Halloween collabaganza!

Okay, I came up with the idea of doing a Halloween collab with Freshmaker and Hilatron, who rule for putting up with my complete lack of organization. We picked out our top five mutually agreed-upon scary movies, and then each of us picked a dark horse. We’re doing our part to Keep Halloween Spooky. Won’t you help?

Hilatron's stuff is here, and

Freshmaker's stuff is over here.

And my stuff is here for right now because inknoise is temporarily down. But I'm cool!

Yeah, they're dead. They're all messed up.

Black and white movie? Check

Indie film? Check.

Unknown actors? Check.

Documentary feel? Check.

Holding up well after thirty plus years, achieving classic status, and still terrifying with repeated viewings? Ch--not so fast,  Blair Witch Project.

Horror movies have ambivalent relationships with budgets. Sometimes really low budget movies look really cheesy and low-budget; sometimes high budget movies end up being all CGI hat, no story/character cattle. Night of the Living Dead was made on something like twelve and a half cents and the lint in George Romero's pocket, and he showed an amazing ability to turn twelve cents into a bazillion dollars worth of scary, and that's enough talk of math.

The vague back story of radiation from outer space is sketched in a line or two, as is the story of what is going on in the outer world. We don't need to see spaceships, astronauts, scenes of crowds panicking. All we need to see are shuffling zombies, and their terrified Scooby-snacks trapped in a farmhouse. Special effects are almost non-existent: some fire, some makeup, some boiled ham substituting for human flesh, and some chocolate syrup as blood. The fact NotLD is in black and white makes everything look more real, not only by masking the lowly origin of the zombie chow, but by giving a pseudo-documentary feel that amps up the creepiness. Last of all, the movie has held up pretty well because the relative lack of special effects means they can't look dated. No zippers up a monster's back, no bats on string, no clumsy posturing in front of a blue-screen. Just gritty shots of zombies, and they're coming for you.

Come and play with us, Danny. Forever... and ever... and ever.

One of the best things about The Shining is also one of my major quibbles with it. I realize it's slightly annoying to compare books to their movie adaptations (somewhere Mr. Charles says "SLIGHTLY, you say?"), but anyway, in the book Jack Torrance is a tortured, flawed character . . . but also a pretty normal guy. He's trying to shake a drinking problem and hold his marriage together; he's trying to write a book, he's trying to hang on to his wife and his son, whom he seems to love a lot. Part of the tragedy in the book  The Shining   is seeing Jack fall under the influence of the Overlook, and how it ruins him.

So, my major quibble with the movie is that Nicholson's Jack Torrance is a few bricks shy of a load from his first appearance. One has to wonder what the hell is wrong with Wendy (besides the fact Shelley Duvall looks like Sissy Spacek's chinless wormy little sister) to consider going anywhere with this squirrelly, edgy nightmare of a husband, much less going out to the middle of nowhere to be locked up with him for months on end.

That said, Nicholson wrings the role dry. One of my favorite of his scenes is with Grady, the ghost of the former caretaker:

Torrance: Mr. Grady. You were the caretaker here. I recognize ya. I saw your picture in the newspapers. You, uh, chopped your wife and daughters up into little bits. And then you blew your brains out.
Grady: That's strange, sir. I don't have any recollection of that at all.

The great thing is that Grady looks kind of unnerved by Jack's creepy delivery. He's even freaking out the ghost.

Other than that: the special effects are great; the film is overall well-made and suspenseful; and the casting is good except for Shelley Duvall, who I just do not get at all. Danny Lloyd does a good job as Danny Torrance, which is worth noting because child actors can be such crap shoots.

Speaking of child actors, I have identified this movie as the origin of the popular horror movie cliché of the Spooky Little Girl. Spooky little girls (occasionally boys) show up as atmospheric human scenery in a slew of horror movies (Ringu, Amityville Horror, Ghost Ship, to name a few); however I think The Shining did it best with the eerie little girls (the aforementioned chopped up daughters of Grady) who beg Danny to play with them.

Was that the boogeyman?

There's a lot to say about Halloween. It introduced Jamie Lee Curtis as a scream queen; it put John Carpenter on the map; and it launched dozens if not hundreds of really shitty teen-slasher movie rip-offs.

Halloween is much better than 99% of its imitators; however, it's not perfect. Donald Pleasance chews the scenery like nobody's business; I mean, there is overacting, and then there is overacting, and then way up on a scaffold, up where people look like ants, there is Pleasance, OVERACTING. Another problem lies with Laurie's (Jamie Lee's) dingbat friends, who are both annoying and kind of mean to her, and so you aren't terribly unhappy they find the business end of Michael Myers's knife. Some of the seventies clothes and dialogue comes off a bit dated.

But the good is really good. Jamie Lee Curtis does some nice, understated acting; she is believable as the kind of sweet, smart girl who would be a really awesome babysitter. The signature riff of music (written by Carpenter) helps builds the tension without intruding. There are lots of cool little moments, like the one where Dr. Loomis (Pleasance) is tracking Myers and comes across the car he has abandoned. He calls the police from a roadside phone booth, and as he talks, the camera pulls back until you see the bloodied body of a man, presumably the former owner of Michael Myers's new car, hidden behind some bushes. Or the one where Dr. Loomis is trying to convince the town sheriff of Impending! Danger! (the sheriff doesn't buy Pleasance any more than I do), and behind his back, Myers’s station wagon drives down the street.

Most importantly, it's suspenseful and scary and the story makes sense, insofar as a story about a sexually obsessed murderer escaping from an asylum and seeking out his innocent sister and pausing along the way to hack up some of her vapid and nubile friends can be said to make sense. But a lot of movies (and not just horror movies, any movies) made in the last ten years or so have scripts that read as if an attention-deficit suffering cretin hopped up on goofballs got a hold of Final Draft.

Halloween is simple--crazy guy goes after a girl, blood is spilled--but effective.  Like a knife to the skin.

Haven't you noticed how nothing in this house seems to move until you look away and then you just... catch something out of the corner of your eye?

That quote sums up The Haunting perfectly. This is the 1963 version; in the 1999 version, everything is dead center. And that's enough about that movie, because I hated it and only watched half of it.

I rewatched The Haunting 1963 to write about it, and realized it had some of the same problems as 1999. Once I overcame my horror at the realization, I figured out why. Both movies have plot issues, and screenplay issues, and uneven ensemble casts. And when I say uneven, I mean the 1999 version has Lili Taylor and Catherine Zeta Jones, which might be a super spooky example of the essential wrongness of Hill House, but also might just be really bad casting. Catherine Zeta Jones is like a bride who needs to surround herself with unfortunate-looking bridesmaids, except that in her case her bridesmaids would all be excessively wooden actors. Like, she should team up with Andie MacDowell.

Tangent. Back to The Haunting 1963. So, there are problems, and the pace is somewhat stately, but once you get into this movie, it pays off in a big way as the cinematography itself cranks up the fear. The visuals are subtly upsetting and elegantly eerie, evoking the atmosphere of Shirley Jackson's book beautifully. It's a slow-build movie, but it's worth the ride.

What an excellent day for an exorcism.

When Freshmaker and Hilatron and I got together to figure out which movies to write about, this was the only one all three of us agreed on. I wasn't surprised that we agreed on this, though, because it is the perfect horror movie.

I love The Exorcist for many reasons, but like the demons in Regan, there's really only one: it's a good fucking movie. It has a great balance of story, character, powerhouse actors, and special effects used to their maximum capabilities.

I like the fact the movie mixes the secular and the religious brilliantly. Regan and her mom are pretty damned mainstream. There is some blah-blah about Ellen Burstyn being a movie star, but she is a peculiarly suburban movie star for all the effect it has on the story: she might as well be a lawyer. She's a single mom, with a cute little girl.  Things are sunny and wholesome. Ouija boards are quaint party games. God and religion are simply outside their scope.

In parallel story lines, Father Karras grapples with the issues of his faith and his commitment to it, and Father Merrin braces himself and his faith for a final earthly confrontation. God and religion are well within their scope, but the thing inhabiting Regan MacNeil pushes the limits of their beliefs.

I like a lot of little moments, like these:

Early in the movie, as Chris MacNeil walks close to the Georgetown campus, she sees nuns walking with their white habits fluttering in the wind; this moment foreshadows the latter part of the movie when the white curtains in Regan's room flap in an icy wind. When Regan is interviewed by a psychiatrist, there is a brilliant, quick moment where Linda Blair's body language and posture changes, indicating that someone new is in charge.

Of course, the big moments in The Exorcist are famous for reasons--they are gruesome and horrifying. Watching--and listening--to Regan's head rotate around is horrible and disgusting, as are her blasphemies, the physical changes, and her spectacular spew of pea soup. And if you watch the version with the ‘scenes you’ve never seen before’ and the spider walk doesn’t make you pee yourself, you may actually be a zombie. In which case, my brain is dry and tasteless, you undead freak.

Bad luck isn’t brought by broken mirrors, but by broken minds.

Generally I like horror movies with a little restraint; I always think my imagination can cook up something really scary if it has some room to work. Suspiria is the mind-boggling exception to that rule.

Suspiria is like a fairy-tale on very bad acid. Visually, it’s amazing, weird, and exhilarating. I’d give you a plot summary, but a) it would make no sense; and b) seriously, dude, no fucking sense whatsoever. Okay, fine. A young girl goes to a spooky school, and . . . then . . . well, maggots rain down from the ceiling, and there is . . . stuff.

Obviously this movie is difficult to describe. I’ll break it down to basics: gaudily ultra violent, beautifully filmed, great soundtrack, and unlike any other horror movie on your shelf. Plus, maggot-fu. BRILLIANT.