The Spooky Season (Part 1)

Yesterday was the first day of the spooky season--October 1, to be precise--and I have been busy curating my yearly mini-film festival for the month. As I've stated on many occasions, this is my favorite time of year. For one thing, the leaves start changing in earnest the closer we get to Halloween--or that would be the case if we lived someplace that actually had a change of seasons. I pretend that it's getting cooler outside (it's actually 93) and that the trees are preparing to dazzle us with orange, gold and red hues before drifting lazily to the ground with the encroachment of winter. I suppose I have an infatuation with chilly climes. And then there are the pumpkins carved into jack-o-lanterns, the swarms of trick-or-treaters, and the inventive party costumes when the big night rolled around. I suppose it's just nostalgia for my youth, but, oh, what fun it was. 

Anyhow, I actually started my film festival a few days ago with Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror, German filmmaker F.W. Murnau's 1922--loose--adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula. I say "loose" because Stoker's widow felt that Murnau was ripping off her late husband's work without consulting the Stoker family before proceeding with the project. While Murnau altered various details from Stoker's novel, the plot is essentially the same. An estate agent named Hutter is directed by his employer to travel to a castle in Transylvania and finalize a business transaction that will allow the castle's owner, Count Orlok, to purchase the rambling house directly across the street from Hutter's home. During a conversation with Hutter, Orlok spies a locket containing a photo of the young agent's wife and decides he must have her. Not have her, in the traditional sense, but have her as in I vant to drink your blood. You know, like Bela Lugosi, only way creepier. So Orlok locks Hutter in his Transylvanian tower and hitches a ride on a doomed ship towards Germany, where he moves in on Hutter's already-overwrought wife. After some consideration, the courts agreed with Stoker's widow that Murnau had committed copyright infringement and subsequently ordered all copies of the film be confiscated and burned. Luckily, for film buffs and horror connoisseurs, the French managed to obtain copies of the film and saved it from those who would see it destroyed. Now a bona-fide classic of German Expressionism, Nosferatu's imagery remains the stuff of nightmares. Most startling of all is the vampire, Count Orlok. Tall, pale, and bald, with elongated fingers (and fingernails), and sharp upper incisors, actor Max Schreck is a convincingly malevolent entity whose visage is all the more terrifying because of his wide-eyed, empty stare. Interestingly, Murnau, a gay man who survived the battlefields of WWI (his lover was killed in action), eventually left Germany for Hollywood; his 1927 film, Sunrise, is widely considered to be one of the best films ever made. 

Hot on the heels of Nosferatu, I sprinted ahead 57 years to view director Don Coscarelli's low-budget 1979 hit, Phantasm. Combining elements of sci-fi and horror, Phantasm finds Mike, our orphaned, 15-ish-year-old hero, pursued by the sinister, time-traveling Tall Man who has murderous designs on Mike, his older brother, Jody, and Jody's best friend, Reggie. After a friend is found stabbed to death in the local cemetery (where he was, unknowingly, in the process of shagging his killer), Mike, notices some ominous goings-on at the mortuary and rushes to warn his older brother that something fishy is afoot. Jody and Reggie, thinking that Mike is still traumatized over the deaths of their parents, urge him to get a grip. However, it isn't long before the older guys find their own lives in danger. The Tall Man is a great screen villain played by the perfectly named Angus Scrimm. A force to be reckoned with, Scrimm's Tall Man is iconic yet he, somehow, never really got his due in the same way that Jason, Freddy and Michael Myers did (probably because the Phantasm sequels were unsuccessful). Too bad, because he dominates the screen every time he appears. With our trio of unlikely protagonists, the movie sometimes feels a bit like a darker, bloodier Scooby-Doo. There are growling, killer dwarves dressed up in monk's robes, a knife-wielding blonde who prowls the local cemetery, dispatching her lovers atop the graves, and a metal cylinder that flies through the air and sprouts metal spikes that drill into the brains of anyone standing in its way. Of course, this is all the Tall Man's doing, and he's got a dastardly plot, indeed, if only I could figure it all out. Filmed mostly on weekends over the course of a year, Phantasm's script was constantly being revised, with the actors--mostly non-professionals who were friends of the director--improvising many of their lines. The seeming incoherence of the film follows a certain dream logic that not everyone can embrace. Phantasm is shaggy in spots but still manages to be incredibly entertaining.

And then I was swept back a few decades for Italian filmmaker Mario Bava's shocker Black Sunday, the director's 1960 debut. For the record, Black Sunday scared the hell out of me when I was a 5-year-old. Who, in my family, thought it was a good idea for my older cousins to drag me to a movie so violent and disturbing? Black Sunday starts off in 16th Century Europe (maybe Russia but who knows?) where suspected witches were routinely put to death by the superstitious villagers. In actual fact, most of the real-life accused were innocent. Not in this movie. When a devil-worshipping cultist and her trusty sidekick are tied to the stake by the hooded townsfolk, she puts a curse on the congregants before being branded and having a spiked demon's mask slammed into her face. It's very gruesome stuff. This was the point when 5-year-old me flew out of my seat and went screaming up the aisle of the movie theater, locking myself in the lobby's tiny bathroom. Naturally, the lock on the bathroom door jammed and had to be dismantled in order for me to be retrieved from my sanctuary. My mortified cousins promptly left the premises with me in tow. It was not until many years later, when I was in my 20's, that I mustered up the wherewithal to rent the VHS and watch the movie from beginning to end. Since then, I've seen it several times and it has never lost its power to shock and terrify, even if it's never clear if the witch is just a witch or a vampire/witch hybrid or a demonic semi-zombie. It doesn't matter really because the movie is extremely effective. Barbara Steele, a scream queen who horror fans of a certain age will immediately recognize, stars as both the witch and her virtuous descendant who is "destined" to be a vessel for the witch to inhabit once the witch's reincarnation is complete. Steele, with her arched eyebrows, foot-long, false eyelashes, glossy dark hair, and black wardrobe is the ultimate Goth Girl; believe it, she has the most distinctive look of any actress of that time period. Incidentally, Steele had a small, but important, role in Fellini's classic of surrealism, 8 1/2, which came out a few years after Black Sunday. For his part, Mario Bava went on to (arguably) invent the giallo genre in 1963 with The Girl Who Knew Too Much, and Blood and Black Lace a year later.

Rene Clair's I Married a Witch (1942) begins with a scene similar to Black Sunday. A young woman and her father, accused of being witches, are tied to stakes and read the riot act by the frightened villagers, who then proceed to burn them both and plant a tree on top of their ashes to prevent their spirits from escaping. Of course, before they are consumed by the flames, the pair place a curse on their tormenters and all their descendants. Unlike Bava, Clair plays his movie for laughs. Whimsical, charming and lighthearted, I Married a Witch offers a nice seasonal offering that doesn't intend to frighten or provoke, only to entertain. To be honest, the only reason I watched this movie is because I adore Veronica Lake and Cecil Kellaway. And because the theme is appropriate to the season. From the opening scene, we are transported to 1942, where the descendant of the Puritan leader who spearheaded the witch hunt (Frederic March), is running for governor of the state. His fiancee, is played by a young Susan Hayward at her bitchiest and most beautiful. Hayward's father is the newspaper baron financing both March's gubernatorial run and the impending nuptials of the unhappy couple. When a lightning bolt strikes a branch of the tree entombing Lake and Kellaway, they are set free to wreak havoc and reap the fruits of their curse. Of course, nothing goes as planned. March falls in and out and back in love with Lake as his relationship with Hayward and her father gets shakier. Meanwhile, Kellaway casts spells, only to have some of them backfire on him, especially when Lake accidentally drinks a love potion meant for March. Occasionally funny, I Married a Witch is a romantic and endearing film that coasts on its charm (and the casting of Lake and Kellaway). It also served as a blueprint for the popular 1960's series Bewitched, which made a star out of Elizabeth Montgomery playing a suburban housewife trying, unsuccessfully, to adhere to her husband's demands to refrain from using witchcraft. Agnes Moorehead shined as Montgomery's mother, and Paul Lynde provided hilarity as Uncle Arthur. A highlight of Veronica Lake's career, This Gun for Hire, a classic film noir co-starring Alan Ladd, was released the same year as I Married a Witch and helped cement her image as a sex symbol. 

Last night, I watched Robert Egger's 2015 creepfest, The Witch, an extremely unsettling example of folk horror set in--you guessed it--rural, 17th Century New England. At a time when Puritanical strictures are at a fervor, a disillusioned English settler (Ralph Ineson) and his family are banished from their colony following a dispute with the village know-it-alls over religion. Deciding it would be a good idea to plant his brood in a remote field on the edge of a dense forest, the father erects shelters for them and his livestock. One day, the eldest daughter (Anya Taylor-Joy) takes the family's newborn out for some fresh air. In the blink of an eye, the baby vanishes. The mother (Kate Dickie) is immediately suspicious. What was her eldest thinking when she took the infant out towards the forest? What we find out--although the characters never do--is that the baby has been snatched by a horrifying old hag who has taken the baby back to her shack in the woods. After some creepy chanting and wiping something icky (magical?) on the child, the woman picks up a large knife and brings it down towards the baby's throat. Although we don't actually see the act (thank Christ), we do see the aftermath where the crone bathes in the innocent's blood. This is probably the point where I stopped watching this movie when I originally got the Blu-ray. This is some disturbing shit. Things don't get much better as, one by one, the family members fall victim to something eeeevilllll and unholy lurking in the area. The parents, increasingly, suspect their eldest daughter of being in league with the devil and their entire ordeal soon goes from bad to worse. Add to this, an enormous black goat with long, sharp horns who is more than what he seems. The Witch, while well-acted, is so distressing that there is not a single ounce of pleasure to be garnered from watching it, even with copious nods to the imagery of Francisco Goya.  The goat is extremely cool looking although I'd hate to run into him in a dark alley, or the woods, or...well, anywhere. I didn't like The Witch and wouldn't watch it again, but if you're looking for something that is unnerving and bleak, then this may be your cup of tea. Or your cauldron of toads and trouble. 

That wraps up my movie picks of the past 5 days. With 30 days of October still left, we'll see where the rest of the month leads me. Young Frankenstein is definitely on the soon-to-be-viewed list, and, frankly, after this last film, I could use a few laughs.