October 22
#18 Spirit Trap (2005)
#19 Theater of Blood (1973)
October 23
#20 Trick ‘r Treat (2007)
#21 REC (2007)

Running a marathon like this, aiming for 31 horror “programs” to watch during October, I have the advantage of making up my own rules, but nonetheless I struggle to decide whether I should include, say, all the episodes of Kolchak: The Night Stalker I’ve been watching, which are certainly horror: do I count each episode toward my goal, or lump them together, or not count them at all?  I have no hesitation including a Masters of Horror episode, so why not a show like Kolchak?  Eventually I decided that I’m keeping pace fairly well without including it in this list, and at the current rate should have no trouble reaching 31.  Halloween, after all, falls on a Saturday this year–wonderfully–so I plan on spending all day watching horror films while handing out candy.  Only 7 days left, and more and more I’m focusing on making this about 31 films, not just “programs.”

Four in two days, so quickly then – one trick and three treats:

I streamed 2005’s Spirit Trap through Netflix-on-Tivo, not knowing what to expect, other than spirits probably getting trapped at some point.  I was happy to discover it stars the wonderful Billie Piper, Doctor Who’s beloved Rose, but otherwise it’s a very colorless and forgettable film.  Piper plays Jenny, who moves into a very cheap–and abandoned and decaying–building in London with four others: a bullying drug-dealer and his girlfriend (Luke Mably and Emma Catherwood), a keeps-to-herself girl (Alsou), and the nerdy, sensitive guy (Sam Troughton) who’s going to help her sort out just why this building is a “spirit trap” and what needs to be done to ends its curse.  You see, there’s a clock, which Jenny–whose mother was a psychic, and who has latent abilities of her own–helpfully explains acts as a portal between this world and that of the spirits.  Eventually Tom goes round the bend, chasing everyone with a hammer, and other ostensibly exciting things happen, and there are some imaginative ideas at play late in the game, but it all just hangs there, style-free, like unambitious television, or maybe an R-rated and below-average episode of Doctor Who.  In fact, I ask you, would you rather be watching this, or the episode in which the Doctor and Rose help Charles Dickens battle ghosts living in the gaslights of a funeral home?  Against that, Spirit Trap is no substitute. 

Much better is Theater of Blood, which has renewed my faith in Vincent Price after beginning this month’s marathon with the utterly terrible Cry of the Banshee.  Clearly inspired by his success in The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971), Theater of Blood, produced two years later, has much the same premise: Price, with his inimitable nasal purr, dispatching one old man after the next in ingenious and diabolical ways.  But it’s the how and the why which is what makes this film so marvellous.  Price plays Edward Lionheart, a theater actor who specializes in Shakespeare, and with his carefully-groomed self-importance, he clearly aligns himself with Olivier and the long line of Shakespearean greats who preceded him on the stage.  When he is nominated for Best Actor in the 1970 Critics Circle Awards following a season consisting entirely of Shakespeare productions–what he considers the greatest season his career–he fully expects to win, to the point of actually standing up when the name is called at the ceremony, before he realizes, to his abject humiliation, that the name is not his own.  Unfortunately, this scene is not depicted in the film, only described–probably due to the film’s low budget; it’s a shame.  But what is depicted is the dramatic aftermath: Lionheart marches into the private suite where the judges–the theater critics themselves–are enjoying some drinks before their annual dinner.  The awards are set upon a table, and Lionheart snatches one up, declaring it’s his by right, before launching into a wonderfully, deliriously egomaniacal speech and an excorciating attack upon the critics, then breaks into tears when his daughter Edwina (Diana Rigg) tells him he’s gone too far, and gives one final speech before plummeting off the balcony into the Thames, award still clutched in his hand. 

Vincent Price, once the dashing young star of Laura, has finally found his rightful place in cinema history, and you have to applaud. 

But this exposition only comes midway through the film, so that you have to find your way to this moment after a string of sadistic and elaborate murders arranged by Lionheart.  The first scene in the film is positively disorienting.  George Maxwell (Michael Hordern, who in 1988 actually won the Critics Circle award himself) is not just a critic but the chairman of a housing and redevelopment committee, and he’s called in to help clear out some homeless people from an old tenement building.  After he arrives, the squatters pull out hatchets, clubs, and knives, and start chasing him.  Brutally assaulted, covered in blood, he desperately turns to the constable for help, who is Lionheart in disguise.  Lionheart says to him: “O pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth, that I am meek and gentle with these butchers.”  Maxwell dies.  If you understand the quote and the scene, you can determine right away that the murder was a staging out of Julius Caesar, and that the line was Mark Antony’s, delivered not long after Caesar was stabbed by the senators.  We will also soon learn that Maxwell was killed on the Ides of March.  But you’d probably have to view the film a second time to then realize that the seemingly superfluous scene which preceded this, in which Maxwell’s wife tries to warn him against leaving the flat that day because of a nightmare she’d had, is actually also straight out of the play, for Caesar, too, was warned by his wife’s dreams–the rare Shakespearean parallel not staged by the sinister Lionheart.

And so Lionheart begins his murder spree, assisted by his daughter Edwina as well as a motley crew of deranged homeless people, killing each theater critic who denied him his award, and each death is a Shakespearean reenactment, as he works his way sequentially through his would-be triumphant season.  Because Theater of Blood is structured around these killings, the fun is not in unravelling the mystery but in seeing what he’s going to do next.  You begin searching your memory for the most violent scenes in the Bard’s plays; and no, Macbeth is not included–too easy, perhaps.  That Diana Rigg (Emma Peel and Mrs. James Bond) is involved at all speaks to how enticing this gruesome project must have been: it’s an actor’s horror film, sharply written and extremely funny in the black-humored vein of E.C. Comics.

Back to modern horror.  Trick ‘r Treat is a delicious celebration of Halloween, and a lovingly-designed anthology reminiscent of the funny and stylish 80’s genre films of Joe Dante, John Landis, and George A. Romero.  It’s written and directed by Michael Dougherty, co-author of the screenplays of Bryan Singer’s X2: X-Men United and Superman Returns (Singer is the producer of Trick ‘r Treat), and his writing here is a lot of fun: unlike most anthology films, which neatly separate the segments, Dougherty wisely takes the Tarantino path of linking up all of his characters and storylines, weaving them tightly together while granting them equal weight.  All of the mayhem which unfolds takes place on one long Halloween night in the same small town, while a Mexican Day of the Dead-style Halloween parade marches through, and trick ‘r treaters venture from one spooky house to the next, smashing jack-o-lanterns, telling each other ghost stories, dodging real-life ghouls.  I hesitate to say anthing, since most of what you see proves to be untrue: in one scene after another, Dougherty pulls the rug out from under the audience, even in a minor moment such as a character looking apprehensively at a spooky masked persona watching from the other side of the street, who soon harmlessly hops into a car with some friends and drives off, proving not to be Michael Meyers after all.  Better just to indicate the elements at play: a school principal (Happiness‘ Dylan Baker) with a very big secret–or a lot of them; his Halloween-hating neighbor Mr. Kreeg (Zodiac’s Brian Cox); Laurie (X-Men’s Anna Paquin), a shy girl dressed as Red Riding Hood experiencing some heavy peer pressure from her two best friends; and a group of trick ‘r treating kids who dare each other to visit the site of a terrible school bus accident from decades prior.  Surprisingly for an anthology film, there isn’t a weak story in the bunch (well, maybe the prologue, but that’s also the shortest), and the final tale, which finally focuses upon that strange-looking ubiquitous kid in the burlap-sack mask, is a monster-mash blast; by all rights this should be regarded as a modern spookshow classic.  Yet the film, produced in 2007, sat on the shelf for two years before finally receiving a direct-to-DVD-and-BluRay release.  When I found this at the video store yesterday it shared the shelf with countless new-release, straight-to-video horror films, all of them either rip-offs, sequels (Wrong Turn 3), or remakes (I had no idea there was a new Children of the Corn, or that someone had even remade Larry Cohen’s exceptionally silly baby-on-the-rampage flick It’s Alive).  Given the fact that there’s yet another Saw film in theaters this month, I would think something as original, polished, and downright enjoyable as Trick ‘r Treat could have received a theatrical release to distinguish itself from the mob.  Regardless, it can now become a perennial favorite in the home of the discerning horror fan.

The Spanish film REC is not just a significant part of the new wave of Spanish horror cinema, but also a key picture in two current genre fads: zombies, of course, and POV, “captured on video” horror in the style popularized (but not originated) by The Blair Witch Project.  I have a deteriorating interest in both of these trends, which are growing as tired as angsty vampire movies, but as this blog has attested, I’m a defender of Paranormal Activity’s virtues, and REC is equally effective in immersing you in the action with the video camera; most important, it delivers on the scares.  The host of a TV show called ”While You’re Asleep” (sort of a straight-laced version of Dave Attell’s “Insomniac” series for Comedy Central) is spending the evening at a fire station, hoping desperately that something exciting happens–at one point, she’s simply filming an empty hallway and pointing at the rooms where the firemen are dozing.  Naturally, she gets more than she’d wanted: she rides out on a call to an apartment building, which turns out to be ground zero for a zombie outbreak.  Shortly after a zombie granny attacks the firemen and policemen assembled at the site, the building is quarantined.  Trapped inside, the plague quickly spreads, as the TV host and her cameraman try to bear witness while desperately trying to find a means of escape. 

If this sounds familiar, you might have seen the American remake, Quarantine, which–judging from the trailer included on the DVD–appears to be virtually a shot-for-shot remake.  Then again, perhaps it sounds familiar because you’ve seen Night of the Living Dead, Cloverfield, Diary of the Dead, or any of the dozens of films which lie upon the same roads that cross here.  Yet REC holds its own in such an overcrowded field.    For one thing, it’s twice as effective for maintaining its reserve until the last ten minutes of the film (at which point all Hell breaks loose).  I’d argue that one of the reasons it’s better than many of its brethren is that it’s so focused on versimilitude that you don’t feel you’re being led from one plot point or horror setpiece to another.  It might seem slow-paced at first, but it pays in dividends: when a zombie attack is followed by a series of interviews with several of the characters, asking for their reaction and probing their personalities, it’s easy to forget that you’re not just watching an episode of a reality-TV show.  You would expect the first attack to result in an ever-escalating chaos, which is one of the newer rules of the genre; most directors are eager to get to the carnage.  Instead, director Jaume Balagueró relies upon a lesson which Romero taught and many have forgotten about: you’re more invested in the story when a shock is followed by long scenes of nothing but waiting.  This allows for the unease to build, but also, more practically, to develop the characters beyond mere stereotypes.  That said, when Balagueró does let loose, it’s horror at its finest.  The final minutes of the film, shot entirely in night-vision in a dark room, at one point merely become green, flickering images, almost avant-garde, and much more nightmarish because they are simply impressions of what is happening.  Some spare CG effects work is buried in these murky moments, and because of that it’s twice as frightening.  There’s a lesson to be learned here, too.