"Left Bank" (2008): Yes! Belgian horror!

I cannot highly enough recommend "Left Bank," which came to my attention via the always-reliable Arbogast. He was comparing it favorably to "House of the Devil," and while I would agree that it is far superior to Ti West's snoozefest I'm not sure I'd compare the two. Both involve creepy buildings and a lone girl in peril, but "Left Bank" is unquestionably modern. Which is weird, because it ends up involving some crazy medieval hoorah, but still.

Heroine Marie (Elina Kuppens) is a scrappy, independent-minded young woman living with her divorced mom and spending most of her spare time running: she's training for an international event in Portugal, and her proud coach thinks she has it in the bag. When she gets sick and Portugal becomes out of the question, she's devastated. With a sudden amount of unwanted free time on her hands, she takes up with cute archer Bobby (Matthias Schoenaerts), and after a night of hot sex, she pulls away from her mom and coach and decides to go recuperate at Bobby's. He's got a sweet apartment on Antwerp's Left Bank, apparently a hip transitional neighborhood, in a huge old building run by his grandmother.

But almost immediately things start to get weird for Marie. Instead of getting better, she suffers headaches, nausea and insomnia; when she tries to go running, she hurts her knee, and it spends the rest of the movie getting darker and purplier and grosser. Her flaky mom comes to visit and starts fussing about weird vibrations and dangerous ley lines. A neighbor tells Marie that the previous tenant of Bobby's apartment was a woman who vanished. Then a package comes for the missing woman; when Marie opens it, she starts learning more about the building than she ever wanted to know.

There are definitely shades of "Rosemary's Baby" here, but unlike fragile Rosemary, Marie stays totally independent and together. I adored her character. She clashes with her parents and coach, but she keeps her head on straight; she asks direct questions, she never starts at shadows, and when things start getting berserk she does the sensible thing and moves the heck back out. She doesn't go creeping timorously down hallways, and you never want to yell "Don't go in there!" You're right along with her the whole way. She's fab.

Marie is also a very physical character -- she's young, her body's always been her ally, she loves running and she enjoys sex -- and I love how this is really key to the ensuing awfulness. Her problems begin when her body turns against her: she's been pushing herself so hard that she's quit menstruating, among other problems. You really feel how much it kills her not to be able to rely on herself anymore. She wants so much to get better, and she can't. And as her hurt knee gets darker and weirder -- eventually sprouting hideous stiff hairs that she tries, sobbing, to yank out -- it all starts to feel like a metaphor for puberty or old age. Transformation turns out to be key to what's happening. I won't give it away, but: brr. See this film!

Final Girl Film Club: 'House of the Devil'

Writing about this movie is going to be difficult because I kept falling asleep. Each time it happened I would jolt awake a few minutes later, see unfamiliar stuff happening onscreen, sigh with irritation and rewind the movie to the last thing I remembered. This was a tedious exercise but, I imagine, not quite as bad as watching "House of the Devil" straight through without interruption. I'm grateful not to have seen it in a theater, where I would have had to sit upright. This movie is a snooze and I'm afraid director Ti West is a frightful bore.

This is the first film I have watched for the Final Girl Film Club that I have energetically disliked. It will be very interesting to see what the other Film Club Coolies have to say! My friend Jason adored it. I read a bajillion favorable reviews when it came out. But -- I have nothing good to say about "House of the Devil." It is without redeeming qualities.

Everyone's favorite thing about this movie seems to be that it's set in the 1980s and made in the style of the era's brilliant horror movies. And how could you not love that idea? A babysitter, a synthesizer score, a friend with a crazy flip hairdo -- these are great accessories for a horror movie. But they're accessories. You need something real at the core. The movie needs a scary idea, and "House of the Devil" hasn't got one.

Heroine Samantha (Jocelin Donahue) lives in a college dorm and really wants to rent an off-campus apartment from landlady Dee Wallace (tribute! tribute!). To help pay her first month's rent, she accepts a babysitting job from weirdo Tom Noonan ("Manhunter," "Monster Squad") and his weirdo wife, Mary Woronov (the friendly scientist from "Night of the Comet" -- and OK, I did get excited about that). But the house is dark and it's creepy! It might even be the house of the devil! Whatever will Samantha do?

Well, she plays some pool. She listens to her Walkman. She orders a pizza. She watches some TV. She walks around the house. I woke up and skipped the DVD back and she obligingly did it all again.

The problem with this movie is not so much that it's slow -- it's really not that slow -- but it gives your brain absolutely nothing to latch on to. The characters are impossible to understand. How come Samantha needs this apartment SO badly? So she gets sexiled by her roommate. Who hasn't been through that? How come the couple is so weird about pretending they have a kid, and then pretending instead they have an elderly mother who needs looking after? How come they don't even show her the upstairs of the house before leaving her alone? How come she puts her Walkman on? What if the "elderly mother" called out for her? Who's after whom? What's going on? I just sat there getting irritated, and after a while I just quit caring and let my eyes close.

Unfortunately, West's "The Roost" had exactly the same effect on me, which is really a shame because I love farm horror and I love bats and I love zombies. But "The Roost" never quite coheres -- it creates an atmosphere, but it isn't intelligent enough to create a mood. "House of the Devil" is the same. A scene doesn't automatically become interesting because the heroine is using a rotary phone instead of a cell phone. The fact that this is all West has got -- I find it kind of insulting. Come back when you have something to say, dude.

But Mary Woronov! That's pretty sweet. God, do I love "Night of the Comet."

I do so love "Cabin Fever"

And I don't think enough other people do. The debut feature from Eli Roth has so much going for it. Just a few reasons, off the top of my head...

The music. Nathan Barr does a fabulous nails-on-a-chalkboard score, starting with the gorgeous opening credits. Angelo Badalamenti contributes a jazzy, "Twin Peaks"-esque number for the surreal Deputy Winston, as well as the haunting "Red Love," for Paul's doomed attempt to manually satisfy Karen. A bunch of songs are borrowed from "Last House on the Left," providing both a shout-out to Roth's beloved 1970s horror, and setting a nicely creepy we're-alone-in-the-woods kind of mood.

I even love the closing bluegrass band, pepping up the end credits with "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot." (Apparently they were a local band and Roth invited them to come play in his movie; I just love that.)

The characters. They're all likable enough that you root for them, yet ultimately they're just rotten enough that you don't feel awful when they die. I've never seen a slasher movie that walks this line quite so well. They're selfish but not loathsome. Everyone gets annoyed with Burt when he shoplifts, and when Jeff talks down to the locals ("If such an incident were to result in a 'lawsuit,' you could be held liable"), his girlfriend Marcy tells him to shut up. A sick man asks for their help, and they light him on fire -- but they feel really bad about it! You wouldn't want to be on vacation with these kids, but you don't hate them like you hate the people in the "Friday the 13th" remake either.

The disease. Flesh-eating virus! I love nothing more than fake blood and zombie skin effects. I also love how a killer disease preys upon these beautiful, hygiene-hyperconscious kids -- "I don't want him touching me" is a recurring line. But the best part: Everyone gets sick by the end, but not one of the main characters actually dies of the disease.

Dennis:



The writing. "Paul, that guy asked for our help. We lit him on fire." (I also like when Jeff says "The rain probably put him out.")

The girl stuff. I might get in trouble for this but I think this movie is particularly fun for women. It can be hard to find good female characters in your modern horror movies; at a glance Marcy and Karen just fall into the usual slut/girl-next-door pigeonholes, but they turn out to be a lot more complicated. Marcy turns out to be very nurturing, fixing chili for everyone and stroking Karen's hair. Karen strings Paul along and then drops him as soon as a semi-cute stranger shows up with a bag of weed ("You can sit here!").

And I think women viewers just are going to get a more personal frisson out of Marcy's notorious leg-shaving sequence, or Paul's even more notorious misfire as he attempts to manually satisfy Karen. (Male viewers might relate to the misfire in their own way, of course.) Even just little moments ring true, like Karen talking about her parents' shower massage and saying "You can imagine my disappointment the first time I had sex." Marcy rolls her eyes: "Tell me about it," and all the boys look confused. ♥!

The group dynamics. People are awful, and they're even worse in groups. "Cabin Fever" is a fascinating showcase of groups behaving badly! First, the teenagers light the aforementioned sick man on fire. They don't mean to; they think he's attacking them, and maybe he is; but still, it's not nice. Later, when one of their group gets sick, they react in terror: screaming, running, slamming doors, and finally putting the sick girl outside in a shed, alone. I love the scene where they line up to carry her mattress out and then help her down the stairs, silent for the moment, their group decision made: they look like a tribunal, there on the back porch.

Then various group members go for help, running afoul of locals in various ways, then lying to each other about what happened: the group is coming apart. They meet their match in a tightly-knit, shotgun-toting family of rednecks. And that's before several law-enforcement agencies hold an emergency parley in a hospital room to discuss the best way to handle this strange new disease. It all seems chillingly plausible. I mean, we cover things up and scrub the surfaces clean and make sure our hair is as shiny as can be, but -- underneath it all, people are just nasty.

God, I love this movie.

One more thing

"Spike," about which I posted some wild-eyed ravings here, is now slated for an early August release on DVD... you can however find it now on Netflix and add it to your queue, where hopefully it will not languish as long as, say, all the other saved movies in my queue. (Come on, Netflix, I wanna see "Cronos" and "Cry of the Banshee." And how come "The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover" is still sitting there? Wah! Although they finally did release "Rabid." That was exciting.)

Anyway. "Spike"'s actual website is here. Horrornews.net liked it too.

Midnight Warrior Attack: What is guaranteed to make you happy?

Dear horror movie bloggers: I love you for updating and giving me reading material and suggesting cool movies for me to watch. But I especially love you for holding participatory events that spur me to quit staring at your sites for long enough to update my own! This is my first Midnight Warriors post for the wonderful The Mike over at From Midnight, With Love. What The Mike does is, he presents a topic, and then we either email him our thoughts or, as in this case, post our own and send him a link.

The current topic is: What's guaranteed to make you happy when it comes to horror, genre or cult cinema? This was a fun topic to kick around. The Mike's list is here; although he kindly insists we do not need to also come up with top 10 lists, I came up with 10 anyway, albeit in no particular order.

1. The woods. Always, anything set in the woods. I grew up on a farm in Tennessee, and at night I would lie awake and think about all the dark forest surrounding the house. What was going on there right now? What creatures were prowling, leaves rustling, unseen things moving through the dark trees? I sleep with the light on when I visit my parents, always. And my favorite horror movies confirm what I always suspected, deep down: There are awful things in the woods and they are going to get you. My beloved "Evil Dead" captures the mysterious feel of the woods late at night so perfectly; "Cabin Fever" does a nice job too, I think, and even M. Night Shyamalan's maligned "The Village" turns that primal dread into a nifty, creepy fable.

2. A dreamy mood. I love a movie that clings to your imagination like cobwebs afterward, trailing gorgeous sticky shreds of mood. I love being haunted by a movie. "Let's Scare Jessica to Death" comes to mind; after watching it, I just put it on again and let it play while I wandered happily around the house, enjoying the music and the creepy water scenes. "Spike" is another one (with another nice eerie score), and so's "Carnival of Souls." I love watching "Evil Dead" at night because it sends me to sleep feeling that way: like I've already been dreaming. Mm.

3. Comedy, but not too much. Such a tricky one. I love the humor in "Evil Dead" but "Evil Dead 2" is almost too much, and "Army of Darkness" makes my head ache. I just like things to be subtle. "Cabin Fever" though is pretty gonzo and it cracks me right up. I also love the vicious black humor of "Hostel," and the loopy insanity of "Spider Baby." Even "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" has some of the most hilarious moments in horror ever -- I love Pam sitting up in the freezer. And then there are the "Friday the 13th" movies, which aren't quite comedies but are impossible to watch straight-faced. Hm. It's hard to get the balance right, but when it's there, oh baby. "Bubba Ho-Tep, "Re-Animator," honeys, I'm looking at you.

4. Gin and microwave popcorn. I don't keep microwave popcorn in the house anymore, but back in my 20s when I was less worried about my girlish figure, my favorite thing after a tough night at work was to fix a giant gin martini, sit down with a bag of popcorn and watch something scary. These days it's usually a baked potato, but still, it's all about the gin and butter. Happy AE.

5. Children. Scary scary children. The floating vampire kid in "'Salem's Lot." Tomas in "The Orphanage." The entire cast of "The Devil's Backbone" (except for that fab teacher with the wooden leg). Is it some kind of psychological anxiety? Is it just that they're small and could creep unseen around your bed at night? Whatever the reason, nothing's as creepy as children.

6. Being surprised. There are jump scares, there's twist endings, and then there's a genuine surprise. Maybe it's taking a chance on an old BBC movie and having it be so scary I actually spit out my drink in terror at one point ("The Woman in Black"). Maybe it's a twist that's more than a gimmick and actually makes you think ("High Tension" -- I realize not everyone will agree with me here). Maybe it's a movie you expected to hate and ended up loving ("The Wicker Man"). When a movie surprises you it becomes yours in a whole different way.

7. H.P. Lovecraft. Darling, elegant, mannered, racist, disturbing Howard. Just trot out his name and I'm happy. It doesn't matter if it's a faithful adaptation like "The Call of Cthulhu," or something that takes more liberties, like the CoC team's upcoming adaptation of "The Whisperer in Darkness." Or something that is completely insane, like "Re-Animator" or "Dagon." Or even something that just requires the adjective "Lovecraftian." I am just happy about the man from Providence.

8. Houses. Anything set in the woods has me. Movies set in houses are much trickier. Done well, they bring your worst nightmares to life: something evil invading the place where you should be safe, making you fight for your life in the exact places you have your cozy daily routines. The best ones make you look around, as you sit drinking tea in your living room, and think : "where are the exits? What could I use as a weapon here?" They force you to think about really nasty logistics. "The Birds," of course, is the classic, as is "Night of the Living Dead." I am also a pretty big fan of "Signs," although it doesn't really turn into a house movie until the very end. Done badly, though, the logistics fall apart and everything becomes confusing: this happens in "Ils" and "Dog Soldiers."

9. This.


10. Fear. That's all. Waking up in the night knowing -- just knowing -- that the old dead woman from "Black Sabbath" is in your doorway. Driving down your street and wondering if, like Mary in "Carnival of Souls," you shouldn't be here. The best horror movies get under your skin, expand your perception, stretch your imagination. Sometimes it hurts, but it's good for you.

Wow, this is long. So much happiness. Also, I clearly need to just dedicate a post to "Evil Dead" already. Thanks, The Mike!

Final Girl Film Club: 'Spider Baby' (1968)

You have to love a movie that was originally titled "Cannibal Orgy." I was first made aware of "Spider Baby" by my marvelously creepy Cousin Merricat,* who had a post about a screening in L.A. a few months ago. Although I couldn't make the screening, the movie sounded great. And then Stacie picked it for this month's Final Girl Film Club, and I learned it can be viewed in many places on the Internet, and "Spider Baby" and I were together at last!

And I do not think we will ever again be parted. What a marvelous film, and enjoyable on so many levels: creepy, funny, beautiful, oddly touching. It even has an excellent theme song, performed by star Lon Chaney Jr.

The plot concerns the three Merrye children -- Elizabeth, Virginia and Ralph -- the last descendants of a wealthy family. They live alone in a crumbling mansion, guarded by their faithful chauffeur Bruno (Chaney), who protects them from the world. But he can't keep them hidden from distant relatives Peter and Emily, who show up one day determined to claim guardianship of the children, and thus a share of the family wealth. But Peter and Emily do not know about the degenerative ailment that has left the children in a state of total savagery. They also do not know about the spiders in the furniture, or the skeleton in the bedroom, or the cannibalistic relatives locked in the basement...

True to their name, the three Merrye children just have a grand old time, and it's a blast to just kick back and watch them running around. Sure, they're killing delivery men and cutting off their ears, but it's just so much fun. Virginia in particular gets a tremendous kick out of throwing a rope web over people and pretending to be a spider; when she brandishes a pair of butcher knives like mandibles and runs at her prey, she suddenly goes from ludicrous to terrifying, and it's a fantastic frisson. And Ralph (Sid Haig -- aha, this is who he is) galumphs contentedly about like a great bald Irish setter. They have a totally sweet relationship with Bruno: he looks after them (is he protecting them from the world or the world from them?) and they trust and adore him.

They're a little old to be children; Merrye syndrome, we're told, sets in at puberty and regresses the sufferer to a "prenatal state" of savagery and cannibalism. So much for the Rousseauian ideal. Besides killing delivery men, they catch and eat cats, kiss their father's rotting skeleton every night, and attempt to saw the feet off a fetching secretary (Mary Mitchel of "Panic In Year Zero"). And when Ralph catches Emily (Carol Ohmart of "The House on Haunted Hill") in her lingerie....

Besides the madcap "Addams Family"-type escapades, though, there's a wonderfully dreamy atmosphere. Elizabeth and Virginia wander in their white nightgowns up and down dark stairs; Ralph navigates the house via a large dumbwaiter; tarantulas spill out of a rolltop desk. The house just feels familiar, like something you read about (the theme of two witchy sisters barricaded against the world is very Shirley Jackson) or dreamed about a long time ago. "Spider Baby" opens the gates to you ... but be careful ...

*not an actual relation, alas

Oh, HA HA.

Happy April Fool's Day, everyone! Last October I finally got around to seeing this 1986 classic (it was one of Cinefamily's wonderful slasher marathons, screening after "My Bloody Valentine" on a holiday-themed night). It's unique, all right. Every slasher movie is essentially a game, with bit players knocked out one by one, routes of escape systematically shut off, until the killer and final survivors meet for a final match. But this is one of the only slashers to make that theme overt: unbeknownst to the main characters, and to the audience (sorry, spoilers, but it came out in 1986 for heaven's sake), it really IS a game.

College student Muffy St. John (Deborah Foreman, marvelously creepy) invites a bunch of her friends to spend spring break on her island vacation home. It's April Fool's Day, and Muffy happens to love practical jokes, so the house is rigged with goofy paraphernalia like joke drinking glasses, joke doorknobs, joke light switches -- stuff that's dumb at first, but eventually Muffy's guests are going to NEED those doorknobs in working order, because it seems there's a killer on the island. Maybe even in the house! Creepy reminders of the guests' dark secrets show up in their rooms. People start to disappear. Muffy starts acting completely spacey and weird. Eventually, clever coed Kit (Amy Steel) and her boyfriend work out the mystery: Muffy has an evil twin sister called Buffy who's been locked away in an institution, but has escaped. Look out!

I can't tell you how weird it is, even knowing the ending ahead of time, to see Kit burst through a door and see Muffy standing there with all her "victims" alive and well. Audiences reacted really badly to this movie, and I can see why (I felt similarly after watching "The Village," although I still love it). Nobody likes being made a fool of, and poor Amy Steel still looks grouchy as it all ends.

There's some interesting tension in this movie between Muffy and another girl named Nan (Leah Pinsent). Nan seems to be particularly hurt by Muffy's weird behavior, and she comes in for some particularly vicious personal pranks involving a rumor about an abortion she may or may not have had. In a bizarre little coda, Nan gets Muffy back in kind for all the April Fool's behavior -- is something going on with these two? Or am I just thinking of lesbians because Amy Steel is here and she's so durn cute? I don't know. Either way it's a fun movie to see with a lively audience. Hooray!

Three dead men ride north

Finally hitched up my skirts, poured a nice tall glass of wine and sat down with "The Last House on the Left" this week. I have been avoiding this movie for many years, on the grounds that it just sounded Very Unpleasant. (The NYT's film critic walked out in 1972!) Sure, it's a horror classic, but why put oneself through it?, was my thinking.

Over the past couple years I've gradually worked up to the idea. First I watched "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre," which I had avoided on similar grounds, and adored it. Then I saw Bergman's "The Virgin Spring," the basis for "Last House," and was fascinated by the themes of revenge, redemption and female purity; it's black and white and it's Bergman and it's arty, but it's still fairly brutal. Beloved medieval daughter Karin is raped and murdered by a trio of men who then, unknowingly, seek shelter with her parents; when the parents find out, they take revenge. What interested me the most was the contrast between adored town flirt Karin and her resentful foster sister, Ingeri, who is pregnant out of wedlock and is in thorough disgrace with the household. The dynamic between them is the real driving force of "Virgin Spring," I think.

And "Last House" hews closer to those themes than I expected. Beloved daughter Mari is everybody's sweetheart. Her parents adore her, only making a halfhearted attempt to stop her from gadding around braless and going to concerts by bands with names like Bloodlust. They do not at all approve of her relatively new friend Phyllis, who comes from a bad neighborhood and is taking her to the latest Bloodlust concert, but they let her go anyway. Unlike in "Virgin Spring," Mari & Phyllis are friends, but they exhibit a milder version of the Karin & Ingeri contrast: Mari takes this innocent, exultant joy in the world around her, pointing out the beautiful fall leaves and then her own new 17-year-old bod. The worldlier Phyllis watches her with something like bemusement at times, but Mari's joy is infectious: the girls frolic in the woods, go for ice cream, and then decide to score some grass before the concert, approaching a total stranger to ask him about it as if asking directions from a friendly neighborhood cop. This is where they go wrong. The girls are different, but unlike in "VS," they end up in the same boat.

From here the movie becomes a protracted, sadistic exercise in dread. I just tucked up my feet and poured some more wine and bit my nails and waited and waited. It seems to take forever for Mari and Phyllis to meet their hideous end, and the film cuts mercilessly between their torment and Mari's parents, first fixing her a birthday cake, then sitting up anxiously waiting for her to come home. It's the dread rather than the actual violence that made this so agonizing for me, although when the brutality arrives, Craven films it in a straight-on, almost documentary style that somehow enhances the cruelty. The grainy film stock makes it look like a snuff film. Over on Final Girl, Stacie has a great line in her review of "The Evil Dead": it "just feels wrong." And that's how this feels. It's like something you shouldn't even be *allowed* to watch.

Making it extra horrible is how hard the girls fight and how close they come. One of the last things Mari sees is her own mailbox; Phyllis dies within sight of traffic whizzing by on the road. Both of them make perfectly laudable attempts at getting away. Phyllis (who delivers a haunting "oh, shit!" as the thugs slam the door shut behind them) does a really good job of keeping Mari from completely freaking out, and then picks a great chance to make a run for it. Mari uses smart psychology to get one of them to help her. They almost make it; they should make it; they die for no reason at all beyond their killers' sheer viciousness.

At the same time, it's beautiful. The colors in this movie are amazing: the fall leaves, the bright red blood on Sadie's white face, the magnificent mustard-yellow shirt worn by Mari's dad in the climactic scene of chainsaw revenge. I'm such a sucker for anything horror that's shot in the woods... I love the contrast between nasty goings-on and the bucolic setting. Fairy tales are right: Scary things do hide behind trees (no matter how beautiful the leaves are); there is something waiting under the surface of that still lake. We all know this, deep down.

Also, when Mari's parents start rigging their house for revenge, you just want to hug them; not only is it cathartic, but they are so satisfyingly competent! How I admire movie characters who have a clear plan. I wanted to match this couple up against the mewling, puking pair from Ils.... Dr. and Mrs. Collingwood would've had those hooded home invaders up against the wall in no time, bellowing "And tuck your shirts in, you damn kids!"

And then there's the bizarrely incongruous folk soundtrack -- I counted four tracks that were borrowed by Eli Roth for my beloved "Cabin Fever" -- and the deranged slapstick antics from the incompetent local law enforcement, who seem to have wandered in from another movie. It all adds up to a big bizarre gorgeous raw mess of a movie. When it was over I had one more glass of wine just to celebrate. Then I watched it again.

Edited to add: Arbogast has an interesting essay arguing that the movie is an unintentional blood libel. After watching the movie I'm not sure I buy it, but it's still a good read. Happy Passover!

A farewell to arms

(Normally I would ask someone to smack me for that subject heading, but it's OK because of "Evil Dead 2.")

There's a pile of classic horror in my Netflix queue, and last night I kicked it off with Tod Browning's "The Unknown" from 1927, starring Lon Chaney and Joan Crawford. (In the Chaneyesque spirit of transformation, Crawford in this movie pretty much looks like every other 1920s actress, with her sleek bob and narrow lips. I would never have recognized her.) I first read about this movie in David J. Skal's wonderful "Death Makes a Holiday: A Cultural History of Halloween"; Skal is fascinated by Browning, who of course also directed the carnival classic "Freaks" as well as a little something called "Dracula." In "The Unknown," Chaney plays Alonzo the Armless, a Madrid circus performer adept at throwing knives and lighting cigarettes with his toes, and smitten with Crawford's sexy Nanon. But Alonzo has a secret -- two secrets! Not only is he not really armless, but he's hiding in the circus because he's a notorious criminal, and the armless act is the perfect way to conceal his distinctive double thumb -- which leaves a notable mark on all his strangulation victims. The armless act is also useful because Nanon has a particular horror of grabby men, and she finds Alonzo appealing because, as she shyly tells him, "You're the only man I can turn to without fear." Circus strongman Malabar (played by Norman Kerry, Raoul from "The Phantom of the Opera") scampers around after Nanon with his arms out, but she will have none of him.

Like every movie monster, Alonzo is brought down by his affection for the beautiful woman, in a series of utterly unbelievable and awesome plot twists. A secret midnight surgery is performed! A dramatic change of heart takes place! The climax involves a pair of rampaging horses on treadmills! This movie just has to be seen to be believed.

I don't suppose it's necessary to say that Lon Chaney is amazing, but you just can't take your eyes off him, whether he's making eyes at Nanon or grouchily kicking his feet up to light himself a cigarette. When he realizes his evil (and insanely elaborate) scheme has backfired on him, the camera never leaves his face as he passes through heartrending shock, grief and rage, finally ending in deranged, mocking laughter. "Look!" says the oblivious Nanon: "Alonzo is laughing at the way things have happened!" You're laughing in disbelief too, but Chaney makes you feel for the man. My dashing Spanish hat is off to him. Netflix this, people.

In which most of the cast melts

Wikipedia's article about "The Devil's Rain" (1975) has an arresting opener: "The film is remembered primarily for its over-long and drawnout ending, in which most of the cast melts." Yes, yes, but check out the cast: William Shatner. Ernest Borgnine (as a Satanic priest who occasionally morphs into the Beast himself!). Ida Lupino, whoever that is. Tom Skerritt. Eddie Albert. John Travolta, even! It was a lovely choice for the Final Girl Film Club and I am so happy to have resurrected the blog in time to join in.

The plot concerns a family -- brothers Shatner & Skerritt and their parents, who do not survive the movie for long -- and the Secret Book it is concealing from Satanic preacher Borgnine. As Borgnine tries to get the book back, he seizes the souls of various family members and replaces them with waxen-faced, empty-eyed cultists. Yipes! The souls themselves evidently go into a little sort of aquarium, in which it is always raining. I had not envisioned hell as being particularly rainy, but whatever. Eventually there is a Confrontation and the promised melting takes place -- there goes the wax, I suppose.

Director Robert Fuest (who ended his feature-film career with this movie) also made "The Abominable Dr. Phibes," which I watched a couple months ago and quite enjoyed. The films have a few things in common: a glacial pace, hammy leading performances and an epic sense of composition. Set largely in a ghost town with a creepy New England-style chapel ("This doesn't belong here"!), this movie has some gorgeous vistas of sunlit mountains and wind-blasted trees. The scenery doesn't help the movie much, but it's nice to look at while you're waiting for something to happen.

My favorite thing about this movie is the crackling chemistry between Shatner and Borgnine as they face each other down on that ghost town's main street, each vying for dominance of the screen. Every look says, "No, I can overact more!" and these men are serious. They purr, hiss, snarl, arch their backs, strut, and eventually just launch themselves at each other. These two need to be in every movie. They could power a town glaring at each other.

Actually, that's just my second favorite thing. My real favorite thing -- spoiler-- comes after Shatner tumbles before Borgnine's maniacal, goat-horned splendor and becomes a cultist himself. Shatner's face becomes waxen. His eyes are blacked out. His expression is vacant. Three years after "The Devil's Rain," this face will become famous...

And then, of course, at the end, everyone melts. And melts. And melts. It's actually pretty creepy looking; I could sort of sympathize with Fuest, thinking "no, THIS one is the most horrible; I have to get THIS in too." I also thought about the "Chubby Rain" scenes from "Bowfinger"; surely they were inspired by this film.

While the faces are melting, you can contemplate the film's remarkable tagline: "Heaven help us all when The Devil's Rain." What is this even supposed to mean? How could one edit it into coherence? I occasionally get sentences like this from reporters, and I just take them out, but I guess the poster would look silly with no words on it at all. What can you expect from a movie in which Borgnine, in an exciting Puritan-era flashback, addresses a crowd of underground satanists as "thee"? That's a singular pronoun, silly! (Spoiler note: This flashback ends with Borgnine's character being burned at the stake, except instead of being tied to it, he sort of lounges next to it as if it were a hitching post. What a badass!)

There is much fun to be had here on many levels. Make yourself a nice big pitcher of martinis (two pitchers if a friend is over), kick back and enjoy the face-melting fun. Heaven help us all when The Final Girl Film Club!

'Halloween is a powerful trigger point for you'

*opens windows, blows dust off blog... coughs violently, having briefly forgotten powerful allergy to dust*

um. Hello! Is anyone still here? Lord, this place looks as bad as the old Myers house.

Well, it has been a lovely summer break, but here in LA the days are growing shorter, the shadows are beginning to lengthen and the fragrance of wood smoke is in the air -- ok, that would be due to the immense and horrible fire continuing to burn above the city. Still, summer is clearly drawing to a close, meaning horror-movie season is about to return. Of course, around here it never really stops.

Rob Zombie's "Halloween" remake was so ballyhooed -- I had mixed feelings about it but thought it was an interesting exercise, if nothing else -- that I felt bad for this one, sneaking into theaters without any advance reviews or any love. And then I heard Margot Kidder was in it. So the ever-patient Art Boy and I gave it a shot, and WOW. It's a hoot and a half, people. It's bizarre, sure, and it's hampered by awkward Rob Zombie dialogue, and a lot of it doesn't make any sense, but it is *never* boring. And it looks great. It's got the same gorgeously worn, lived-in patina as all Zombie's movies, making it feel beautifully raw, almost "Texas Chain Saw Massacre"-style. I had to run out for a minute when a dog got killed (I had to pee anyway, so it worked out) but otherwise I was just glued to the screen.

What helps a lot is that Zombie's not remaking a classic this time. The action starts, like the first "Halloween II" did, later the same night, with Michael reappearing to wreak some hospital havoc. But things move forward fairly quickly, and from then on, it's an entirely new movie. It's a huge relief to bid the specter of Jamie Lee Curtis farewell and just enjoy the performances on their own terms. Yeah, performances -- I kinda dug Scout Taylor-Compton as Laurie this time around. The girl is a great screamer! And Brad Dourif is quite subdued and heartbreaking as the long-suffering Sheriff Brackett, to whose little town Death is about to return. All he wants is to protect Laurie and his daughter, but we all know how well that's going to go. (The girl who plays Annie, inexplicably allowed to survive the last film, is fine, but it's hard not to think about Nancy Loomis and how great the first sequel would've been with her.) And of course Malcolm McDowell is back as Dr. Loomis, chewing the scenery even more maniacally than before.

Most of the action takes place a year later. Laurie is living with Annie & Sheriff Brackett, who are both incredibly protective of her and feed her healthy breakfasts even after she keeps them up nights screaming in her sleep. Her therapist (Margot Kidder!) helps her work through her grief over her parents and cautions her that she'll have a lot to deal with, emotionally, as Halloween rolls around, bringing the first anniversary of Michael's massacre. Laurie still doesn't know she's Michael's biological sister... but Dr. Loomis, who has once again morphed into a self-obsessed celebrity author, is about to come out with a tell-all book that might destroy Laurie's peace of mind forever! Oh noes!

Well, the movie doesn't build up much tension about that. And you're not really afraid of Michael, either -- he'll show up and stab someone every few minutes, but that's just what he does. Yet somehow this movie just never stops being entertaining. Rob Zombie's slices of domestic life are, once again, a hoot; as Laurie sulks around the Brackett house in her black T-shirt and eyeliner, with her Alice Cooper posters, you imagine Zombie thinking wistfully "Here's the daughter I never had." Malcolm McDowell is, of all things, the comic relief -- snarling at interviewers and reluctantly sharing talk-show space with Weird Al Yankovic (whom he addresses as "Mr. Weird"). Yes, there's Weird Al. There's also Sheri Moon Zombie as a ghost, leading a white horse. What is up with that? This movie makes no sense. And yet it is never boring, right up to the "Psycho"-inspired finale. It's the perfect summer slasher film. I can't believe I'm saying this, but don't miss it.

Another reluctant admirer is over at BloodyDisgusting.

Final Girl Film Club - Amityville II: The Possession

I've got a bad feeling about this ...

Normally I'm kind of a completist -- I don't watch sequels or remakes without having seen the originals, and I never start a book series in the middle. I just like to know what's going on. (I also sleep with the lights on, but that's another story. Or is it?) So watching "Amityville II: The Possession" was an unusual experience for me, since it's a sequel to a movie I've never seen, based on a book I haven't read, and part of a horror franchise that I have no experience with at all. But I hadn't really heard good things about the other movies, or really about any of the books... still, this was for the Final Girl Film Club, which has not yet failed to introduce me to something new and interesting ("Phenomenon," for example). And anyway, "Amityville II" is actually a prequel, so there you go.

As I understand it, in the first movie Margot Kidder and her family move into a house where Something Awful Once Happened, and at the end they leave. The sequel/prequel covers the Something Awful that Happened, which apparently really did happen: Ronald DeFeo Jr., 23, shot and killed his parents and siblings in their home one night in 1974. "Amityville II" cheerfully changes the family's name to Monelli, then gussies up the story with extra gizmos, including demonic possession, Indian burial ground and incest.

Despite the ludicrous trappings, the first two-thirds of the movie are pretty straightforward: The Monelli family moves into a new house. They fight. The eldest son goes increasingly berserk and eventually out comes the shotgun. Knowing what's going to happen, it's just sickening to watch the tension build. Is it the house turning them on each other, or just amplifying their familial dysfunction? Although the movie's trappings are supernatural, the performances are good enough that all the characters seem organic. The father (Burt Young, who is indeed repellent) is a brute; his wife treats him coldly; the youngest children are scared. And poor Diane Franklin is terrifyingly vulnerable as the older sister. (I didn't even recognize her as the brilliant, mostly-silent comedienne from "Better Off Dead.") This is a family with real problems; the Indian burial ground in the basement is just decoration.

The family slaughter scene pretty well caps the movie; afterward there's some business about exorcism involving The Worst Priest in the World (who dashes out the door at the first sign of unpleasantness, then responds to Diane Franklin's pitiful pleas for aid by leaving on a camping trip). But the money scene is Sonny stalking through the dark house with his shotgun, hunting his family down one at a time. His surviving siblings huddle at the bottom of the stairs, unable to escape (you can't escape from family, after all), watching helplessly as his shadowy figure approaches and raises the weapon. They can't even scream. It's your very worst childhood nightmares come to life, and no amount of satanic trappings can keep that from being scary.

So thanks for the nightmares, Final Girl! I vote for something with maggots next time!

Ki-ki-ki-ki Ma-ma-ma-ma!

Just in from the Friday the 13th remake. Hmm. It wasn't so much bad as it was sort of pointless. I had never seen any of these until a couple years ago, when Art Boy introduced me to the first one and we went on kind of a binge (here's the month with those posts if anyone is curious -- you have to scroll down) (yeah, I could be using these rainy days to tag my archives). I loved #1 and heartily enjoyed #2 and belly-laughed my way through #3. It's not a long history with these movies, but I did enjoy them.

So the remake? Meh. It was about a third as much fun as the "My Bloody Valentine" remake, and about one-twelfth as interesting as the "Halloween" remake (which was not itself very good). Jason scholars should get a kick out of some references: Jason jumping through a window, Jason briefly thinking the final girl is his mom. And slasher scholars can contemplate the changes in mores over the years. I think it's very interesting that smoking pot can now get you killed just as dead as fornicating can. What does this mean? The characters aren't very interesting, and none of it makes any sense, but that wasn't a problem for me in the first three movies. Really the worst thing about this movie is the total lack of atmosphere. It feels incredibly cold and clinical, from the perfectly waxed & buffed bodies to the unlived-in locations. Maybe in 20 years it will look better... but I doubt it. Still, if you're bored and feel like a movie, you could probably do worse.

I am actually pretty excited about the "Last House on the Left" remake. I haven't seen the Wes Craven movie but did see the Bergman movie it was based on, "The Virgin Spring." They share a plot: daughter gets murdered, parents get revenge. So judging from the previews of this remake, the daughter *doesn't* get murdered... she's apparently brutalized but survives. Does she get to partake in the revenge then? Is it more gritty or less gritty? (My money is on less gritty.) I am curious.

Children hate you!

In honor of the octuplets lady, here are some thoughts on David Cronenberg's "The Brood"!

Gosh, I just loved this movie. I didn't expect to. Years and years ago I saw "The Fly" and thought it was fine, but more gross than scary, and I assumed that would be the case here. And there's some grossness (see photo) but it's the tension and the bizarreness that really make this movie wonderful. It's a good while before you see the evil children, so the sense of dread really builds up. I love the first kill scene, which begins when the victim-to-be hears a muffled thump in the other room, and creeps toward the swinging kitchen door... This is totally the kind of movie that makes you scream "Don't go in there!" And once you actually see the children -- who are of course not children but physical manifestations of a divorcee's repressed rage -- the balance kicks over into the deeply surreal. The evil shorties in their little bright hoods are a great shout-out to "Don't Look Now," too...

It's fascinating. And somehow even empowering. I thought this movie would be all misogynistic and women-are-evil, but divorcee Nola develops this Carrie-like power. Somehow by having her dwarf creations beat the living daylights out of everyone who's ever gotten on her nerves, she achieves peace of a kind her miserable ex-husband will never know. She's certainly not a hero and things go no better for her than they did for Carrie White, but the movie still treats her powers with tremendous respect. Don't mess with a breeding woman, I guess.

Por fin

Por fin, I can be happy with Guillermo Del Toro again. Finally steeled up the nerve to watch "The Devil's Backbone" last night. I was all braced to loathe it, what with having hated "Pan's Labyrinth" and having viewed enough Spanish Civil War movies in college to kill a horse. But this 2001 film hits all the right notes. It's a good ghost story. It's a good war movie. It's scary. It's sad. It has beautiful colors. It has dead children and a teacher with a wooden leg. It has everything!

The setting is symbolically loaded: an orphanage for leftist kids during the last days of the Spanish Civil War. The director & teachers have watched, devastated, as their side has lost; their food supplies are dwindling, their options are running out, and they have all these kids with nowhere to go. The last boy to arrive is wee Carlos, who learns the orphanage has a resident ghost: that of a boy named Santi, who died violently on the premises. His ghost flickers through the bedroom and hallways at night but spends most of its time near a basement cistern. What does it want?

Unlike "Pan's Labyrinth," where you just get so exasperated with everyone you want to kick them in the shins, this movie gives you a great array of flawed, complex, identifiable characters. Even the villain has a tragic past -- he's the total opposite of the scenery-chewing fascist from "PL." All the action is all too believable. Del Toro does a great job of delineating the scorching sunlight of the external world -- where adults are, where the war is -- and the dark interior corridors of the orphanage, where Santi tries to communicate with the boys. But the two worlds inexorably overlap. The ending, in which a group of wounded boys limps haltingly out into the blinding sunlight, is both a perfect war-movie visual and a perfect ghost-story visual. He mixes the tropes just flawlessly.

And the ghost stuff is nice and scary. Santi is no Tomas, thank God, but he's plenty creepy. He's a little CGI-intensive but that's OK. All the ghost tricks you might expect, like footprints from an invisible source, the shadow of a hand that isn't there, an eye suddenly on the far side of a keyhole, are deployed so expertly. It's a pleasure to see Del Toro exercise his craft. It almost makes up for Hellboy 2.

Movie "pick" of the week! (Ha ha!)

By all means, go and see "My Bloody Valentine 3D." It is indeed a barrel of laughs!

And amazingly, it really honors the spirit of the original film. I missed the everyday camaraderie of the miners, and the denizens of the small town -- these characters spend most of their time standing around in shock or running for their lives -- but still, they're clearly working-class folks rather than your typical slasher victims. The killer chases two employees through a darkened grocery store and goes after a hotel desk clerk, a truck driver and a very unfortunate nanny.

But this movie is definitely less about the characters and more about the 3D. Here comes a pickaxe! Here comes a tree limb! Here comes an eyeball! Here comes a jaw! Oh man, the 3D is used to maximum effect and it just could not be more fun. It's cheesy but competent, intelligent but not snarky, and just on the whole a great ride.

There are some nice references to scenes from the original, too: something horrible in a dryer, the scene with all the empty mining suits (yes!), body parts in candy boxes (really, would a heart fit in one of those?). Sure, there are a couple bits that don't work -- the mine setting isn't used as intelligently as in the first film, and the scene where the killer walks along smashing light bulbs would be a lot scarier if it actually got DARK when he did that -- but these are quibbles.

You have to love a movie that, in its first ten minutes, gives you Tom Atkins walking into a carnage-filled hospital, surveying a bloody body's empty chest cavity, and snarling, "Happy f***king Valentine's Day."

As for Jensen Ackles, ACE... he is perfectly serviceable, if not really my type. Still, just for you, here is a gratuitous photo!

Time to lose your heart!

Sat down with Art Boy the other week and tucked into "My Bloody Valentine," the classic Canadian slasher being remade in 3-D. What a fascinating little movie! I thoroughly enjoyed it, start to finish -- even though Art Boy pointed out afterward that a) it does not hold up under any degree of analysis and b) it has no genuine scares at all. Still, it's so unique that it's just a real charmer.

First of all, it's set in a sleepy mining town, and our heroes are all working-class men and women -- not high school students, campers or babysitters. It all begins with a horrible mining accident, in which sole survivor Harry Warden is trapped underground for six weeks and has to subsist on the bodies of his friends, all because his colleagues on the surface blew off work in order to get to the town's annual Valentine's Day dance. A year later, Harry escapes from an institution and kills said colleagues, threatening to do the same every year that a Valentine's dance is held. Twenty years later, the town finally decides to have a dance, and guess what happens!

I am so in love with that premise. It's like nothing else you've ever seen. The workers and their gals care so much about this dance! They really hate to think about canceling it even after people start dying! They ignore the dire warnings of their bartender! The whole thing even closes out with a Gordon Lightfoot-style folk ballad, recapping the story in vague fashion ("The horror, from 'long time agooooo"). I can't talk about it without gushing. But it's not just that it's cheesy. The movie, oddly enough, makes this quirky little world believable, at least for a couple hours. The miners' banter, the run-down laundry room, the creaking mine machinery, the lived-in neighborhood bar... somehow it all works. You end up really rather concerned for these people.

It's stylish, too. There aren't any great scares, but the atmosphere down in the mine is fantastically creepy, and the movie intelligently teases you for a while until it actually gets you down there. My favorite though is the scene in the room with all the hanging uniforms -- it almost resembles Harry Dean Stanton's death scene in "Alien." (The death by pot of boiling hot-dog water is pretty imaginative too.) The final shot is fantastic, a perfect blend of gruesome (the severed arm) and stylish, with an eerie sound effect to cap everything. It's like listening to a predictable but still well-told ghost story. This movie's a real pleasure.

Apparently at the time it was a box-office flop. I watched an interesting documentary this week, "Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Flick," in which the movie's failure is blamed on its R rating. This was back when kids could get into pretty much any movie (lucky damn kids) and an R rating was seen as kind of a punishment, in this case because the makers were seen as Canadian carpetbaggers trying to capitalize on the new American slasher-movie cash-cow formula. Anyway, it's interesting that the remake is also rated R, and that will probably do nothing but help it at the box office, since no teenager is going to bother with a lame-o PG-13 movie. (Teenagers still say "lame-o," right? Oh, where are my bifocals?)

Side note: The remake is driving me up the wall with its tagline, "He's coming to break your heart." With a pick? He's going to *break* my heart or just drive a pick into it? (I don't think it's the same thing.) And he's not going to extract it and hide it in candy boxes for people to find? Drag.

Kiss me good night, Miss Giddens!

And finally, to ring in the holiday season, I finally got around to watching "The Innocents" with Deborah Kerr. It's been on my list for years, since I read "The Turn of the Screw" in college. All I remember about that class (whichever class it was) was having to read five different essays that analyzed the story from five different points of view -- one saying the governess is a basket case, one saying the ghosts she sees are real, one talking about the children and their Freudian projections, and I don't remember what-all else. They were all pretty convincing and I came away with a mild headache and a deep-seated confusion about the story.

So it was really impressive to me that the movie upholds the same ambiguity. You're seeing it all in front of you, but you really can't tell what's going on. Miss Giddens (Kerr) is a fetching young governess who lands her first job ever after a flirty conversation with her cute employer. He explains, though, that she'll never see him -- he lives in London, and she'll be looking after his two young wards at his country estate. Still, she claims to love children, and she really seems to enjoy her work. But there's something weird about the children....

There is of course nothing creepier than creepy children, and the most awesome thing about these kids is that you never know if they're malevolent or not, but they're still utterly creepy. Young Flora prances around singing "O Willow Waly" (which turns out to be a song about mourning a dead lover) and slightly older Miles is just a little... precocious. Are they possessed? Are they just misguided? Is Miss Giddens really seeing ghosts through the windows? Even the ending leaves you wondering. But no matter what you think is going on, you have to enjoy the ride as Miss Giddens slowly loses it. When the ghost brushes past her in the schoolroom, oh my God, the hairs on my neck stood up.

I was also excited about this movie because it inspired Kate Bush's classic song "The Infant Kiss," which itself is pretty ambiguous: "There's a man behind those eyes... Oh, how he frightens me." Is it a love song or a song of terror? The movie walks the same line.

Brr. Let's take our niece and nephew's Christmas presents back to the store!

Secret stigma, reaping wheel

Next up in my festive holiday trifecta: the 1962 classic "Carnival of Souls." Wow! I don't think I've ever identified with a horror heroine quite so much. After a serious car accident, Mary (Candace Hilligoss, who only made one other movie, but it was called "Curse of the Living Corpse"!) packs up and moves to Utah for a new job as church organist. But she's haunted by creepy apparitions and horrific nightmares. She has episodes where she seems to become invisible to people around her - a saleslady looks right through her, sound seems to come from under water. And everywhere she goes, she sees the same smiling white-faced man, staring back at her out of mirrors, reflected in her car window, nearly bumping into her nose at the water fountain.

This all makes Mary a bit jumpy, and it doesn't help that she's already kind of an oddball for 1962. A healthy, intelligent young woman who doesn't want friends, isn't interested in the advances of the loutish tenant across the hall in her boarding house, plays professionally on a church organ but lacks religious conviction... she doesn't seem to fit in anywhere. Her landlady, her boss at the church and her doctor are all slightly baffled by her. You've already got the plot twist figured out, ten minutes into the movie, but it's fascinating to watch: on so many levels, Mary doesn't belong here. She belongs somewhere else.

It's creepy as hell to watch Mary's destiny close in on her. Gorgeous, too. Why aren't more horror movies set in Utah? The black and white cinematography makes the most of the sweeping, open landscape, especially around the vacant lakeside pavilion that irresistibly draws Mary: white skies against dark water. This would be great to see on a big screen. The soundtrack, almost entirely organ music, is gorgeous too.

As a fairly spacey person myself, with an often-tenuous grip on reality ("Where are my glasses? What's her name again? Wait, what year is this?"), I could powerfully identify with Mary's terror as her world starts to blur and something else starts to come in. It's a universal fear, this fear of losing one's grip altogether. James Thurber puts it this way in his introduction to "My Life and Hard Times":

It is unfortunate, however, that even a well-ordered life can not lead anybody safely around the inevitable doom that waits in the skies. As F. Hopkinson Smith long ago pointed out, the claw of the sea-puss gets us all in the end.

Brr. Let's turn on some more lights and have some eggnog!

It's Christmas. Let's have a ghost story!

I'm coming off a trio of excellent ghost stories, my little pippins. I'll post about the other two later but will start off with my favorite: "The Woman in Black," by Susan Hill. This book has been on my to-read list for years but it's surprisingly hard to find. None of my last few libraries has had it and it's never in stores... I finally caved and included it in a big Amazon order last month. I read it on a visit home over two nights, sitting by the fire while my parents watched football. The racket of the TV kept me from getting too creeped out while the fire added nice atmosphere: it was a perfect setting for this classic ghost story.

The narrator is celebrating Christmas with his second wife and her grown children; he's enjoying the merriment and the good times when the family starts clamoring for a ghost story, and his mood darkens. He goes for a walk and remembers what happened to him many years ago, when he was a young, happily betrothed solicitor. His firm sends him from London to a northern town, to settle affairs for a client who's just died. No one in the town wants to talk about the client and her creepy old house, and no one comes to the funeral... but a mysterious woman in black appears in the back row during the service. When he mentions her, the reaction is shock and horror. She's a ghost!

This book has everything: a big creepy house on the marsh; ghostly sightings; ghostly sounds; a haunted nursery (yes!); a cute dog; and, most heartbreakingly, a very relate-able narrator who really does his best to pull himself together and do his job. You just deeply feel for the guy as events unfold. What would you do differently? Probably nothing. The pieces of the story fall inexorably into place around him, and there's no way he can escape.

At one point I was reading and gave a tremendous gasp. Mom looked up from the third down (or whatever football has) and I said, "He's alone in the house at night and the lights just went out!"
She said "How can you read those things?"

In 1989 the book was adapted for British TV, and I managed to track down a copy at the excellent Cinefile (and then kept it for an extra week -- sorry, guys). I had been working up this post in my head when I sat down to watch the movie, but afterward, I didn't want to even think about "The Woman in Black." It's taken me about a month to get it together enough to write this. The movie is absolutely terrifying. It nails all the best elements from the book, adds some good twists and some beautiful images, and gives you one scene that made me scream out loud here in the living room. Not a start; not a yelp; nothing that could be followed by embarrassed laughter, but a genuine scream of terror. (I had just taken a mouthful of hot toddy, which was extra tragic.) Oh my God. I've never seen anything like it. Final Girl has, as usual, an excellent review.

I understand the stage play is excellent as well, but haven't talked to anyone who's seen it. Apparently it makes explicit the terrifying subtext -- the reader/audience is as helplessly involved in things as the protagonist, so are we cursed too? Brr! Let's turn on all the lights!