13 Nights of Shocktober: House on Haunted Hill (1959)

by A.J.

Night 13: Happy Happy Halloween

“I’ve rented the house on Haunted Hill tonight so my wife can give a party. A haunted house party… You’re all invited.”

House on Haunted Hill (1959)

Fright Favorites written by David J. Skal and published by TCM describes House on Haunted Hill (1959) as “one of the most preposterous movies ever made—and one of the most enjoyable.” “Preposterous” and “enjoyable” are the key words to House on Haunted Hill, one of the classic “so bad it’s good” movies. It is also genuinely entertaining and even has a good scare or two. It was produced and directed by William Castle, who was as much a showman as a filmmaker. He would incorporate carnivalesque gimmicks into the theatrical experience and since his movies were typically low budget and cheesy, this only made them more fun. His most famous gimmick was rigging certain theater seats with a buzzer and hiring actors to jump in their seats during a scene when the monster escapes in The Tingler. For House on Haunted Hill the gimmick was presenting the film in “Emergo'' which meant that for a certain scene a model skeleton, seeming to emerge from the screen, would fly over the audience. The effect didn’t always work. Castle was well aware of his audience, mostly younger people and children, and knew how to give them a good time. House on Haunted Hill is still a good time 

The plot is a take on the ‘old dark house’ story, a type of whodunnit where people gathered in a creepy house had to solve a mystery or murder. The possibility of the supernatural loomed but the solution was rational. Horror legend Vincent Price stars as Fredrick Loren, the host of the party; he also feels like a master of ceremonies. He has invited 5 strangers to a supposedly haunted house he rented to have a party for his wife and is offering $10,000 to the guests if they make it through the night, or he’ll give it to their nearest relative if they don’t survive. So, the bottom line is he’s giving away money no matter what. He may also be using the party as an elaborate way to kill his wife, Annabelle (Carol Ohmart). They cannot stand each other and she only speaks to him with contempt. In one scene he looms over her, pulls her by her hair, asks, “Would you adore me as much if I were poor?” and gives a sinister chuckle. The haunted house party was her idea but he is the host and their continued bickering over whose party it is makes for an unusual, likely unintentional, running gag. 

The protagonists should be Nora, a secretary, and Lance, a test pilot, but she does little more than wander into one spooky situation after the other and scream at everything and Lance proves to be an uncharismatic dolt. Elisha Cook Jr plays the Elisha Cook Jr role, meaning he is the weak pushed around nerd and/or geek. He is the owner of the house and also the most afraid of it. He plays his character well but has little more to do than show up and rattle on about ghosts. Price and his charisma really hold the movie together. You know he is up to no good but want to see where he is going. 

Just how ridiculous is this movie? It opens with a montage of screams over a black screen followed by not one, but two floating heads that appear and explain the premise of the movie. The house has a pre-existing pool of acid in the basement, you might call it Chekhov’s pool of acid. One jump scare that legitimately works, even after repeat viewings, has Nora being surprised by the creepy witch-like face of one of the caretakers. This is immediately followed by one of the most hilarious moments on film as the caretaker-witch simply glides away as though she is a mannequin being pulled on a skateboard. The most preposterous moment of the movie has all of the characters agreeing to a good idea: they will stay in their rooms for the rest of the night. Then they all leave their rooms and start wandering again and no one ever brings up that they were supposed to stay in their rooms. In a great reveal, Price emerges from the shadows wearing an elaborate marionette pulley system and he sells it completely. 

This movie is not scary but it is so much spooky good fun. I think William Castle would be satisfied to hear that his House on Haunted Hill is still entertaining people in the 21st century, even without an inflatable skeleton flying over them. He also wouldn’t be surprised. House on Haunted Hill is in the public domain so you can easily find it streaming and on DVD in both colorized and original black and white (naturally I recommend the black and white). For some extra fun, you can watch the RiffTrax Live version, currently streaming on Tubi, featuring the former stars of Mystery Science Theater 3000, Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy, providing a hilarious commentary to the movie as well as some shorts.

13 Nights of Shocktober: In the Mouth of Madness (1995)

by. A.J.

Night 12: John Carpenter Night

“Do you read Sutter Cane?”

In The Mouth of Madness (1995)

With credits like Halloween, The Thing, Christine, and They Live, director John Carpenter is unquestionably one of the true masters of horror. John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness is not as famous or widely seen as those movies though it is equally well-crafted and very scary. It opened in February of 1995 to mostly negative reviews and indifferent audiences, but over time has gained somewhat of a cult status and a special edition Blu-ray release in 2018 from Shout Factory (through their special horror label, Scream Factory). Currently it is streaming on the Criterion Channel, Tubi, and The Roku Channel.

The film begins with the main character, John Trent (Sam Neil), being dragged into an insane asylum screaming that he is not insane. He’s interviewed by a psychiatrist played by David Warner and we flashback to see how Trent ended up in a padded cell. They make reference to how bad things are “out there” and it is clear that Trent’s story will also explain the beginnings of that as well. In the Mouth of Madness is part of John Carpenter’s Apocalypse trilogy, along with The Thing and Prince of Darkness, each of which is about how the end of the world, at least as we know it, begins. Here the cause of all the trouble is the latest book by the mysterious horror author Sutter Cane (Jurgen Prochnow).

Trent is an insurance investigator hired to locate Cane, the most famous and best selling author in the world, who has vanished along with the manuscript for his new book, titled In the Mouth of Madness. Cane and his work are so popular and create such hysteria that riots break out when bookstores sell out of copies of his current novel. Trent believes that the disappearance is a hoax and is smugly proud that he’s never heard of Sutter Cane. Cane’s editor, Linda Styles (Julie Carmen) goes with Trent on his search. They end up transported to a town that shouldn’t exist, Hobb’s End, the fictional town in Cane’s novels that looks like a perfect small town but has many strange things and horrors that emerge from every corner. The town residents, starting with the children, are mutating: some have deformed faces, some have tentacles. Trent and Styles find Cane in a red chamber in a Byzantine style church finishing his novel. He reveals that he has merely been channeling his work from ancient otherworldly creatures that once lived on earth and seek to remake the world and return. 

Jurgen Prochnow is very well cast as the mad author Sutter Cane. He is so low-key in his surprisingly few scenes that it only makes his character more frightening. In a very memorable scene he stands in front of a pulsating door covered in slime and then…rips a hole in reality… is probably the best way to describe it. Cane is a villain but there is no ultimate bad guy. The horror of In the Mouth of Madness is in its characters questioning their reality, learning knowledge or ideas that will drive them mad, and the horror that an idea can alter reality and bring about mass destruction. 

Sam Neil gives a superb performance as a man who begins as a smug skeptic and then is driven to madness. The image of him sitting alone in a movie theater with black crosses drawn all over his face and eating popcorn as he finally succumbs to the spreading madness is a haunting and unforgettable scene (there’s little surprise that it has turned into an internet meme). Neil also has one of the great screams and maniacal laughs in movies. No matter what state his character is in, you believe it. Julie Carmen as Styles also begins as a conservative character, then her hair comes down and she too succumbs to madness. She is not just a tag along character either. She witnesses the strange sights first as their car flies through the air to reach the otherworldly, horrific town of Hobb’s End. Once she witnesses the horrors Sutter Cane shows her, she becomes an important part of getting the insidious manuscript to our world. 

Sutter Cane is obviously modeled after Stephen King. Both have similar sounding names, set their horror stories in New England towns (King uses his native Maine, Cane uses neighboring New Hampshire), and both are extremely popular. However, Sutter Cane is more of a stand in for the extremely influential, and problematic, early 20th century weird and horror fiction author H.P. Lovecraft. Also a New England native, Lovecraft set most of his stories in or around the fictional town, Arkham, Massachusetts. His stories often dealt with ancient monsters that predated humanity and sought to reclaim the earth. He rarely described the monsters in detail but used many adjectives to describe the terrified reactions of the characters. A very Lovecraftian scene happens when Neil peers down into an abyss and sees the creatures approaching the portal to reality. Carpenter keeps the camera on Neil whose expression communicates the approaching horror. The next scene is not only nightmare fuel but the epitome of a nightmare: being chased by a mass of monsters down an endless hallway. We see only quick flashes of the monsters, close ups of mouths and teeth and tentacles and claws. Their anatomy seems to make no sense and that is part of the horror. Carpenter also makes good use of well timed jump scares and more subtle moments of suspense. In an early scene Trent and his boss, played by the late, great Bernie Casey, are having a casual conversation in a diner while a deranged looking man crosses the street towards them carrying an ax. 

This is one of my absolute favorite, top 13 horror movies. The screenplay by Michael De Luca and Carpenter’s direction effectively use many different kinds of horror. This is a horror movie with monsters, gross effects, and jump scares, but also a horror movie with suspense, surreal imagery, unsettling ideas, and disturbing themes. Compared to Stephen King or Edgar Allan Poe, there are only a handful of adaptations of Lovecraft’s stories or novellas, which due to Lovecraft’s literary style are inherently difficult to visualize (The filmmaker who has probably had the most success with adapting Lovecraft to the screen is Stuart Gordon, director of Re-Animator, From Beyond, and Dagon). Even though In the Mouth of Madness is not a direct adaptation of any specific Lovecraft story, it may well be the best cinematic representation of the horrors of H.P. Lovecraft.

13 Nights of Shocktober: The Black Cat (1934)

by A.J.

Night 11: Universal Horror Night

“Superstitious, perhaps. Bologna, perhaps not.”

 The Black Cat (1934)

Released in 1934, The Black Cat is unusual for a Universal Studios horror picture because it features none of their signature monsters like Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, the Mummy, or any monsters, at least no supernatural ones. However, The Black Cat does feature the biggest horror stars of the era, Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff giving some of the best performances of their careers. The title card says the movie is “suggested by the immortal Edgar Allan Poe classic” but that claim is more than a stretch as the only thing the plot has in common with the Poe short story is the inclusion of a black cat in one scene. Fortunately, the story invented by screenwriter Peter Ruric and co-writer and director Edgar G. Ulmer makes for a superbly dark and creepy old-school horror picture.

While traveling on the Orient Express through Hungary on their honeymoon, newlyweds Peter (David Manners) and Joan (Julie Bishop) end up sharing a train compartment with Dr. Vitas Werdegast (Bela Lugosi), who is very polite but mysterious. They also share a carriage but after an accident Dr. Vitas takes them to the closest shelter, which happens to be his destination: the home of an “old friend,” Hjalmar Poelzig (Boris Karloff). We learn that Vitas and Poelzig are actually deadly enemies. During the Great War Poelzig betrayed their army, leading to a massacre and Vitas being sent to a prison camp where he says, “the soul is killed slowly.” Poelzig built an elaborate estate on the site of the massacre, kidnapped Vitas’s wife, whose body he keeps preserved in a glass case, and is now married to Vitas’s daughter. Poelzig is also a Satan worshiper and wants to use Joan in a ritual. In short, he is a very bad guy. It is no wonder why Vitas is so set on revenge. Vitas has also been driven mad from his time in the prison camp and is so set on getting vengeance that even learning that his daughter is still alive doesn’t alter his revenge mission.

The highlight of The Black Cat is watching Lugosi and Karloff duel, first with their words and later with their fists. Vitas and Poelzig have a strange respect for each other even though their hatred for each other permeates every scene. Karloff is excellent as the sinister and evil Poelzig. We first see him in silhouette and his tall, gaunt, and slender figure is used to great effect. Karloff’s lilting voice also adds an extra creepy layer to his dialogue. Lugosi gets to be the hero, sort of—anti-hero might be a better description. He has been so overwhelmingly wronged by Poelzig that he has your sympathies even though his plan is to horribly torture Poelzig. His main redeeming quality is that he wants no harm to come to Peter or Joan and goes out of his way to protect Joan (Peter proves to be superfluous, even misunderstanding Vitas’s rescuing Joan). As Vitas, Lugosi brilliantly delivers many wonderful and eerie speeches that do as much to create a chilling atmosphere as the setting and score.

Poelzig’s home is not a creepy gothic castle but a surprisingly modern looking estate. Peter describes it as a “nice, cozy, unpretentious insane asylum.” The lair where Vitas’s wife’s preserved body is kept and the satanic ritual is performed is a mix of dungeon and mad scientist’s lab. Vitas’s torture of Poelzig happens offscreen but still makes you squirm. The Black Cat was made before the puritanical Production Code heavily restricted the content and subject matter of all movies. With its plot dealing with violent revenge, torture, satanism, implied rape, and necrophilia, there’s little chance it could have been made after the code became strictly enforced. Because of this, The Black Cat still retains some surprising shock value even after nearly 90 years. This movie is not nearly as well known or widely seen Dracula (1931) or Frankenstein (1931), but it is as deserving of classic status, and in many ways it is the scarier classic horror movie.

The Black Cat airs on TCM on Halloween at 1:30 PM CT and is currently streaming on the Criterion Channel.

13 Nights of Shocktober: Arachnophobia (1990)

by A.J.

Night 10 Creature Feature Night/Julian Sands Memorial Night II

“A web would indicate an arachnoid presence.”

Arachnophobia (1990)

Arachnophobia is both fun and frightening, finding just the right balance between humor and horror. The premise is B-grade material, but in the hands of Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment company, with longtime Spielberg producer Frank Marshall in the director’s chair, the result is a creepy, crawly, but not too scary or too gross film about killer spiders that invade a small country town. If you indeed suffer from the titular affliction, it might be a lot to handle, as much for the close ups of spiders as for the spider facts about how many live in a house at any given time. 

Jeff Daniels plays a doctor who has recently moved his family from the big city to the small rural community of Canaima, an idyllic small town if there ever was one. Dr. Jennings (Daniels) made the decision to move reluctantly, he much prefers city life and has arachnophobia from an encounter with a spider when he was a toddler. His wife (Harley Jane Kozak) takes a picture of a large, impressive spider web in the old barn on their property. Of course, neither knows that living in their barn and cellar is a rare ultra deadly spider that killed a photographer on an expedition in South America and hitched a ride in the photographer’s coffin to their town. That spider crossbred with a local spider and the killer offspring are spreading throughout the town. The bodies of healthy people start piling up and Dr. Jennings’s calls for autopsies and an investigation are ignored by the lazy sheriff and established old doctor. Eventually an arachnid specialist, Professor Atherton (Julian Sands), his assistant (Brian McNamara), and a slyly goofy exterminator (John Goodman), join in the battle to save the town and stop the killer spiders from spreading. Yes, this is JAWS but with spiders. 

On the human side, the trio of Daniels, Sands, and Goodman are what make the film work. Daniels grounds the film as an everyman out of his element in a new town and forced to confront the thing he fears the most. Julian Sands is not in the movie a lot but his scenes leave an impression and serve an important purpose. Sands grounds the film on a scientific level, bringing spider facts and plausibility to the whole scenario. His Professor Atherton character is a take on the “mad scientist” archetype; he doesn’t go over the top or come to side with the monster like a typical mad scientist, but his obsession proves to be his undoing. Also, the scenes with Jeff Daniels and Julian Sands together have a lot of feathery blonde hair going on. John Goodman as Delbert the exterminator maybe took a note or two from Bill Murray’s groundskeeper character in Caddyshack, but Goodman of course makes the performance his own. He doesn’t ground the movie so much as provide important comic relief. The rest of the performers play everything straight, but Goodman’s character lets you know that it is okay to laugh. He also gets to be a hero in addition to being comic relief, which is very cool.  I remember seeing Arachnophobia in theaters when I was 5 years old and being so scared that I was crying and hiding my face in my mom’s shoulder. Then I remember her telling me to look at the screen when Goodman showed up at the end with “private stock” of extra poisonous pesticide to kill the spiders. My 5-year-old self was very relieved. 

On the spider side, the movie works because director Marshall and cinematographer Mikael Salomon find a way to shoot the spiders that makes them menacing instead of puny and squishable. The close-ups of the spiders, both real and prosthetic, are creepy and gross. The shots of people narrowly avoiding the spiders as the score builds then stops abruptly are cliched but also work because, for most, the thought of coming that close to any kind of spider is enough to enhance the horror. Even the less effective shots of fake spiders dangling from strings—I mean webs—still work because of most people’s natural aversion to spiders. The practical effects of the giant “general” spider and the pulsating egg sac hold up very well. 

Arachnophobia is aware of the paradoxical legitimacy of a fear of spiders (because some are poisonous and potentially deadly) and its absurdity (because they are so small and we are so big) and leans into that. Characters reach into corners or are frustratingly unaware of the deadly spider in the foreground while they wander about unaware in the background. These scenes simultaneously create tension and humor and then the movie lets you know it is okay to feel both. Despite the close ups of fake and real spiders, the movie never gets gross or goes for easy schlock sensation. This is a not-so-scary movie that viewers of most ages can enjoy, but scary enough to be an effective horror. Most of all it is still entertaining after more than 30 years.

Arachnophobia is available to stream on Tubi and is available on DVD.

13 Nights of Shocktober: Pearl (2022)

 by A.J. 

Night 9: Psycho-Killer Night II (Qu'est-ce que c'est)

“One day the whole world’s gonna know my name.”

Pearl (2022)

In 2022 writer-director Ti West released not one but two horror films starring Mia Goth, X and a prequel, Pearl. X is a slasher film set in 1979 about a group of people making an independent porno film on a farm owned by an elderly but homicidal woman, Pearl. Mia Goth played one of the would be adult film stars and also, under heavy makeup, Pearl. X is a well made but standard genre exercise; not exceptional but not bad either. On the other side of the coin, Pearl, a prequel showing the elderly woman in her youth, is an exceptional film. While X was genre driven, following the well established formula of a slasher film, Pearl is character driven, the result of conversations West had with Goth about the background of her character. Here, as Pearl, Mia Goth gives one of the best performances of any movie from last year in one of the best films of 2022 (and one of the best horror films of the last few years). Best of all, it truly stands on its own, so you do not need to have seen or even know about X to get the full effect of Pearl.

Set in 1918 as The Great War is drawing to a close and the Spanish Flu pandemic has people fearing disease and wearing masks, we meet young and sweet Pearl, who lives on an isolated farm with her strict German immigrant mother and invalid father but dreams of leaving and becoming a movie star. The impending return of her husband Howard from the army seems to be more of a source of anxiety than joy. Her chance at stardom comes when her blonde, all-American looking sister in law Mitzy (Emma Jenkins-Purro) tells her about an audition for a touring church dance group. In the days leading up to the audition, she will reach her deadly breaking point. 

What makes Pearl a special film is Mia Goth’s performance. She has turned in great supporting performances in films like Lars Von Trier’s Nymphomaniac Vol. II, The Cure for Wellness, Suspiria (2018) and Emma.(2020), but here she really gets to shine a starring role (Yes, she is the star of X, but that script offers little for any of the performers). As a performer, Goth brings a sly, unexpected physicality to the role, from her dancing to her sudden, extreme shifts in mood and temper. Long before Pearl deals her first death blow, we know what she is capable of because of the flashes of intensity Goth shows us. She is believably sweet and naïve and innocent and also repressed and angry and maniacal and murderous. 

Ti West is a very stylish director, but every flourish in Pearl, meaning every use of technique or aesthetic highlight, enhances the story instead of drawing your attention to the style itself. The most important thing about the single take close up of Pearl’s confession is Goth’s performance, not the unbroken length of the shot. There is some incongruity however between the period setting (1918 during the sepia toned silent era) and the look and sound of the film (the lavish technicolor look of the 1950’s). The score is evocative of classic Max Steiner scores (his most famous being for Gone With the Wind) and the colors are rich and bright and vivid. The grass of the farm is bright green, the red of the barn is a vivid red, and Pearl’s overalls are a striking shade of blue. It is as though the movie draws from everything someone in the 21st century might deem classic, meaning everything from before 1960. The farm girl wishing for escape story evokes The Wizard of Oz (1939), the rich colors evoke 1950’s technicolor movies of Douglas Sirk or a Doris Day/Rock Hudson movie, the story of a girl with with a sinister side evokes Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s All About Eve or Mervyn LeRoy’s The Bad Seed. In not having a specific film or genre to emulate Ti West has made a picture that feels unique. 

The set pieces are not the kills but the scenes that showcase Goth’s performance (which, yes, include the kills). Her dance with a scarecrow in a cornfield shows us her light, dreamy side. Her tongue kissing the scarecrow then realizing what she’s doing and screaming at, “I’M MARRIED!” at the scarecrow and bearing her teeth in a growl, shows us a quite different side. Her extended confessional scene, an excellently written and deeply affecting monologue delivered almost entirely in one take, is the key scene to the whole movie. A great performance really can elevate an entire movie and that is just what happens here. Pearl does indeed have that “x factor” and it is Mia Goth. 

Pearl is available to stream on Showtime, Paramount+ with Showtime, and is available on DVD/Blu-ray.

13 Nights of Shocktober: Twixt (2011)

 by A.J.

Night 8: Ghost Story Night

“Our work must be the grave that we prepare for its lovely tenant.”

Twixt (2011)

My podcast The Directors’ Wall, co-hosted by Bryan Connolly, recently wrapped up season 2, covering the career of Francis Ford Coppola and we ended on a high note with Coppola’s most recently released film, Twixt, which we both enjoyed very much. We also reviewed Coppola’s re-edit titled B’twixt Now and Sunrise: The Authentic Cut. While both begin the same, major changes to the ending give B’twixt a more open ended “arthouse” conclusion (or lack thereof). The emphasis is on the main character’s emotional journey to confront the tragedy in his past and the horror plot is downplayed. Coppola’s original cut of Twixt, we both agreed, captures the character’s emotional journey while also being a lively and fun horror movie. Currently, only B’twixt is available to stream, but Twixt, if you can find it, is the version we both recommend. Our discussion contains major spoilers, but if you don’t mind (or care) or think it might peak your interest please give it a listen on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or our website.

A brief spoiler-free summary and review:

Released in 2011, Twixt marked Coppola’s return to the horror genre for the first time since Bram Stoker’s Dracula in 1992. Twixt tells the tale of third-rate horror novelist Hall Baltimore, played by Val Kilmer, who stops on his book tour in a small town with a dark past and a recent mysterious murder. The local sheriff, played by Bruce Dern, thinks that the murder is tied to a group of goth teens, led by Alden Ehrenreich, who he believes are vampires, and wants to collaborate with Hall on a book about the murder. Hall is desperately in need of money, so he reluctantly agrees. 

Coppola effectively creates an eerie atmosphere through striking dream sequences, encounters with strange characters, and touches like the body in the morgue with a giant stake still stuck in it and the seven-faced clock tower that tells seven different times. The dream sequences are what really make the movie. They are not so much in black and white as they are drained of color, except for certain things like a red carpet or yellow lantern. In these dreams Hall wanders in the woods and meets V (Elle Fanning), a ghost and victim of the long ago murders. In the dreams Hall is also visited by Edgar Allan Poe, played wonderfully by Ben Chaplin, who discusses writing techniques, the nature of tragedy and melancholy, and also reveals the secrets of the terrible murders that happened in the town decades before. There are also some funny moments like Hall’s video calls to his wife and then his publisher and an out of control Ouija board session. These scenes add in some comedy without turning the movie into a horror-comedy. Twixt is not especially violent and not especially scary, but it is eerie and creepy and entertaining and the kind of movie you should settle in with on a Shocktober night.