"A REALLY INTELLIGENT INTERVIEWER." -- Lance Henriksen "QUITE SIMPLY, THE BEST HORROR-THEMED BLOG ON THE NET." -- Joe Maddrey,Nightmares in Red White & Blue
It's one of those movies that is on just about every serious horror fans favorites list. John Carpenter's The Thing is one of the most debated and dissected films of all time, and so is certainly fertile ground for lengthy discussion. So when I wanted to discuss, debate and dissect the movie, I contacted one of my longest-running Vault contributors, and someone who has been kind of silent as of late.
I've known RayRay for more than two decades now, and I can tell you that he knows The Thing in a way that few people know any movies. He lives, eats and breathes it. So what better reason to drag Ray out of parental mothballs than to talk ad nauseum about this true masterpiece of genre cinema? The result was a Vaultcast that went far longer than most, so I hope you'll forgive our long-windedness.
If, however, long-windedness is what you're looking for, then you've come to the right place. When was Blair assimilated? What does the Thing really want? How does it work? And what the hell happened to Fuchs? Ray and I discussed the weighties, and generally rambled on and on for nearly an hour and a half, so if that's your bag, then go ahead and take a listen to this very special "You Gotta Be Effin' Kiddin' Me" edition of Conversations in the Dark. You can either listen directly to the embedded player below, or proceed to the Vaultcast page to download for listening at your leisure...
And for more from RayRay, here are some of the gentleman/scholar's finest posts:
What happens when you combine horror and science-fiction—those two vaunted pillars of genre entertainment? You wind up with some of the most fascinating, challenging, and downright kick-ass pieces of cinematic gold ever created. The key to great horror/sci-fi is maintaining that balance between the horrific and the…well, science-fictiony elements. This week, we here at the Vault, and the crew over at Brutal as Hell, have selected a bunch of films that do just that.
I've always felt that, generally speaking, science fiction's goal is to make you think, and horror's goal is to make you feel. One's intellectual, the other is visceral. Together, they make for a fascination combination, and this week I have a record-setting number of contributors chiming in to give us some prime examples...
B-Sol on Gojira
The absolute high watermark of giant monster movies--and I'm including the original King Kong in that assessment. If you've only seen this film in its watered-down Americanized edit as Godzilla, King of the Monsters, you're doing yourself a major disservice. Seen in its original Japanese version, Gojira is a stark, terrifying vision, a horror film in the truest sense of the word. In fact, if you're wondering why I'm writing about Godzilla on a horror blog, than you've clearly never seen this film.
Not to take anything away from the many films that followed, but Gojira is infinitely better than any of them. This is not a fun popcorn flick, good for a laugh with your buddies. This is cinema--a viewing experience that moves, and provokes thought. From the opening titles--one of the single most powerful openings credit sequences of any movie, for my money--it grabs hold of you, and doesn't let go.
Director Ishiro Honda is masterful at creating this aura of fear, but massive amounts of credit must also go to score composer Akira Ifukube, whose music is inextricably tied to the power of the film. It is hard to imagine the movie without his iconic score, as much a part of Honda's work as Ennio Morricone's compositions are to the work of Sergio Leone. By turns insistently dire, broodingly nightmarish and profoundly sad, Ifukube's masterpiece of a score is among the most effective ever written.
While The Thing was completely unappreciated in its time in the theaters, and roundly panned by critics great and small, over the test of time it has become one of the most beloved and fiercely defended horror films out there. At least this fanboy says so.
The alien creature in The Thing, as presented by two special effects geniuses, Rob Bottin and Stan Winston, is pound for pound, cell for cell, slimy tentacle for slimy tentacle, the scariest, most invasive and probably most dangerous movie monster of all time. It is no man in the "rubber suit." It is a monster of Lovecraftian proportion and perfection, but don't take my word for it... The incredible, pre-CGI effects steal the show, and are superior to much of what we get nowadays. But that is not why this is my favorite horror movie, or one of my favorite films of all time.
No, The Thing is so great because it has it all. The sets, though spare, were effective, especially on location in snowed-in Alberta. The synthesized Ennio Morricone score is simple, but a perfect match to the piano wire-like tension, and also was probably the inspiration for half of the theme songs of the 1980s. The camera work is perfect. The script is executed to near perfection, with each character built rapidly, yet effectively in each sequential appearance. The cast is excellent, with several very accomplished actors, and all in top form.
Unlike most films, much less of the horror variety, The Thing has an onion-like quality. What I mean is that it is a film that keeps on giving upon repeated views, not unlike a film such as The Godfather II, (I know, big comparison). When watched over and over, the significance of the "little things" comes to light, increasing the viewer's joy. An example is the scene when MacReady has been locked out of the compound. Palmer and Norris make statements sowing seeds of doubt about him, and when MacReady breaks in through a supply room window, they silently give each other knowing glances, and Norris says:"All right, all right, we've got no choice now!!" That little sequence gets better every time, and there are others.
Finally, R.J. MacReady is one of the great heroes in cinema, and I don't mean the Han Solo variety. In addition to being a world class drunk--meaning he doesn't let his copious hard drinking get in the way of saving the world--he is smart and ruthless. He rapidly picks up on the threat after only one warning, seizes control, and makes the correct calculation that there is no cost too high to prevail in the battle against the thing[s]. He is uncowed and unbowed by failure, terror and the terrible odds. When his chips are down, he goes all in.
I'm not usually one for movie sequels. We all know that they are usually (with some rare exceptions) inferior to the original, and usually just the studio's way of wringing some extra cash out of a successful intellectual property. The original Alien was one of the first four horror movies I had as a kid, when VCRs were a luxury item and movies on VHS were extremely hard to come by and very expensive (the other movies being The Thing, Jaws, and An American Werewolf in London). Alien always held a special place in my heart, mixing sci-fi and horror so seamlessly. So how do you top one of cinema's best sci-fi horror movies?
Enter James Cameron. Cameron took the concept of a vicious alien stalking crew members on a spaceship and just multiplied the horror a thousand-fold. For me, Aliens was a much more terrifying movie than the original because of the sheer number of aliens. I'm not afraid of a zombie. I don't think anyone is afraid of a single zombie. The horror of zombies is that there's dozens or hundreds of them, swarming you with a single-minded mentality. The cocky and technologically superior space marines are quickly overwhelmed by the aliens, who seem to be crawling out of every air duct, around every corner. The motion detectors showing hundreds if not thousands of aliens approaching their location was almost claustrophobic.
But the aliens weren't the only enemy. Paul Reiser turns in an excellent performance as the slimy company puppet Carter Burke, who has his own devious motives. Lance Henriksen, a staple of horror films, plays Bishop, another "unknown" amongst the crew. The android couldn't be trusted in the first "Alien;" could he be trusted now? Of course, Sigourney Weaver as Ripley continues to do an excellent job as the ass-kicking heroine, thus solidifying her place in movie history. Michael Biehn plays Hicks with a tough yet subtle calm. But Bill Paxton steals the show as Hudson, whose "Game over, man!" line has forever been immortalized in popular culture.
It's a shame the franchise went so off-course with the third and fourth movies. But Aliens is still one of my all-time favorite horror movies, and I watch it whenever it's on TV.
Many overlook the upsetting horror of 1997’s Event Horizon. Perhaps he sour taste of Paul W. S. Anderson’s previous effort with Mortal Kombat is to blame. But with Laurence Fishburne and Sam Neill as the principle roles, the film has a solid foundation of acting, and its chilling story and visual sensibilities have made it noteworthy among horror fans. Exuding a stylized sense of hyper-violence that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre coupled with Hellraiser, Event Horizon upped the ante, with its graphic depictions of death. There are no laughs or love interest, and there’s no hope to be found.
The story packs in a lot of theoretical elements, and really aims to create a unified vision of future space travel. By creating an artificial black hole, an experimental starship is able to travel vast distances through a gateway in the space time continuum. But this gateway actually opens a portal to another dimension: Hell itself. Unbeknownst to the rescue team that intercepts a distress signal from the missing starship, their boarding of the experimental rig will only trigger their downfall. The starship has returned with a supernatural presence aboard, and it begins to infect and kill the crew members in ghastly ways. With only 20 hours of oxygen, things go from bad to worse when their rescue ship is destroyed, forcing the crew to take shelter on the starship.
The special effects seem all too real, almost like a snuff film from the future. The quick flashes of Hell shown to Laurence Fishburne are almost too much to bear at their formatted speed; woe to those that watch them in slow motion. The film walks a fine line between philosophy and technology, fear and faith, religion and science, offering a solid example of sci-fi horror. But the one universal truth is that life is pain, and you’d wish for death before returning to where the abandoned starship has traveled.
Sadly, test audience research led many studio executives to the opinion t that the initial director’s cut was too unnerving, so they ordered a trimming of 30 minutes from the film, with large snippets to be taken from the graphic violence and gore. Anderson has said he regretted the edits, and one can feel for him, as he turned down the original X-Men to make Event Horizon.
I can’t say for sure when exactly I saw Night of The Creeps for the first time, though I am sure it was around the age of 11. I can tell you that I rewound it and watched it twice more within the same six-hour span. I was smitten. It blew my mind in a way I couldn’t remember a film having blown my mind before. I had seen Alien and I had seen Predator, but here was a straight-up horror film with sci-fi elements. I felt like this was meant for me for some reason. I guess I had never really been a huge fan of sci-fi--hell, I can’t really say I am the biggest one now. But NOTC took me in, sat me down and made it OK to be fully embroiled in a sci-fi mindset.
The film itself focuses on Chris Romero (Jason Lively) and JC Hooper (Stephen Marshall) as they unwittingly unleash an alien-infused zombie epidemic on campus. And if you’re thinking they’re named after George A. Romero and Tobe Hooper, you’re 100% correct. Another great nod comes in the form of classic bad-ass cop, Ray Cameron (yes, named after James Cameron, a friend of Dekker’s) as played by veteran actor Tom Atkins. To this day Tom Atkins says of his storied career, this is his favorite role of all time.
It’s truly remarkable now as an adult when I realize what a feat Dekker’s first film was. When I first saw it I just remember the childlike wonder as I saw the “creeps” slither for the first time, and when I saw the first head explode only to be eviscerated further by a flamethrower. The special effects were done by three hugely talented artists; David Miller of the Nightmare on Elm St franchise, and Howard Berger and Robert Kurtzman who would soon go on to KNB EFX along with Greg Nicotero.
I recently had the pleasure of meeting both Fred Dekker and Tom Atkins in person. The T-shirt company I work for, Fright Rags, hosted a double feature of Night of The Creeps and The Monster Squad here in Rochester, New York. I spent an entire weekend with one of my film-making heroes, and a living legend. It was a fangirl dream come true. I have more memories than I can include in one post, but one conversation that I found quite interesting was on the subject of James Gunn’s Slither. I am one person who wholeheartedly looks at it as a rip-off of Creeps . Fred said that James Gunn vehemently denies this, and that he could indeed be telling the truth. Fred said when his film came out, that people accused him of ripping off an old sci-fi film he had never even seen. His message was to simply understand that there is never a definite answer when it comes to those accusations. Maybe he did get ripped off, but so be it, Fred Dekker has far more on his mind than to worry about it. Another sidebar: The line that Atkins delivers, “Good news is your dates are here, bad news is they’re dead,” was from a day of pick-ups, and improvised.
All in all, what do I have to say about Night of The Creeps that hasn’t been said before? Maybe nothing different, but the point to be made is, if I had to choose my favorite sci-fi horror film of all time, I would choose Night of The Creeps. Go ahead, Thrill Me!
Even a seasoned sci-fi fan wants something different once in awhile. Moon is one of those films. While at first it seems like you may be watching a rehash of 2001: A Space Odyssey, you soon realize things are not as they seem. And if I do say so, Sam Rockwell really puts on a tour de force performance here, carrying nearly the entire movie by himself. Written by Duncan Jones, Moon tells the story of one Sam Bell, an employee of Lunar Industries, Inc. who is nearing the end of a three-year contract in which he is alone on the moon, extracting helium-3 to be used as energy for Earth. His only companion for the long venture is GERTY (voiced by the wonderfully monotone Kevin Spacey)--think HAL, but less controlling. Sam is anxious to get back to his family, a wife and daughter which he can only see through long distance video hookup pre-recorded transmissions that are far and few between.
The scares here are mostly psychological, which to me is more than just creepy when you're the only one on an entire planet. But then again, is he?
Moon succeeds on so many levels. The feeling of complete and utter isolation is so tangible here, so frightening, that you can't help but to be a bit anxious. GERTY, while certainly Sam's only friend and confidant, still has us curious if "he" knows more than he is letting on. The movie keeps you wondering--you'll be guessing, and you'll be wrong. Confusion abounds, but not in a Memento kind of way. It's a good confusion, one you will be thinking about long after the final few moments.
I'm not your average sci-fi fan. I love Alien, The Thing, and am a huge X-Files fanatic, but I'm not as well-versed in the sub-genre as many others. But Moon comes highly recommended. It's one of my favorite films of the last year.
Hardware was the last of the post-nuke films to get a theatrical release. Audiences didn't get it. Critics were all over the place on their feelings for the film. As a result, the film flopped at the box office and the post-nuke genre died down after soaring with films like Mad Max and The Running Man. Hardware takes place during the Christmas season in the post-nuke future, as a scavenger (Dylan McDermott) presents his artist girlfriend (Stacy Travis) with some robot parts. After a passionate night together, the robot reassembles itself to continue on with its life mission--population control.
I was lucky enough to catch this back when it was released in theaters. I was only 8 or 9 at the time, but it was a breathtaking experience for me. The visual aesthetic of the film captivated me. The film's pulsating techno score by Simon Boswell added to the excitement of the film's on-screen carnage and gore (which had to be trimmed to avoid an X rating). A shocking death about two thirds into the film added to that breathtaking factor for me.
As I got older, I was able to appreciate to an even greater degree that Hardware was one film that didn't play by genre rules and was willing to take chances. From director Richard Stanley's claustrophobic, voyeuristic atmosphere. To his willingness to try out experimental camera angles and to commit to one of the bleakest portraits of the future ever portrayed on screen. The colorful supporting cast included the likes of character actors John Lynch and William Hootkins, mixed with musicans like Iggy Pop, Carl McCoy of the goth band Fields of Nephilim, and Lemmy of Motorhead. The use of religious iconography and references contrasted against the film's strong use of sexuality and violence gives it a bit of a sense of irony.
Hardware went pretty much ignored during the '90s, but luckily for us, the film gained a cult following over the years and went on to receive both a DVD and Blu-Ray release. Hardware is hands down my favorite film to mix elements of science fiction with horror. It also ranks as one of my top five favorite films of the '90s.
From my point of view, the most plausible dystopias are the most menacing ones, and Soylent Green (1973), set a mere twelve years on from the time I’m writing this, seems increasingly, uneasily recognizable. The 2022 of the film--riddled with environmental damage, grotesque overpopulation, hunger and an increasing gap between rich and poor--could so easily be our own legacy, and Detective Thorn’s final discovery speaks a familiar language of corruption, bleak utilitarianism and desperation. ‘Desperation’ is the single word I’d choose to sum up Soylent Green: it runs through the film like a seam; in its malnourished masses, its non-status women and its euthanasia depots (the latter providing one of the film’s most poignant--and most appalling--scenes).
But, for all that palpable desperation, all that horror, there’s a real sense of humanity here, too. Detective Thorn (Charlton Heston) has a long-standing friendship with Sol (Edward G. Robinson in his final role). They take a real pleasure in life, in each others' company: when Thorn can get hold of ‘luxury’ food items, he shares them. Thorn also loves Shirl (Leigh Taylor-Young), and implores her to ‘LIVE!’, to get any happiness she can, when he is no longer able to protect her. And, of course, Thorn’s determination to get to the bottom of the ‘Soylent Green’ brand mystery comes from his sense of decency and honesty. Ultimately, there’s a grain of hope here that basic humanity can remain intact, can avoid being consumed, even when humans are unwittingly consuming each another. Humanity stands opposite the cold rationale of the Soylent Corporation, so when the tagline declares ‘People are still the same’, perhaps that bleakness has something positive embedded within it, even when a startling and ambiguous ending keeps us wondering.
Profound, clever, with a stellar cast and a pervasive, disturbing atmosphere, Soylent Green derives both its horror and its hope from a hell that might be right around the corner…
Though there's no good reason, from a technical (or even logical) standpoint, that I should call this my favorite film in which the sci-fi and horror genres cross their streams; I'll be damned if I don't have an immense amount of love for Jack Harris & Irvin Yeaworth's production of The Blob. A large reason for this was the impact the film had on me at a young age--it was one of the first monster movies I was allowed to watch on VHS--but time has only helped the film tunnel its way deeper into my heart.
It was the late 1950s, and Harris' idea was simple. Take two of the most popular sub-genres going--Earth-based science fiction and teenage delinquency drama--and put them together in one film. (To the trained viewer, there's no hiding the fact that this movie borrowed more from Rebel Without a Cause than any of the “Watch the Skies!” films of the '50s.) This didn't matter to me when I was a kid. I was too busy pondering how the Blob worked and wondering how big it could get if it kept eating. The kids were running around trying to convince the adults that they weren't just punks, and I was too busy trying to figure out how many people Sir Blob would have to eat to get big enough that he could cover my family's entire house. And I loved it.
But with age, I've come to love the human aspects of The Blob just as much as any of the carnage the gelatinous carnivore starts. Unlike other teen flicks of the era, there's so much hope for humanity at work in this film. These kids fit the same stereotypes that films like Rebel put them in...and still go out of their way to help others. There's no bad guy who's out to settle a petty score, and there's no evil mastermind who we need to hate. As a film, The Blob breaks from dramatic traditions, showing that it understands that people aren't generally as bad as movies paint them to be.
Of course, I wouldn't be ranting about this sentimental favorite if it didn't have one of the most fun monsters ever put on screen and a slew of horror and sci-fi staples. They were the hooks that got me to watch the film, and they still bring me back to it frequently. But when I look past those hooks, and remember how much I love the film's ability to spread hope alongside its camp and fear, I'm reminded why The Blob still stands as one of the most beloved flicks I've ever known.
John Carpenter immortalized this one by making it a part of Tommy Doyle and Lindsay Wallace’s Halloween night monster movie marathon in 1978, but it was always destined to be a classic. Few films manage to capture a dread sense of isolation and paranoia as well as The Thing From Another World; released at the dawn of McCarthyism and the UFO craze in a post-atomic world, the film conceptualizes all of these very real fears into a horrifying story (as good science fiction often does). The mysterious, single-minded monster that’s “devoid of morality” represents anti-Communist rhetoric that no doubt was frightening Americans from coast to coast.
Even stripped of its historical and allegorical contexts, it’s still a great, suspenseful monster movie. The titular creature is brought to life by James Arness, and the hulking monster tears apart everything in its path. The isolated, arctic setting intensifies the suspense by creating no escape for the protagonists. However, in typical fashion, these characters might be more of a threat to each other than the monster is; though the creature isn’t a shape-shifter like in Carpenter’s redux, the situation still creates a natural dissension and paranoia among them all. It’s a standard horror motif that’s been used countless times since: a group of survivors trying to keep itself from unraveling while fending off something hideous (George Romero has practically made a career out of this plot).
In particular, The Thing From Another World presents a divide among military and scientific lines, with each side battling to determine the fate of “The Thing.” Captain Hendry wants to destroy it, while Dr. Carrington wishes to study it to learn from it, no matter how deadly the results. This conflict might be the film’s ultimate legacy, because it’s one that’s shown up a number of times since, with each side taking their share of the blame over the years. Here, Carrington, the meddling scientist, is the untrustworthy character that reminds us of how dangerous unbridled scientific ambition can be.
At the end of the day, though, it doesn’t matter who comes out on top because the movie preys on the fear of the unknown to the end. For a '50s monster movie, it’s rather ominous and plays well as a spookfest on Halloween or any other cold, dark night. Even as the film comes to a close, we’re warned to “keep watching the skies,” because something might still be out there, waiting…
Planes, trains, and extraterrestrials… Horror Express is not your average alien-goes-amok story. After hearing about this film a few years back, I finally took the time to sit down and watch it on one of those glorious 50-film packs that you can find in the dusty recesses of the bargain bin. I was astounded by what I had seen; for all the typical trappings of a Eurotrash feature with cheesy, rubber-suited monsters, this little chiller was quite effective. I have subsequently re-watched and resoundingly enjoyed this film more than some may think it deserves.
The story is entertaining in and of itself. Sure, the science may be hokey and totally off-the-wall, but the craziness only serves to make the film that much more enjoyable. You can’t help but grin as the scientists calmly reason the possibility of an intergalactic mental vampire sucking passengers dry on the very train they’re on.
With the added benefit of having Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing in the film, it’s guaranteed to serve as a full evening of entertainment. The duo’s chemistry is spot-on as always, both of them playing rival scientists here. While they may be a bit competitive and pushy towards one another, they actually stick together and work as a team for the majority of the film. It’s a delight to see them as partners instead of being at opposite ends of a wooden stake. Lee goes about with his usual somber and demanding presence, while Cushing lightens things up with his ever-affable and charming personality. He also gets probably the best line in the entire film. When accused of being possible hosts for the galactic monster, Cushing responds with genuine shock: “Monsters? We’re British you know!” Telly Savalas pumps some sadistic energy into the piece when he shows up later as the iron-fisted Captain Kazan, rounding out an already impressive cast.
Upon viewing the film recently, I was also taken by how astounding some of the musical pieces are. Especially awesome is the heavy bass that plays every time the creature’s eyes glow that ominous red as it prepares to kill. The pacing of the film is just perfect, each minute growing with more tension as the alien stalks about the claustrophobic aisles of the train. It all builds and climaxes in an appropriately fiery finale that caps off this terror from beyond the stars in a most satisfying manner. If you haven’t already heard of this film, it comes with my highest recommendation. You may be prone to just throw it away as another cheapie feature, but Horror Express is probably the most exciting and charming ride you’ll take into the dark realms of sci-fi madness for a while.
Originally, I was set to write a love letter to Ridley Scott's Alien--until yesterday when I found myself trying to explain to a skeptical friend of mine why Forbidden Planet is so cool. If you were to make a venn diagram of horror and science fiction, the crossover would be ridiculous. The human race, in general, has a strange fear and fascination with technology, so there's not a lot of sci-fi out there that doesn't have at least one foot in horror territory. Forbidden Planet is no different. Inspired, at least a little bit, by Shakespeare's The Tempest, a spooky favorite or writers looking to add horror and mystery to their scripts, the film easily qualifies as my favorite sci-fi horror flick, as well as my favorite flying saucer movie.
A crew of astronauts are dispatched to the planet Altair to investigate the disappearance of an expedition lost some 20 years earlier. What they find is that the missing Dr. Morbius has set up a permanent home on Altair with his daughter Altaira and robot servant. There he survives using the amazing technology left behind by a long dead race called the Krell; but a powerful and invisible force keeps them there, and intruders out.
It's a killer flick from top to bottom. I can't find a single negative criticism to level against it while I explore it. Forbidden Planet is a seriously broad vision at the height of the flying saucer phase in Hollywood. In 1956, everyone was still aping every move from The Day The Earth Stood Still, and the era produced some of the shoddiest, crappiest science fiction in the entire history of Hollywood. But Forbidden Planet took a different route and chose to eschew the entire notion of the red scare in favor of something a little more classic hidden beneath a slick science fiction veneer.
The cast is absolutely astonishing, featuring Leslie Nielsen, better known for his zany comedies, in a serious role as the ship captain, and the flamboyant Walter Pidgeon as Dr. Morbius. Anne Francis is beautiful and hypnotic in every scene, and her costuming covers just enough of her to keep the censors at bay. To top it all off, we're treated to a set of stunning special effects and amazing sets and props. The C-57D flying saucer and the iconic Robby the Robot suit go on to make many appearances on The Twilight Zone, and this fantastic setting is rounded out with some amazing matte paintings that convey the sheer size and anthropology of Altair. It's amazing, I tell you! But we're not done. Often mistakenly believed to have a full-on theremin score, Forbidden Planet is scored by musique concrete masters, Louis and Bebe Baron. A multi-layered soundtrack of circuitry modulation that sounds alien and psychedelic at all times, Forbidden Planet's score is the first all-electronic score.
I really can't say enough about this piece of classic sci-fi. Afficionados celebrate it until the cows come home, but I have such a hard time selling your average movie viewer on it. Forbidden Planet is timeless!
* * * * * * * * * *
Now head over to Brutal as Hell to see what Marc Patterson and his crew have come up with. And if you're interested in taking part in the FINAL installment, just give Marc or myself a holler.
Straight away, the biggest problem with Rob Zombie's Halloween is that it is a remake of Halloween. That is, it has to deal with the expectations and entrenched beliefs of the preexisting fans. It is actually well made, a relatively high quality film, though fairly conventional, especially for Zombie. Also, Zombie knows what he is doing behind a camera, and clearly has tremendous respect for the material. Therefore, while an excellent effort, I think the Halloween remake falls a bit short. There is a spoiler alert for everyone who hasn't seen the movie, as the rest of this post is rife with information sure to spoil your surprise.
The new Halloween falls short because the main difference is the time spent adding flesh to the childhood of Michael Myers, and in that endeavor I think Zombie fails in his intent, which is to explain why Michael Myers does what he does and add to his story. In so doing, the family life in the Myer's home is revealed to be dysfunctional, yet inexplicable. The loser-drunk step dad somehow manages to keep the apparently loving mother of young Michael in his gravitational field while doing nothing but being a drunk slob and abusing her almost feminine blonde little boy.
Michael is about twice the age he was in Carpenter's original, old enough to beat a much older and larger bully to death with a stick and his sister's boyfriend with a bat, as well as able to duct tape down a grown man tight enough that he cannot move. Perhaps this is foreshadowing of his titanic physical attributes to come. Perhaps his rage is the dynamic force behind his strength, even at the age of ten.
But in humanizing Michael, Zombie has taken away the mystery, the abject horrific wonder of the original, where Michael was six, and apparently acted for no reason, killing his older sister out of nowhere. It is the lack of motive behind the opening scene in the original that sets the stage for the soulless stalking killer to follow. That he kills animals in the remake, and gets caught, makes Michael more normal, more of this Earth, less mysterious, a human being; a killer that we have already known and documented a million times. By making him a sympathetic character, some of the sting is taken out of Michael; the gutteral "Why?!?!" of the shocked voyeur is partly muted when the contents of the charnel house are discovered.
In the original, when the six year old kid inexplicable stabs his much older sister to death for no reason, it does not feel like much of a stretch for him to become the invincible stalking killer, at least in movie reality. Yet the transition from sorry little blonde abuse case to confused inmate into hulking, inhumanly powerful, I Can Snap Chains With A Flick Of My Wrist psychokiller feels uneven, abrupt, notwithstanding the bodycount he amasses in his tender years.
In short, as they have learned in the comic book business, if you have a mysterious origin to an important character, have a care when you reveal it, as it probably looked better on paper than it sounds out loud.
On the other hand, as said before, it is a better than average movie, and Zombie goes about his business well. The score is faithful, if not exact. Once the action sequences get going, they move at a quick pace. There are a few surprises, like when Michael only roughs up one of the young ladies committing the mortal sin of the horror flick, [having sex], instead of killing her. Also, the Dr. Loomis for the 21st Century does not choose his own fate [and is actually of less gravity than the original played to the hilt by Donald Pleasance].
And there are a few tasty tidbits here and there, like when Laurie's adoptive father muses that a rotting corporate monster is destroying their town [a little commentary about the movie and character, or Hollywood?], or when Blue Oyster Cult's Don't Fear the Reaper is playing behind Michael's first kill in his old house.
And in the very end, there appears to be a bit of a twist, something I had to see it twice to confirm. After chasing long lost sister Laurie through more than a few walls, and doing his best to kill her, and even telling her why he is there [via a tattered photograph of her and his prior, blonder self], the brother and sister fall from a height, and she, face bloodied, ends up on top of him. Thinking quickly, she produces the revolver she retrieved from the corpse of Loomis, and attempts to shoot Michael in the face point blank. After trembling and flinching through the first 3 [or four] empty chambers, Michael comes to and grabs her wrist. At first this looks like he is struggling, but upon a closer review, it is more as if he is steadying her hand, so that the shot counts. Perhaps this was the surcease of pain Michael required - he stalked his sister so that either would force her to end his existence, and perhaps give him peace.
See the problem with humanizing your stalking psychokillers? They become so needy!
RayRay is back again, true believers, and this time I am bringing you my exclusive list of the 13 greatest horror movie heroes. Why thirteen? Why not? And thirteen is a pretty scary number, so I am going with it. Or maybe I couldn’t come up with 15. Whatever.
This list was inspired by B-Sol’s post a short while ago regarding his top ten favorite horror movies characters, and I realized that there was only one protagonist. Since then I have thought deeply about the subject of the protagonist, and realized there were too many. So I decided to go for the heroes.
In any event, I want all to know I do not think this list is exhaustive, and would like stir some discussion on the topic. I surely missed some great horror heroes, and want to hear about it.
Also, I want to let everyone know this list is not about the final girl, or last survivor, or the best scream queen. This list is reserved for characters that saw the evil with their own eyes and went out to confront it, and then did so in as badass a manner as humanly (or superhumanly) possible, and often paid the ultimate price for their heroism.
So, without any further delay:
13) Dr. Sam Loomis (Halloween, 1978, Halloween II, 1981) Dr. Loomis, played by the wonderful Donald Pleasance, did it more with his brains rather than brawn. But he was also the only person to realize the depth of the evil in Myers, and realized he had to try to keep him locked away. When he realized that was impossible, he knew he had to confront his patient, and knew he had to pack heat to do so. And when it came to it, he also knew he had to sacrifice himself to do the deed. [After the sequel, the series sorta dumbed down a lot].
12) Alice (Resident Evil, 2002, etc.) Milla’s Alice, one of the few heroes on the list that could do a swimsuit calendar, is one lady you don’t want to mess with. She deals with the chemically undead caused by the T-virus handily, never backing down. She is a bad broad, and as the series went onward, only got badder.
11) John Constantine (Constantine, 2005) Maybe you hate Keanu, and maybe you didn’t think this was the best movie. But to be real, the man is accursed and condemned to Hell, yet in thrall to God, and still wrestles demons like hillbillies rassle ‘gators, and is one of the few humans that can tell Satan to shove it. Plus, the crucifix-come-shotgun is a badass weapon.
10) Hellboy (Hellboy, 2004) Hellboy, played by Hollywood’s man in makeup, Ron Perlman, is a super, duper badass. He has it all: no looks, one good hand, and a Good Samaritan. Plus, he can speak to the dead. Being the son of Satan, yet fighting for the good guys has to wear on a guy’s psyche, but that has not stopped ol’ Red yet. Few of our heroes can deliver a snappy line while fighting creatures of Lovecraftian terror, like Samiel, The Desolate One.
9) Michael (Dawn of the Dead, 2004) Michael, played by Jake Weber, is the Superego awash in Id at the Crossroads Shopping Mall. He keeps his cool, puts the other hormonally challenged males in their place, and quietly becomes the leader of the small band of survivors. He faces the horror of the situation without fear, and when his chips are cashed, he walks away from the table with a nary a complaint.
8) Dutch (Predator, 1987) I am sure I will hear it that this is not really a horror movie, but if not, then neither is Godzilla. In any event, Dutch, one of Ahnold’s best played roles, is a super badass. First, he and his team dispose of an entire company of bad guys, and then, like little Indians, his squad is picked off. But does Dutch panic? No, he tells the little Commie girl to get to the chopper, and then takes care of business. Which is not a problem, except business is 7 feet tall and packs a small nuke. Just for surviving, Dutch makes the list.
7) Wray (Planet Terror, 2007) Not only does Freddie Rodriguez’s Wray never miss, he makes his girl Cherry Darling into a walking zombie destroyer. But before she rules the wasteland, he has to take care of business, which includes taking out most of the zombies in Texas. Though his origins aren’t clear, what is is that Wray was an undercover agent and/or commando, and if killing was his business……
6) Clarice Starling (Silence of the Lambs, 1991) Jodie Foster’s Starling is at once a delicate, pale West Virginian girl running from demons, and at the same time a vicious hellcat with a big brain. She not only figured out who he was, she single-handedly went after Buffalo Bill into his lair. Not for the faint of heart. And while she did get a little lucky that Bill was cocky, as they say: fortune favors the bold. And most importantly, she was the music to tame the most savage of hearts, that of the good doctor’s.
5) Professor Abraham Van Helsing (Bram Stoker’s Dracula, 1992) Sir Anthony’s Van Helsing was, in my humble opinion, the version of the character played with the most vim and vigor. While stodgy and old, he was nonetheless the most knowledgeable of the vampire hunters, as well as the one who stiffened the others’ backbones for the hunt and kill of “wampyres…….nosferatu……” Not to mention he seemed to get a kick out of it, and the slaying of the blood sucking undead never seemed to bother his appetite for rare beef or strong, dark ales. My kind of guy!
4) Father’s Merrin & Karras (The Exorcist, 1973) For this one there is a double bill. I could not decided which of Pazuzu’s nemeses to choose, so I went with both. Max von Sydow’s Merrin brought gravity and professorial steadiness, while Jason Miller’s Karras was devotional anger at the defilement of innocence. Both priests fought for the soul of young Regan, no matter what temporal torments, or whose voice, the demon threw at them. And in their single combats each paid the ultimate price for that little girl, but they succeeded.
3) Ash (Evil Dead I-II, Army of Darkness, 1992) I know this is going to get me grief. Ash is only number 3?!! Sorry, kiddies, but at least he cracked this rarified air. Hey, if asswhippery were a religion, Ash would be the patron saint. He also gets points for introducing the phrase “pillow talk” to medieval Europe. But the man can’t remember 7 lousy syllables. However, he did lop off his own hand, and he can handle a rifle like few others. And he saved the world in both the 13th and 20th centuries, so he gets to be in the high pantheon. Plus, being the King of the One Liners makes him that much more awesome.
2) Ellen Ripley (Alien 1979, Aliens 1986, etc.) Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley is the very first female action hero. She goes from junior officer on a doomed interstellar freighter to leading a bunch of badass space marines, to the savior of mankind. Not only does she tangle with one of the most fearsome creatures man ever encountered in the stars, she wins. And she only got angrier and more badass as the series went along, though the quality of the movies declined as an inverse proportion to her badassery. Notwithstanding, she took the Queen on, woman to woman, and it was no small feat to have defeated such an implacable, indefatigable foe. Especially one so pissed off.
1) R.J. McReady (The Thing, 1982) Kurt Russell’s McReady, the surly, Scotch swilling, chess playing chopper pilot at Outpost 31, is number 1 on this list. This may be controversial, but that’s why people do silly lists like this. McReady is number 1 because a) he faces what I consider to be the scariest monster of all time, b) he does it in the worst conditions I can think of, c) he rapidly realizes the gravity of the situation and does not lose his mind (unlike Blair, who does, or Fuchs, who commit suicide), and computes that this is a battle for the planet. He also gets that if they lose, humanity is gone. He takes control in a situation more suited to madness, never loses his cool, and is willing to pay the ultimate price from the word go. That, and he is handy with a flamethrower.
So there it is, true believers. I look forward to hearing from all the Vault Dwellers on how awesome I am for making this list. I hope you enjoy chewing it over as much as I enjoyed making it. Until next time……..
(We join our regularly scheduled blog post, already in progress.)
While still young, I did succumb to more than one “devil movie.” The two most famous were of course The Exorcist and The Omen. While The Exorcist was one thing all to itself, The Omen was rather the flagship to a genre of ‘70s devil movies. While The Omen was creepy, mostly because of that chubby little kid, there was one titled Devil Dog, Hound of Hell. Now this sounds stupid, like a Drake’s cake gone wrong. But to the ten year old me who decided to watch it on either the “Five Star Movie” or “Drive in Movie” on channel 5 one Saturday afternoon, it was a little more than that.
Now that lousy movie “Devil Dog…” was one of those poorly shot, poorly produced, poorly scripted ‘70s horror endeavors where the film is so bad that it is dark during the day time. And I think it was this poor film quality coupled with a fairly decent devil story. Now, why were devil stories so effective? I think it can be summed up in that a) the devil (or Devil), is all consuming evil, way more evil than just a zombie or slasher, and b) the devil always came in the package you were least expecting: a little girl, a little boy, or, in this case, a little puppy. It is the destruction and the perversion of the innocent into something diabolical that really makes devil movies, and their related genre scary. The same effect can be applied to other stories of a similar vein, like Children of the Corn, and for its part, Pet Semetary’s Gage.
I won’t say much about The Exorcist, as it is like a 5 tool player in baseball (it scares for average, scares for power, etc…), except that a) some of the really scary parts are when you just see the shadows of the demons, and b) when Regan bends over backwards to scuttle down the stairs – whoa, that’s a bad 3 seconds of film. Why? Because it is friggin’ weird, and weird is scary.
A few weeks back B-Sol was good enough to do a post on Hieronymous Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights, and in particular, the Hell portion of the triptych. The thing is, while the Hell portion is obviously terrifying, the other two panels, one of Eden, and the other of Earth, are both so weird (and ahead of their time, for purposes of fantasy and science fiction), that they border on the scary. Scary in the sense of making no sense, the horror of a topsy-turvey world. In the Eden Panel, there are the naked Adam and Eve with a clothed Jesus (ok, nothing weird yet), but the surroundings are filled with never-before-seen animals, and a really strange castle in the center. The middle portion of Earth is even worse, with a multitude of nude figures with an enormous amount of oversized birds, fruit, strange vehicles, and in the far background, even stranger creatures and weirder architecture. And the Hell portion is, well, Hell. What is all the fuss? Well, what I am saying is that the weird can be scary, and this triptych is friggin’ weird.
A recent example as to the frightening nature of the weird is the video from The Ring. There really isn’t anything scary about it. But it is shot in that off-color, with strange set pieces (ladder against a wall, centipede running through a living room, the silhouette of the tree), weird sounds, and doesn’t make much sense. But there is a malevolence running through it that is expressed via its strangeness, which fills one with unease. Unease is the first level of fear.
Mr. Hungus cited David Lynch’s Lost Highway as an example of unnerving cinema. I agree, and put forth that another Lynch classic, Blue Velvet, while also not a horror movie by any stretch, is also disturbing as the characters are nearly alien in their various versions of madness. It has always turned my insides how the characters seem to choose to follow the wrong path at every turn, how it almost doesn’t make sense.
Weird first scared me when I saw the Beatle’s Yellow Submarine. While the Beatles are about the least scary rock band in history, Yellow Submarine, with the Blue Meanies, can scare any little kid. Why? In part because the story is really weird, with really strange creatures, and makes little sense, and also because the Blue Meanies are really weird as well, and in addition, they are cruel for cruelty’s sake. Now, I don’t think Yellow Submarine is scary as an adult, it does bring me to my next observation – cruelty is scary.
Cruelty has a tremendous effect on me. That otherwise normal human beings are capable of the most inhuman acts is the terrifying part of being human. Not to wax political, but we in America are often given to the illusion that all we have wrought is good because we are good, and only the bad people have done awful things. Things that the Communists did in Russia, China, or Cambodia. Things that the Nazis did in Germany, Austria, or Poland. Or the Japanese did in the Pacific.
What is lost in this worldview is that the awful occurrences did not happen outside the purview of good people, but rather despite them, or with their assistance. Horrible human acts by otherwise normal people are not impossible. Cruelty has, more often than not, been the norm. And it percolates just below the surface of all of us. All it might take is one act, or one person, one event to bring it all up, and terrible deeds will come to pass.
Torture porn, a genre of which I am not a great fan, attempts to use cruelty for this sake, to get at us under our skins. Like in Hostel, where there is systematic kidnapping/torture/murder, the scary thing isn’t the torture itself, but that people want to torture, to maim, to kill, and even videotape it, like in Vacancy. It is scary because we are all, in the right time and place, capable of some very awful things.
For instance, the most horrible scene of cruelty in the classic Texas Chainsaw Massacre comes not when Leatherface is chasing anyone with his saw, but when he suddenly appears from a corridor, smashes a fellow human on the head with a mallet, and then, while the body is violently twitching, drags it inside, and then slams the door closed. It is the casual nature of the act which reinforces the cruelty. On the other hand, over time, other slashers, like Jason Voorhees or Michael Myers, are rendered less scary in that they only do what they do but for no other reason than that’s what they do. They do not do it out of any cruelty – they are essentially knife/axe/machete wielding zombie automatons.
Sometimes annihilation comes from large groups. Being faced with the overwhelming force of a community bent on my own destruction, like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, is a form of group cruelty, in that it seeks the end of my person, if not my torture. The scary aspect isn’t that they are alien plants, but that it is everyone but me. Body Snatchers is about being the last free thinking man amongst the Nazis, the Bolsheviks, or the Khmer Rouge.
The Shining is a similar dynamic, but instead of human cruelty, or reeducation via seedpod, the overwhelming forces arrayed against the Torrance family is that of ghosts through the transmitter of a sentient building, the Overlook Hotel. But that malevolence is something more seething than apparent, and only is truly manifested in the third act of the film. But it is its cruel nature, wanting sacrifices of blood, that makes the Overlook such a scary hotel.
In that vein, I think we begin to return to the unseen. I wrote my first post about The Thing by John Carpenter, and state unequivocally that it was the scariest horror movie of all time. I think that the horror from this movie is that, like Body Snatchers, the monster lurks within, with other factors elevating the terror. This is no longer an anti Communist, anti-intellectual screed (as was its titular predecessor, as well as Body Snatchers). Rather, the fright is of the psychological nature, when the civilization of the men involved breaks down (fear of madness), when they realize they no longer know each other, or truly know themselves. What could be more frightening than not knowing if you continued to be you? Couple this with the thought that if in fact you are you, at best one of your colleagues is harboring a very slimy and malevolent monster under his skin. The isolation of each character, from himself, from his friends, and from the rest of the world, is total. Personally, I think I would have flipped my lid like the character Windows, and beat a hasty trail right to the arsenal (I often think how the shotgun would vitiate most horror movies plots, but probably not The Thing).
Well, that’s about it for now, gentle reader. As Mr. Hungus asked: What scares you?
Recently, my co-contributor Karl Hungus posted a great piece on what turns the screws of his fears. I could not help myself, and have decided to return the favor.
My earliest fears - that is, the first movie to really scare the bejeezuz out of me – was a mixture of The Hand with Michael Cane, and Sasquatch. I can recall these movies being on a television when I was very young, and I was not able to understand them. They may have been playing on what would by now be an antique movie player, either an early VHS or maybe some sort of laserdisc system (anyone recall “Selectivision??”). In fact, for a long time (whatever a long time is to a 4 year old) I conflated these two movies together. But what was it that scared me? The autonomous hand? The concept of some monster named ‘Sasquatch’ roaming the dark woods? I think that it was just that these movies were scary, and therefore I was scared by them.
Not too long after the Hand/Sasquatch caper there was a television showing of the first true fear I would experience on film. This was different than the abstract experience from above. Rather, this was something I perceived could happen to me, and it continues to affect me. The movie was Spielberg’s “Jaws” and I am still afraid to swim in any body of water alone, much less swim in any body of water, alone or otherwise, at night. This includes shallow, above ground swimming pools.
What was it about Jaws? Well, it did have the advantage of at least being essentially plausible – people had really been attacked and eaten by sharks, most gruesomely by the infamous white shark. That both the robot shark and the real life versions are so awesomely built to inspire human fear they border on a parody of the form – huge mouths in a dreadful smiley-face, with mandibles that can diabolically disengage for larger bites, filled with row about row of symmetrically triangular razors – it is almost too much, like a child’s drawing. Further, it was not unusual for me and mine to spend a good deal of time in the water, as we loved swimming and beaches (still do).
Well, I can chalk a lot of the fear about Jaws, in addition to the plausiblilty, up to that there was a) the prospect of being eaten alive – which has got to be painful in the extreme, and b) that it came from nowhere. That is, you never saw it coming until it wanted you to see it coming. While the shark does reveal itself at times by the fin, whenever it went in for a kill, it came from underneath. I think that the two most terrifying “kills” are the opening scene, where the shark essentially comes out of nowhere to take the skinny-dipping girl, and the later scene, when the boy on the raft is killed.
The first – the girl killed at night, gets to me because she cannot possibly see the shark, and was trusting of the ocean to not send something wicked her way. And there she is, a fragile human full of the belief nothing can go wrong, until suddenly she is without a leg. Oh, the horror. And you pretty much don’t see the shark, either. In the end there is barely enough of her left to fill a bedpan.
In the second scene, where the boy is killed in broad daylight, you again don’t really see the shark, except as it completes a “death roll” as the rest of the swimmers run for it. Now, this scene got to me young because that could have been me on that raft. But, as I have gotten older, it has turned more into the instinctual “protect the young" fear. While I am not a parent yet, I am the oldest in my family, and have a very developed protective streak, and the idea of being unable to prevent a child in my charge from harm, much less becoming a snack for a giant fish, is unconscionable. When the camera closes in on the poor mother in her sun hat searching the surf for her son, it is almost unwatchable for me now.
Finally, there is a third scene, which is the death of the character of Quint. He is an implacable foe of the shark, bent on vengeance, clearly cast as a latter day Ahab. But in his final scene, when the shark has breached the transom and all but sunk his Orca, he is kicking and squealing like a baby, all for naught. Even the toughest succumb to the Leviathan is the unspoken moral.
Notwithstanding that I was already damaged goods from Jaws, my good ol’ Uncle Pat decided it would be a great idea to take me and my cousin, Jenn, to see the brand new adventure film at the local drive-in in New Jersey. We had gone to this drive-in before, having seen both The Muppet Movie and The Empire Strikes Back there. This time, though, with Raiders of the Lost Ark, we were in for fare a little more suited for adults. Frankly, the only scene that got to me was the melting faces. It didn’t get to me at the time, only later, when I tried to go to sleep after an extremely satisfying movie going experience. I closed my eyes and all I saw was the wire rimmed spectacles falling from the disintegrating face of Major Arnold Toht, over and over again. As for Jenn, to this day she never got over the chamber of the serpents.
I am unsure why, beyond the obvious, this got to me. I suppose it had a lot to do with the idea of the pain of a melting face, coupled with the idea of being so bad that God is that mad at you. It’s worse than the Devil being mad at you, I guess.
I appreciated Mr. Hungus’ inclusion of the film “Pet Semetary” in his piece. Being a precocious child, as well as always trying to prove myself to the adults in my family, I read the novel as a 3rd grader (it took me a long time to get through, though – most of a year, if I recall). I was blessed with the type of parents that would permit me to read just about anything, including Stephen King, and this one looked good. Well, let me tell you…………
Pet Semetary might be the all around scariest King book, and was by far the scariest King I ever read. As a kid it was mind-bendingly terrifying. It had it all – reanimated zombie cats, ghosts coming without warnings, children’s deaths, reanimated zombie children, and a twisted sister locked in the attic. There was a blackness in the horror of Pet Semetary that most horror books lack. And somehow this blackness translated into the film.
I suppose, at the outset, Pet Semetary has an advantage of being scary as it threatened the well being of children. As can be seen by what I related above, in addition to my own safety, as I got older there developed in me the fear of harm to the helpless. To be unable to save Gage from the truck is unimaginable; the fear of being a parent and losing a child is only moreso.
In addition to this, though, is that the dead return to life rather surly. They aren’t slothful, moaning zombies, but actually motivated agents of great evil. Churchill the cat was not pleasant after his stint in the Micmac burial ground, and Gage literally brings the voices of Hell. Mr. Hungus had it nailed with his analysis of the showdown between Gage and the old man, Jud. It was scary in the book, and this was faithfully translated into the film version. And while the Achilles severing was awful, the part that got me was when Gage swipes the corners of Jud’s mouth with the scalpel. (Fans of Asian cinema might see shades of this in the character Kakihara from the incredible Ichii the Killer.)
Taking a little break from speaking about horror fiction, I would like to talk a little about horror fact. Don’t hold this against me, but I used to live in a haunted house. “A haunted house?” you say? Yeah, a haunted house. Two story, full basement, fully attached, single bath, on 77th Street in Brooklyn. For 19 years.
How is this possible, you say? I don’t know. I don’t really believe in the supernatural [though I do not affirmatively deny it, either]. But the house was haunted, and you don’t have to take my word for it. You can ask just about anyone who ever lived there, or even anyone who ever spent a little time there.
Like I said, it is a pretty nondescript house. In fact, the only thing that can really give any credence whatsoever to this series of vignettes is that fact that the house is rather old for our part of Brooklyn, built sometimes during World War I, and probably before America’s entry into it in 1917.
When I was a kid, my mother’s parents lived there, and we moved in when I was 4. I don’t recall really any strange experiences when I was that young, or any stories, but I didn’t like the basement. The stories would come later, which would only confirm events that I was around for. In the spirit of full disclosure, I never actually SAW anything. But my sister and my parents both did. My experiences with the haunted aspect were just amorphous feelings, instincts, hackles.
See, this house, which I loved dearly, and had many great times in, was the seat of my family’s warmth and love. But, for whatever reason, the shadows in certain corners were darker, more inky, than in other places. And there were certain parts which just didn’t feel right – a closet in a bedroom, corners in the basement – and at times it seemed like there were places light didn’t, couldn’t, or wouldn’t, penetrate.
Like I said, I never affirmatively experienced anything. But I can remember being in the basement [which was always disorderly, chock full of stuff in random stacks] as a child, either playing with electric trains set up down there [it was the only area big enough], or looting though the vast, moldering library for many hours at a time, amusing myself with finds from the magical to the titillating. And at first, when I would turn on the lights, and the shadows would flee, I would be fine, and I would set to doing what I planned. And sometimes, after an uneventful while, I would feel something. I would feel it on the nape of my neck, or the base of my spine. And the little hairs would rise. And suddenly I realized that beyond the light lay the shadows in the corners. And then I didn’t feel so safe and secure, and when the opportune moment would arise, I would bolt back up the rickety stairs to the safety of the upper floors.
Then there would be other times, when I was old enough to be home alone [I guess around 12 or so], and I would come home from school, and my sister and brothers were at the sitter’s house, and I would, as just about every kid would do, watch TV. I would start watching at 3:30pm, watching GI Joe, the Transformers, Voltron, and maybe some other half hour long commercials. As the hours crept by, the house would get progressively darker, the shadows slinking ever closer. But me, being in front of the boob-tube, would seldom notice until maybe I was thirsty for more Sunny Delite. As I would turn to get up, it would dawn upon me that the house was, aside from the pale TV glow, entirely dark. And I mean COMPLETELY dark. And that is when I would feel like I was on display, out in the open. I cannot say I felt any overt malevolence, but it was certainly no attention I wanted. Again, instinct would take over and I would freeze until I could summon the will to move, and when I moved it was with the speed I could muster, and I would bolt to the nearest and brightest light I could. Once that light was on, I would then systematically turn on all the lights in the common areas of the house, and again breathe a sigh of relief, for once again I was delivered.
Okay, you're thinking: “Alright, this guy says he lived in a haunted house, and all he is telling us is he is a little wussy who was afraid of the dark.” But I said I never saw anything. However, when I was about 13, and my sister was about 8, and my whole family was home one weekend evening, my sister out of nowhere begins to scream bloody murder. She was upstairs in the bathroom, my mother preparing the usual Saturday feast, and my Dad and I in the living room, probably watching some type of sports. My father and I run up to see what’s wrong, and she related the following: she was taking care of business in the usual fashion when a silhouetted face appeared in the window of the bathroom door [there was an old style, fogged window on the upper third of the door], and the handle began to rattle. She realized it was too tall to be any of us, and thought there was an intruder, so she began to scream at a volume and pitch only achievable by 8 year old girls, and as she did so, the face disappeared.
My Dad and I [mostly my Dad, I was only 13], checked the upstairs, and nothing was amiss or out of place. My sister was not one to make such stories up, and she was clearly shaken from the event. That night we had my aunts [my Mom’s sisters] coming for dinner, and we told them about this strange story, and how silly my little sister was for scaring herself.
Instead of sharing in the laugh, they both looked at each other, and then at my Mom, and with knowing smirks, they each began to tell tales of when they were girls it the house, and of strange goings on, etc. One story they told me was of meeting an old lady after Church, named Mrs. Loughlin. Mrs. Loughlin and her husband lived in the house before my grandparents and sold them the house. Mrs. Loughlin, according to my aunts, told them that one day, years after her husband had died she walked into the bathroom to see him standing there shaving, only to disappear after he turned around to look at her. She then told of a boy, in his teenage years, who had lived there before her, and had died tragically while riding the train to a school dance, and was said to still inhabit the walls. This was the first time I realized that I lived in a haunted house.
Time passed, and the house remained in its usual state – shadows darker than usual, corners that remained uninviting, yet we were all living happily within. My parents had two more kids. While I still never saw anything, I would mark how objects would occasionally disappear, and reappear later in unexplained fashions. In fact, I named this effect “Fred” and joked with friends that Fred lived in the basement.
Then one summer evening before I went away to college, I came home late from hanging out with the guys. My parents had had company for dinner that night, and were still awake talking after the company had left. As I come in my father calls me over to the dining room, saying they has something to tell me, which turned out to be the definitive ghost story from 77th Street.
The story went as follows: after the usual large Saturday night feast of steaks and all the sides, and after the company left and the boys [then 8 and 5 years old, respectively] were put to bed, Mom and Dad stayed up, talking over a glass of wine. Both my sister and I went out. At one point, when all was quiet, they hear a snuffling, a whimpering, of a child, and cautious footsteps one at a time coming down the stairs. My Mom said she called out to the footsteps, thinking it was one of my brothers upset at something, maybe not feeling well, or had had a nightmare. When she called the footsteps stopped. My father told me he called out next, this time using their names, but there was no response. At this point they both realized something was amiss, and my Dad got up and started towards the stairs. He then told me that as he approached the stairs he heard the footsteps go up, one at a time but quickly, and as he got the foot of the stairs, he saw a shadow turning the corner of the landing. He went up the stairs, and there found both my brothers both sound asleep, wrapped tightly up in their blankets. They had never gotten out of bed.
It was clear they both were disturbed by this tale, though also somewhat exhilarated, in that they felt that they were privy to something truly mysterious and otherworldly, or at the very least, weird. They asked what I thought, and I didn’t have a good answer for them.
Years later, the year I graduated college, our family moved out to a new house. My Dad and I spent many hours cleaning out the various corners of the 77th Street house, including the most forbidding of corner and closets. It was in more ways than one a cathartic activity. The next Spring, while we were waiting to sell the old house on 77th, I was using the all but empty house as a study hall for me and my study group from graduate school. We were there daily, and we even made up keys for them in case they had to get in and I wasn’t there. During our finals that Spring I was going to meet my fellow students one day, and for whatever reason I arrived a few minutes after they did. I found them both sitting on the front stoop, with the front door open, and the both of them wide-eyed and ashen faced. I asked what was wrong, and Pat said that he didn’t know what was up, but they both had no idea what was going on. I turned to Cheech, and he said that they were sitting there, talking about the day’s study itinerary, when there was a flash of light from nowhere, and a set of bongos that Pat [a Deadhead] had brought over on another day began to play by themselves. At that these two fully grown men, in the middle of broad daylight, ran out of the house in fear. I am not making this up.
At that point I was constrained to explain the history of my soon to be former house, and after that it took a little reassuring to get them back inside. I had to say it was a little creepy, but nobody ever got hurt. After a little while, we reconvened our study group, but they were never able to just let the random sound of the house settling go without a furtive glance.
I swear to you, gentle readers, that the events as set forth above are 100% true, and that I only changed some names for the sake of privacy in these electronic days.