October Horror 2013: 8 - The Mummy (1932)

Similar to last year's Call of Cthulhu, I find myself somewhat ill-equipped to react appropriately to a movie like this.  Now, while it at least has sound, it's still black & white and comes from an era far removed from modern horror cinema.  Camera placement back in the day was a very different animal than it is now.

That said, 1932 was in a pre-steadicam era and as such the camera was generally placed on a tripod and operated mechanically in the few instances they required panning.  There were some shots where the frame shook violently, and I'd believe those to be where the camera was handheld for close shots or some more complex movement.  One particularly impressive movement was of a camera from behind two characters in an arc before stopping suspended over a pool of fog, which then became a sort of flashback/film-within-a-film.  I'd assume it was thought of as impressive back in the day when all effects were done with optical compositing, and this would even be the early days of compositing.

The Mummy's plot concerns an archeological expedition to Egypt which unearths the tomb of Imhotep.  Against the advice of their occult consultant the expedition leads decided to bring up the mummy and also read aloud a found scroll which inadvertently brings Imhotep back to life and he wanders off.  10 years later the original archeologist's son is leading a somewhat fruitless expedition in Egypt when he's interrupted by a man named Ardath Bey who shows him where to uncover the tomb of princess Ankh-es-en-amon, claiming that Egyptian natives aren't allowed to dig up their dead and he must tell a foreign archeologist where he found an artifact.

As to reactions I thought the shots and camera action were surprisingly lively feeling.  It didn't feel that far removed from a more modern movie most of the time, but the lack of dynamism was noticed as a whole.  The plot included an oddly stilted feeling romance sub-plot that almost felt obligatory so they could have a female lead pursued by two suitors, which is a pretty common trope.  These early Universal horrors tended to have that Damsel in Distress, and this feels quite formulaic.

That said, I definitely enjoyed it as an artifact.  It wasn't too tough to watch, though a bit slow sometimes.  One or two of the early creepy scenes were quite effective, and like a lot of great modern movies worked on the strength of the actor's performance.

I believe we're including one "old" movie and one subtitled movie in this week's "Ultimate Movie List" subset, so this is the old and tomorrow is the sub'd: Ju-on

--PXA

October Horror 2013: 7 - Misery

Closing out Shit We Missed week is the Rob Reiner directed Misery starring James Caan and Kathy Bates, based on a story by Stephen King.  Misery is considered by many to be a classic, and I think it deserves that distinction but I am never watching this movie again.

Author Paul Sheldon (Caan) has published a series of successful romance novels centering around a woman named Misery Chastain.  He wanted to focus on more serious work so he retired to his traditional writing cabin to put together a manuscript.  Upon finishing it, he began driving down the hill in the middle of a blizzard.  Unfortunately he can't hack the weather and drives off the road, where he's rescued from the wreck of his car by Anne Wilkes (Bates), a local nurse who takes him to her home.  When he wakes up she claims to be his #1 fan, however her devotion makes Paul pretty uncomfortable.  I'm going to leave it there because this actually a very good movie and although the elements aren't really twists and are pretty easy to see coming, it's worth it to let the movie reveal things at its own pace.  One thing I will say is that when I saw the movie I thought Paul's new manuscript was the final part of the Misery series that incites the conflict, and not the recently published Misery book.  In checking wikipedia's summary, I discovered I was wrong.

Anyway, the movie really succeeds on the strength of the performance.  Specifically the stark contrast between Caan's mostly passive smile-and-nod Paul and Bates' completely manic-depressive Anne.  Woman plays a good psycho.  Most of the camera work is very good and tension building but some of it when Anne flies off the handle is a little cheesy at first.  Though it plays a major part in producing that uncomfortable feeling you get when you're stuck in a room with someone who's taking something way too far and reacting way too strongly and you don't want to contribute to the situation, but you can't leave and don't know how to make it stop.  Uncomfortable is the word of the day here because it's very hard to watch this movie.  Very worth it, though.

One more important caveat is this, like Secret Window, is very difficult to play the Stephen King drinking game to.

Week 2 begins with the first of mega-ultimate-super-classics: The Mummy.

--PXA

October Horror 2013: 6 - Campfire Tales

Campfire Tales is not a spectacular movie, but I do enjoy it.  It was originally slated as part of our Anthologies week.  This was the one from 1997, not the 1991 movie of the same name starring Gunnar Hansen.

Campfire Tales is interesting in the sense that out of the rest of the Anthologies this one is only retellings of classic scary folk stories and urban legends instead of original stories.  The framing story, as far as I know, is mostly original but relies heavily on a darker version of a very common TV and early film trope.  I like it because it's fun, not because it's particularly good.

Eschewing the Anthology format I've been using thus far, I will talk about the framing story then mention the classic stories included.  These are classics so I won't be spoiler tagging them.

After an opening classic tale from the 50s, our intrepid heroes are driving wrecklessly along a country road, probably drunk, before crashing their car.  They setup road flares and light a fire in the woods then wait for rescue.  To pass the time, they tell each other scary stories.  I understand the need to set the lead up as the irresponsible one in order for the reveal to drive home the appropriate moral epiphany on the repercussions of your actions, but it was just a bit trite.  Oddly, despite the obvious moral I never felt the movie was terribly preachy, which was pretty welcome.  The framing story otherwise is the least entertaining but most interesting segment in the movie.

The other classic stories are:
"The Hook": Set in the 50s, two teens are at makeout point in a car when the radio announces an inmate from the local prison has escaped.  He has a hook for a hand that he's used to kill people.  The girl claims she hears a noise and forces the boy to take her home, but instead he takes her to the local burger/shake/diner at which point he steps out of the car and is horrified to see a bloody hook embedded in the side of the car.

"The Honeymoon":  A newlywed couple is driving in an RV to Las Vegas for/as their honeymoon.  Eventually they stop to rest for the night but are confronted by a nervous man with a shotgun telling them the area isn't safe because "they" (heavily implied to be werewolves) come out at night.  The couple leaves, but runs out of gas shortly and the husband decides to walk to the nearest gas station.  During the night the RV is attacked, but the wife manages to lock herself in and defend against the attackers.  When she wakes in the morning a police officer has arrived and attempts to escort her away from the RV without her looking at it, however she turns around and sees her dead husband hanging from a branch over the camper...his wedding ring scraping the roof.

"People Can Lick Too": A young girl lives with her older sister, parents, and dog.  The dog will often sit under her bed and lick her hand if it drops over the edge of the bed.  One night her parents leave her alone at home, which she mentions to another young girl she's chatting with online.  This girl turns out to be a creepy older stalker who breaks into her house that night.  When she drops her hand over the bed, she assumes it's the dog licking it but then sees "People can lick too" written in blood on the window and sees the reflection of a man under her bed.  She flips out and runs away.  When her sister returns and checks the scene, she finds the dog's corpse under the bed.

"The Locket": A younger guy decides to go on a cross-country motorcycle ride in search of adventure.  He runs into engine trouble outside of a country home and seeks help.  A pretty girl answers the door, but she is mute.  They seem to connect and she allows him to stay the night while her father is away driving cattle.  A brutal fight, and possibly a murder/suicide are played out by ghostly figures and voices throughout the night, until the guy runs away with the girl.  They wake up under a tree in a field and he removes a locket she wears around her neck.  Opening it, he reveals a picture of both of them, dressed in obviously 1800s clothes.  The girl wakes, asks what's happening, and then her head falls off.  A cut forms where the locket was originally tied.

It's kindof lame and camp, but for some reason I've enjoyed watching it.  You can see some actors before their famous roles and they're decent adaptations of classic urban legends.

Tomorrow Shit We Missed concludes with Misery from Stephen King week.

October Horror 2013: 6.5 - The People Under the Stairs

So I neglected to mention that Campfire Tales was not actually missed.  We hadn't gotten to it during the month itself but did watch it for kicks during the off-season and just forgot to update our spreadsheet.  So while we did watch it, we felt like we owed ourselves a new movie.

This has recently shown up on Netflix and I was urged to check it out if I liked bad horror.  There is, however, a difference between cheesy horror and bad horror. I kindof like cheesy or cheap horror, it can be endearing in its own way or try so hard it pops a vessel and becomes so-bad-it's-good.  There is also bad horror, which is just something somewhere going horribly wrong.

This is a 1991 Wes Craven movie starring Ving Rhames.  The story is about a black family living in a ghetto.  Faced with rent increases demanded by their landlords, The Robesons, and the mother's medical bills for cancer, they're unable to afford the apartment and are being evicted.  Leroy (Rhames), who I assume is a family friend or older brother or something, decides that they will organize a robbery of the Robeson's house for vengeance and cash monies.  The child, "Fool", played by Brandon Adams goes along.  After gaining access to the house everything goes south and Leroy and another friend called Spenser are killed.

My number one problem with this movie is tone.  Namely that no one seems to be able to agree on what genre of film they're acting in.  The male Robeson (just called Daddy) plays his parts as an evil and psychotic version of the robbers in Home Alone, while the female Robeson (Mommy) seems to think she's in some sort of live-action Disney venture.  She plays the "exasperated rage" thing so many live Disney villains do where they go cross-eyed and steam comes out their ears.  Fool's read is somewhere between straight and actually thinking he's in Home Alone and making cracks.  It's all over the place.  This is supposed to make the action mad-cap, but it just feels confused like no one is getting any direction.  The action also seems like the director/editor envisioned cutting Benny Hill music over half of it and freaking Mortal Kombat over the other.  Also, why would you want mad-cap action in a movie about feral children living in the walls of a house?

It's all just disjointed and retarded.  Not worth the effort.

Now, back to your regularly scheduled program.
--PXA

October Horror 2013: 5 - The Shining

I really do enjoy Kubrick's The Shining.  I haven't read Stephen King's original story and I am aware of his dislike of this version.  I do have the King-approved version on my watch list but I haven't gotten around to it yet.  For now, I really like the unsettling atmosphere of this movie.  There's not a lot I can say about it since it is such a classic.  This was part of Stephen King week, as though I had watched it entirely my partner in crime hadn't watched the entire thing in one focused sitting.

The movie itself is legendary already, spawning other documentaries and countless homages and references.  Kubrick built sets using impossible geometry and drove his actors to their breaking points to create amazingly "off" performances.  Except Danny Lloyd.  I always thought his performance in the movie was strange, especially in the face of the often cited report that Kubrick made him think he was acting in a drama film and he didn't realize it was a horror movie until years later.  With the shots of him shaking in bed and frothing at the mouth, the various close up "horrified" faces he had to make, and all the Tony/"Redrum!!!" stuff, how could you hide the nature of the film?  Either way, maybe that's why his performance has always seemed not-entirely fitting.

Child actors tend to be a mixed bag and I feel like this one was a slight ding against the movie, and I really wish I knew what was up with the fursuit blowjob bit right near the end.  Freaky shit.

Anyway, it's up there as one of the few horror movies that is regarded as an amazing work of film in its own right and well worth checking out.  Also, the documentary "Room 237" is currently on Netflix, I haven't seen it yet but theories and observations for The Shining are generally pretty interesting.  There's a lot going on in most of Kubrick's movies, but this one seems especially dense.

October Horror 2013: 4 - The Others

This one was really good, not going to dance around that one at all and try to play the somewhat non-committal "Yeah, it was ok.  Nothing spectacular and nothing horrid" tone my writeups have been tending to take.  We got to the movie really late after getting home from Barrett's Haunted Mansion and a semi-interactive adventure called Zombie Apocalypse which was right down the street.  So we started the movie pretty low-volume hoping to not be too loud for anyone, which caused a problem because of just about everyone in the movie whispering almost the entire time.  The only major complaints I have are that everyone was whispering and that both Nicole Kidman's character and her daughter were kindof a bit of a bitch.  The daughter more often I think because she was pretty mean to her brother a lot of the time.

So the movie is set in England in the 1940's sometime after World War 2 and stars Nicole Kidman as Grace, a woman with 2 children alone in their large manor.  Grace's husband, Charles (Christopher Eccleston), had gone off to fight in the war on the side of England but has likely been killed.  A few weeks prior to the beginning of the story the house servants had suddenly left without informing Grace or collecting their final wages, leaving Grace alone in the house with her children Nicolas and Anne.

We open with the arrival of 3 people, led by a Bertha Mills (Fionnula Flanagan) who claim to be responding to a request for new house keepers to assist Grace in taking care of her children who suffer from extreme photosensitivity and require special treatment.  This treatment consists of a bizarrely ritualistic way of life in which all doors in the house are closed and locked before another door is opened, and all curtains must be closed in a room before allowing the children in.  Most of the light sources in the shots are implied to be leak from around the curtains (which is explained as the children being tolerant of a low level of light) and hand-held oil lanterns.  Grace claims that during the war the electrical power was continually being knocked out so the family just decided to leave it off and rely on natural fuel sources for light and heat.  I would add that, probably for practical reasons, a lot of the movie felt much brighter than it should have been for a house that is being deliberately darkened.  It's not bad and I stopped noticing quickly but it seems strange that this movie is better lit than Sinister, which took place in a house with electricity.

It's all a very interesting setup that lends a very oppressive and uncomfortable atmosphere.  I was initially taken aback by the adversarial posture that Grace takes a lot of them time but it really fit her character when I think about it.  She's effectively cut off from the nearby town by an oppressive fog, and the spooky happenings during the movie are spurring a belief in ghosts in her children that is clashing with her strong Roman Catholic faith.  The children, Anne particularly, feel like they're being treated unfairly (which they are, being punished for telling the truth of things but then being told to tell the truth) and begin to draw away from Grace and gravitating towards Mrs. Mills.  Grace then sees the new servant as a competitor for her daughter's affections and possibly even an active force driving a wedge between her and Anne, so she lashes out at the new servants.  It's all drama which I normally wouldn't care for since I did sign up for a horror movie but it's really well done as a backdrop to the things that go bump in the night.

There aren't actually a tremendous amount of explicit scare scenes in the film, they mostly just serve to ramp up the tension as Grace unravels and the servants are revealed to have their own agenda.  The character drama and the implication of things happening plays amazingly on the imagination and even though you're not really imagining ghouls and etc, there's a certain amount of feeling things are not quite right needed for the ending to work, which to me it did.  While the ending was not exactly something completely groundbreaking and new, it brought the movie together really tightly and paid off the excellent atmosphere building that had been going on.  Very spooky and focused.  I'm glad we finally got to this one.

Next up is The Shining from Stephen King week.

October Horror 2013: 3 - Secret Window

Secret Window (2004), written and directed by David Koepp and starring pre-Burton/Disney Johnny Depp and always-great John Turturro is possibly the tightest adaptation of a Stephen King story I have ever seen.  Though it is a bit dry to play the Stephen King Drinking Game to.

The premise here is that a writer {DING!  Take a drink!}, Mort Rainey (Depp), catches his wife cheating {DING!} on him at a motel and has a mental break.  After initiating divorce and moving out, he retreats to a small lake town in Upstate New York {Aww} to work on a book.  However, he has horrible writer's block and can't think of anything so he spends his days napping and talking to his dog.  Until one day he's woken up by John Shooter (Turturro) at his door, claiming in a ridiculous southern drawl that Rainey had stolen, word for word, a story he had written several years ago but is mad that Rainey botched the ending.

Rainey spends the rest of the story attempting to prove he wrote the story first, by producing a magazine in which it was published which predates when Shooter claims he wrote his, while avoiding finalizing the divorce with his wife and being tormented by Shooter who continually asserts Rainey cannot prove he wrote the story.

As his life spirals out of control, Mort...really doesn't do much.  It's an entertaining movie with a solidly built twist reveal and well delivered climax but it's odd thinking about it that Mort barely deviates from his busy schedule of napping in a ratty robe and running out the door without a shower.  I suppose I can see how it would fit, but it's striking how not-proactive he is.  Also it's pretty refreshing for a Stephen King story that alcohol is only given a brief mention.

There are a lot of signature quirky Johnny Depp behaviors in his portrayal of Rainey, and while it was amusing in the beginning with cigarettes a lot of it seemed out of place later.  In fact, more of the movie seems to be occupied by Depp's mannerisms that King's signature tropes.  Except for the very end of the movie following the climax, which is pure Stephen King.  And really the falling action and resolution taking so long is a very literal thing, most movies ends much more abruptly after the climax without nearly as much epilogue.  It's definitely one of King's hallmarks to resolve things like that in a way that might feel awkward, but it makes sense since it's a horror story and wants to get under your skin and make you uncomfortable.

If we're making distinctions I'd say this is more of a thriller because the majority of the movie is a study of Rainey's unraveling mental stability.  It was really pretty good and there is a lot of the performance that Depp gives that shines wonderfully but almost as much is weird and awkward.  Turturro's take on John Shooter is incredibly entertaining to watch and the kind of giddy psychopath that is absolutely perfect in this sort of movie.
P.S. You're gonna want to watch through the credits for the stinger. It's freaking hilarious.

Moving on to The Others.

--PXA