Jeff Kuykendall

October 17
#14 The Ninth Gate (1999)
October 18
#15 The Undying Monster (1942)
October 19
#16 The Ghost Ship (1943)

It’s bizarre to think that The Ninth Gate is ten years old.  It has, as I’d always suspected it would, taken a while to find its fans, and now has a deserved cult following thanks to DVD and the rising popularity of Johnny Depp.  But Roman Polanski, in recent weeks, has become something of a flashpoint for issues of the Art vs. the Artist, among other things.  (As I write this, Polanski is still under arrest in Switzerland and battling extradition to the United States for fleeing the country in 1977 before he could be sentenced for the crime of unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl.)  I’m not going to comment here on Polanski and his legal troubles, as I’m not a legal expert, although I’d suggest that anyone wishing to form an opinion should seek out his autobiography, Roman, in which he details the incident as well as the legal fallout and his time served, and also watch the documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, which covers the case fairly well.  Polanski’s troubled life story aside, I’ve always been a fan of his work, and my reaction upon first viewing The Ninth Gate was that it was an artistic sucess, although it wasn’t what I’d expected it to be: it was marketed as an end-of-the-millenium, End of Days-style Apocalypse thriller (which was in vogue at the time, as you’ll recall). That it was “from the director of Rosemary’s Baby” was also an effective way for the studio to sell it as a Satanic horror film. It isn’t quite that. What I saw was a film that was deliberately old-fashioned, with nods to Hammer Studios (a scene is borrowed from The Devil Rides Out), Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Alfred Hitchcock. It’s intended for the audience who enjoys that sort of thing, and I very much do. As Polanski admits on the audio commentary track, he made it because it’s the sort of movie he likes to watch.

He was the victim of a kind of hysteria in the late 60’s, and practically tagged a Satanist by the press after the Manson Family murdered his wife Sharon Tate–the implication being that he invited the tragedy by making Rosemary’s Baby (a film which is now regarded as a classic, although at the time it was viewed as extremely explicit and diabolical). In fact, he’s an avowed atheist. His suspense thrillers are more concerned with psychological states than the supernatural: Repulsion, Rosemary’s Baby, and The Tenant deal with issues of paranoia and schizophrenia.  He is also keenly interested in both the subjectivity and specificity of the camera’s eye: when his films are not taking the direct point of view of the protagonist, they are often observing details pointedly.  Take the pre-credits scene of The Ninth Gate: we see a man writing a letter; as he writes, the camera makes pains to show you a footstool unusually positioned in the center of the room, and then pans up to a noose hanging from a chandelier.  A moment later, the man carefully finishes his letter, places it in the envelope, strides calmly across the room, and puts his head in the noose.  We see his feet awkwardly attempt to kick aside the stool, and when they succeed, we see the chandelier jerk downward by a few inches, shorting out the lights, and then the feet struggle in mid-air.  When they cease to move, the camera wanders across the room, over the desk and the envelope, and then searching the bookshelves, passing over a multitude of antique books with the obsessive quality of its protagonist, the “book detective” Dean Corso (Depp).  Finally the camera discovers a gap between books–a missing volume–and it plunges into the darkness of that gap and into the opening credits.  In a capsule, we have the entire film: the sinister amidst the mundane, a passion for books, and a search for the one special volume which might contain a dark secret.  Those who were expecting special-effects driven horror with MTV cutting, rock music, possessed children and gory deaths would have to look elsewhere (say, the next 10 years of Hollywood horror).  This is a Roman Polanski film, and it has as much in common with Chinatown as Rosemary’s Baby (and Death and the Maiden, and Frantic, and The Tenant, and Bitter Moon, and even Cul-de-sac).  It’s very much in his ouvre, and not a lesser Polanski picture by any means.

One of the chief joys of watching The Ninth Gate is, however, Johnny Depp, who gives Corso such a winning mixture of Philip Marlowe and, well, Ichabod Crane, whom he played that same year in Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow.  I’m not sure if it was Polanski’s or Depp’s idea to make a subplot out of Corso’s glasses, of all things–he’s constantly adjusting them, polishing them with his tie, or putting them back on after they’ve been slapped off or trod upon–but I have a feeling they were both giddily urging each other to push it as far as they could.  Corso is also an unashamed scoundrel, a book appraiser introduced casually ripping-off some clients to get his hands on an 18th century multi-volume edition of Don Quixote; and it’s this trait which becomes crucially important as the plot advances.  Corso is hired by an amoral millionaire, Boris Balkan (Frank Langella, rarely better), to validate his prize possession–a Satanic volume called The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows–against the only other copies known to exist in the world, held in private collections in Portugal and France.  The book was written in 1666 (of course) by Aristide de Torquay, who was burned by the Inquisition for writing it, and for possessing, it’s said, a book written by Lucifer himself.  Balkan suspects that his copy is a fake.  “You mean the Devil won’t show up?” Corso asks.  He’s required to take the book with him so he can carefully compare all three copies, but in great film noir tradition, it’s deadly cargo: the wife of the man who last owned the book tries to seduce Corso to get it back; an albino is trying to kill him for it; and he’s trailed by a mysterious woman–known in the credits only as The Girl, and played by Polanski’s wife, Emmanuelle Seigner (Bitter Moon)–who protects Corso for reasons she keeps to herself.  Depp, much like Jack Nicholson in Chinatown, acts tough and cracks wise while ducking, weaving, and running from all the forces out to stop him; and often he loses spectacularly (although his nostril never gets sliced).  The mystery involving The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows, and its Tarot-like illustrations, is deeply compelling, faithfully translated from the novel The Club Dumas–but Polanski otherwise gutted the book, removing, for example, all references to Alexandre Dumas, as well as more literature-oriented digressions.  The film must be taken on its own merits, not as an adaptation of Arturo Perez-Reverte’s work; and, on that level, it succeeds as a story of a quest into the nature of evil.  In The Ninth Gate, evil is not located beyond the gates of Hell.  It is in the commonplace, the banal.  It is in Boris Balkan, who believes his money can purchase anything, including a man’s soul: he’s not unlike those tycoons celebrated by reality-TV shows Shark Tank and The Apprentice.  Nevertheless, the ending of The Ninth Gate once bothered me, a misstep in an otherwise fine film.  On this, my third viewing, I was struck by how carefully prepared-for the last scenes were.  Polanski is nothing if not neat and tidy.  I also now believe that I had originally misinterpreted the ending, or at least the nature of The Girl.  This is genuinely one of those films which improves upon multiple viewings.  Polanski’s films are built to last. 

On Sunday and Monday night I watched two minor thrillers of the 40’s, both low-budget but genre-bending, and mildly clever in their own ways.  The Undying Monster, a Fox Studios film directed by John Brahm (Hangover Square), promises a werewolf and doesn’t deliver until the last minute of the film.  Until then, it’s a mildly witty, entertaining-enough mystery in the Agatha Christie mold, with a bit of Hound of the Baskervilles mixed in.  Ironically, the opening shot of this film is very similar to the opening shot of The Ninth Gate, both involving a camera roaming about the room, gazing meaningfully at various objects; in this case, it ends not with a shock but a very funny joke.  More to my taste, however, is The Ghost Ship, which continues my Val Lewton marathon.  Although it’s eclipsed by the more memorable and stylish Val Lewton-produced films of the 40’s, The Ghost Ship is a lot of fun.  Like Jack London’s The Sea Wolf or, of course, Moby-Dick, it involves a sadistic captain (Richard Dix) on the verge of insanity, here tormenting young officer Merriam (Russell Wade).  At first the captain seems like a gentle, if long-winded, soul; he advises Merriam to not kill a moth, for crying out loud.  But his speeches about the meaning of authority take on a sinister air when Merriam witnesses the captain arranging an “accident” for a sailor who had the nerve to question him–this is the film’s strongest scene, as we watch a man trapped in a ship’s well while he’s slowly crushed to death by a great heavy chain spooling down upon him; the noise of the chain is so loud that they drown out his cries for help, and the men above carry on, obliviously killing their friend.  The film is also more than a little strange–in a good way.  The film is intermittently narrated by a mute deckhand, whose voiceover drones on about issues of morality while he stares at the audience with a countenance like the unmasked Jackie Earle Haley in Watchmen.  Eerie indeed.

October 16
#13 Fright Night (1985)

Ah, Fright Night. 

My teenage years; here they are.

Nervous teenager Charley Brewster (William Ragsdale) is a passionate fan of Peter Vincent (Roddy McDowall), who, in better years, starred in films as ”Peter Vincent, Vampire Slayer,” but is currently relegated to the role of late-night monster-movie host on a show called “Fright Night.”  Now Peter’s show is getting cancelled, because, as he puts it, today’s kids are only interested in ”demented madmen running around in ski masks hacking up young virgins,” and an eviction notice is waiting for him at home.  Charley needs his help.  He’s just received conclusive evidence that Jerry Dandridge (Chris Sarandon), the handsome and charming man who’s just moved in next door, is a vampire: partly because through his window he witnessed Jerry about to bite into the neck of a pretty young woman, and partly because Jerry, fangs bared and eyes glowing red, has just invaded his bedroom and tried to murder him.  Much like that one police officer, Peter thinks Charley’s crazy.  But soon they’ll both be up against Jerry Dandridge in a battle for the soul of Charley’s girlfriend Amy (Amanda Bearse).  Movie props are pitted against shapechanging bloodsuckers in “Fright Night – for real.”

It might be one of the iconic 80’s horror movies, but I still think Fright Night’s been undervalued in the two-and-a-half decades since its release.  As with many of the films of Joe Dante and John Landis, writer/director Tom Holland has a genuinely reverent, Famous Monsters of Filmland-style affection for out-of-fashion monster movies.  But it ranks among the best of the decade’s retro-minded horror films not just because the pre-CG special effects (by Richard Edlund) are still very impressive, but also because it does not buckle under the weight of nostalgia and sentimentality.  Fright Night not only has a serious beef with those films about ”madmen running around in ski masks,” but it treats its themes seriously.  Amy is confronting an emerging sexuality which frightens her, but which Jerry Dandridge draws out with a confidence Charley can only envy.  Charley’s spasmodic friend, “Evil” Ed (Stephen Geoffreys), is condemned to be a social outcast until Jerry offers him a way out, a means of having power over those who would torment him.  Both Charley and Peter are forced to emerge from their claustrophobic worlds, and it’s charming to watch one guide the other on–as they figure out, together, how to become heroes in the face of real danger.  Fright Night is wish-fulfillment for horror geeks (what if Peter Cushing or Vincent Price helped you kill real vampires?), but it also takes care to ground each moment with humor and feeling.  Peter Vincent does not become a fearless vampire killer in the space of a heartbeat.  There’s a lovely moment after he’s steeled himself to the task, and hesitates just on the brink of the walkway leading up to Jerry’s house.  Then he overcomes that hesitation, and marches confidently forward, determined to do the right thing despite his nerves.  (And even then, he’ll run in terror when their strategy immediately falls to pieces.)  The script stays sharp as a stake throughout, and Holland is at the top of his game when he stages a dance of seduction between Jerry and Amy on a dance club floor, or when Peter tries to prove to Charley that Jerry is not a vampire by giving him fake “holy water,” and Jerry pauses with the flask near his lips, hoping to the Devil that it’s really fake.  Sarandon, chomping on apples and flashing smiles at Charley while smooth-talking the boy’s mother, gives a performance that’s been justly praised.  But to revisit the film many years after I last saw it, I’m struck now at how much Ragsdale’s performance is keyed to McDowall’s.  Roddy McDowall’s acting has always had an affectation, which can crumble into camp in the wrong role.  Young Ragsdale pitches his line delivery to McDowall’s, giving it a similar kind of affectation, and so, subtly, sells the idea that Charley is just a younger version of Peter, and Peter just an older, more world-weary Charley.  Much of the reason Fright Night clicks so perfectly is the pairing of these two actors, who make such a great team that they had to be reunited…although Fright Night: Part 2 was a sad disappointment, saddled with a script that couldn’t quite balance its satire with its horror, and lost this film’s youthful, exuberant flush.  Undoubtedly the very-80’s score has aged less well, too often just squealing guitar solos, or smothering the warmer scenes with schmaltz.  It regains its footing, you’ll notice, in the climax, aping James Bernard’s muscular scores for the Hammer horror films of the late 50’s and early 60’s, while we’re watching a scene which pays direct tribute to those films.  You can slap your head now: the whole film should have been scored this way.  But it’s hard, for one of my generation, to not feel a rush of nostalgia during the club scene, scored to the max with a medley of New Wave and power pop: non-hits, the lot of them, but as reassuring as comfort food nonetheless. 

The 2006 repackaging of the DVD prominently displays the names of Sarandon, McDowall, and Bearse (best known for Married…with Children), but curiously not the star of the film, Ragsdale, who went on to do Herman’s Head for FOX, and continues to work consistently in television.

October 15
#12 The Leopard Man (1943)

The greatest thing about 1944’s The Curse of the Cat People was that, unlike 99% of all sequels, it was not a retread of the original.  Instead it actually moved the characters into a completely different genre–a children’s fantasy–in such a way that it offered a sort of flip-side or negative-image of the original film, complementing it without remaking it.  (It was also the directorial debut of Orson Welles’ editor, Robert Wise, who would go on to direct The Sound of Music, West Side Story, and The Haunting.)  No, if there was a retread, it had already been made: 1943’s The Leopard Man reunited the great Jacques Tourneur with Val Lewton for the third time, after Cat People and I Walked with a Zombie, and for the first half it is, by all appearances, a more direct sequel than Wise would make.  To its credit it ultimately reveals itself to be about something entirely different, although not entirely original.

Those previous Tourneur/Lewton collaborations were striking and memorable not least because they brought their stories’ subtext into the foreground: Cat People’s sexual neuroses and I Walked with a Zombie’s preoccupation with death are front and center, and pretty hard to miss.  In this way, they are unique horror films which deal directly with fairly abstract ideas.  But The Leopard Man, based on the novel Black Alibi by Cornell Woolrich, is disappointingly straightforward.  It’s a playful film, but ultimately proves to be little more than a simple game.  After a delirious first half in which we’re not even sure who the protagonists are, so much does Tourneur leap from one character to another (as the camera swings out one window or doorway and into the next, in a breathless style reminiscent of Welles), we witness two gruesome deaths.  After a leopard–intended for use in a cabaret show–gets frightened by the click-clacking castanets of a dancer, it breaks free of its leash and runs off into the shadowy streets.  Next we see a young Hispanic girl venturing forth, by her mother’s command, into the night on a random errand, and she is violently attacked by the leopard, which has been lurking in the shadows under a bridge: in the film’s single notorious scene, she pounds upon the door of her home while her oblivious mother only taunts her from inside; by the time the mother has crossed the room, the cries have stopped and blood begins pooling out from underneath the door.  Not much later we witness a second death, as another girl finds herself getting locked into a high-walled cemetery.  Although her screams for help are answered by a friendly voice that offers to go fetch a ladder, the boughs above her bend, as though bearing a great weight–and then snap loose as something unseen leaps free.  In both of these waking nightmares, the victims find themselves trapped against an unbreakable barrier while their calls for help are answered impotently. 

Being stalked by a deadly cat was familiar ground for Tourneur, and he repeats himself with one of the most effective scares from Cat People, building the expectation of an animal attack and then replacing the expected feline roar with that of something similar, for a jolt: in the original film it was a bus, and here he uses it at least twice, most startlingly with a train that passes on the bridge above the first victim, so loud that I actually jumped.  Tourneur might be excused for relying upon an old trick.  Although Cat People was the hit that launched Val Lewton’s run of horror films, critics would not peer so closely.  His films, with their exploitation-ready titles, were not appreciated for their craft for a few more decades; surely it would not be until they began rerunning on television that more and more people took notice of just how special Lewton’s films were.  The Leopard Man, produced so quickly after Cat People, gave Tourneur a chance to refine his technique in the confines of a low-budget genre horror film, a B-picture (66 minutes long) which would be considered disposable entertainment.  So he might be forgiven if he repeats himself here: he is, I believe, trying to tweak what he had previously tried to see if he can amplify the effect, as interested in playing the audience as Hitchcock.

Although it’s somewhat of a relief that The Leopard Man is not actually about a man who turns into a leopard, the second half proves just as routine: when it’s suspected that a killing spree is not an animal’s work but that of a man, the film becomes a standard detective film–and you will correctly guess whodunit long before the big reveal.  Still, the finale is effective and atmospheric, and the events are almost eerily detached from reality.  That dreamlike quality is present in all of Lewton’s films, including The Leopard Man, so that it lingers in the consciousness perhaps more than it ought to.  Even a lesser Lewton & Tourneur, divorced of profound ideas, manages to achieve a haunting quality which eludes the vast majority of horror films.

October 14
#11 I Walked with a Zombie (1943)

“It’s not beautiful…everything seems beautiful because you don’t understand.  Those flying fish, they’re not leaping for joy.  They’re jumping in terror.  Bigger fish want to eat them.  That luminous water, it takes its gleam from millions of tiny dead bodies, the glitter of putrescence.  There’s no beauty here, only death and decay.”

This cheery monologue is delivered not by Werner Herzog (although he says something very similar in Burden of Dreams), but by Paul Holland (Cat People’s Tom Conway), standing upon a ship bound for the West Indies, gazing cynically at young nurse Betsy Connell (Frances Dee), who has gone to work for him on his St. Sebastian sugar plantation.  Betsy is naive, he insists, because she thinks that nature is beautiful.  He has the more clinical eye.  But he’s been greatly wounded by an incident in the recent past: his wife Jessica is mentally ill, catatonic, given to wandering in a white dress with vacant eyes, and all because–he believes–of a single harsh confrontation between them.  His half-brother Paul is also wounded, but by long-festering jealousy over Jessica and resentment toward Paul.  The plot does not simmer much more than this.  There is a gloom which hangs over the proceedings that also touches every one of the productions overseen by the great Val Lewton.  Everyone seems stuck in place.  Nothing can be changed, because it is already in ruin: doom is in every character’s gaze, most dominantly in the perfectly round, neatly spaced globes set into the head of one eerie giant named Carrefour, who may or may not be one of the walking dead, if those rituals practiced by the locals produce real magic.  And Betsy has begun ruminating over those ceremonies, because if the voodoo is real, perhaps it can bring Jessica back from the brink.  This is complicated by Betsy’s newfound love for Paul, as well as the possibility that Jessica, still wandering the plantation, might not actually be alive.

The most important fact in I Walked with a Zombie, explicitly stated, is that the apparently-beautiful island has a history of pain and misery: it was built on the backs of slaves, and continues to be worked by the descendants of slaves.  Prominent in the plantation is a statue of Saint Sebastian, riddled with arrows and tied to a post (how he was said to have been killed by the Roman emperor Diocletian); but this statue was actually a figurehead from a slave-ship before it was set up in the garden for decoration.  This uncomfortable history hangs over the inhabitants both white and black, just as does the spectre of death.  Betsy, arriving with the intention of healing others, finds herself swimming against the tide.  How can anything be restored in such a place?

Every film in the Val Lewton catalogue (available in a fine box set from Warner Bros.) features at least one key scene which stands tall above the others, the Val Lewton Moment, and a classic example of how fear and dread can be generated through suggestion.  Jacques Tourneur (Cat People, Out of the Past) here delivers a doozy.  Betsy leads Jessica through tall fields of sugarcane while the drums of the voodoo ceremony beat in the distance, and silently they encounter ill omens and obstacles: a skull in the ground, a dead rabbit hanging from a tree, and eventually Carrefour, alliteratively like the boatsman Charon.  In a panic Betsy realizes she has lost the ribbon which would have allowed safe passage, so she clings to Jessica (who still has hers).  She might as well be clinging to a corpse to infiltrate the Underworld.  They are allowed to pass.

In Val Lewton’s films, death is inescapable, and it chokes and it suffocates.  In being handed the title I Walked with a Zombie, he famously decided to use Jane Eyre as his source text, and emerged with a more literate and lyrical B-movie than anyone could have expected.  But his film is honest, disconcertingly so.  It is a film about zombies: a story about death and this limbo isle which seems to be perched upon the boundary of death and life–a place where nothing can live, and yet nothing, least of all the past, remains buried.

October 9
#9 Mother’s Day (1980)
October 13
#10 Paranormal Activity (2009)

My ongoing horror movie marathon has slowed down somewhat this past weekend; I watched Mother’s Day, a Troma film from 1980 which broadly mixes satire with Last House on the Left-style horror, to variable results. (Although after watching this bizarre, intermittently funny film, it is difficult to not come away repeating a memorable dialogue exchange which takes up a full minute of screen time: “‘Punk sucks!’ ‘Disco’s stupid!’”)

But the spirit of the season returned in force last night as I dragged a kicking and screaming wife to the east side of town, to the only theater in Madison showing Paranormal Activity, the low-budget horror film generating such tremendous buzz that it is guaranteed we are mere minutes away from the inevitable backlash (and a few days away from the backlash-to-the-backlash–order your team colors now).  Comparisons to The Blair Witch Project have already become tired, but they’re hard to avoid: this is another shot-on-video production featuring supposedly “recovered” footage shot by the participants before their…unfortunate fate.  And like TBWP, the film makes pains to hide its manufactured origins, insisting upon the veracity of its material, leaving it open for a wink-wink ”it’s all real” promotional campaign which has been in use for decades in the horror genre, going back at least to 1980’s Cannibal Holocaust.  But the comparison is more vital because of the divisive reaction it will receive from audiences. 

I first saw TBWP in Seattle right when the hype was beginning to escalate, but before the hype explosion of a wide release.  I didn’t really know what the film was about apart from the basics (some people get lost in the woods, there’s something out there, and it’s “found footage”).  The theater, to its everlasting credit, generated a healthy dose of atmosphere by piping woodland sound effects into the cinema before the film’s start; and the film was a deeply unnerving experience, in part because I had no idea what was going to happen or what the parameters for the “horror” were going to be.  I left the theater rattled, disturbed, and delighted.  What seemed so extraordinary–what I most appreciated–was that the ending did three things simultaneously:

1) It expected the viewer to have been paying attention throughout the film, and subsequently did not spell out the meaning of its final image.

2) It did not directly depict its monster, relying upon the audience’s imagination to fill out the horror.

3) It was scary, mainly because of points 1 and 2.

As I’ve always been interested in what makes for a good horror film and why so many people want to be scared in the first place, The Blair Witch Project stayed in my thoughts for weeks afterward.  At a party, I encountered two women discussing the film; one had seen it and one hadn’t, and the former insisted, “Don’t go, it’s awful.  The characters are so annoying and nothing ever happens.”  She also offered the highly dubious opinion that “Anyway, no one can get lost in the woods anymore, America’s too overdeveloped,” which indicated only that she had been living in the city for too long.  Regardless, I didn’t speak up, and began to question my own opinions.  In subsequent years, those opinions hardened: TBWP is a litmus test for the imagination.  If you have a limited imagination, the film simply does not work.  It requires you to think about what you cannot see, and generates its disturbing quality from that work which your imagination provides.

After Paranormal Activity ended and a packed house (on a Tuesday night!) began to file out, I overheard many appreciative words as well as one person emphatically declaring it “the biggest piece of shit film I’ve ever seen!”  (Oddly, this summer I overheard the same opinion announced, loudly, in the middle of a screening of Public Enemies.  Maybe it was the same disgruntled patron?)  Already, then, Paranormal Activity is beginning to challenge its audience and divide them right and left. 

Certainly the plot offers nothing new or overly complex: as the film begins, Micah and Katie have already been experiencing supernatural goings-on since moving into their small, two-story suburban home, and we only pick up the events, naturally, when Micah buys a camera so he can attempt to capture the activity on tape.  He’s still not convinced it’s paranormal in nature, though Katie is, for reasons that are soon made clear.  He sets up the camera at the foot of their bed and lets it record while they sleep…and then we begin to see what they cannot, which is the central ingredient for this film’s horror: we watch the couple asleep, helpless, while the nefarious unseen being acts.

The proceedings are essentially a chess game in which one player acts, waits, and then the other responds; however, critically, one player doesn’t know the rules.  Micah is thrilled and engaged to be witnessing the supernatural.  He wants to communicate with the entity (which a local psychic quickly diagnoses as a demon, not a ghost, and therefore out of his jurisdiction); he taunts and goads it.  His girlfriend pleads with him to stop; eventually she decides it’s best to ignore it, in hopes that the increasingly hostile activity subsides.  It’s an argument which persists throughout the movie, and which provides much of its tension; I suspect viewers will quickly be allying themselves with one side or the other, before helplessness sets in and events progress to a point of no return.

The camera, of course, is not static throughout the film.  Most of the time we’re on Micah’s shoulder while he’s interrogating his girlfriend, running after bumps in the night, and obsessively watching the previous night’s footage.  To that last point, it’s worth noting the meta aspect of watching a recording of Micah watching a recording of himself (and Katie), unaware that he will then become the footage that we pore over.  Similarly, while he fast-forwards to get to the good stuff, so do we: the nighttime surveillance footage has a timestamp which, in more than a few scenes, fast-forwards for us, as though we have our finger on the button.  Cleverly, writer and director Oren Peli (who goes uncredited, so far as I could tell) actually uses this device to produce one of the creepiest moments in the film, in which the unease is generated because of what is being revealed by the act of fast-forwarding, as well as just how much time elapses (as the timer at the bottom of the screen spins on).  But the biggest scares come after long moments of stillness, as we gaze into a dark room and down that open door to the left, with a glimpse of shadowy stairs and doors, waiting for something to materialize: an unnatural sound, a disembodied shadow.  Roger Ebert nails it: ”It illustrates one of my favorite points, that silence and waiting can be more entertaining than frantic fast-cutting and berserk f/x. For extended periods here, nothing at all is happening, and believe me, you won’t be bored.” How long has it been since you’ve seen a genre horror film which relies upon being patient and observant? In a crowded theater, populated largely by teenagers, you could hear a pin drop during the “surveillance” scenes. Everyone was simply staring at the screen, studying it, and listening very closely. After the big jumps, the audience finally relented into peals of laughter, tension broken, delighted to be scared.

I don’t mean it to sound as though I believe a horror film is only meant to be a machine, tuned-up and well-oiled to produce maximum impact.  Actually I think there are two kinds of horror, not mutually exclusive.  One is the macabre, more intent on unsettling the reader/viewer, and often more thematically rich as it traffics in taboo ideas: this might be called the Frankenstein strain.  A second focuses upon generating shocks–genuinely intended to produce fear and tension: this might be called the Dracula strain.  It’s this second strain to which both Paranormal Activity and TBWP belong.  Their purpose is to evoke fear.  This is every bit as artistically valid a goal as that of a catharsis drama, and should not be dismissed out of hand (which is what A.O. Scott does in his sniffy and unintentionally humorous appraisal of PA for the NY Times).  Similarly, no one should be ashamed for wanting to be scared, nor to explore their fears.  Only by doing this can we better understand them.

After the film was over, my wife was deeply bothered, and did not want, that night, to go to sleep in a dark house.  I asked her why: “You’re a rational person.  You’re a scientist.  You don’t believe in demons or ghosts.  You don’t believe these things are real.” 

She said, “I do when the lights are out.” 

And it’s that simple contradiction which stories like Paranormal Activity were meant to draw into the open, like a camcorder capturing the shadow of a ghost.

October 8
#8 Splinter (2008)

I have a weakness for monster movies, which may have something to do with my overwhelming preference for Splinter over the previous night’s viewing, the more ambitious Deadgirl.  Directed by special effects artist Toby Wilkins (I noted minor similarities to another low-budget monster film directed by a special effects artist: Stan Winston’s Pumpkinhead), it’s the streamlined tale of two young campers (Paulo Costanzo and Jill Wagner) who are taken hostage by an outlaw (Shea Whigham) and his drug-addicted, hallucination-prone girlfriend (Rachel Kerbs).  Ostensibly they’re just making a run for Mexico, and need the unlucky couple’s car.  But then they strike an animal in the road, infected by some kind of virus which causes sharp splinters to emerge from the skin–and the roadkill continues to move after it’s been flattened.  Later they’re forced to stop at a gas station, where the same virus has infected the attendant; and soon, predictably, they’re trapped within the convenience store while the mutations manifest outside in horrifying forms. 

You can easily check off the influences: John Carpenter’s The Thing and Frank Darabont’s The Mist (as well as the stories which inspired them, by John W. Campbell, Jr. and Stephen King, respectively), plus any number of 80’s and 90’s monster movies around the same theme.  In this subgenre, what’s more important are the effects work, the level of acting, the ingenuity of the direction, and the effectiveness of the suspense, and for the most part Splinter covers itself just fine.  Whigham, who according to IMDB is playing the character of Phil in an upcoming adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s excellent posthumous novel Radio Free Albemuth, is particularly effective as a felon with a conscience.  As with Alien and both versions of The Thing, the fun is in trying to figure out how the menace operates; here, the fact that one of the characters is, conveniently, a grad student in Biology allows plenty of opportunity to investigate the creature’s bizarre nature (it proves to be more of an unintelligent fungus).  Unfortunately, the credibility-stretching climax is more than a tad ridiculous.

Monster movie diehards such as myself will nevertheless find plenty to enjoy.  Also, no zombies are raped by high schoolers, and I now consider that a plus.

October 7
#7 Deadgirl (2008)

Two best friends, Rickie (Shiloh Fernandez) and J.T. (Noah Segan), skipping school and fleeing bullies, break into an abandoned mental hospital–one which looks uncannily like the abandoned mental hospital right next to my in-laws’ house, by the way–with the intention of causing some unsupervised havoc.  At first it proves an exhilarating means of exercising control and freedom that they cannot find in their daily lives; that is, until they wander into a menacing, shadowy basement, which might remind the viewer of Brad Anderson’s superior Session 9.  Here they encounter a vicious dog, one whose inexplicable presence is one of a handful of unexplained aspects to the story (the ever-lurking dog, present but largely unseen for much of the running time, seems to serve more as metaphor than reality, enhancing the fable qualities of the film).  The two are chased by the dog into a barricaded section of the hospital, and here they find, in a morgue-like room, a naked young woman covered in a plastic sheet.  She is held tight by chains, and a gag is in her mouth.  Although by all appearances–yellowed skin, sunken features–she’s a corpse, they’re startled to find a breathing disturbing the sheet.   Almost immediately J.T.’s fascination turns to possessive lust.  Rickie is repulsed and frightened, although there’s a glimpse of a similar lascivious impulse: both boys are obviously virgins, and it is made clear that, at 17, they remain in a pall of paralyzed fear in the presence of the opposite sex.  Rickie runs, leaving J.T. alone with the body; and it’s then, we learn later, that the girl tries to attack J.T., and he fights with her, breaking her neck.  Yet she cannot be killed.  She’s undead, though they never say the word; a zombie, most likely, but J.T. simply calls her “our monster.”  By leaving her chained, in this place no one else is likely to discover, they can do whatever they want to her.  Rickie won’t.  J.T., on the other hand, not only uses the girl to exercise all the control he’s ever lusted of having over a girl, but also begins to loan her out to another friend.  For all his guilt and revulsion, Rickie cannot distance himself.  Neither can he tell anyone.  An attempt to free the “dead girl” is aborted when she proves to be lethal unchained.  And the moral quagmire is further complicated when it’s proven that her condition can spread by bite (although not, curiously, by sexual intercourse; perhaps because Romero never had anything to say on that detail, and almost all zombie movies must follow Romero’s Laws).  Meanwhile, inevitably, Rickie’s unrequited love for a girl who was his first (and possibly only) kiss is dragged into this dangerous game–as is the girl’s  jock boyfriend.

All of this is handsomely shot, with an excellent soundtrack and some thoughtful editing: despite the extremely disturbing nature of the plot, Deadgirl does not belong to the same strain of “extreme” horror currently pushing the limits of what can be shown on screen (largely from Europe and Asia).  Directors Marcel Sarmiento and Gadi Harel prefer instead to give only subliminal flashes of violence, with a jolt of the soundtrack followed by a shock of blackness.  And even though the “dead girl” is never clothed–and is being raped and brutalized throughout the film–some nauseating makeup and creepy camera angles guarantee that none of this is eroticized or overtly exploitative.  Deadgirl unfolds as a dark coming-of-age tale with elements of genre horror.  When it keeps its focus on the real-life horrors of adolescence, it can be quite powerful. 

Unfortunately, however, the metaphor at the heart of the film is burdensomely problematic.  The symbol for gaining control and exorcising teenage sexual frustration is the raping and beating of a bound-and-gagged woman.  The fact that she’s a zombie often seems relatively unimportant (though J.T. uses this as an excuse, from our point of view we are watching nothing but a rape); and that our protagonist, Rickie, has any indecisiveness at all is a hurdle too high for the film.  The filmmakers want this to be a story about teenagers battling their fears of powerlessness, but the weightiness of the “r”-word overwhelms the proceedings.  There is nothing wrong with using rape as a metaphor in fiction (and, yes, we’re often told that rape is about power), but it is such a potent element that it throws all others out of balance, and the film struggles to define itself as anything else.  This accounts for the awkward changes in tone, with some late-in-the-game attempts at black humor that feel forced, obligatory but somehow out of place.  The same goes for the supernatural horror, which requires a grand guignol climax that seems somehow dishonest here, though admittedly it’s more restrained than it might have been.  The directors are playing with fire, and more power to them–the horror genre, at its best, goes to uncomfortable and taboo places–but they have raised the stakes too high to indulge in either perfunctory moments or whimsy. 

The ending itself is curiously unsatisfactory and somewhat underdeveloped.  It’s also dispiriting, as much for being obvious as for its disturbing implications (which, to its detriment, are left largely unexplored).  I am not sure what the filmmakers are saying about male sexuality and desire, if they have anything to say at all.  Contrast this–unfairly, perhaps–to the resolution of Let the Right One In, which, in the simplest stroke, offers revelations about what we’ve witnessed and where the characters are going.  Deadgirl is almost claustrophically small-minded in its own denouement.  The film has struggled to be more than just 100 minutes of a zombie getting raped, but ultimately its virtues are subsumed, and it is not much more than just that: some guys raping a girl, and one guy who doesn’t know what to do about it.  It’s handsome but immobile, like a fresh corpse resting on a table.

October 1
#1 Cry of the Banshee (1970)
October 2
#2 P2 (2007)
October 3: The Madison Horror Film Festival
#3 The Landlord (2009)
#4 “You’re Next: Pajama Party Massacre 3″ (2007)
#5 Re-Animator (1985)
October 4
#6 The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)

Every year I treat October as a month-long celebration of Halloween, and my horror movie viewing starts on the first of the month and often continues past midnight on the Day Itself.  Whether or not to blog about it is always a matter of internal debate, not the least because every film I watch is not necessarily worth the blogging (like some of the entries listed above).  But this year I have a specific goal in mind, so I figure it’s worth chronicling, to hold myself to that goal:

Last year I watched 28 horror programs.  (I say “programs” because I include short films and TV episodes or specials, and even live theatrical events, alongside feature films as perfectly valid Halloween-horror celebrating.)  This year it seems only reasonable to shoot for 31, one for each day of the month.  Naturally I don’t expect to have time each day–despite everything I’ve written above, I do have a life of some sort–so to make this goal achievable I’m allowing myself to cram more than one horror program into a single day.

My enthusiasm for the holiday kicked in early – by the middle of September I was already itching to start my horror movie marathon. (At this point I feel obliged to explain just what inordinately attracts me–a bookish English major, Francophile, and lover of split pea soup–to this much-maligned film genre. But I can save that for later. For now, take it for granted that I will be blogging about horror films to an absurd degree for the next month.) Really my marathon began with Rob Zombie’s adult animated film The Haunted World of El Superbeasto a few weeks back, and…or, wait, maybe we should actually begin when I revisited Jacques Tourneur’s superb Cat People in July…

Okay, you know what? Let’s start on October 1st.

I recently got a Tivo. If you knew that I don’t actually have cable or satellite dish–that I, in fact, get about twelve channels–you might think this a little ridiculous. What is there to Tivo? Antiques Roadshow? (Yes, actually. I’ve got three episodes I still need to watch. And tons of Family Feud.) The reason is that I have one of the older HD televisions, the kind without an HD receiver built in. Last year my wife and I were industrious and bought a digital converter box early, one with an HD receiver. It broke last month, and apparently no one carries those anymore. Someone at American laughed at me. Let me underline that: someone who works at American laughed at me. When one is already questioning one’s rocky career path, such an event can be traumatic. I had a standard, non-HD converter box set up for another television in our home, but, being a man who lives in 2009, I find that my eyesight can no longer properly register non-HD programming, reducing it all to an unintelligible blur, like trying to watch TV after removing my glasses and being struck about the cranium with a blackjack. Surely some enterprising grad student should conduct a study on this twenty-first century condition. My wife, who handles all online shopping research in my household, quickly determined that we had two options for viewing HD television again. We could purchase online, used perhaps, the same HD digital converter box we once owned, eagerly anticipating breakage. Or we could get an HD Tivo, which has a built-in HD receiver. And it is marvellous. Oh, there’s this little guy who looks like a TV, and he fidgets nervously while you go through your twelve or thirteen channels, and the word “Tivo” I think appears on his face–I’m at work right now, I’m not sure. And you can even “pause,” “rewind,” or “fast forward” a program. You can also “record” a program, which means, as I gather, that you can capture a program and (through the use of magic, so far as I can tell), watch it again later. Thank God I’ve completely blocked out all memories of VCRs so this can all seem so wondrously new and leave me in a state of childlike joy.  When you hit a button, Mr. Tivo goes, “Ba-bink!”  My television-watching device is adorable.

So here I was, browsing through the infinite variety of program listings which my antenna can provide (this is the future, so they are not rabbit ears–they are round, like robot rabbit ears), and lo and behold there’s a late-night screening of the 1970 Vincent Price film Cry of the Banshee. I tape it–excuse me, Tivo it–and it becomes my inaugural horror film of this month’s marathon.

It’s not very good.

In fact, it’s rather depressing, an American International impersonation of Hammer horror. It’s a costume drama in which each character seems to be costumed for a completely different period and country. It’s a film in which the “banshee” of the title actually just appears to be a werewolf. (That’s right–a mere werewolf!) Vincent Price looks only mildly engaged, as if he’s been hoodwinked into appearing in a community theater production. The sex is of the whip-and-chains variety which may or may not be your preference, but the smut is pretty dreary nonetheless. Or perhaps I should say “bleary.” It’s been a long while, I now realize, since I last watched a theatrical movie edited for television, and it was quite alarming to learn that women as a people do not have breasts, but rather a large cloudy region, as if a dirty old man had breathed on the glass. More specifically, it is exactly like watching naked women on non-HD TV.

Cry of the Banshee has some historical interest for being one of the few examples of a non-Monty Python animated sequence commissioned from young Terry Gilliam (he would have been working on Monty Python’s Flying Circus at the time). But this only means you need to watch about one minute of the film, and can switch it off early. It is the rare Vincent Price film which can almost turn me off his output entirely–I should watch The Pit and the Pendulum or The Masque of the Red Death to cure these blues.

One of the great things about Tivo is that, if you have a Netflix account as I have, you can stream a select number of films and TV shows through your television. This works surprisingly well.  It also threatens to derail my monthlong horror marathon in favor of “Mythbusters”-on-demand.  I added to my Netflix streaming queue all the horror films of interest that I could find, and it’s strangely heartening, if not downright heartwarming, to know that the yeti-rampage film Shriek of the Mutilated will now always be at my fingertips.  This month’s first on-demand horror film is the almost determinedly-mediocre P2, a parking garage thriller which threatens to give a bad name to parking garage thrillers.  All right, it’s not so terrible.  But I will confess that I watched this film only because Video Watchdog told me it had “that girl from The Woods,” and I was disappointed to learn it was actually “that other girl from The Woods…sorry.”*  Wes Bentley plays a presumably psychotic security guard in an underground parking garage, who ties up Rachel Nichols and forces her to have a low-key Christmas Eve dinner with him.  ”Presumably,” I say, because Wes Bentley’s idea of “psychotic” is just acting endearingly sweet punctuated by moments of sudden screaming; as a performance it seems inadequate, although it does the job just fine in my personal life.  If I could provide a blurb for a Blu-Ray release, it would be “This is not the most dire of modern horror films.  It passed the time!”

The Second Annual Madison Horror Film Festival, spotlighting independent horror films, took place this weekend, and I attended a wee bit of it, which is to say most of Saturday evening’s programming.  Booked into one of the screens at the Market Square Theatre, which is Madison’s budget theater, it was actually well attended, lively, cheery, and fun.  (Well, most of it–more on that in a moment.)  We arrived just in time to see Wisconsin legend Bill Rebane (Giant Spider Invasion) receive a lifetime achievement award.  He did not seem impressed, and took no questions, but he was smiling, at least, as he quickly fled the theater with his plaque.  What was most interesting about the subsequent screening of the zero-budget, shot-on-video-and-it-looks-it Chicago production The Landlord was the reaction of the audience, which was respectful silence, interrupted by either respectful or genuine laughter.  No one laughed at the film, but accepted its obvious limitations and appreciated what it managed to do well.  Usually I’m the nice one, but I had to giggle here and there at the special effects (which are on the level of an early 70’s Sid and Marty Croft show) or the awkward editing; that my giggles echoed through the theater left me chagrined.  The story is actually quite clever, if unnecessarily busy: a Chicago landlord must share his apartment building with demons from Hell, who occasionally feast upon his tenants; he’s left to hide the bodies and dodge questions from the cops.  We learn that he and his sister have both been aware of just how many demons occupy Chicago (a secret infestation, it seems) since they were children–their parents were part of a devil-worshipping sect–and while his sister, a corrupt and adulterous cop, has learned to strike bargains with the murderous demons to mutual advantage, he’s muddled along miserably with his supernatural burden.  The script delivers some strong comedic moments, even in bizarre digressions, such as a little sketch set in the lobby of the world’s sleaziest motel; but it struggles with the changes in tone, and the director never lets the material rise to its potential, allowing the pace to eventually fall into the somnambulistic.  But those effects!  During the freakout finale I tried to imagine I was watching a Kenneth Anger film from the late 70’s–Landlord Rising!–and found myself enjoying the silliness much more.

We came back from a popcorn break to find two women in lingerie telling each other scary stories and striking poses.  What at first seemed like a brilliant parody descended all too quickly into an ugly rape-and-slaughter fantasy.  At least it was over in about 10 minutes.  Who says the short film is dead?  Apparently somebody made three “Pajama Party Massacre” shorts. 

But at last came the main event of the festival, a screening of an indie horror classic Re-Animator with director (and onetime UW-Madison student) Stuart Gordon in attendance.  Gordon is one of the most talented of the so-called “Masters of Horror,” and his most recent film, Stuck, a black horror-comedy starring Mena Suvari and Stephen Rea, received some of the best reviews of his career.  As much as I enjoyed that film at last year’s Wisconsin Film Festival (which Gordon also attended), I doubt he’ll ever make a more perfect film than Re-Animator.  It is his Greed (but shorter).  How strange, after The Landlord and “You’re Next,” to see a first-time director demonstrate a perfect grasp of mise-en-scène, editing, suspense, and a pitch-perfect deadpan humor.  Granted, Gordon had lucked out with his casting call: after seeing this film, you cannot imagine anyone else but Jeffrey Combs inhabiting the role of Herbert West, “Re-Animator,” a young med student more brilliant than his instructor, Dr. Carl Hill (David Gale, also perfectly cast).  Herbert West is the kind of student who knows his talent, with little patience for anyone who might waste his time with their mediocrity; but Combs delivers his lines as though he’s 1940’s Katharine Hepburn.  He’s found a glowing-green formula for reanimating dead tissue, which has more unpredictable results than Dr. Frankenstein ever encountered.  Beside such a sensational performance, Bruce Abbott, as his roommate and reluctant co-conspirator Dan Cain, can only play straight man, but he’s every bit as sympathetic, and as valuable as the viewer’s surrogate, as he needs to be.  Barbara Crampton, meanwhile, is Gordon’s secret weapon; playing a pillar of virtue as the dean’s daughter (well, sort of–she’s sleeping with Cain), she finds herself unexpectedly confronting her dead cat re-animated into a screeching, pulpy mass–and, in the film’s key notorious moment, tied to a table while the severed head of Dr. Hill leers and drools blood upon her completely naked body.  Find me a braver actress who will go to greater lengths for a gross-out gag (or pun, really, if you know where that scene goes).  But Gordon is an equal-opportunity purveyor of nude bodies, and the finale is apocalyptic insanity in the spirit of both H.P. Lovecraft and E.C. Comics, with a good half-dozen nude corpses running riot in the hospital.  God bless the man; there is little in this world more gleefully insane than the last ten minutes of this film.  Gordon has used the momentum gained from Stuck’s positive reception into the production of another pet H.P. Lovecraft project, this an adaptation of “The Thing on the Doorstep,” due to begin filming next year; which is a good thing, as Gordon is, to date, the best director to attempt to bring Lovecraft’s peculiar “cosmic horror” to the big screen, with Re-Animator, From Beyond, Dagon, and the Masters of Horror episode “Dreams in the Witch-House.”  On a parallel track is his obsession with Poe, and as a companion-piece of sorts to his Masters of Horror episode “Black Cat,” which starred Combs as an uncanny Poe, he has cast Combs again as the doomed, alcoholic author, in a stage production called Nevermore, which he is hoping to put on the road.    

Sunday we bought pumpkins and apples at two separate farms outside Madison, and walked through a muddy corn maze, motivated on through the tall stalks of corn by a card of movie and TV trivia we held in our hand, so that when we reached a numbered post, we were to read the respective numbered question on our trivia card.  If we answered the question correctly, it would take us on the correct path out of the maze.  But, come on…”Who starred in The Wizard of Oz?”  This is the best you can do, Schuster’s Playtime Farm?

Naturally that night I decided to watch The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

I was perhaps partially motivated by a question during the Stuart Gordon Q&A from the night before.  (Question: What are the three greatest horror films?  Answer: Psycho, Silence of the Lambs, and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.**)  When I first saw this film, I was a freshman in college, and my friend T-Bone and I rented two films we hoped would make for a suitably scary evening: Hellbound: Hellraiser II and Tobe Hooper’s 1974 cult classic.  At one point during Hellbound, the lights in the room began to flicker ominously for several seconds (right when we see the labyrinth of Hell for the first time); during The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, my nose began to bleed.  Or maybe it was T-Bone’s.  Either way, the film was eeeeeeevil!  It left its mark upon my psyche, and a few years later I dared watch it again on the Independent Film Channel.  IFC then showed the film again, this time with the audio commentary by Hooper, cinematographer Daniel Pearl, and “Leatherface” Gunnar Hansen.  The curtain opened: suddenly I could see the gears of the fear machine exposed, and I was fascinated.  This film was actually good.  Not a force of good, perhaps; there’s a distinction.  But a damn good film.  I also realized, for the first time, that it was funny, albeit in the bleakest possible way.

Now that I’ve visited it again, another six years later or so, I am seeing even more.  For a low-budget piece of scrappy filmmaking, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre has layers and layers that are surprisingly rewarding, and earn its reputation in unexpected ways.  This is a proper film, a great film.  Yet so much has been written on the subject already (the persistent solar imagery, and the slaughterhouse motif; the surprisingly careful use of blood, and almost complete absence of gore; the cannibal family representing an older, ugly America, repressed from memory but very much alive) that it leaves me exhausted of insights, except for this minor one: this film, which I once thought was so ugly, is unerringly beautiful from one shot to the next.  Often it’s a terrible beauty, or a grisly one, but it is striking and undeniable upon close study.  Every shot is carefully constructed, from the Hitchcockian P.O.V. glimpses into the Old Dark House (a staircase, a frighteningly red room off to the left–bones hung on the wall–both menacing and inviting), to the chilling shots of characters isolated in the frame just as they’re isolated from society (the wheelchair-bound Franklin most of all); from a boiling sun that slowly obliterates objects and characters in the foreground, to the brief flashes, in the darkness of a car on a night drive, of a kidnapper’s perversely fascinated face.  Even in the darkest moment in the film–Sally Hardesty flipping out while in the captivity of the cannibal family–the delirious extreme close-ups of her eyeball, and then the bloody-red edges of her eyeball, are so unexpected, and so unhinged, that they perfectly fuel the madness.  What’s behind all this but Hooper, working in extreme heat and extreme conditions, following his instincts and peering at every angle–the sculptures of bones and chicken feathers, the poorly stitched-together mask of human flesh–like a documentarian with a masterful eye.  As much was accomplished in post-production, Oscar-worthy editing (restricted to an alternate universe where the Academy would notice such things) and an experimental, jarring soundtrack which sounds like it was composed by Krzysztof Penderecki at his most avant-garde.  All of this in service of a plot which consists of (1) innocents get killed, and (2) one teen runs, and runs, and runs, and can never quite lose her pursuer.  It is not a plot but a nightmare–I have had this dream, over and over.  And yet it’s a nightmare you can analyze, that you can revist and wonder over.  It gives up some secrets: Leatherface, for one, gets more comical and less frightening on each viewing, as do all the family members; and Franklin, so annoying on first viewing, becomes more sympathetic in light of his endearing, and misguided, attempts to connect with the psychotic hitchhiker on the subject of slaughterhouses.  Some of the film’s secrets it keeps to itself.  If John Carpenter made the ideal Halloween film, Tobe Hooper made a film which captures horror, and turns it over, and gazes unblinkingly into it.  There are few finer films on the subject. 

 * The Woods is a film directed by Lucky McKee (May).  It’s much better than P2, but did not receive a theatrical release, presumably because the lead actress does not get soaking wet in an evening gown while trapped in an elevator.

** My answer: Psycho, Rosemary’s Baby, and Suspiria.