there were loads of other cool acts that I’m not even scratching the surface of here: 2 masked “boogie men” competing over who can best frighten a little girl, a Black Swan/White Swan ballet number complete with heart ripping, an Irish burlesque – dancing widdershins on the barrows by moonlight to gain gold, finding it hidden in the layers of clothes until an inner fey is unveiled, a skeleton doing aerial silk work, an audience interactive dating game show where all the contestants are monsters, and much, much, much more). I didn’t write about any movies last month, but my horror fan brain was still appropriately occupied I think.
But Also, Some Recent Watches
Finally, I just wanted to share some thoughts on a couple of movies from this year that, with the show in the rear view mirror, I recently had the chance to catch up on. It’s really rare that I manage to watch anything new, and so it’s always exciting when it happens. First, the other day, I got to check out a double feature of Immaculate and The First Omen. So-called “Twin Films” (such as Dante’s Peak and Volcano from 1997) are nothing new, but it’s a while since I’ve been so aware of two coming out so close to each other with such parallel plots. Of the two, I definitely preferred Immaculate – the atmosphere and performances just pulled me in and it even had some fun jumps and gross out moments – and a climactic sequence before cutting to the credits that was so satisfying, and so nice to see that it got to “go there.”
But while I think The First Omen suffered somewhat both from being a prequel, and thus in service to a pre-existing story while also setting up a new series that can grow out of it, as well as having a very predictable turn that I felt was intended to be a ‘big twist,’ but which was obvious from the very beginning, it did do something really interesting. My understanding of the conventional wisdom surrounding the Satanic threat books and films of the 60s and 70s, such as The Omen and the Exorcist, is that they represented a pushback against a secularizing counterculture moment in which society was turning against all authority, including that of faith, and especially a hierarchal institution like “The Church.” These works are all predicated on discovering the truth of radical evil – there is a devil, he is real and dangerous in our lives, and the only possible solace and protection comes from faith, from God, from the Church. Whether their creators directly intended this or not (for example, I read that Ira Levin, an atheist Jew, regretted that his excellent, feminist, cultural paranoia novel, Rosemary’s Baby had inadvertently participated in this reactionary moment), many of these works served to scare a reading/viewing population back to the pews. It’s the main reason that I’ve often found myself turned off by such content, especially exorcism films – they so often feel like proselytization.
But in this little, modern prequel – a really fun scary movie that takes great pleasure in delivering some reasonably shocking imagery of its own (with one much discussed moment that I had not seen on film before) – there is such an interesting angle taken. This brings me to a big spoiler that wasn’t obvious, so be forewarned. In this case, the sinister cabal within the church that is pulling all the strings to trap our protagonist into birthing the antichrist isn’t actually “Satanist.” Rather, they are an ultraorthodox wing of the Catholic Church, worried about the secularizing counterculture moment of the 60s/70s, who decide that they need to scare the population back into the pews by birthing the Antichrist (sound familiar?). The villain of the prequel is effectively the personification of the actual cultural soil out of which the original book and film grew. In this way, the film makers have their cake and eat it too – able to make a spooky antichrist movie with all the fixins, and still not turn off a loyal horror viewer such as myself who is otherwise loath to engage with such content. Neat.
And then last night, I finally got myself out to The Substance. I’d intended to do so more than a month ago, but with the Halloween show underway, it was just impossible to take an evening to go watch something for my own pleasure (I remember a good friend having the saying that “you can see the show or you can be the show”). But what a pleasure! Easily the most fun I’ve had at the cinema in a good long while – and I even got a few people walking out in the final act, which made it all even better (I’d heard it likened to Brian Yuzna’s Society, and I think it delivered). The intense style, the driving energy, the performances, the campy streak of black comedy and social satire, and the goopy, bloody, bizarre practical effects – everything about this movie was a blast and I love that this weird flick is getting so much mainstream attention (also, I cackled at the Act III title card). But what I think was most interesting about it of course requires spoilers, so beware.
Obviously so much of the thematic is all tied up in gender and youth and beauty – that’s clear from the outset, it is so present in the satirical, ironic gaze of the camera, and it narratively explodes in the final reel in a fashion at once emotionally cathartic, hilariously absurd, and honestly sad. But it is also quite on the nose and I can see someone taking issue with its bluntness (kind of like the big speech in the Barbie movie, but with considerably more body horror). But I feel there was so much to the movie. Ultimately, I think there was a larger exploration of people’s inability to share, to love the other as oneself (which includes the edict to love oneself) which surfaces in self-hating, self-destructive tendencies on both personal levels and for society as a whole. The Devil’s bargain that Elisabeth makes is one for which most of us would fail to follow the rules, and there is a satisfying horror in seeing it destroy her and feeling it cut close to home. One need not specifically “be an older woman in Hollywood, subjected to cruel double standards that serve to shape girls into objects for male pleasure when they’re young and then forget them when they age” to identify with the toxic impulse to wish oneself away (and then make it happen with compulsive, self-erasing behavior) in favor of some ideal, some wished for version of oneself, the “better” person who would garner the approval of not just others, but more importantly, yourself. This theme (we greedily neglect to take care of each other just as we fail to take care of, or love, or even just not hate ourselves), I found particularly effective and well handled – and it was served up with wicked humor, cinematic verve, and bubbling, fleshy, gory glee, presenting a harsh, bleak notion in a manner that is simply fun. I thought it was rather something special.
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And that brings us up to date. I hope you’ve all had a good spooky season. I have a plan for November, but it is ambitious, so we’ll see how that goes. It might come early December. Wish me luck!
