Ten Halloween Treats

If you are like me, then that distinguished period of time every year starting around mid-October and lasting through Halloween evening brings with it, aside from the obvious indulgences of candy, costumes and parties, the opportunity to immerse yourself in your favorite horror films for days on end. It is in celebration of this that I present you (in chronological order) ten excellent horror films that may have slipped under your radar for one reason or another:

The Seventh Victim (dir. Mark Robson, 1943)

Producer Val Lewton's masterpiece is this menacing, moody offering starring Kim Hunter as a student who must abandon her Catholic schooling to embark on a search for her missing sister in a dreary Manhattan infested with devil worshippers, ominous shadows and things that go bump in the night. With an incredibly bleak conclusion even by today's standards, The Seventh Victim generates the type of movie experience that sticks in your head for many days.

Night of the Demon (dir. Jacques Tourneur, 1957)

As he was so often apt to do, here Tourneur takes a smallish budget and fairly hokey plot and spins out of them an eerie and effective example of minimalist horror. Dana Andrew stars as Dr. John Holden, a psychologist and supernatural skeptic who, after the suspicious death of a colleague, finds himself in way over his head with local cultists and supposedly only a few days to live. Curse of the Demon, as it was renamed when released in America, has 15 key minutes trimmed out, so be sure to get the Night version if you seek it out (which you obviously should).

The Innocents (dir. Jack Clayton, 1961)

Clayton's brilliant adaptation of Henry James' s equally brilliant novella The Turn of the Screw is not only my favorite horror movie of all time, but also the most genuinely unsettling one I've ever seen. Deborah Kerr gives her greatest performance as the new governess of a lonesome and (possibly) haunted country mansion, watching over the two children who live there. Is the place truly haunted by the ghosts of its sadistic sex-crazed former employees? Is Kerr possibly projecting her own sexual frustrations and inadequacies onto the children? The Innocents weaves its Freudian themes in spellbinding fashion, leading to a controversial ending that is all at once frustrating, cathartic and utterly terrifying.



Kwaidan (dir. Masaki Kobayashi, 1964)


Quite possibly the most gorgeous horror movie ever made, Kwaidan (based on the writings of Lafcadio Hearn, a 19th century Japanese folklorist), is an anthology of four tales, expressionist in nature, with horrors that for the most part lie dormant yet throbbing just below the surface, giving the film a pervasive, indelible sense of dread. Each segment is a visual marvel, filmed using meticulously crafted sets with vibrant, popping backdrops, adding up to a dreamy and ethereal experience.

Cuadecuc-Vampir (dir. Pere Portabella, 1970)

This otherworldly piece of surrealism from Spanish experimentalist Portabella was cobbled together using documentary footage shot during the making of Jesus Franco's innocuous Count Dracula. Using high contrast b&w film stock and plenty of gothic imagery (making it somewhat of a distant cousin to Dreyer's Vampyr), Portabella sketches his own haunted version of the Dracula story, layering it with his unique sense of humor to create something strikingly original.



Tourist Trap (dir. David Schmoeller, 1979)


One of the weirder horror movies you're likely to come across. I saw this when I was younger and it's stayed with me ever since due to the completely offbeat yet undeniably creepy subject matter (involving lifelike mannequins) and the deranged, maniacal performance Chuck Connors gives. The story involves a group of teens who go looking for a missing friend and stumble upon a strange museum owned by Connors. A disturbed little sleeper of a movie.



Scarecrows (dir. William Wesley, 1988)


Criminally underappreciated 80's classic is a claustrophobic and tense-filled exercise in using mood and ambiguity to evoke terror instead of hollow shocks and gore. The excellent production values are evident in every shot, especially those where the camera slowly pans in on the uber-creepy scarecrows placidly hitched to their stakes. Look closely...are those damn things breathing? Well crafted and worth seeking out.



Ghostwatch (dir. Lesley Manning, 1992)


This infamous BBC production caused quite a stir when it hit British airwaves and fooled the country in 1992. Essentially a 90 minute scripted drama posing as a documentary special investigating a supposedly haunted house, Ghostwatch utilized well known BBC personalities playing themselves to pull the rug out from under its viewers with a grisly denouement, sparking controversy and even causing post-traumatic stress disorder in some children, subsequently leading to a decade-long ban on the program. Even if knowing it's all fake takes some of the juice out of the experience, this is still an effective and prescient artifact from a time when audiences were a little more naive, and bit just a little harder.



Regarde La Mer (See the Sea) (dir. Francois Ozon, 1997)


This superb little shocker from Frenchman Ozon has been referred to as Rohmer by way of Hitchcock, which is about as good a description as I can imagine. Sasha Hails stars as a young mother taking care of her baby at a beautiful seaside home while her husband is away on business. A mysterious female hiker knocks on the door one day asking to setup her tent for a few days, and what develops after is by turns nefarious, poetic and uncompromising. You'll never look at your toothbrush the same way again.



Silent Hill (dir. Christophe Gans, 2006)


Unfairly maligned upon its theatrical release, Silent Hill was pigeonholed by critics as just another lousy video game adaptation, which it most definitely is not. What it is however is a masterpiece of phantasmagorical imagery and art design that is destined to be rediscovered by future film lovers as an authentically haunting aesthetic experience. Set in a world saturated with fog where ash falls from the heavens like snow and ominous, piercing alarms sound off at a whim signifying something very bad, Silent Hill crafts a masterful, borderline transcendent experience that climaxes with a deliriously extravagant Grand Guignol sequence that few horror movies would have the stones or originality to pull off. And if it occasionally falls into the genre trappings of stock dialogue and plot developments, we can forgive Silent Hill for simply providing us with a world this fully realized and immersive.

Haze (dir. Shinya Tsukamoto, 2005)

One word you will occasionally hear when someone describes a movie is "claustrophobic". Sometimes this can refer to action that is contained to few characters in unsettlingly intimate living quarters (The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, to cite a recently seen example), other times it can obviously mean when a character is trapped in a tiny space, unable to move (scenes in Spoorloos, Kill Bill 2 etc.). And then you have a movie like Haze, which so fully embodies the term and so effectively paints the essence of claustrophobia in all its frozen terror and anxiety-ridden glory, that the horrors seep through the screen and fully into the psyche of the viewer to such effect as to make one feel worthy of an Olympic medal for having simply endured it.

The movie opens up thrusting the viewer immediately into the muck. Our unnamed protagonist (played by director Tsukamoto) awakens in darkness. Now whereas most movies in a scene like this would give our hero something, a lighter or match, to slightly illuminate the screen and provide something of a visual context for both the character and viewer, Haze is satisfied with a momentary patch of light, giving us a brief glimpse at our guys wide, terror-filled eyes before plunging him back into a world of complete darkness, his heavy panting and uneasy sounds saying more than any words could. He feels his way around the narrow corridors of this dark and mysterious place with his limbs as best he can, stumbling into barbed wire and other little traps, inadvertently setting himself up in some extremely cringe-worthy situations (the worst involving teeth and pipes) as he searches for anything at all that will make sense out of the predicament he has found himself in.

If it is not a wholly original concept, the execution is anything but stale. Tsukamoto's digital photography is unrelenting. The first half of the movie (which only runs about 45 minutes total), is primarily filmed in grainy, visceral closeups in near complete darkness. You can never really be sure exactly what you are looking at at any given time. It is disconcerting for sure and frequently frustrating, but make no mistake, Tsukamoto knows exactly what he's doing and his unwillingness to give the audience any piece of tiny freedom or context that our hero is not given feels fresh and admirable in a very committed, mind warping way. To give away much more of the "plot" would be a crime, but I will say that our hero finds that he is not the only person trapped in this place, and efforts to find out exactly what is going on and why give the second half of Haze its shape and focus.

Shinya Tsukamoto is probably best known for his cult series of Tetsuo films, none of which have been seen by me (I am anxious to see them now). If Haze is any indication at all, Tsukamoto has that distinct ability to craft not only a movie (a very good one at that) but an experience entirely unto itself. The most remarkable thing about Haze is that as immediate and intense, as in your face and unyielding as this material is, it still finds the perfect blend of poignancy and meditation on which to end, and it doesn't for even a second feel manipulative in the least. In fact, for all of the darkness and misery experienced, for all of the pain and anxiety felt, it probably shouldn't have ended any other way.

Sleepwalk (dir. Sara Driver, 1986)

Sleepwalk is the first feature film from Sara Driver AKA Mrs. Jim Jarmusch. Released in 1986 and clocking in at a mere 76 minutes, this quietly mystical fantasy is set in the Chinatown area of New York. Secret manuscripts, shady gangsters, possessed offices, ancient curses, kidnapping, murder and Steve Buscemi, everything but the kitchen sink is present in Sleepwalk, yet the film never feels overstuffed. On the contrary, it is a leisurely paced tale that makes great use of its atmospheric locales and quirky cast to deliver the type of enthralling natural storytelling that makes one seriously wonder why Mrs. Driver never gained anything close to an ounce of her husband's indie-god renown.

Following a voice over intro explaining in puzzling detail something about The Year of the Dog, we are introduced to Nicole (Suzanne Fletcher) who works in a typing/printing store, putting in long hours in front of a computer and pecking away at her keyboard day after day while her young son Jimmy sits at home under the care of Nicole's money-hungry roommate of questionable immigration status, Isabelle (Ann Magnuson). One particular day two men come into her store. They are Dr. Gou (Stephen Chen) and Barrington (Tony Todd, of Candyman fame). Being aware of Nicole's fluid Chinese, the two hire her to translate an ancient manuscript they have come into possession of through less than honest means. The manuscript, which stinks of almonds, must never leave her sight the pair warns her, and she has three days to complete the translation for an unspecified yet promising amount of money. Nicole begins to translate the writings, and what at first appear to be innocent fairy tales and legends quickly become portends to ominous events that will soon bleed into Nicole's everyday life.

All of this could have easily added up to Sleepwalk being nothing more than a hokey B movie filled with bad effects, a cardboard plot and stock dialogue, but Driver has something quite different in mind. As I said earlier, she is a natural storyteller with an excellent sense of pacing and a keen surrealist touch, and the events themselves happening in the film are not of extreme importance to her. Rather, Driver is interested in small, moody moments and the face of her lead actress, which is often working under muted emotions and detached dialogue in the wake of all the craziness around her. It is an enigmatic and effective performance from Fletcher and is the anchor for the air of dreamlike ambiance that often permeates through the film.

The streets of Chinatown are almost ghostly in Sleepwalk, and they provide a wonderfully mysterious atmosphere. They are often shown as desolate stretches of pavement filmed almost exclusively during the night where children and other peripheral characters wander around aimlessly like lost souls without a home. A small boy asks Nicole to help him cross the street, only to run right back to the other side again. A young girl tosses confetti into the air in a magical little moment. A businessman stops, turns towards Nicole and barks savagely for no apparent reason, which if nothing else reminds us that it is indeed The Year of the Dog, and strange things are happening. Sleepwalk is sprinkled with little moments like these that only add to the ethereal textures of the film.

At some point the plot itself becomes secondary while the movie focuses on following Nicole (and to a lesser degree, her son and Isabelle) and her journey. The best sequence of the film comes during an elevator ride Nicole takes from her seventh floor apartment down to the ground floor. The elevator begins mysteriously stopping all by itself upon every descending floor, opening its doors to reveal things increasingly sinister and surreal to the bewilderment its sole occupant. The scene bathes Nicole in the elevators shadows, allowing just enough light for her wide white terror filled eyes to pierce through the screen. All of this leads up to a pitch perfect cliffhanger (or maybe it's not) ending that gives the film a circular quality and leaves us with a unique brand of poetic resonance that only filmmakers of a high caliber are able to deliver. Driver's only other feature film was something from 1993 called "When Pigs Fly". I will definitely be searching that out, and in the meantime let's hope that she decides at some point in the future to try her hand at directing once more. After all, most directors should be so lucky to have a movie as special as Sleepwalk under their belts.

Poison (dir. Todd Haynes, 1990)

"The whole world is dying of panicky fright."

- Opening line from Poison

Poison is the conceptually interesting yet uneven 1990 feature film debut from Todd Haynes. The film attracted me for two primary reasons: first Haynes directed what I consider to be quite possibly the finest film of the 90's (Safe) and two outstanding films from the 00's (Far From Heaven and I'm Not There), and secondly the broad outline of the plot appealed to my guilty pleasure for horror anthologies. The film deals with three seperate stories, each told with an entirely different narrative model and visual look, spliced together to create a thematically consistent yet spiky and jumbled whole.

The first story entitled "Hero" is the most compelling of the bunch, and it is told in documentary format revolving around a young kid named Richie Beacon (remaining unseen for the majority of the story), who apparently one morning finds his mother and father having a fight, shoots and kills his dad, and flies out of a window towards the sky to never be seen again. This segment is made up almost entirely of establishing shots and talking heads giving testimonials, but it is effective in the way it slyly hands out little nuggets of info which put Richie and what may have transpired that fateful morning into a bit of perspective. We learn Richie was bullied, picked on constantly and made a staggering amount of visits to the hospital. Other secrets are shared and the questions continue to mount, all leading up to a splendid shot ascending towards the sky that closes the film and marks the one, true moment of beauty we are offered from Haynes.

"Horror", the second story, deals with a doctor (overtly named Dr. Graves) who has isolated and liquidated the essence of the human sex drive, and one day accidentally ingests it. What follows is a send up to the low-budget monster movies of the 1950's era, with a constantly swirling camera obsessed with close-ups and the appropriate black and white photography. As Dr. Graves quickly turns into a leprous, contagious monster, he finds himself the target of a manhunt while dooming the one woman who still loves him, all spiraling towards an inevitably tragic ending. It is tongue in cheek for sure, but not without charm as Haynes hits his stylistic bullseye and provides assuredly the most techinically competent segment of the film.

The last story comprising Poison is titled "Homo", and it deals with two prisoners in the early 1900's who knew each other when they were kids, but find themselves forced to reconnect in a much different environment. They quickly develop a cruel and sadistic, doomed sexual relationship that provides a few stomach churning moments and more than explains the films NC-17 rating. "Homo" is based on the writings of Frenchmen Jean Genet, and it is only with the emergence of this story that we begin to see exactly what Poison is going for. Haynes, an open homosexual, seems to be painting us a kind of mad, enraged allegory. We can speculate with a bit more ammo what exactly it is that may have tortured young Richie Beacon. The "Horror" story now quite obviously becomes a metaphor for the AIDS virus. Victimization, transgression and being outcast by society are the threads that tie these stories together, and I'd be lying if I said Haynes doesn't provide us with some particularly interesting things to say on these topics.

The problem is that it all failed to come together for me, and I believe the editing is the major reason why. The film constantly jumps from one story to the next in a manic frenzy, spending no more than three or four minutes on any given sequence while never allowing the opportunity to invest in any of the situations or characters. I just couldn't help but feel as though had the stories been given more room to breathe, perhaps giving us 10 minutes at a time between cutaways or even showing them in their entirety one at a time, it would have added up to a more cohesive and digestible whole. The pieces are here and they are interesting, but they are not in place, and while this doesn't take away from the importance of the statement Haynes is making, it does lead to a disjointed and rather frustrating viewing experience. I mentioned earlier that I was drawn to this film out of my love for horror anthologies, but here we are presented with a horror of a much different type, a very real horror. Though Poison will stand to me as a failed experiment, it still represents a challenging and noble first effort from one of the most important contemporary directors we have.

The Bakery Girl of Monceau (dir. Eric Rohmer, 1962)

"One represented truth, and the other a mistake, or so I told myself at the time"

- From "The Bakery Girl of Monceau"

Eric Rohmer began his famed Six Moral Tales anthology with The Bakery Girl of Monceau, by far the shortest of the six films at only 23 minutes. Each of the six tales in the collection stand on their own as individual achievements, but collectively they make up one of the richest of all cinematic works dealing with the ineffable attributes of the language of love. Indeed a common thread running through each of the works involve a man inevitably drawn to a woman who is either just out of his grasp or a little too easy. They are often contemplative and dialogue heavy with self reflexive voice-over narrators, but they are never boring, and despite The Bakery Girl of Monceau's brief running time, it remains one of the most biting, potent entries into Rohmer's ambitious and important series.

The story itself is simple enough. An unnamed law student (Barbet Schroeder) hangs out with his buddy at a cafe day after day and admires Sylvia, a beautiful young woman whom he crosses paths with frequently. He desires the courage to speak to her and one day fakes bumping into her to get things rolling. They like each other and make implied plans to arrange a date the next day when they cross paths, however she never shows and sends the student into a state of mental turmoil and obsession. To quell his longing, he begins to frequent a local bakery and indulge in their pastries, and the sweet, doe-eyed, frumpy-yet-still attractive bakery girl begins to make subtle flirtations. He acquiesces to her overtures as something of a game, he admittedly has no interest in her, and is even offended that she would think he might be interested in her, but he nevertheless leads her on out of boredom and as part of some self satisfying revenge on Sylvia, who still weighs heavily on his mind. One day, after making dinner plans with the bakery girl, the student runs into Sylvia in the street and hits it off with her once again, ditching his plans with the bakery girl, forever wondering if she was watching him through the bakery window as he walked down the street with his future wife.

It ranks, to me, as one of the greatest short films of all time. Watching it again today, the thing that stuck out most to me was the gentle jazzy minimalist rhythm that flows throughout, the same style that would be a template for Rohmer's future work, and that here gives the film the reflective poignancy and impact that allows it to stack up against the best stuff of his career. The reason it works so perfectly is that Rohmer, unlike the vast majority of synthetic "romantic" dreck that Hollywood processes these days, has a genuine insight into and fascination with the nuances of relationships and the nature of the sexes. He is wise to the fact that words can sometimes be more effective aphrodisiacs than anything on a physical level, and the verbal cat-and-mouse games that usually develop in his movies are by and large more satisfyingly realistic, complex and unpredictable than any of the American by-the-books romantic procedurals churned out by the dozen. Influencing the likes of Mamet, LaBute and on down the line, The Bakery Girl of Monceau remains a microcosm of the importance Rohmer brought to film, and is a premium example of one not needing a feature length to make a lasting impression.