This is my favorite time of year, second only to Christmas. Autumn has arrived, the weather is cooling down, and October becomes the month-long celebration of scary movies called Shocktober. So, in the days leading up Halloween I’ll be posting some horror movie recommendations to help you celebrate Shocktober.
The 1945 horror film Isle of the Dead, from director
Mark Robson and auteur producer Val Lewton, makes for a peculiar viewing
experience in era of the COVID-19 pandemic. The story concerns a group of
people quarantined on a small island after one of them dies suddenly of the plague.
Making their situation even more tense, is the growing suspicion that one of
them may be a vorvolaka, a mythic vampire-like creature that feeds on the
living.
The story takes place in Greece during the war of 1912.
Boris Karloff stars as General Pherides, a stern, cold, even tyrannical general
referred to as the “Watchdog” of his country. In the opening scene we see him
sentence a subordinate to death by suicide for letting his troops lag behind.
An American reporter, Davis (Marc Cramer), accompanies Pherides to an island
cemetery to visit the tomb of his long dead wife. Mysterious singing leads them to the house of an
archeologist, Dr. Aubrecht (Jason Robards, Sr.), and his guests, including the ailing Mrs. St. Aubyn (Katherine Emery) and her young travelling companion,
Thea (Ellen Drew). Kyra, the superstitious housekeeper, believes they
are the victims not of a plague but of a vorvolaka and that Thea is the
mythic, life draining creature. One of the guests dies suddenly that
night. Dr. Drossos diagnosis the cause as septicemic
plague (the most lethal form of the plague/Black Death) and General Pherides
orders a quarantine.
Almost everyone in the group thinks that the General’s
quarantine order (which includes forbidding gatherings of more than two people)
is an overreaction. They challenge him, claiming they do not have to
follow his orders since they are civilians. Dr. Drossos says when the warm south winds come, the fleas carrying the plague will die
and they will be safe to leave the island. The archeologist is
overly skeptical, saying that the doctor’s claims sound as ridiculous as old
superstitions. He even lights a fire to the old gods he says will be as
effective as the quarantine. General Pherides believes in the law, science, and
medicine but as the plague spreads and people die, including Dr. Drossos, he
begins to believe science has failed. The persistent claims from Kyra about a
vorvolaka consume his mind until he too targets Thea as the cause of the
plague.
From 1945 until the COVID-19 pandemic, Isle of the Dead
surely played differently. The film’s sympathy is on the side of the characters
who think the General’s quarantine and ban on gatherings are an overreaction
and unnecessary. When the General stops Thea from escaping the island, it is meant
to show his cruelty. Watching this film now, the most tense and anxious moments came from characters ignoring the
General’s orders, which he made according to medical advice. In 1945, Isle
of the Dead was a film about how the right situation can lead to a single
person seizing control and becoming mad with power. It is still about that, to be sure, but
in 2021 it is also about how an event like an epidemic spurs different
reactions, including dangerous ones. In both views of the film, General
Pherides is an unsympathetic man who loses his mind and goes from trying to
protect people to trying to kill the same people. He is also a man that becomes
dangerous as he loses confidence in science and medicine and gives into
superstition.
Isle of the Dead falls into the second tier of the
series of low budget horror films Val Lewton produced for RKO in the 1940’s.
The horror classics Cat People(1942) and I Walked With a Zombie
(1943) are firmly in the top tier. Those films partnered Lewton with director
Jacques Tourneur, who made use of eerie imagery to emphasize the
fear felt by the characters. Director Mark Robson does a fine job at the helm
of Isle of the Dead but lacks the stylistic touches and eye for eerie
imagery that made the previous Tourneur/Lewton films great. For a film set on
an island cemetery there is a disappointing lack of creepy or
eerie imagery depriving the film of a richer atmosphere. Despite these flaws
Isle of the Dead is still an intriguing, low key horror movie and an
interesting one to watch during a pandemic.
This is my favorite time of year, second only to Christmas.
Autumn has arrived, the weather is cooling down, and October becomes the
month-long celebration of scary movies called Shocktober. So, in the days leading up Halloween I’ll be posting some horror movie recommendations to help you celebrate Shocktober.
Night 10: Werewolf Party Night! “It’s the she-wolf herself!”
Good werewolf movies are hard to find, so even a decently
made, entertaining movie that may, or may not, have a werewolf is quite welcome.
Made by Universal in 1946, She-Wolf of London took a different approach
to the Universal Monster movie. The heyday of the Universal Monster movies (Dracula,
Frankenstein, The Mummy, and their many sequels) began in the early 1930's and now was on the
decline. The monsters were already meeting each other, though they wouldn’t
meet Abbott and Costello until the 1950’s. Thanks to producer Val Lewton, RKO
was the big name in horror movies. Lewton’s approach to horror was nearly
the opposite of the Universal model. His films were more psychological often
only hinting at the supernatural, emphasizing mood and atmosphere over
monsters. She-Wolf of London was almost certainly made to compete with
the RKO Val Lewton horror pictures. Like Lewton’s Cat People or I
Walked With a Zombie, She-Wolf of London takes a sensational title and
delivers something more than just a monster movie. Though admittedly, She-Wolf
of London doesn’t match the substance or quality of the better RKO Lewton
movies, it is still a solid and entertaining mystery and thriller.
Set in London during the early years of the 20th
century, She-Wolf of London centers on Phyllis Allenby (June Lockhart),
the sole living descendant of a wealthy family with a dark history. She lives
with her cousin Carol (Jan Wiley), and stern aunt, Mrs. Winthrop (Sara Haden), who
became the guardian of Phyllis and caretaker of the the Allenby estate after Phyllis’s parents died. Now
Phyllis is about to be married to a wealthy lawyer, Barry (Don Porter), but she
worries that the Allenby curse is now affecting her. The family dogs bark at
her angrily and constantly. She has dreams of turning into a wolf and wakes up
with her hands covered in dirt and blood.
The next morning, Carol reads
newspaper reports of night time attacks by a wolf in the nearby park. We also
see the family dogs escape at night, presenting the possibility that Phyllis
might not be responsible for the attacks. Mrs. Winthrop isn’t much
comfort or help and won’t let Barry visit Phyllis. Detective Latham (Lloyd Corrigan) believes that the animal attacks are being done by a werewolf,
specifically a female werewolf. He is not exactly comic relief, but he does not
come across as especially sharp either. He simply has a hunch based on witness reports
that he believes is worth pursuing, even if it is outlandish.
The period setting gives the story several elements that
create an eerie fantasy atmosphere. Costumes, horse drawn carriages, foggy
roads and woods lend this movie a visual style. Fog and shadows obscure the attacks which adds to the atmosphere
and saves on special effects. This may not be the straight up horror werewolf
movie you would expect from the classic era of Universal, but it works as a
mystery and thriller and effectively uses the possibility of the supernatural
to create tension and suspense and atmosphere. This is definitely a less well-known
horror movie from the classic era but I’ll count it as one of the better
werewolf movies.
This is my favorite time of year, second only to Christmas.
Autumn has arrived, the weather is cooling down, and October becomes the
month-long celebration of scary movies called Shocktober. So, in the days leading up Halloween I’ll be posting some horror movie recommendations to help you celebrate Shocktober.
Throughout the 1940’s, the movie studio RKO released a
series of low budget horror hits that despite their exploitative titles (Cat
People, Isle of the Dead, Curse of the Cat People) were films
of first-rate quality and substance. These films were developed and overseen by
producer Val Lewton, who has the rare distinction of being a producer seen as
an auteur (or author) by modern film critics and historians. The best of Val
Lewton’s RKO horror films were his collaborations with director Jacques Tourneur, including I Walked With a Zombie.
You won’t find any flesh eating ghouls in this zombie movie.
Before George Romero’s landmark film Night of the Living Dead in 1968, a
zombie was a dark myth of the Voodoo religion. Specifically, a zombie was a
person that had been put in a deathlike trance, buried, dug up, and then
continued in a trance as a slave to the Voodoo priest that performed the
“resurrection.” This is the type of zombie the characters in I Walked With a
Zombie are confronted with.
Betsy (Frances Dee) travels to the island of St. Sebastian
in the West Indies to take a job as a private nurse. She moves in to the
Holland family sugar plantation and becomes friendly with Tom Holland (Tom Conway) and
his half-brother Wesley Rand (James Ellison), though the brothers are at odds. Her
patient is Tom’s wife, Jessica, who is in a perpetual catatonic trance and
wanders the plantation at night. As Betsy tries to understand Jessica’s illness,
she uncovers dark secrets about the Holland family.
The Val Lewton RKO horror movies emphasized atmosphere over
visual scares, though there are naturally a few of those in I Walked With a
Zombie. The titular scene of Betsy walking with Jessica through the cane
fields coming across eerie markers like a hanging dead animal and a skull in the
dirt is accompanied only by the sound of wind. The possibility of the
supernatural looms over the characters, but
this film delves more into the psychological effects of superstition. Betsy is
a in a new and exotic land with customs and beliefs strange to her; her lack
of familiarity puts her on edge. Perhaps the creepiest scene is also the
unlikeliest. When trying to wake Wesley at a bar patio, a street musician sings a melancholy calypso ballad of the Holland
family while walking slowly towards Betsy. Then he includes her in the ballad.
It’s easily the creepiest use a calypso song in a movie and also a clever way
to deliver exposition. The beautiful Film Noir-like use of light and shadow
further adds to the eerie atmosphere of every scene.
Slavery is at the heart of the Voodoo zombie myth. I
Walked With a Zombie is aware of this and deals indirectly with the
lingering effects of slavery, albeit only for the white descendants of the
slaveowners. A black carriage driver tells Betsy how the Holland family brought
“the long ago fathers and long ago mothers of us all” to the island, “chained
to the bottom of the boat.” The figurehead of that slave ship rests in the
center of the courtyard of the Holland estate, an ever present and morbid
reminder of the family’s past. It’s interesting that when Tom Holland says that
the slave ship brought “our people” to the island, he is referring to
his family as well as the slaves.
The central theme of I Walked With a Zombie is a
simple one: things are not what they seem. When Betsy is admiring the beauty of
the sea, Tom tells her with a resigned melancholy: “Those flying fish, they’re
not leaping for joy, they’re jumping in terror. Bigger fish want to eat them.
That luminous water, it takes its gleam from millions of tiny dead bodies. The
glitter of putrescence.” Voodoo is not dangerous; it is just a religion that
can be used for good or evil. The zombie is a victim, not a monster. The harm
to Holland family was done not by the natives; it was done by the Hollands themselves.
From its title, I Walked With a Zombie seems like a silly exploitation
film, but it is a genuine horror classic made with exquisite talent on and off
screen. This Lewton/Tourneur film is not as well-known as their signature film Cat People, but is easily of the same quality. Its moody and eerie atmosphere
hold up solidly, as do the performances, and will make for a great Shocktober
night.
This is my favorite time of year, second only to Christmas. Autumn has arrived, the weather is cooling down, and October becomes the month long celebration of scary movies called Shocktober. There are a lot of horror movies out there, but as a genre, horror is still looked down upon by some mainstream critics and moviegoers. It doesn’t help that, admittedly, there are so few quality horror movies made but, like comedy, it’s a very difficult and subjective genre. So, in the days leading up Halloween I’ll be posting some recommendations for scary movies to help you celebrate Shocktober.
In the early 1940’s RKO Pictures created a low budget
B-horror movie unit to compete with, and capitalize on the success of, Universal
Studios’ B-horror movies like Dracula,
Frankenstein, The Wolf Man and their
many sequels. Producer Val Lewton was put in charge of the unit and tasked with
churning out horror movies with sensational titles, miniscule budgets, and left
over sets from other movies. The result was a series of horror films that were
the opposite of what the studio was expecting, but were still box office hits.
Today they remain spooky and interesting films and Val Lewton is one of the few
producers that critics, film historians, and cinephiles consider to be an
“auteur,” or the author of a film. The first of these low budget horror movies was
Cat People, released in 1942, which
deserves to be included alongside horror movie classics like Dracula (1931) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935). If you are someone that doesn’t like graphic
violence or bloody horror, or even if you are, or if you want to become more
familiar with classic horror cinema, Cat
People is a great film to watch any Shocktober night.
Cat People stars
Simone Simon as Irena, a Serbian immigrant in New York City who meets and falls
in love with Oliver, played by Kent Smith. Irena lives in an apartment close
enough to the zoo to hear the animals at night and finds the roar of the big
cats comforting. She and Oliver fall in love and marry, but Irena’s belief in a
superstition of her homeland keeps her from becoming intimate with him, or even
kissing him. She fears that any passion or jealousy she has will change her
into a jungle cat and she will kill her lover. At a restaurant, a woman that
some characters say “looks like a cat” greets Irena by calling her “my sister.”
When Irena walks into a pet store with Oliver, animals go into a wild frenzy and
become calm once she leaves. Oliver is a good, decent husband and believes
Irena will overcome her superstitions with the help of a psychiatrist played by
Tom Conway, who exudes a cool, debonair, and condescending aura (not unlike
that of his brother, actor George Sanders). Oliver confides his marriage
troubles in his friend and co-worker Alice, played by Jane Randolph. Though
Alice is in love with Oliver her only intention is to be a friend and offer
advice, but Irena resents their closeness and becomes jealous and dangerous.
Lewton was a hands off producer when it came to shooting movies,
but there is a distinctive style to his RKO horror movies despite working with
different directors. The Lewton style was born out of necessity due to budget
restrictions, but he and his directors turned this handicap into creative
advantages. Cat People is shot with
stark shadows and low lighting resembling the look of a Film Noir. In fact, the
director of Cat People, Jacques Tourneur, perhaps Lewton’s best collaborator, would go on the direct the lauded Film
Noir Out of the Past.
It’s a well-established horror movie trope that you can scare
the audience more by showing them less; what you show them will never be as
scary as what they create in their own imaginations. Lewton and Tourneur fully
exploit this idea to great effect. They knew they did not have the budget for
decent special effects so the movie avoids showing the audience what they might
expect to see, namely a monstrous cat-person, and instead fills its spooky
scenes with shadows, dim lights, and darkness. Shadows are as important to Cat People as its characters, and they are
used along with a clear and effective sound design for maximum effect. They
hide the film’s low budget and put the audience at unease by denying them a
full picture and thus a full explanation. You may not see a lot of horror in Cat People but it builds a moody
atmosphere that primes the viewer for scares which the movie delivers, but
never quite how you are expecting. In one of the most memorable scenes Alice is
walking home through a park at night in shadows and small pools of light from
the street lamps. There is complete silence except for the clicking of her
heels and… another set of heels behind her. For just a brief moment, so
purposefully quick it’s easy to miss, we think we hear the growling of a big
cat, but the growl morphs into the rumble of a city bus. A few moments later,
however, large paw prints are found in the soft ground of the park.
Cat People plays
with the preconceived notions the characters and audience have about
superstitions and the supernatural. The movie begins in a thoroughly real world
in which there is no chance of anything supernatural. Then, slowly, it shows us
scenes to suggest otherwise and make the characters second guess their
rationale. Is Irena really a cat person of old world legend or does she just believe
she is so much that the people around her begin to unconsciously believe so as
well?
Cat People is the
antithesis of the Universal monster movies, in which the monster is the star of
the movie. It holds back showing you any horror or scenes of violence for as
long as it possibly can. The characters feel like full-fledged people, a rarity
in horror movies of any era, and their world feels like a real, lived in place. Cat People does all of this and more in
less than 75 minutes.
