13 Nights of Shocktober: Death Becomes Her

by A.J.

Happy Halloween! The countdown is over and Halloween is finally upon us. Tonight, hopefully, you'll be relaxing, eating some candy, and watching a scary, or not-so-scary, movie. There are a lot of options for tonight and I hope I've been of some help. Here is my final recommendation to help bring an end to Shocktober:

Night 13: Happy Happy Halloween
“'Til death do us part! Well, you girls are dead. And I'm parting.”
Death Becomes Her

You’ll find few horror comedies as absolutely fun and satisfying as Death Becomes Her. This is due in no small part to the stellar performances from Meryl Streep, Goldie Hawn, Bruce Willis, and Isabella Rossalini and the filmmaking wizardry of Robert Zemeckis. As with the Back to the Future movies and Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Zemckis mixed cutting edge visual effects with a fun story and lively characters to create a wonderful, delightful movie.

Death Becomes Her opens on a fabulous note; actually, several notes. The year is 1978 and we see fading theater star Madeline Aston (Meryl Streep) in her new play, Songbird, a disco musical of Sweet Bird of Youth. Streep is dressed in a sparkling gown and boa and surrounded by male dancers. The audience is either walking out or bored and falling asleep except for Dr. Ernest Menville (Bruce Willis), much to the chagrin of his fiancé Helen Sharp (Goldie Hawn). The dowdy Helen and glamourous Madeline are supposed to be friends, though frenemies would be a polite way to explain their relationship. Sure enough, Madeline steals away Ernest and Helen goes in a downward spiral that includes some pretty funny scenes of her gaining a ridiculous amount of weight, being evicted from her apartment, and being put into an institution. Then, she comes up with a plan for revenge.

Years pass and image conscious Madeline can no longer hide the effects of aging. She is introduced to the beautiful and mysterious Lisle Von Rhuman (Isabella Rossellini), who provides Madeline with an elixir that will give her what she wants most: eternal youth. She also gives Madeline a stern warning, after Madeline has already drunk the elixir, to take care of her body. Madeline is indeed rejuvenated but doesn’t have much time to enjoy it since she finds out that Ernest and Helen, now thin and glamourous, are plotting to kill her and run away together. It turns out that Madeline can’t be killed, but her body can be broken and still, mostly, work. So, when she falls down the stairs and twists her head totally around, she’s still alive and feels, mostly, fine. When Madeline blasts a hole through Helen’s stomach with a shotgun, Helen is also still alive and, mostly, fine. They continue to inflict damage on each other while Ernest, shocked and confused, is caught in the middle.

The effects may have a slightly dated look now, but were remarkable for 1992. Frankly, even with the dated look, the visual effects are still impressive. It’s no surprise to learn that Death Becomes Her earned an Academy Award for its visual effects. Watching Madeline’s head spin around after Helen hits her with a shovel or water spill out of a hole in Helen’s stomach is so much fun. It’s like watching a live action Looney Tunes cartoon. As their bodies become more and more broken and they hobble around after each other, the humor goes over the top and absurd in the best way possible. It is obvious that Zemeckis loves using visual effects, computer created or practical, whenever possible. His willingness to experiment with visual effects would be to his detriment later in his career, but unlike in his later films, the effects in Death Becomes Her enhance the story instead of overtaking it.

As important as the impressive visual effects are to the macabre plot, Death Becomes Her would be nowhere near as fun or good without its killer stars: Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn. Both actresses play their parts with total glee. They go from zero to camp and back again at all the right moments. No matter who is mutilating who, thanks to their natural charisma they are both enjoyable characters. There’s no argument that Meryl Streep is one of the best actresses, ever, but she is so lauded for her dramatic work, that it’s easy to forget just how good she is at being funny. After the wonderful misfire of the opening song and dance number, we get a quick moment of her in her dressing room rehearsing different greetings for Helen. It’s a small moment but brilliant comic acting. Goldie Hawn plays both the dowdy frizzy-haired Helen and the elegant, fabulous Helen with equal ease. It’s easy to forget that before Bruce Willis became an action star, and then a self-serious action star, he started in comedy (Moonlighting), and is really good at it. He’s fantastic as the meek and high-strung Ernest. Willis acts as an audience stand in, having the appropriate freak out reactions to everything happening on screen. Isabella Rossellini is perfectly cast as the mysterious and alluring Lisle. She wears an elaborate necklace as a top and has silent muscle-bound man servants in spandex do her bidding. Everything about her character and her performance is everything you never knew you wanted to see.

Death Becomes Her plays like a classy but still campy episode of Tales From the Crypt, which Robert Zemeckis directed three episodes of and executive produced. Despite all of the damage Madeline and Helen inflict on each other’s bodies, there’s no graphic or explicit violence, so this movie could be easily enjoyed by anyone looking for something fun to watch this Halloween. “Easily enjoyed” are the key words. Just sit back and have a Happy Halloween! 

13 Nights of Shocktober: Stay Tuned

by A.J.

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 12: Spooky Fun Night
“666 channels of heart pounding, skull blasting entertainment.”
Stay Tuned 

Not long ago, when I worked the dayshift at Vulcan Video during Shocktober and needed something daytime appropriate (not rated R) to watch, I would often put on the 1992 horror comedy Stay Tuned. It usually drew amused reactions from customers. Stay Tuned has gone out of print on DVD but it is still available on Blu-ray and is currently available on some streaming services, including Amazon Prime Video. This is a very broad, goofy, and fun movie. If you’re looking to watch something light but still horror themed, I recommend Stay Tuned.

John Ritter plays Roy Knable, an average middle class man whose midlife crisis has him watching TV nonstop, even over the shoulder of his wife, Helen (Pam Dawber), while she tries to talk to him. Their marriage isn’t doing too great and she is ready to leave when she comes home and finds that Roy has bought a massive satellite dish from a travelling salesman. They don’t have much time to argue however because it turns out the salesman was an agent from Hell and the dish sucks them into a hellish TV world. The catch is that if they can survive 24 hours living through TV shows that are literally trying to kill them, they’ll be released from the contract.

It turns out that Hell is corporatized and run like a TV network complete with a broadcast control room and slimy executives. Eugene Levy is great comic relief, as always, even in his small role as Crowley, an obsequious, wise cracking executive. The whole organization is run by Spike (Jeffery Jones) who likes to ensnare souls is the most extravagant, showiest way possible. Why not make it entertaining? he says. The new intern, Pierce (Erik King), is disappointed by the lack of subtext in Spike’s methods. Spike, annoyed, asks Pierce if he is a film school graduate. Pierce then launches into his thesis on Kurosawa and Spike Lee. As a former film student, I found this bit particularly amusing.

This fun comes in Roy and Helen making their way through the hellish channels. They end up on a game show called You Can’t Win! (which Helen is clever enough to win), a wrestling match, a generic Film Noir, a western, and other Hell themed parodies of TV shows and movies. One of the best scenes comes when Roy and Helen end up as cartoon mice being hunted by a killer cat robot. The animation style and humor are in line with the Chuck Jones Looney Tunes cartoons, and at one point Mouse Roy sends away to ACME for a crazy contraption. The climax includes a montage of Roy and Spike stumbling through different channels. They end up in a swashbuckler movie, a hockey match between devils and angels, a movie called “Driving Over Miss Daisy,” a parody of Star Trek, and, best of all, a Salt and Pepa music video. Ritter is dressed in a yellow suit and turban, Jones is a DJ, and each are after the remote control, the key to Roy and Helen’s escape. The dancers, some representing good and some representing evil, pass around the remote, and Ritter tries to casually dance his way to the remote instead of just grabbing it. This doesn’t make any sense but it’s fun to watch.

At times Stay Tuned is clever, at other times it’s hokey. Casting notable TV stars like John Ritter (Three’s Company) and Pam Dawber (Mork and Mindy) is one of its clever strokes. The hellish TV parodies are pretty enjoyable even when they’re dumb: Three Men and Rosemary’s Baby, Northern Overexposure, Duane’s Underworld, Sadistic Candid Camera. There is even a parody of the Maxell cassette tapes commercial, for those old enough to remember the variety of blank cassette tape choices, myself included. One of the parodies has Ritter wearing a Hawaiian shirt stumbling over a couch with two women (one blonde, the other brunette) staring at him with a familiar song in the background (familiar, if, like myself, you’re old enough). He screams and immediately changes himself into another channel.

John Ritter had a great career in comedy and more serious roles like the miniseries of Stephen King’s IT. He was a talented physical comedian and gets to show off that talent a bit here (if you want to see more of John Ritter as a physical comedian, please watch Peter Bogdanovich’s They All Laughed). Is this a secretly great film deserving of cult film status? Perhaps, perhaps not. Is it better than it has any right to be? Yes, firmly yes. The approach by Peter Hyams, both the director and cinematographer, and the talent of the cast are what have made this film worth watching and re-watching for me, and I hope for you too.

13 Nights of Shocktober: Byzantium

by A.J.

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 11: Vampire Night
“When I was born there were only seven planets.”
Byzantium

Director Neil Jordan’s approach to horror avoids sensationalism and lurid indulgence even in moments of violence and terror. His surreal dark fantasy film, The Company of Wolves, a retelling of Little Red Riding Hood based on the works of author Angela Carter, is one of my absolute favorite horror films, and, in my opinion, the best werewolf movie. His adaptation of Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire is melancholy and overwrought at times, but memorable for its portrayal of vampires as sympathetic and pitiful creatures. Jordan’s best horror films have two things in common: they examine well known movie monsters from a different perspective while still being effective horror movies, and they are based on the work of female authors. Byzantium, written by Moira Buffini based on her play, A Vampire Story, gives us, once again, a different kind of vampire movie about a different kind of vampire, and, again, one of my absolute favorite horror movies.

“Humans need to tell stories. It’s a fundamental and uniting thing,” says the teacher of Eleanor Webb, a teenager whose aloof demeanor suggests a much older soul. Eleanor is in fact over two hundred years old. She is a vampire, of sorts. She doesn’t sleep in a coffin and can be out in daylight. She has no fangs but an unnaturally sharp fingernail to puncture the wrist or neck of a victim to drink their blood. Eleanor, played wonderfully by Saorise Ronan, may not be human but she longs to tell her story. She writes her life story down then tears up the pages and scatters them in the wind. Eleanor’s mother, Clara (Gemma Atherton), also a vampire, hides a dark secret about their origin and why they live like nomads, fleeing at a moment’s notice. Eleanor is tired of telling made up stories about herself and her mother to the people they encounter. She wants to tell someone the truth. So, she tells us.

Saorise Ronan has always possessed a preternatural acting talent and it is on full display here. She does a great job of playing a weary old soul; someone who despite her young face conveys a profound wistfulness. Still, Eleanor, not knowing all of the facts, makes foolish mistakes that teenagers often make. She hides truths in plain sight, saying things like “She got bitten by a vampire” or that she has been playing piano for 200 years, so plainly that you wonder how people could think she is joking.

Gemma Atherton as Eleanor’s mother, Clara, is very protective of their secrecy, which their lives depend on. She preys on lascivious predatory men that would take advantage of her, taking their cash and blood instead. Atherton plays the different layers of Clara with great believability. She is a determined survivor, vengeful, protective, cold, and also kind. Atherton runs after the men that have kidnapped her daughter with an unquestionable urgency and fierceness that only a mother could possess.

Clara has the opposite approach to immortality from her daughter. She possesses all of the lively youthfulness that her daughter lacks. Clara’s big mistake is one that only a parent could make: she thinks that not telling Eleanor the whole story will protect her, but instead it leads Eleanor into danger. We see in flashbacks to the late 18th and early 19th centuries that as a young girl Clara met two British navy officers: Darvell (Sam Riley), a young officer that shows her kindness and Ruthven (Johnny Lee Miller), an older officer that forces her into prostitution. We also learn that, unbeknownst to Eleanor, she and her mother are being pursued by a vampire brotherhood determined to kill them for violating the brotherhood's code (i.e. not being men).

Moira Buffini’s story is greatly influenced by the gothic atmosphere and language of the stories written by Lord Byron and Dr. John Polidori during the “haunted summer” of 1816 as part of a contest with Mary Shelley. The vibe of Byzantium is indeed best described as modern gothic. Lines of dialogue like “Does the light offend you?,” “Knowledge is a fatal thing,” and “She was morbidly sexy” could be ridiculous but are delivered with intrigue and casual confidence by major and minor cast members alike. 

Byzantium was released in 2012 in the wake of the angsty teen vampire-romance Twilight movies and suffered unfairly from comparisons at the time. There is a romantic subplot as Eleanor is drawn to a meek but persistent young man recovering from leukemia played by Caleb Landry Jones. Eleanor certainly qualifies as an angsty teen longing for a connection and disillusioned with the way she lives, but having lived in such a way for so long, conveyed convincingly by Ronan’s performance, gives serious weight to her emotions.

This is a brilliantly made film with poetry in its words, imagery, and music. There are a few bloody and graphic scenes but overall Byzantium has an exquisite visual aesthetic. You could pause this movie at any given moment and have a beautiful still image. The locations feel lived in but not gritty. The look of every scene is muted but not dour. This is a great horror film to watch with people that don’t like graphic or intense horror. The violent scenes are few and far between and, so, more powerful when they do occur. At certain moments the flowing blood even accentuates the poetic tone of a scene. Like The Company of Wolves, Byzantium has an ethereal, dreamlike tone. It is a dark fairytale that leaves you lying awake, haunted but deeply satisfied. I am fascinated by the “haunted summer” of 1816 that inspired Mary Shelley to write Frankenstein, changing the course of science-fiction and horror forever, and John Polidori to write The Vampyre: A Tale, allegedly the first story to portray a vampire as a sophisticated seducer. Byzantium also feels like a story that also would have been inspired by that dreary haunted summer.

13 Nights of Shocktober: Dagon

by A.J. 

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: Stuart Gordon Memorial Night

“Now you serve Dagon.”
Dagon

Earlier this year notable horror filmmaker Stuart Gordon passed away at the age of 72. He was one of the only filmmakers daring enough to tackle adapting the unspeakable eldritch horrors of author H.P. Lovecraft, with varying degrees of success. Without a doubt his most famous film is the cult classic Re-Animator, adapted from the Lovecraft story Herbert West, Re-Animator. This film mixes shock visuals, gross effects, lurid nudity, and dark, offbeat humor. Scenes involving a decapitated head that won’t shut up and the glowing green syringe of reagent, used to bring the newly dead back to life, are well known to horror fanatics. I have to admit that though I’ve seen Re-Animator a few times, it never struck a chord with me the way it has for countless horror movie fans. 

His 2001 film, Dagon, however, I found very entertaining. I can’t say it is a good movie exactly, but it is definitely an awesome movie. With its exploitative sensibilities, gory violence, monsters, and lurid nudity, it feels like the Tales From the Crypt movie that wasn’t but should have been. If you’re a fan of Tales From the Crypt, Roger Corman movies, or Stuart Gordon’s own Re-Animator, you’ll have a good time with this Dagon.

Dagon is actually based on two Lovecraft stories: Dagon, a very short story about someone encountering a strange creature on a small strange island and The Shadow Over Innsmouth, from which the film takes its plot. Dagon moves the setting from a small, isolated New England seaside village (Innsmouth) to a small, isolated Spanish seaside village (Imboca); it’s worth noting that numerous Spanish production company logos appear in the opening credits. After a storm causes a yacht to strike rocks and begin to sink, a young American man, Paul (Ezra Godden), and his Spanish girlfriend, Barbara (Raquel Meroño), seek help at a nearby village. Right away nothing seems right. The village is eerily deserted and the people they do find have deformities like webbed, claw-like hands.

Paul and Barbara are separated and as he searches for her he has a strange vision of a mermaid, is chased by a mob of grunting villagers in raincoats, and stumbles into a shed straight out of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but somehow more gruesome. He meets an old drunk, Ezrquiel (Francisco Rabal) who tells him the dark history of the village. We see in a flashback to when Ezequiel was a boy that the village gave up Christianity in favor of worshipping the sea god Dagon, in exchange for gold and fish. When the gold stopped coming, they began offering human sacrifices to Dagon and now the villagers are changing “into the sea.”

All B-movie qualities aside, of which Dagon has many, Francisco Rabal’s performance as the old drunk is genuinely great. He died shortly after making Dagon and the film is dedicated to him. Paul also finds the beautiful mermaid of his dreams, Uxia (Macarena Gomez), though her bottom half is more squid than fish. At first Uxia seems vulnerable and helpless and Gomez does a good job playing these traits. Then she’s revealed to be a crazed mastermind and Gomez does a great job at this, going completely over the top, which just makes the movie fun. Raquel Merono gives a solid performance as Barbara but she unfortunately doesn’t have many scenes. The weak link in the cast is Ezra Godden; his performance does not break the movie but it’s carried by everything else working in Dagon’s favor. I suppose in its own way his performance fits the B-movie sensibility.

The budget is low and the visual effects look cheap but are still gross and effective. The CGI effects however look very fake. The mob of villagers is obviously people in masks and fake monster hands; it’s a good thing it was raining so they could wear big raincoats that cover everything else. There are some horrific and upsetting visuals, most notable a man getting his face flayed off in full light. It is incredibly gross but also impressive from a technical point of view. There’s also some implied offscreen horror that is very disturbing. Still, Dagon, even in its goriest, darkest moments never feels dreadful or sadistic towards the audience. Unlike the Saw or Hostel films, Dagon isn’t out to make you feel awful; it wants to leave you entertained. Dagon is a B-horror movie at its best.  

13 Nights of Shocktober: The Lighthouse

by A.J.

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 9: Shelter in Place Night II 
“I seen ye sparring with a gull. Best leave ‘em be. Bad luck to kill a seabird.”
The Lighthouse

Does this scenario feel familiar? Due to dangerous conditions you have been forced to remain in one location for an indefinite period of time? In this time of self-isolation and shelter-in-place, the premise of the 2019 genre defying film The Lighthouse may seem familiar. Maybe too familiar.

Horror, like comedy, is subjective and difficult to execute. One can be as unsettling as the other, and they can, perhaps often, go hand in hand. This is certainly true of the surreal psychological horror The Lighthouse, a film that is perplexing, unsettling, and thoroughly entertaining. Like with director Robert Eggers’s moody and chilling debut feature, The Witch, a standout of recent horror movies, you could make a good argument that The Lighthouse is not strictly a horror movie but more of a cerebral drama with some horror elements. Its inability to be classified is part of what makes this movie special. The Lighthouse is an intriguing blend of strange visuals, psychological uncertainty, and genuine humor all anchored by two incredible performances from Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson.

The Lighthouse isn’t so much a character study as a situation study. The plot is so simple it is practically nonexistent. Two late 19th (or early 20th) century lighthouse keepers become stranded on a tiny, rocky island during a prolonged storm. The younger of the two men is Winslow (Robert Pattinson), the new assistant to the salty and cantankerous veteran keeper, Thomas (Willem Dafoe). Thomas gruffly orders Winslow around and has him do all the menial chores like polishing brass, shoveling coal, and cleaning their sleeping area. They are supposed to take turns tending to the light but Thomas insists that only he will watch the light. Their beds are on opposite sides of a tiny room and there is no outhouse, only two pots near their beds. There is no privacy unless the other is working their shift.

From the start, The Lighthouse takes on an eerie and ominous tone. Winslow begins having dreams of finding a dead body on the shore and visions of a mermaid. We learn that his predecessor went mad talking about sirens and mermaids and believed there was some enchantment in the light. Sneaking out one night, he sees Thomas standing naked in a trance in front of the bright, glowing light. The answers to what is really going on and why are either in plain sight or nowhere to be found. We learn that Winslow stole the identity of another man and Thomas lied about how he hurt his leg, yet neither seems unreliable or untrustworthy. The screenplay by Robert and Max Eggers is clever to get ahead of potential explanations and audience theories. We learn that Winslow used to work in timber in Canada and left after an accident. When Thomas tells Winslow that he might still be in Canada having a hallucination as he is dying of exposure, that idea as a plausible explanation seems to be extinguished.

Winslow’s dreams/hallucinations are filled with strange, creepy imagery made all the more striking by the brilliant Oscar nominated black and white cinematography of Jarin Blaschke. The film is shot in the 4:3 aspect ratio giving it the boxy window look of a silent movie. The sound design mixes the sounds of the sea along with the unnatural low bellow of the foghorn is as unsettling, if not more so, as any of the strange visions.

What really makes the film worth watching are the brilliant, powerhouse performances by Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson. Dafoe delivers one of the best and strongest performances of his long and great career; his role here ranks with his work in Platoon and Shadow of the Vampire. He looks like Van Gogh’s postman portrait come to life and speaks and acts like an old sea captain. Both he and Pattinson look believable as people from a bygone era. Pattinson’s character is the one that may or may not be going insane, but his break with reality is slow and subtle. Even in his wilder moments Pattinson never feels over the top. You might describe Dafoe’s performance as over the top, but it never feels indulgent.

If Hell is other people, this movie is a window into that Hell. Winslow and Thomas begin as strangers, don’t much care for the other, then hate each other, then respect each other, then hate each other, then open up to each other, then hate each other. The humor, and there is plenty of it, is broad and awkward. “Let Neptune strike ye dead, Winslow!” Thomas shouts after Winslow says he doesn’t like Thomas’s cooking. Dafoe plays this scene with such hurt and anger you don’t know whether to laugh or be awkwardly silent. One morning Winslow, disoriented from a hangover, throws the chamber pots into the wind. When he returns, Thomas tells him casually, “you smell like shit.” They drink together, and then they drink more, and when they run out of alcohol, they drink the kerosene for the light. You watch these two men descend into madness or be trapped in Hell, and it is incredibly entertaining thanks to the actors.

If you have ever wondered what The Shining would be like with more laughs, I highly recommend The Lighthouse. This is a movie, like The Shining and Apocalypse Now, that is an all-enveloping experience. You might be unsure of what is real and what is a dream, but at a certain point it doesn’t matter because you’re stuck there with the characters. What does the final image mean? I have no idea, but anything else, any kind of explanation, just would not be right.

13 Nights of Shocktober: The Shining

by A.J.

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 8: Shelter-in-Place Night/Stephen King Night 
“I wish we could stay here forever... and ever... and ever.”
The Shining

The poster for Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining advertises it as “A Masterpiece of Modern Horror.” For once, the marketing does not exaggerate. Each scene is crafted with superb skill and contains iconic characters and images. The influence of The Shining on later films and pop culture is immeasurable. Countless movies and TV shows have referenced The Shining; it’s one of the few movies that people will understand a reference to even if they have not seen the movie.

The plot follows what happens to a family living alone and isolated in a snowbound hotel. Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) has taken a job as the winter caretaker for the Overlook Hotel in the Colorado Rocky Mountains. Jack, his wife, Wendy (Shelley Duvall), and young son, Danny (Danny Lloyd), will be entirely alone at the Overlook and, once the heavy snow falls, entirely cut off from the rest of the world. Early on we learn that one of the previous caretakers suffered from “cabin fever” and murdered his wife and two daughters with an axe then killed himself with a shotgun. Not to worry, Jack assures the hotel director, his wife loves ghost stories and horror films (though it’s unclear if he tells her about this) and he is looking forward to outlining a writing project. The hotel itself has a sinister supernatural side and the ghosts of the hotel influence Jack to harm his family. Unbeknownst to his parents, Danny has a psychic power, a sort of telepathy, that makes him a target for the malicious ghosts of the hotel. The Overlook chef, Dick Halloran (Scatman Carruthers), also has this power, which he calls “the shine.”

Watching the film this time, I found that The Shining’s sense of terror comes from Shelley Duvall’s performance. Jack and Danny are caught in the hotel’s supernatural schemes, but she is alone in not understanding what is happening or why. She is the audience substitute and the scene of her running through the hotel experiencing something frightening at every turn is the experience of a viewer watching the movie. Jack Nicholson is an actor not afraid to go big, or even over the top for a role. When Jack (the character) begins to unravel, Nicholson contorts his face, makes his eyebrows go wild, and speaks in a comic tone though his grin is all danger and menace. Child actors can make or break a movie and here Danny Lloyd gives a performance that really makes the movie. Danny is a smart child but never feels as though his precociousness is required by the script; he always feels like a real kid. When he goes catatonic and starts shouting “REDRUM!” while holding a knife it is genuinely creepy. Scatman Carruthers gives a good performance as the kindly chef. He handles explaining “the shining” well and also convincingly conveys the danger of the hotel even while trying to hide it from Danny.

The Shining is difficult to classify: it’s a haunted house story, a ghost story, sometimes it plays like a slow burn psychological horror story, other times it has intense shock visuals. It’s an odd, unique movie. Little is made of the fact that the hotel was built on an Indian burial ground. Long stretches of the film are filled with mundane things like Wendy and Danny watching TV, Jack throwing a baseball against a wall, or Danny riding his tricycle around the endless hotel hallways. Then a music “scare” cue will hit startlingly on something random like Jack taking paper out of his typewriter or a title card letting us know that it is Tuesday. If you’re paying close attention you might notice that Danny seems to be riding his tricycle on the ground floor then turns a corner is on the second floor. In a film about a haunted hotel, a “mistake” like this works in the film’s favor. The vision Danny sees of creepy identical twin girls in old fashioned dresses asking him to play with them “forever and ever and ever” is chilling and one of the most iconic images in horror cinema, perhaps only topped by the image of gallons and gallons of blood pouring out of the elevator doors in slow motion. When the horror hits, it hits hard.

Around the time I read the novel, I started calling this movie Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining to firmly differentiate it from the 1997 TV mini-series (starring Steven Weber) and Stephen King’s novel, to which the film is less than faithful. King has been quite open about his disdain for Kubrick’s adaptation which he feels misses the whole point of the novel. To King, the story of The Shining is about a man warped by alcoholism into a threat to his family. To Kubrick, alcohol is merely the catalyst, the result is pure terror, and the cause is not important. In an interview on NPR’s Fresh Air, King talked about a phone call he had with Kubrick that revealed their fundamental differences when it came to ghost stories. Kubrick told King that all ghost stories are inherently optimistic because they imply something existing after death. King replied, what about Hell? After a long pause, Kubrick said, “I don’t believe in Hell.”

I end up re-watching The Shining every few years. I even got to watch it at the Stanley Hotel, the real-life hotel in Estes Park, Colorado where King stayed with his family on a lonely, snowy night and was inspired to write the novel. I ate a delicious steak and drank a fine whiskey while sitting under a portrait of Stephen King at the hotel restaurant; easily one of my vacation highlights. The Stanley Hotel had no hedge maze, but such was the influence of the movie that it eventually grew one (it was only knee high and not very ominous when I visited). It seems too on the nose to describe The Shining as haunting, but that perfectly describes the film. It stays with you and creeps into your thoughts and you wonder if you ever really left.

13 Nights of Shocktober: Onibaba

by A.J.

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 7: Japanese Horror Night
“The Hole, deep and dark. Its darkness has lasted since ancient times.”
Onibaba

For most of its runtime, the period Japanese film Onibaba does not feel like a horror movie. Then the final act puts its characters in an unsettling situation and unleashes chilling and frightening imagery. Onibaba, which translates to Demon Woman, was directed by Kaneto Shindo, who also directed one of my favorite Japanese horror movies, Kuroneko (Black Cat), a moody and haunting ghost story. While Onibaba takes its time before delving into horror, the entire film is dark and eerie.

Set in war torn feudal Japan, two women, one older (Nobuko Otowa) and one younger (Jitsuko Yoshimura), live in a hut in a seemingly endless field of tall grass. They survive by ambushing and killing samurai soldiers lost in the grass and selling their armor and weapons for food. They dispose of the bodies by dumping them in a mysterious pit also in the field of grass. Neither of the women are given names but we learn that they are in-laws. Their son and husband, Kichi, was kidnapped, along with his friend Hachi (Kei Satô), and forced to join a warlord’s army. Only Hachi returns. The mother is immediately suspicious of Hachi and even thinks he may be responsible for her son’s death. She also immediately notices that Hachi is flirtatious with her daughter-in-law. Hachi is a gross, lascivious scoundrel but the daughter-in-law is attracted to him anyway, perhaps because he is the only man close to her age not away at war. It is unclear if the mother is jealous of Hachi’s attraction to her daughter-in-law or if she is just afraid of being left to fend for herself. The daughter-in-law sneaks out at night and runs through the reeds to Hachi’s hut and they begin a torrid affair. Soon after, the mother begins telling her daughter-in-law about demons and ghosts and punishments for sins.

The turn to horror comes when a lone samurai general breaks into the mother’s hut while her daughter-in-law is with Hachi. The samurai wears an odd, creepy mask that he refuses to take off because he claims it protects his beauty. The mother eventually steals the mask and uses it to appear as a demon in the field of grass blocking her daughter-in-law’s way to Hachi’s hut. This plan works, until it goes horribly wrong. The mask is so strange that it might be comical if it wasn’t so creepy. Even though you know it is just the mother in disguise, the image of her appearing out of the dark floating through the grass wearing the mask and long robes is still scary.

The unnatural black hole in the sea of swaying grass is completely incongruous with the surrounding landscape; it’s an uncanny sight. The tall grass looms ominously over the heads of the characters and sways hypnotically in unceasing whistling winds. That constant whistling becomes part of the soundtrack and the world of the characters. The moody atmosphere this creates in just the opening shots never abates, even when the characters are indoors. Every image, eerie or normal, is beautifully photographed in high contrast black and white by cinematographer Kiyomi Kuroda. In certain shots the background is pitch black so it looks like the actors are on a bare stage. The ending is abrupt and disquieting; it’s final image and dialogue are haunting. Through atmosphere and a few well selected visuals Onibaba and Kuroneko create memorable and frightening movie watching experiences. 

13 Nights of Shocktober: Howling II …Your Sister is a Werewolf (AKA: Stirba—Werewolf Bitch)

by A.J.

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 6: Werewolf Party Night! 

“For it is written: the inhabitants of the Earth have been made drunk with her blood. And upon her forehead was written: "Behold I am the great mother of harlots and all abominations of the Earth."

Howling II …Your Sister is a Werewolf (AKA: Stirba—Werewolf Bitch)

Good werewolf movies are few and far between; great ones are even rarer. There are a lot of ways for a werewolf movie to go wrong. The Howling (1981), directed by Joe Dante, is a good and solidly entertaining werewolf movie. Howling II …Your Sister is a Werewolf (1985), directed by Philippe Mora, goes wrong in so many ways that it goes hilariously right. Beginning with the subtitle “…Your Sister is a Werewolf'” you know you’re in for a less than serious movie. The original title, which the Canadian and Australian releases kept, was somehow even more outlandish: Howling II: Stirba-Werewolf Bitch. This isn’t just a “so bad it’s good” movie. This is a “so bad it’s awesome” movie. Awesome to the max.

Howling II picks up after the events of the first movie. At his sister's funeral, Ben White (Reb Brown) is approached by an occult investigator, Stefan Crosscoe (Christopher Lee). Stefan tells him that his sister was a werewolf and a ritual must be performed before her body is taken by members of a werewolf cult. Ben thinks the man is crazy but is urged to hear him out by his sister’s friend, Jenny (Annie McEnroe). It turns out Stefan is right, of course. After fighting the werewolf cult members in Los Angeles, they travel to Transylvania to kill the evil werewolf queen, Stirba.

By the time Howling II was made in 1985, the 80’s New Wave craze was in full effect. One of my favorite highlights of this crazy movie happens when Christopher Lee follows a suspected werewolf to a nightclub and wears those skinny, elongated New Wave sunglasses to blend in. The punk/new wave band performing on stage is Babel and the song they play is appropriately called “Howling.” They make another appearance at the climactic werewolf-orgy-costume-party in Transylvania and then appear again back in Los Angeles at the very end of the movie. It’s unclear if they are also werewolves or just really willing to play any gig.

The script seems to have gotten werewolves confused with vampires. By this point in his career Christopher Lee was already a horror icon for playing Dracula in numerous films for Hammer. Howling II casts him as a Van Helsing figure, but still wants to cash in on his Dracula fame. Not only is Transylvania home to werewolves, but Stefan kills werewolves by stabbing them in the heart with a metal stake. He explains that silver will work on certain werewolves but powerful werewolves can only be killed by titanium (because it’s the 80’s and everything has to be extreme). The battle in the woods of Transylvania with Lee and Brown fighting off werewolves with guns and daggers and swords has elements of 80's action movies and is pretty entertaining.

Sybil Danning plays Stirba, the werewolf queen, who turns out to be Stefan’s sister; that’s not really a twist since when it’s revealed it doesn’t change anything about the movie. Her performance is broad and so is her line delivery but in fairness all the dialogue in the movie is ridiculous. Her performance is right in line with everything else. She spends a lot of the movie in leather bondage gear, which seems to be the preferred choice for the werewolves.

Everything in Howling II is gratuitous. The action feels excessive and shoehorned in, though still entertaining. Yes, werewolves are traditionally killed by silver bullets (in this case titanium bullets) but the scenes of werewolves being blasted away are over the top. There is a lot of nudity and sex but it all feels either too gross or too ridiculous to be titillating. Aside from Stirba presiding over the werewolf orgy from her throne (some werewolves have transformed, most are humans, all are vaguely writhing around), there is also a werewolf threesome which is furry and silly and gross and seems to go on for a full day. It's something you never knew you never wanted to see.

There are some cheesy looking special effects but also some good, gross effects. Scenes of a disembodied werewolf arm clawing at someone look like an actor being hit with a fake monster arm. Some of the werewolves look like vaguely monstrous apes. Allegedly, this is because the production received leftover costumes and masks from the Planet of the Apes movies instead of werewolf costumes. Also, allegedly, Lee improvised a line of dialogue explaining that part of becoming a werewolf is to “de-evolve” to explain the ape faces. 

Christopher Lee is the best thing in Howling II. His deep commanding voice gives weight to just about anything he says, no matter how ridiculous. Lee was the kind of actor, like fellow horror film legends Peter Cushing and Vincent Price, that always found a way to give a solid performance no matter what kind of movie he was in. Even when his dialogue is ridiculous, or he’s in new wave gear, Lee himself never comes off as ridiculous.

Without a doubt the most memorable and bizarre sequence in Howling II is the closing credits. Footage of the new wave band is intercut with random shots from the movie and presumably outtakes. A shot of Sybil Danning ripping her top off is repeated again and again to the point of absurdity. At a certain point it becomes like an exercise in montage theory. We see reaction shots from different characters at different points in the movie cut to make it look like they are reacting to Danning’s nudity. She rips her top off, cut to a shot of a character’s eyes exploding out of his head. She rips her top off, cut to a shot of Lee chuckling in a church. It’s exploitative to be sure, but it is also so ridiculous and perplexing that the shot of Danning ripping her top off loses its sex appeal. It’s a bonkers closing credits sequence to a bonkers movie.