Sure, Christmas is great because of the presents and all, but my favorite holiday is Halloween, my favorite month October, my favorite season the fall. Each October I try to cram as many horror movies as I can into the month, and while this month I failed to fulfill the impossibly ambitious list I set for myself (watch one movie from Australia, one from Eastern Europe, one from Africa, etc.), I did watch a much higher percentage of films that I had never seen before, and at least it's fodder for this blog to give a run-down with some capsule reviews. I'm including the 3 episodes of the Showtime TV series "Masters of Horror" because they are essentially short (1 hour) films; I'm excluding the terrific new horror series "Dexter" on the same channel.
- 1 -
Psycho (U.S., 1960) * * * *
D: Alfred Hitchcock
Well, of course I'd seen Psycho before. Too many times, in fact. Each time I watch it, I'm certain it's one of my favorite films, although as time passes I'm sure to shove more snobby choices above it. In truth, though, each time I see this film I'm studiously attentive, aware of each camera movement, squinting to catch the details in Norman Bates' bedroom or basement, gasping not at the shocks but at the head-slapping brilliance of Anthony Perkins' casting, though it pretty much ruined his career, typecasting him for the rest of his life. The film's single flaw--the final psychoanalysis scene--has been isolated countless times by others, but obviously, in a film so radically stark and unsparing to 1960's viewers, it was necessary. To my mind, the whole thing is perfect cinema. I don't know if it's Hitchcock's best film: he has about ten of those, and this usually gets short shrift by scholars who would rather put forward Vertigo or Shadow of a Doubt (Hitch's favorite) or Notorious. Horror--or, specifically, the slasher film, which this birthed--is still considered a gutter genre, nothing but "entertainment" with minimal intellectual value. But Psycho is a highly intellectual film, engaging with the viewer's expectations, questioning them, and savagely turning on them. When Norman Bates moves the innocuous painting to glimpse through a crudely-carved peephole, not only was the genre raised to a new level, but so was the game of the auteur. (This is the only DVD in the Alfred Hitchcock boxset to not feature a documentary on its making; a shame.) I watched this on the 1st of October almost as ceremony.
-2-
Masters of Horror: Dreams in the Witch-House (U.S., 2005) * * *
D: Stuart Gordon
This Showtime series was born out of the semi-annual meetings of a society almost self-mocking calling itself the "masters of horror," and consisting of the likes of John Carpenter, John Landis, Joe Dante, Wes Craven, George A. Romero, Mick Garris, and others. They would gather to drink and talk about whatever they felt like talking about; the Showtime series pays tribute to them by giving (some of) them one-hour films to express their imagination. The personal indulgence of master of horror Stuart Gordon (who recently directed the David Mamet adaptation Edmund, starring William H. Macy) is to adapt the work of H.P. Lovecraft; to date, Gordon is about the only director to get Lovecraft right, from the morbidly funny Re-Animator to the fantastically grotesque Dagon. (The other director I'd nominate, Guillermo del Toro, has yet to actually direct a Lovecraft adaptation, though Hellboy seems to be an audition for the job.) So to see Gordon adapting my favorite Lovecraft story, "Dreams in the Witch-House," is a dream. And he gets it pretty much right, again. The premise is the same: a young man rents a room in the top floor of an ancient house, and becomes mathematically obsessed with the peculiar and unique angle that the walls and the ceiling meet; turns out, it's a portal to another dimension, from which comes a baby-sacrificing witch and her rodent familiar, who has a human face. It manages to be bleak, weird (in the pulp-fiction sense), and gleefully mischievous pretty much at once and throughout--a tough note to strike without going over the edge. One of the best episodes of this series' first season.
-3-
The Unknown (U.S., 1927) * * * *
London After Midnight (Restoration; U.S., 1927)
D: Tod Browning
For a while--in college, I think--Tod Browning was my hero, my past life, a visionary who could compel otherwise respectable members of the audience to pay strict attention to--and even sympathize with--outcasts and monsters. Freaks, of course, is his manifesto: a one-of-a-kind film in which were are initiated into the secretive world of circus sideshow performers, and in which the delineation between outcasts and outright monsters is made clear (the villain of the piece is actually a sadistic, hateful woman who just happens to be physically perfect). Before working in sound pictures, before Freaks and Dracula, Browning made films with Lon Chaney, and each pushed the other to the pinnacle of his craft. The Unknown might be that pinnacle: Chaney plays a strangler impersonating an armless man (his hands are tied down by a girdle beneath his shirt) to elude the authorities; while working in a circus, he falls for a beautiful woman who cannot stand the touch of a man's hands, and who feels safe near him. Despite his machinations, she falls in love with the team's new strongman, and (I spoil) adjusts to human contact just as Chaney cuts off his own arms to complete his new identity and to be with her. Chaney's performance is astonishing; in many scenes, his legs act as arms and are every bit as emotionally expressive. London After Midnight is one of the lost films of the silent era, and one of the most eagerly sought-after, as it's one of Chaney's "make-up" films (he plays a vampire). The reconstruction produced by Turner Classic Movies lasts about an hour and exhaustively pores over archived production stills while running through the script, effectively proving what those who have seen the actual film have claimed: that's it's standard "old dark house" fare and pretty dull. (For more on that genre, see the film of the same name, below.)
-4-
Nosferatu (Germany, 1922) * * * *
D: F.W. Murnau
Each October the Alloy Orchestra performs a live musical score at the Times Cinema in Milwaukee; although the Times has become less of a repertory theater and more of a first-run arthouse since it was taken over by new management this year, they brought the Alloy back again for a double feature of this and Alfred Hitchcock's Blackmail (which I'm not including as "horror," but which a spectacular moviegoing experience nonetheless). The Alloy not only tour across the country throughout the year, they also compose original soundtracks to accompany the DVDs and television screenings of various silent films, and are regarded as the best folks out there doing so (in fact, the print of The Unknown which I watched featured an Alloy score). Last year's performance of The Phantom of the Opera was a hit with the Times crowd; this year, they seemed strangely bored and distracted, unless my subjective reading was incorrect. But it was still a great time. You can read my thoughts on Nosferatu here.
-5-
Goke, Bodysnatcher from Hell (Japan, 1968) * *
D: Hajime Sato
This one has a fervent cult following that includes Quentin Tarantino, but the only thing it really has going for it is a frenzied approach to narrative that results in lots of humor both intentional and (predominantly?) unintentional. Consider the pre-credits sequence. A plane is flying against a strangely ruby-red sky. The pilots have lost course. A bomb threat is received. Birds begin to commit suicide by smashing against the plane. A psychotic political assassin fights with the pilot. A glowing UFO streaks past, and the plane careens into the ground. Granted, the pace slows a bit after this, but only a bit. And there's a real triumph in that all of that actually begins to connect into a cohesive plot...well, sort of (it involves aliens that crawl into your skull through your forehead and turn you into a vampire). My wife and I got most of our entertainment from the American female passenger, who shouts in English "My husband died in Vietnam!" again and again while the Japanese characters look confused. I guess you can expect this from Criterion in the future, since the Janus logo was attached to the TCM print.
-6-
The Black Cat (U.S., 1934) * * 1/2
D: Edgar G. Ulmer
Edgar G. Ulmer is considered one of the kings of B-movies, and the apex of his output was the 30's and 40's, when he turned out one zero-budget film after another, the most notable being the accidental film noir masterpiece Detour. The Black Cat is notable too, chiefly because it brought together horror icons and rivals Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. Right from the opening credits you can see whose career was taking off: Karloff is listed just by his last name, but Bela must suffer both names. They play two bitter enemies--Karloff is a Satanist priest, Lugosi an ex-pupil who blames him for the death of his wife--and it's impossible not to think of them just playing comic book versions of their Hollywood personas, two ghouls fighting for the crown of King of Horror. It's entertaining enough, but the story is so absent that the events happen almost as nonsensically as those in Goke: the characters wander into the frame, bicker, scream, encounter preserved corpses or black-robed worshippers, and wander out. It has nothing to do with the Edgar Allen Poe story that supposedly inspired it, although Lugosi's character shrieks at the appearance of a black cat. (Actually, Stuart Gordon is taking on the Poe story in his installment of the second season of Masters of Horror.)
-7-
Jigoku (Japan, 1960) * * 1/2
D: Nobuo Nakagawa
Criterion has just released this truly bizarre (okay, not Goke bizarre, but bizarre nonetheless) Japanese horror film from the same year that brought Psycho and Peeping Tom. It begins with a brief vision and description of the Buddhist Hell, but then retreats for a full hour to tell the story of a young man, the girl he loves, and his bullyish friend who seems intent on bringing his dreams to ruin. Things get delirious, and a bloated ensemble cast begins to quickly die off, before the main event: forty minutes or so of our protagonist wandering through Hell, trying to find his beloved, battling off demons and witnessing a phantasmagoric vision of the various levels of Hell, each radically different from the other, but involving some mesmerizing, nightmarish vision. The special effects are quite good, and the sights are certainly memorable, but I'll be damned if I can tell you what this movie is about.
-8 & 9-
Plan 9 from Outer Space (U.S, 1959) *
Bride of the Monster (U.S., 1955) *
D: Edward D. Wood, Jr.
This month Turner Classic Movies debuted TCM Underground: a cult film (or double feature) hosted by Rob Zombie and airing Friday nights at midnight PST. His first picks were two by Ed Wood, and having not seen these in many years, I can say that I agree with Zombie's statement that Ed Wood may have been a bad director, but he had a vision, and his films are more worthwhile than much of what comes out of Hollywood these days. But his films are worthwhile because they're enormously entertaining in unintended ways. Plan 9, for example, is a comedy masterpiece; it just so happens that we're supposed to take it seriously. It's the way Wood draws out his "special effects" sequence of paper plate UFOs flying over Hollywood: he really thinks he's Ray Harryhausen. Or the way the actors deliver lines like: "You humans are so stupid! Stupid, stupid, stupid!" Or the way Tor Johnson fails to deliver any line successfully, but sounds instead like Frankenstein's monster (he's actually playing a police chief!). The dialogue is so ambitiously bad that there really isn't a good way to deliver it, but you must admit, it's delivered in the most entertaining way imaginable. Bride of the Monster isn't quite as enjoyable, but worth it for the octopus-wrestling sequences, or Lugosi's "race of atomic supermen" speech. On the commentary track of Tim Burton's Ed Wood, the screenwriters note that after watching Burton's film, you view Wood's work more sympathetically, and that's true. But it's still astoundingly terrible stuff.
-10-
The Woods (U.S., 2006) * * *
D: Lucky McKee
McKee is my favorite of the new generation of horror directors, primarily because he doesn't set out to ape anyone else (most new horror directors, including Rob Zombie, are intent on remaking The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or The Last House on the Left); instead, he's establishing his own voice: sardonic, modern, colorfully cinematic, and keenly interested in the female psyche. His film May followed a young introvert (Angela Bettis) at an animal hospital whose obsession with dead things frightens away her would-be boyfriend, leading to drastic measures to repair the relationship; wit infuses the film not just through its observant dialogue but through its soundtrack and even the movement of the camera (horror has finally found its Scorsese). The finale, with one simple movement of an arm, was horrifying, whimsical, and touching--not a mixture you get from most modern horror films. McKee's segment for Masters of Horror, "Sick Girl" (also featuring Bettis) wasn't a let-down but a hilarious satire involving lesbians and insects; my wife found it to be one of the best things she saw all year. Unfairly, McKee's follow-up to May, The Woods, was released directly to DVD in October. While it's deliberately lacking in the broad satirical strokes of his earlier films, the McKee touchstones are still there: a prominent soundtrack (notably featuring "You Don't Own Me"), female leads (the cast is almost entirely female, with the exception of Bruce Campbell as the character's father), and one wise touch after another. Heather (Agnes Bruckner) is brought to a school for gifted girls in a secluded forest in the mountains; the year is 1965. As with Dario Argento's classic horror film Suspiria, she begins to suspect that the teachers are really witches; meanwhile, the girls begin to disappear from their beds, replaced by an assortment of fall leaves. Heather bonds with a friend, stands up to a bully, and suspiciously scrutinizes the head of the school, Ms. Traverse (Patricia Clarkson). The plot isn't surprising, but it's not meant to be: McKee is a revolutionary in this genre because he actually wants you to care about the characters and where they end up. I can only imagine that it was dumped on DVD because it wasn't a horror film in the mold of Saw, Hostel, or The Hills Have Eyes remake. The gore is kept at bay until the grand guignol finale, which is still as abstract and impressionistic as something out of Jigoku or another Japanese ghost story of the 60's.
-11-
The Old Dark House (U.S., 1932) * * * 1/2
D: James Whale
Now here's a horror film that's short on sense and thoroughly charming. Some tourists travelling through Wales become trapped by a landslide on the proverbial dark and stormy night, and are forced to take shelter in a home where they're not welcome: a family tormented by the psychotic Morgan (Boris Karloff), and unspoken personal demons. James Whale (Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein), ever the artist, combines elegant camera shots that evoke German expressionism with wry, Thin Man-style comedy. It's a wisp of a film but it glows.
-12-
The Tenant (France, 1976) * * * 1/2
D: Roman Polanski
The highlight of last year's horror marathon was a Times Cinema screening of Rosemary's Baby on Halloween; this year I showed my wife The Tenant, which seems to be a reimagining of that film with Polanski playing the Mia Farrow role, and with a twist to the premise: that nothing supernatural is happening at all, and that our protagonist is simply unravelling. Of course, toying with that theory is one of the things that makes Rosemary's Baby so enjoyable; but The Tenant reminds you that Polanski is, after all, an adamant atheist and skeptic, and paints a picture that is harsher, riskier, but just as darkly satirical. Polanski himself plays Trelkovsky, an introverted Polish immigrant who moves into an apartment previously rented by a woman who threw herself out the window. Bossed by his "friends," lectured and threatened by his fellow tenants (who cannot tolerate the slightest noise), he eventually begins to unravel and lose his sense of identity--and begins to think that he's becoming the former tenant. And this was Polanski's follow-up to Chinatown! He's coming off the height of his craft, and will shortly be trapped by a scandal that will haunt the rest of his career, but The Tenant is a polished little indulgence, a whim by a director who seems incapable of making a bad film (although I haven't watched Pirates in many years).
-13-
The Hills Have Eyes (U.S., 1977) * * *
D: Wes Craven
This is one I caught on the Independent Film Channel a few years ago when they were running a streak of horror films of the "independent" persuasion such as Martin, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and even Argento's Deep Red. This one stuck out as a film made on a very low budget but using its limitations as its strengths. It takes its time setting the stage and gets you to invest emotionally in the characters, whether you realize you're doing it or not; you may cringe at the racism and bullheadedness of this vacationing family's patriarch, but it only builds your sympathy for those who have to put up with him. As the family's camper breaks down in a dead-end road in the middle of the Nevada desert, and becomes the target of some radiation-affected cannibals hiding in the hills, you agonize over their deaths, which don't come in quite the expected order. (There's also genuine tension because a helpless infant is involved.) After watching this film a second time, I was struck by how much grief the film contained: when a member of the family dies, the others react very realistically--they don't just pick up and move on. But this isn't torture to sit through. It's a smart thriller that's not short on social comment--and unlike Wes Craven's earlier hit, The Last House on the Left, this is fairly unpretentious commentary, worked naturally into the narrative, that I can swallow. It's also answers the question of what a horror film directed by Sam Peckinpah might look like (watch this and Straw Dogs back to back, if you can stomach it).
-14-
Hostel (U.S., 2006) * * 1/2
D: Eli Roth
Roth directed Cabin Fever, an empty, if diverting, funhouse; this follow-up was much more financially successful (Roth is filming a sequel), and it has a little more substance, but it sacrifices logic along the way. The premise, at least, nicely locks into the current cultural and political climate, as some of the best horror films do: two college kids, accompanied by an Israeli tourist, look for sex and drugs in Amsterdam, then take a tip to Eastern Europe to visit a secluded town and a hostel supposedly occupied by hot, easy women. At first it seems that their dreams will be realized, but the hostel is actually a venus flytrap in which those with enough money can pay to torture the captured tourists. (It costs the most to torture an American, which is why these kids are so highly prized; but the most sadistic torturer in the film is, significantly, an American businessman out to get some thrills.) Ultimately, Roth is talented but immature. That adolescent immaturity serves him well in the opening half, but the final scenes are illogical and over-the-top, if not just stupid. The best scenes exist right in the middle, as the two protagonists begin to sense that there's something sinister just below the surface, and try to find their missing Israeli friend, and I will say that this is the one film of the marathon whose disturbing images wouldn't leave my head after I watched it, whatever that's worth.
-15-
The Return of the Vampire (U.S., 1944) * * *
D: Lew Landers
Noticeably misguided by the monster mashups of the 40's (Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, House of Dracula, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, and so on), this knockoff of the Universal horror pictures is still far more interesting and entertaining than it has any right to be. It's most notable for being a Bela Lugosi vampire movie: Lugosi actually seldom played vampires after Dracula, being afraid of typecasting (career-wise, he should have embraced it instead). Here, he is Armand Tesla, an occult historian who plots vampiric domination from his headquarters in a foggy cemetery, and served by a werewolf (the makeup rips off the Jack Pierce work on Lon Chaney Jr.'s Wolf Man). The whole thing takes place in England during the war, and the Nazi blitzkrieg of London is actually worked into the plot. You forgive its weaknesses because of its fast pace and interesting digressions; it has more atmosphere than many of the Universal cash-ins from this period, and, despite its setting and Lugosi's advancing age, has some of the quality of a 30's horror film like Dracula's Daughter.
-16-
Masters of Horror: Imprint (U.S., 2006) * * 1/2
D: Takashi Miike
I might raise this rating in another month, since with each passing day I become convinced its a better film than it seemed while I was watching it. Miike is the Japanese auteur so prolific that the IMDB currently credits him with 70 films made since his debut in 1991. He is not strictly a horror director, although his imagery and subject matter in his horror, gangster, and action films are so extreme and shocking that he has quickly become the crowned king of "Asia Extreme," the Americanized term for those Hong Kong and Japanese directors who seem to try to top each other in tackling the taboo. The best film of Miike's I've seen is Audition, which I would readily recommend to the adventurous. He's also made Visitor Q, a film that made me want to scrub my eyes and brain with heavy-duty soap. Showtime elected not to air his episode of Masters of Horror in the United States (it went on in the U.K.), but that's a shame, because his contribution to the palette of the series' "horror" is invaluable. Anyway, the only thing that keeps my opinion harsh on this installment is the performance of American star Billy Drago (the rest of the cast is Japanese, speaking English, sometimes brokenly)--it's simply one of the worst performances ever put on film. But this twisting ghost story is beautiful to look at, even in its many grotesque scenes, as it recounts the horrible history of two prostitutes in a netherworldly brothel.
-17-
The Devil's Backbone (Spain, 2001) * * * 1/2
D: Guillermo del Toro
Del Toro is a true "master of horror," though he hasn't contributed to the Showtime series. He began making films in Mexico, with the vampire film Chronos, and made his American debut with the monster movie Mimic. Before making his excellent comic book adaptation of Hellboy, he released this film under the radar. Set at the end of the Spanish Civil War, it begins as a young boy, Carlos, is abandoned at an orphanage/private school in the middle of the desert; an unexploded bomb sits upright in the center of the courtyard, menacingly. As Carlos attempts to fit in with the other children, he quickly becomes aware of another presence in the ancient building--the ghost of a child, who seems to be seeking Carlos out. The film is co-produced by Pedro Almodovar, and one can almost feel his hand on the film: it's a film of warmth and humanity, with richly developed characters and a nostalgic sense of childhood tempered by tragic violence. But Del Toro deserves all the credit, and the vivid cinematography and the ghoulish sensibility are entirely his. Like the best ghost stories, it really has a gripping story to tell about histories, tragedy, and greed.
-18-
Masters of Horror: The Damned Thing (U.S., 2006) * *
D: Tobe Hooper
Hooper is a long way from his best work--The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), Poltergeist (1982)--and his episode from the first season's Masters of Horror was pretty mediocre. "The Damned Thing," the premiere episode of the second season, is much better, but still a distance from anything worthwhile. The story--reportedly based on an Ambrose Bierce story, though I have no idea how faithful it is--begins well, as a family shares warm laughter around a dinner table, and then, a minute later, some black matter drips on the father's hand, he panics, swears that "the damned thing" is back, and shoots his wife with a shotgun. After pursuing his son into the yard, he is ripped apart by an invisible creature. But from there, the story and characters become sketchy: the boy has grown into Sean Patrick Flannery (from "Young Indiana Jones"), and his wife has left him because he's never fully recovered from his childhood tragedy. His paranoia becomes justified as strange, sudden bursts of violence and erratic behavior begin to afflict the townspeople, eventually leading to riots and murder. Pretty quickly. Perhaps if another half hour were added to the middle of the film, it might feel more like a complete story: we need to know these people in order for their mental breakdowns to affect us. Still, while I might shrug off the climax, the very final shot takes Hooper's latest pet technique--blurring and distorting the image while the camera shakes, to emulate chaos--into the realm of the pure abstract. As a family is attacked in their car, shattered glass flies about the frame and almost seems to hover, while we hear feral growls and terrified screams. Nothing much else to find interesting here.
-19-
Night Watch (Russia, 2004) * * *
D: Timur Bekmambetov
The first of a planned trilogy (the second installment has already been released in Russia), this adaptation of a Russian fantasy novel begins with visions of an epic war between the people of the "light" and the people of the "dark," and it really looks like a lower-budgeted Lord of the Rings. But it's not that kind of a fantasy. After the dense narration drops us off in the present day, we begin to follow the story of Anton Gorodetsky, a reluctant agent of the "Night Watch"--supernatural creatures, living among humans, who keep a close eye on those creatures whose sinister activities take place at night. You know, vampires and such. With its bitter humor and sensational camera work, this actually reminded me of the Hungarian film from last year, Kontroll (about subway ticket-takers who work third shift). The supernatural elements are fascinating at first, particularly in the elliptical, unexpected way that they're introduced--my favorite is the girl who has been trapped in the form of an owl--but eventually it all adds up to a silly clash on a rooftop that's straight out of a Highlander film. Here's hoping the sequels foster the imaginative side, instead; so far, it's a great introduction, and now we just need to see these characters take a journey.
-20-
Session 9 (U.S., 2001) * * *
D: Brad Anderson
I have a soft spot for haunted house films, and one of my best Halloweens was spent watching The Legend of Hell House, The Haunting, and The House on Haunted Hill almost back-to-back. Session 9 is a haunted house film with some significant differences: the haunted house is an abandoned mental institution that dates back to the 19th century; it's a real place, and was really shot there; and the characters are not psychics or detectives, but working-class asbestos removers. I've always wished more horror directors would pick up where Stanley Kubrick left off with The Shining, and it's a pleasure to see that Brad Anderson's doing it. Granted, sometimes he copies a little too closely (title cards announcing the day of the week, for example), but the important thing is that he captures the stillness of a haunted house, and gives the audience time to wonder what might be lurking around the corner or at the end of a dark hallway. For much of the film, nothing happens at all. They bicker. They eat lunch. They complain about each other's music. They remove asbestos. But one of their number begins to investigate the recording archives in his spare time, working his way through each of the nine interview sessions with a young woman with multiple personalities. Another of their team seems to be mentally unravelling. They only work during the day, but when one of them decides to visit at night...well, this movie scared the hell out of me, and for that I recommend it.
-21-
The Crazies (U.S., 1973) * * *
D: George A. Romero
Sort of a sequel to Night of the Living Dead a few years before he made its real sequel, this has no zombies, but follows the same theme of the disintegration of a society in the face of a viral threat. The specific point is made that the military and government structure that is meant to contain and eliminate a plague outburst actually just exacerbates the chaos; the problem, you see, is that there's no way to tell who's been infected and who hasn't. One day, as in "The Damned Thing", someone simply has a breakdown and begins killing. But unlike Hooper's film, Romero doesn't spend a lot of time on dramatic mental breakdowns. He's more concerned with how functioning societies fall apart. You see this in microcosm, as we follow a group of townspeople attempting to escape from the quarantined area by travelling across the countryside, and in macrocosm, as government officials and scientists talk past each other and get caught up in the panicking mob. An effective and intelligent low-budget thriller, proving Romero was way ahead of his B-movie peers.
-22-
Vampire Circus (U.K., 1972) * * *
D: Robert Young
Halloween began with a late-period Hammer studios horror film. The plot begins with a lengthy prologue in which a vampiric count is slain by a mob (he has been seducing the wives of the villagers), his mistress/victim brutally beaten. She vows revenge and keeps his body preserved in a cave. Over a decade later, the revenge is enacted upon the children of the mob, and the retribution comes in the form of the titular circus, which offers disconcerting magic tricks such as animals turning into people right before the eyes of the audience. (There's a lot of nudity and body paint, bringing to mind Cirque de Soleil--another circus of vampires.) I wanted to watch something light, cheesy, entertaining, and Halloweenish while dealing with trick or treaters, and this sufficed nicely, though it's considerably more sexy and gory, by turns, than I'd remembered.
-23-
Night on Bald Mountain/Ave Maria [from Fantasia] (U.S., 1940)
D: Wilfred Jackson
Iconic Halloween entertainment, this: I vividly remember it playing during the Halloween specials on either the Magical World of Disney ABC network show or on the Disney Channel, squeezed between similarly holiday-themed shorts from the Disney studios circa the 1940's. We watched this segment between films to enhance the mood. I maintain that Fantasia is the greatest animated film ever made.
-24-
House of Usher (U.S., 1960) * * 1/2
D: Roger Corman
TCM was showing Vincent Price movies all night; we passed on The Masque of the Red Death, which we actually saw theatrically about two years ago, for the second feature, another Poe/Corman film, House of Usher. This has a really impressive pedigree: not just the presence of Corman and Price, but a faithful script by Richard Matheson and a score by Les Baxter. The only problem is that the script is too faithful (a mistake Corman wouldn't repeat, certainly). It just doesn't have enough plot to sustain feature length. Another problem is that the pivotal character of Madeline is treated like a typical 50's glamour queen; she should look empty of life, decimated. But the finale is handled well, and there's something very pleasing and comforting about watching an old dark house film with Vincent Price--and shot in Scope, with bright colors. You've also got to dig those paintings of all of Roderick Usher's relatives...straight out of Disney's Haunted Mansion ride!
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