Halloween Horrors: Vincent Price

 

HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL  (1959)
Directed by William Castle
Starring Vincent Price, Carol Ohmart, Elisha Cook, Jr., Richard Long, Carolyn Craig, Alan Marshal, Julie Mitchum
Not Rated (Contains PG-13-level horrific images and thematic elements.)
SCAREmeter: 4.5/10
GOREmeter: 4.5/10
OVERALL: 4 out of 4 stars 

In my mind, William Castle's 1959 cult-classic HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL is the epitome of a Halloween movie.  It's not especially scary; in fact, it's very campy and cheesy most of the time, but it's in such a successfully fun way, with all of the delicious showboating of morbidity that one could ask for in a Halloween movie night.  With Vincent Price at his sinister best in the lead role, plus ghostly severed heads, skeletons dancing on strings, bubbling pools of acid, bodies swaying nooses and party favors handed out in miniature coffins, it is all the corny, macabre fun that could possibly be stuffed into a 75-minute movie.
The film tells of a night spent in the "only really haunted house in the world," for a "party" of sorts being hosted by eccentric and unscrupulous millionaire Frederick Loren (Price).  Five strangers have been invited to spend the night in the mansion which Loren has rented, and each guest who stays the full night in the house will be awarded $10,000, and each of them need the money.  There's the dashing test pilot, Lance Schroeder (Richard Long); the skeptical psychiatrist, Dr. David Trent (Alan Marshal); the damsel in distress, Nora Manning (Carolyn Craig), randomly picked from Loren's scores of employees; newspaper columnist Ruth Bridges (Julie Mitchum) and finally, the house's owner, Watson Pritchard (Elisha Cook, Jr.), a man previously driven nearly mad by the ghosts of the house.  Co-hosting the party with Loren is his wife, Annabelle (Carol Ohmart), his fourth spouse (no one is really sure what became of the last three), who may have planned this "party" as an attempt by each other to finally be rid of the other.  However, the house truly is haunted, and up to that night, seven people have died in it, all of them horribly gruesome deaths, including beheadings in which the heads were never found, but will reappear that night, and a man who dipped his wife in a vat of acid that still remains in the basement, and will factor into the night's proceedings.
Castle remains one of the greatest figures in the realm of b-movies, an infamous schlockmeister who sold his low-budget exploitation horror film with in-theater events and related gimmickry (Joe Dante payed homage to Castle in his 1993 film MATINEE, in which John Goodman plays Lawrence Woolsey, whose movie MANT! features a live performer and rumble packs in the seats).  Among some of his most famous gimmicks were stationing nurses and hearses outside theaters showing his movies, as well as offering life insurance policies in the lobbies, Percepto for the film THE TINGLER (1959; vibrating military surplus wing de-icers in the select seats simulated the film's monster, which attached to the human spinal cord, loose in the theater), and for the 1960 film, 13 GHOSTS, Illusion-O, in which "ghost viewers" were distributed to reveal the ghosts onscreen.  When HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL showed in theaters, certain theaters screened the film in Emergo, which basically meant that at the appropriate moment, in which Price puppeteers a skeleton like a marionette, a plastic skeleton would fly over the audience in the theater on wires via a pulley system.  That should give you a fair idea of what type of movie we're talking about here.

It's not a particularly scary movie, although there are a couple of surprisingly effective "jump scenes" (rare for films from that era), but anything that comes close to scary is the sort where it may startle you for infinitesimal moment, before yielding to laughs at the utter silliness of it all.  A widely-derided R-rated remake was released in 1999, and while the original is a bit gory, especially for a 1959 film (obviously not produced to the standards of the Production Code), the worst parts are mitigated by the black & white cinematography and are highly stylized.

From the floating talking heads that introduce the picture, to the fourth wall-breaking conclusion, HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL is an ideal spookfest for any Halloween party.  It's campy fun, and cheesy in a way that's entertaining and contributes to the experience, rather than feeling embarrassing.

November 2013 Movies Preview

Ah, November; it is a good month for movies.  It usually starts a little bit slow before it crescendos into a full-blown madhouse with the Wednesday before the Thanksgiving holiday, often with an emphasis on family fare, mixed with some serious Oscar contenders.  While that's mostly true of November 2013, there are some definite abnormalities, in particular, a few major movie events that normally be released as summer science fiction blockbusters, but you won't find complaints about that here.
MOVIES IN NOVEMBER 2013 TO WATCH FOR: 
THOR: THE DARK WORLD
THE HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE
FROZEN

Nov. 1
ENDER'S GAME  (SCI-FI/ACTION)  Asa Butterfield, Hailee Steinfeld, Harrison Ford, Ben Kingsley, Abigail Breslin, Viola Davis
PG-13 for some violence, sci-fi action and thematic material.
Although things have definitely wound down some, this adaptation of the classic 1985 science fiction novel is one of the more controversial major movies of the year, due nothing to the material itself, but to the material's author, Mormon novelist Orson Scott Card, whose venomous diatribes against the LGBT civil rights movement have encouraged ill-advised calls fro boycott.  That would be unfortunate for all those else involved who need the movie to be a hit, whatever Mr. Card's opinions, but while I haven't read the book myself, it still doesn't look that appealing to me one way or another.  The story involves a future where the human race faces annihilation by an alien race called the "Buggers" [snicker], and so children are trained to lead the defense against them.  Lots of people love the book, but it might be more fulfilling to devoted science fiction aficionados.
SEE IT?:  I'll wait and see how the reviews go over on this one before deciding.

FREE BIRDS  (ANIMATED-COMEDY/CHILDREN)  Voices of Owen Wilson, Woody Harrelson, Amy Poehler, Dan Fogler, Keith David
PG for some action/peril and rude humor.
The animated feature film debut for special effects company Reel FX Creative Studios tells the story of Jake and Reggie, an odd couple pair of turkeys who travel backwards through time to the First Thanksgiving to prevent turkey from becoming the traditional main course of Thanksgiving dinner.  Although any fifth grader ought to be able to tell you that the main course at the First Thanksgiving was actually venison, the movie doesn't look that interesting for the discerning viewer, but it'll probably be a harmless diversion for the kiddies.  It's also nice to see a Thanksgiving movie come along, because while there as many movies with Thanksgiving dinner scenes as there are Christmas movies, there are hardly any movies which could qualify as actual "Thanksgiving movies".
SEE IT?:  You'll probably not have much reason to go with bringing along a brood, but if that's the case, it's probably at least a little bit better than, say, ESCAPE FROM PLANET EARTH.

LAST VEGAS  (COMEDY)  Robert DeNiro, Morgan Freeman, Kevin Kline, Michael Douglas
PG-13 on appeal for sexual content and language.
It's like THE HANGOVER, but with old people!  Directed by that one guy who made THE SORCERER'S APPRENTICE (2010; Hey, remember that movie?  It wasn't actually that bad...), Billy, Paddy, Archie and Sam were party boys back in their day, but have now been long settled down.  When Billy, the sworn bachelor of the gang, announces he's getting married to a significantly younger woman in Las Vegas, the friends reunite (some more enthusiastically than others), and find that their old party-land, as well as their relationships, have changed more than they realized.
SEE IT?:  There's definitely an audience for this sort of thing, but they're mostly in the 50+ age range.

Nov. 8

THOR: THE DARK WORLD  (ACTION-ADVENTURE/SCI-FI)  Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Tom Hiddleston, Christopher Eccleston, Anthony Hopkins, Idris Elba
PG-13 for sequences of intense sci-fi action and violence, and some suggestive content.
The reliable and occasionally excellent Marvel Cinematic Universe continues with Thor's second solo outing, directed by Alan Taylor, known for his work on the hit television series, Game of Thrones, and who promises to bring with him a grittier, earthier sensibility as opposed to Kenneth Branaugh's Buck Rogers-styled predecessor.  Although the official synopsis is pretty vague, it involves the mighty God of Thunder defending the Nine Realms from a primitive race that threatens to plunge them into darkness, but he must reunite with Jane Foster, a human astrophysicist and his love interest, and is forced to turn to his treacherous brother Loki, as he is the only one who knows the nature of this new threat.
SEE IT?:  Yes; the highly successful Marvel Studios ventures have provided some of the best superhero action in movies of recent years, and as this all leads into the next Avengers movie, it's practically obligatory viewing.

THE BOOK THIEF  (HISTORICAL DRAMA)  Sophie Nelisse, Geoffrey Rush, Emily Watson, Ben Schnetzer
PG-13 for some violence and intense depiction of thematic material.
Based on the award-winning novel of the same name by Markus Zusak, Death narrates a story set in Nazi Germany, a time when Death was extremely busy.  Liesel Meminger is sent to live with foster parents, who are harboring a Jewish refugee in secret.  Fond of books, Liesel snatches them up from the book burnings, and brings them to share in secret with her family.
SEE IT?:  The marketing campaign has been positively godawful, showcasing the syrupy, treacly tripe that is sometimes derisively referred to as "Oscar-bait," cloying, self-important, "inspiring" drama.  Unless the reviews indicate far different, I'd give a resounding no to anyone not a woman over the age of at least 40.


Nov. 15

BEST MAN HOLIDAY  (COMEDY)  Terrence Howard, Sanaa Lathan, Taye Diggs, Morris Chestnut, Nia Long
R for language, sexual content and brief nudity.
A basic Christmas chaos comedy about an African-American family getting together for the holidays and driving each other crazy.
SEE IT?:  No; there must be an audience for this sort of thing, because they keep making 'em, but the last dozen or so generic holiday comedies of similar concepts introduced nothing new, and this is directed by Malcolm D. Lee, the man who brought us SCARY MOVIE 5 already this year.


Nov. 22

THE HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE  (ACTION/THRILLER)  Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Sam Claflin, Woody Harrelson, Donald Sutherland, Philip Seymour Hoffman
PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, some frightening images, thematic elements, a suggestive situation and language.
The most hotly-anticipated movie of the season follows up last year's enormously successful adaptation of Suzanne Collins' best-selling book series, after Katniss and Peeta have returned from the Hunger Games victorious, but having planted the seeds of rebellion, quickly recognized by the tyrannical President Snow, who has designs to douse the sparks of revolution before they can spread.  The 75th Annual Hunger Games will include a lineup of victors from past years, setting the stage for the bloodiest games yet.
SEE IT?:  Yes; this is more of a cultural event than a movie.  It's a conversation starter and practically essential viewing for members of society.  The change of directer (from Gary Ross to I AM LEGEND-director, Francis Lawrence) is a little troubling, judging by the quality of the first film, it should get pretty far on its material alone, and the significant investment this kind of film represents means that they're likely to follow through.

THE DELIVERY MAN  (COMEDY/DRAMA)  Vince Vaughn, Chris Pratt, Cobie Smulders
PG-13 for thematic elements, sexual content, some drug material, brief violence and language.
David Wozniak is a ne'er-do-well down on his luck when he discovers that he is the biological father of 533 children via sperm donations he made twenty years earlier.  Now, 142 of them have come with lawsuits to find out who their father is, and David is forced to grapple with whether or not to reveal himself.
SEE IT?:  Maybe; the concept alone is a very funny one, but other than that, the previews offer little more and Vince Vaughn is hardly a reliable comedy leading man.  I'd wait for the report of others first.

Nov. 27

FROZEN  (ANIMATED-FANTASY/FAMILY)  Voices of Kristen Bell, Idina Menzel, Josh Gad, Jonathan Groff, Alan Tudyk
PG for some action and mild rude humor.
Based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, The Snow Queen, the kingdom of Arendelle is cast in an eternal winter when it's heir to the throne, Elsa, allows her emotions and magical abilities to overcome her, so Elsa's younger sister, Anna teams up with Sven, a mountain man, on a quest to find Elsa and end the winter, while an evil duke uses the situation to his advantage.  Clearly attempting to emulate the success of TANGLED (2010), this long-in-gestation Disney animated feature represents an extensive trial and error process over several attempts.
SEE IT?: Yes, undoubtedly; Disney animated features are a grand tradition, and the fairy tale/princess movies have a special place of their own.  Admittedly, the previews so far have sucked big time, but the previews for TANGLED, the best Disney animated feature since the "Disney Renaissances" in the 1990s, were really crappy too, so I'll be taking a leap of faith.

OLDBOY  (MYSTERY-THRILLER/ACTION)  Josh Brolin, Elizabeth Olsen, Samuel L. Jackson, Sharlto Copley
R for strong brutal violence, disturbing images, some graphic sexuality and nudity, and language.
A remake of the 2003 cult classic South Korean action-thriller shocker, Spike Lee directs this story about an advertising executive who is kidnapped one night and held as a solitary prisoner for twenty years without explanation.  When he finally escapes the one-room apartment holding him, he sets out to unravel the conspiracy surrounding him and discover the purpose of his torment.
SEE IT?:  Maybe, but with strong caution; the original was not an easy viewing experience to put it lightly, and the American version isn't likely to tone anything down much, however, if you've already seen the original, it's unlikely that that film's power will translate to a remake to those already familiar with the story's originality and revelations.

HOMEFRONT  (ACTION/THRILLER)  Jason Statham, James Franco, Rachelle Lefevre, Winona Ryder
R for strong violence, pervasive language, drug content and brief sexuality.
This action-thriller starring-vehicle for Jason Statham finds him as a low-level DEA agent whose family comes under fire when he crosses paths with a drug kingpin and a band of drug traffickers.
SEE IT?: If you're a big Statham fan sure, but his action movies are usually pretty generic, and this doesn't look especially different.  Having James Franco as the villain is intriguing (his character is named "Gator", this in the same year he played a gangster named "Alien" in SPRING BREAKERS), but I just don't have much faith in this one outside of the star's established fan-base.

BLACK NATIVITY  (MUSICAL DRAMA)  Angela Bassett, Forest Whitaker, Tyrese Gibson, Jennifer Hudson
PG for thematic material, language and a menacing situation.      
A contemporary adaptation of the Langston Hughes play, a Baltimore teen travels to New York to live with his estranged relatives, a preacher and his wife.  When he finds the preacher's rules not to his liking, he decides to return home to his single mother, and finds spiritual enlightenments along the way.
SEE IT?:  Maybe; this is clearly a specialized interest movie, but if you're a Black Protestant, or otherwise a fan of gospel choirs, then this might be reasonable holiday viewing.

Halloween Horrors: Coppola & Branaugh

BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA  (1992)
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola
Starring Gary Oldman, Winona Ryder, Anthony Hopkins, Keanu Reeves, Richard E. Grant, Cary Elwes, Bill Campbell, Sadie Frost, Tom Waits, Monica Belucci
R for sexuality and horror violence.
SCAREmeter: 4.5/10
GOREmeter: 6.5/10
OVERALL: 1.5 out of 4 stars

Francis Ford Coppola was one of the golden children of the New Hollywood movement, which describes the revitalization of artistic cinema, thanks to an infusion of European sensibilities and other cultural and industrial shifts throughout the last couple years of the 1960s and fizzling out in the first couple years of the 1980s.  Although filmmakers like Warren Beatty and Mike Nichols captained the flagships of the era, BONNIE AND CLYDE and THE GRADUATE, respectively, Coppola is arguably the figurehead of this period in the film industry, thanks to American classics like THE GODFATHER (1972), THE CONVERSATION (1974), THE GODFATHER PART II (1974) and APOCALYPSE NOW (1979), which won him two Palme d'Or awards (the top prize at Cannes Film Festival), Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay (he also won the award for Best Original Screenplay for 1970's PATTON, one of his early successes, directed by Franklin J. Schaffner) and Best Director, and all four of those films are part of the Library of Congress' National Film Registry, films selected for preservation as "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant".  Somewhere along the way, Coppola lost his golden touch though, and after the 1970s, he never touched the same greatness again.  There were a couple of minor charmers during the 1980s, like THE OUTSIDERS (1983) and PEGGY SUE GOT MARRIED (1986), but even when he returned to the Corleone saga that he had served so well, THE GODFATHER PART III (1990) was like a sputtering last gasp from the legend, receiving mixed reviews, many lambasting the casting of his own daughter, Sofia, in one of the most infamous performances of all time.  It was still nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards, but this is generally thought of as a courtesy nomination more than anything else.
Then came along the announcement of DRACULA, usually known by its more distinguishing title, BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA, the promise of a brand-new Coppola masterpiece was on the horizon, marketed as the a collaboration between two uncompromising masters, Coppola and Stoker.  Unfortunately, what we got was an incredible production, and not a lot else.
The screenplay by James V. Hart modifies the story from Stoker's novel by introducing a love triangle as Count Dracula (Gary Oldman) is revealed in a prologue as a Romanian knight, a variation on the historical Vlad Tepes III, who fought for Christendom in 1462 but renounced God when a misunderstanding led to his wife's suicide, damning her according to the Christian priest.  In 1897, Dracula is now an eccentric shut-in buying up land in England, and Jonathan Harker (Keanu Reeves) is the young solicitor tasked with assisting the Count in his property purchases, after the previous solicitor, R.M. Renfield (Tom Waits), has gone mad and been committed.  Dracula notices Jonathan's picture of his fiancee, Mina Murray (Winona Ryder), and is struck by her resemblance to his long-dead wife, believing her to be her reincarnation.  Once Dracula's affairs in England have been prepared, he leaves Harker to the mercy of his vampire Brides, and sails for England to find Mina.  Intermittently seducing Mina and sucking her breast, er, I mean, best friend, Lucy (Sadie Frost) dry, Dracula's vampiric menace is discovered by brilliant and eccentric Dutch professor, Dr. Abraham Van Helsing (Anthony Hopkins), who enlists Lucy's suitors, Sir Arthur Holmwood (Cary Elwes), Texan Quincey Morris (Bill Campbell) and sanitarium psychiatrist Dr. Jack Seward (Richard E. Grant), in a perilous mission to put an end to Count Dracula.
Count Dracula is the most frequently depicted movie monster in history, beginning with the unofficial silent film adaptation, NOSFERATU, in 1922, and the first official and best-known adaptation in 1931's DRACULA.  However, by the time Coppola took his artist's brush to the material, the legendary horror had been beaten down by dozens of campy and juvenile interpretations, to the point that the iconic vampire could just as well have been children's character, and with such examples as breakfast cereal mascot Count Chocula and Sesame Street muppet Count von Count, he actually was.  Coppola's was the first sincere adaptation of Bram Stoker's story in decades.
Coppola isn't so interested in the horror though as he is in the erotic aspects and visual flair.  The vampire myth is most commonly psychoanalyzed as being associated to venereal diseases, as there's an undoubted sensual aspect to vampires, and the act of penetration, albeit with fangs instead of phallus, factors in to the transmitting of the vampiric curse.  To be made a vampire requires an exchange of bodily fluids, strictly blood though, and the curse is passed from person to person through intimate interaction.  It's a fear rooted in medieval and Victorian prejudices, like much else in Bram Stoker's novel; vampirism is a primitive fear based in fear of sexuality.  These themes are touched on in BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA, but much of the time they seem disorganized with minimized purpose as buxom bared breasts and sexual perversion flows through the screen space with excess.  Dracula, the book, makes a point of vilifying female sexuality, as women are divided between the virtuous and chaste virgins, Lucy and Mina, who must only experience sexuality through their husbands, and the menacing "whores" of Dracula, one of whom Lucy becomes, who are defined by nothing but their evil sexuality.  In the book, Lucy is an unrealistically saccharine sweetheart beset by the affections of noble men, but without an explanation that I can reason, this personality is exchanged for an equally irritating one, played by Sadie Frost, as a lusty and sexually frank aristocrat who seems even more sexually-minded before she is turned.  Frost is an alluring and starry-eyed vixen, but her sultry British voice is grating, plus she has sex with a werewolf.  It seems as if Coppola is making a point that Lucy's fate is a result of her sexual nature, while the purer Mina works out better, even as the vampire's victim.
Oldman is in overdrive as the Count, acting through several sets of thick makeup, and while he steps over a bit too far from time to time, it's generally a very strong performance, and Hopkins, fresh off his Oscar win for SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (1991), is great as Van Helsing, but some his 'comedic' moments in the script are irritatingly lacking in subtlety.  Reeves' performance as Jonathan Harker is infamously bad, and it is as bad as you've heard.  For all the good things that manage to get through, Reeve's is a nearly smothering force of miscasting and an atrocious attempt at a British accent.  Reeves is kind of like the Sofia Coppola of the film.

The production is undoubtedly the strongest aspect of the film, designed with highly imaginative Gothic visuals, combining accents of several other styles.  The special effects play especially heavily into this, creating atypical split-screens and transitions, creature effects and the like, as well do the flamboyant costume designs.  Coppola famously fired his original visual effects team who told him that the effects he wanted would require modern digital technology.  Instead he hired his son, Roman Coppola, to create the film's special effects using only archaic techniques, which is astounding considering the very showy look of the film.  There are incredible images like a train moving along the upper half of the screen, atop the lower half filled with an open journal, and the many creature effects and makeup involving Dracula.
Unfortunately, the result is a frustrating and gorgeous shell filled a little trickles of insubstantial substance, and a really bad Keanu Reeves performance.  Coppola's film production studio, American Zoetrope, made two more gorgeously stylish major film adaptations of classic horror stories during the 1990s, but his own DRACULA is the most disappointing, and most amazing.

Halloween Horrors: Haunted Houses

POLTERGEIST  (1982)
Directed by Tobe Hooper
Starring Craig T. Nelson, JoBeth Williams, Beatrice Straight, Zelda Rubenstein, Heather O'Rourke, Oliver Robins, Dominique Dunne
PG (contains PG-13-level frightening sequences and images, and a scene of drug use).
SCAREmeter: 4.5/10
GOREmeter: 4.5/10
OVERALL: 2.5 out of 4 stars

POLTERGEIST is the bastard stepson of CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND.  I don't mean that merely in terms of aesthetics, although that would also be accurate to a degree.  No, I mean it literally, at least, as far as movies and their scripts can have bastard stepsons.  It's also a bit of a bastard half-brother to E.T.: THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL, for that matter, which in turn could be considered the legitimate heir to CLOSE ENCOUNTERS.  When CLOSE ENCOUNTERS was released in 1977, it became one of the highest-grossing films of all time, and naturally, Columbia Pictures, the studio behind the film, was eager for a sequel.  Spielberg wasn't keen on the idea (it's not really the kind of film that lends itself to a sequel, is it?), but neither did he want Columbia to go ahead and make a sequel without him and tarnish the brand, like Universal had with JAWS.  So Spielberg whipped up a sequel treatment titled Watch the Skies, one of the working titles for the original, which put a horror twist on the material, involving malevolent aliens that terrorize a family farm and was said to be inspired by the John Ford's 1939 classic film DRUMS ALONG THE MOHAWK, about a family of settlers terrorized by British forces and American Indians during the American Revolution.  From there, the film evolved further to include one friendly alien, a misfit from his vicious peers, who befriends a boy in the family.  Special effects maestro Rick Baker was even hired to design the creatures, completing a $70,000 prototype of the lead alien, while Spielberg was in Tunisia filming RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK.  RAIDERS was a dreadfully exhausting production, and Spielberg decided that instead of taking on another high-octane special effect extravaganza that Night Skies (as it came to be known) would be, he wanted to return to something more tranquil like CLOSE ENCOUNTERS.  It wasn't a total waste though, because Spielberg found much of the material for his next film, E.T, in Night Skies, with the subplot of the friendly alien befriending a troubled boy.  Annoyed at the development of E.T and not wanting to make a "wimpy Walt Disney movie," Columbia sold it to Universal, where it became the highest-grossing movie of all time, and the elements of a family terrorized by supernatural creatures were applied to POLTERGEIST, which Spielberg took to MGM to be directed by Tobe Hooper.  For all the legends about the behind the scenes of POLTERGEIST, I think that one is most interesting, so now that we've gotten past that...
POLTERGEIST is an old-fashioned haunted house movie packed with big budget special effects, about the Freeling family, Steven and Diane (Craig T. Nelson and JoBeth Williams), and their children in descending order of age: teenage Dana (Dominique Dunne), obnoxious boy Robbie (Oliver Robins) and the littlest, Carol Anne (Heather O'Rourke).  Steven is a successful real estate developer, and the family lives in a suburban neighborhood that the company he works for developed, but starting with strange interactions between Carol Anne and the "TV people" who she speaks to through the television static in the middle of the night, strange occurrences appear throughout the house.  At first, freethinking Diane is actually thrilled at these paranormal events, but the occurrences become increasingly disturbing (as the tend to), to the point where the scary old tree outside Robbie's bedroom window reaches through and grabs him, and Carol Anne vanishes, but they can hear her calling to them through the television static.  With the help of a team of parapsychologists (see: ghostbusters) and Tangina Barrons (Zelda Rubenstein), a spiritual medium, the Freelings try to retrieve Carol Anne before it's too late and she passes on to another world entirely, while discovering the dark secrets that have cursed their home.

Directed by Tobe Hooper, who was selected by Spielberg after the success of his shoestring-budgeted horror hit THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (1974), it's widely rumored that Hooper was really more of a stand-in while Spielberg, contractually obligated not to direct any other films while making E.T. at Universal, was in fact more responsible for directing POLTERGEIST.  The reports vary, and the undoubtedly unusual nature of the director-producer relationship on the film makes it difficult to sort out the facts of who deserves credit.  Admittedly, it does mostly feel like a Spielberg film, with some very strange anomalies mixed in, but while Spielberg has a strong reputation for directing children in films without them coming off as annoying, Oliver Robins as Robbie, is really annoying a lot of the time (I wish that tree had eaten him), so there's that against the rumors.  Spielberg received top credit out of three credited writers for the film's screenplay, in addition to producing, but in an open letter to The Hollywood Reporter, in an attempt to clear the air, Spielberg described Hooper as allowing him a "wide berth for creative involvement".  Some people have dismissed the media claims that Spielberg was de facto director on the film by claiming that it was mere coincidence that Spielberg was helping on set during some press visits, while other members of the cast and crew have stated the opposite, including Rubenstein, who said in an interview in 2007 that of all six days of shooting her scenes, Spielberg was directing.  Whatever the case, Spielberg's touch is blatantly evident in the film, while subtler moments testify to Hooper, but what was supposed to be Hooper's big break into mainstream filmmaking proved to be a false start and he never fully developed past low-budget horror.  Rubenstein mentioned in the same aforementioned interview that she believed Hooper had being using illicit substances during production.  Whatever the case though, both Spielberg and Hooper seem to agree that each had a fair level of influence and involvement.
Spielberg is not a name well-associated with horror though, despite having his first major success on JAWS, which I am adamant is not a horror movie (it's an adventure movie; adventure movies can have scary/horror elements, but it's still an adventure movie).  While POLTERGEIST is clearly a horror movie, it has definite Spielberg elements that are not so much associated with horror, especially the monologue by Rubenstein's Tangina character explaining about ghosts and the afterlife, that's like a sentimental counterpart to similar The Twilight Zone (which Spielberg produced and co-directed a film version of released the following year), specifically the Season 3 episode, "Little Girl Lost" in which a six-year old girl falls through a rift in dimensions in her bedroom and can still be heard, but not seen.  While The Twilight Zone, a low-budget television series had to get by on subtle implications and big ideas, POLTERGEIST tells essentially the same story, but with big, slimy, uterine canals at the entrances of the dimensional rifts, giant monsters that emerge from said canals, a tree that tries to (and should) eat a little boy, all topped off by an entire house being swallowed up into the Earth.
meditations on extra-terrestrial life in CLOSE ENCOUNTERS and E.T.  Also, POLTERGEIST relies far more heavily on special effects than is typical of the horror genre, and that doesn't necessarily work to its advantage most of the time.  Spielberg is often criticized for relying on big-budget spectacle and if he really was as hands on in this film as is rumored, it wouldn't make a decent defense case for him.  The story borrows heavily from the classic anthology television series,
I don't think POLTERGEIST is very scary, it's too flashy to be so, and it lacks the fluidity and consistency it should have.  It's interesting though, and clown dolls and television static finally received the fearsome reputation that they deserve.  But personal favorite part, even while it's probably more silly than scary is the climax when all the partially-decomposed corpses rise out of their graves, the kind where a coffin comes out of the ground upright, then creaks open to reveal a skeleton, and so on.  That's my kind of "scary" movie.  I like the Gothic b-movie spooks.

Halloween Horrors: ROSEMARY'S BABY

ROSEMARY'S BABY  (1968)
Written/Directed by Roman Polanski
Starring Mia Farrow, John Cassavetes, Ruth Gordon, Sidney Blackmer, Ralph Bellamy, Maurice Evans
R for unspecified reasons (contains some sexuality/nudity and disturbing content.)
SCAREmeter: 6.5/10
GOREmeter: 3/10
OVERALL: 3 out 4 stars 

ROSEMARY'S BABY is generally considered the first film of the "New Horror," the major resurgence of popularity for the horror genre that was part of the larger New Hollywood movement that took place from 1967 through the early 1980s.  The New Hollywood was marked by the rise of a new generation of filmmakers, sometimes called "the movie brats," in reference to the fact that this generation had grown up as fans of the filmmakers of the Hollywood Golden Age who were now past their prime.  It was also the result of the dissolution of the Production Code of 1930, which had strictly dictated the content permissible in studio films through self-governance in an effort to avoid the local censorship boards that began to sprout up nearly four decades earlier.  Movies like PSYCHO (1960) and WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINA WOOLF? (1966) had managed to push the boundaries that had held firm in the Code's earlier years, and movies like Billy Wilder's kinky comedy SOME LIKE IT HOT (1959) had proved that films unapproved under the Production Code could be successful.  During the same time as the Production Code, the National Legion of Decency, founded as the Catholic Legion of Decency, wielded nearly as much power as the Production Code, but while the Code possessed most of its power from within the studio system, the Legion of Decency wielded an immense power over the public.  Utilizing a three category system of A (Morally Unobjectionable), B (Morally Objectionable in Part) and C (Condemned), the Legion of Decency held the industry in a vice-like grip, and any movie "condemned" was likely to fail prior to the mid-60s at the same time that the Code began to wither.
Nobody told the Legion of Decency of how greatly their influence had waned by 1968 though, and they condemned more movies that year than ever before, and no movie ruffled Catholic feathers that year more than ROSEMARY'S BABY.
Based on the best-selling novel by Ira Levin, it's the story of Rosemary Woodhouse (Mia Farrow), a yuppie housewife who moves into an old New York City apartment where she hopes she and her husband Guy (John Cassavetes), a struggling actor, will start a family.  Their apartment building, the Bramford, is the setting of several spooky urban legends, and it is said to have been the base of coven of witches once, but the worst thing about it seems to be their garish and meddlesome neighbors, Minnie and Roman Castevet (Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer, respectively).  Guy strikes up a friendship with the elderly Castavets, and when Rosemary becomes pregnant, he allows them to be as much a part of the event as himself.  The Castavets set Rosemary up with Dr. Sapirstein (Ralph Bellamy), a prestigious doctor who orders Rosemary to ignore her friends' advice and not to read any of the books on the subject, because no two pregnancies are alike and he doesn't want her to become worried.  Eventually Rosemary finds that Guy, the Castavets, and Dr. Sapirstein are shutting off all her communication with her old life.  The only socializing they do now is with people twice their age, and her pregnancy is causing her severe abdominal pains and her health is failing.  On the other hand, Guy's luck in getting roles seems to have taken a full reversal, sometimes under uncanny circumstances.
The basic plot is very direct; it is the two possibilities that drive the drama: Did Guy offer Rosemary's baby to a coven of Satan-worshipers, including the Castavets, in exchange for career success, or is Rosemary going mad?
If you're unfamiliar with the film's plot and wish to remain so for now, do note that further reading details the plot twists of ROSEMARY'S BABY.

In fact, Guy, it is revealed, offered his wife, Rosemary, as a vessel to bear the Antichrist, a true-life child of Satan.  She is the counterpart to the Madonna, descended upon by Lucifer, and impregnated with the Devil's spawn.
For as extreme a notion that the film is based in, what makes the film most noteworthy is how it brought horror home.  Previously, most major horror films were somewhat macabre flights of fancy, regarded without much seriousness and lumped in with fairy tales as juvenile fare.  ROSEMARY'S BABY was filmed on location in New York City, in the grungy, real-life world, and deals with common real-world anxieties.  As much or more than being a film about the birth of the Antichrist and a coven of witches, it's a fright-fest about modern anxieties for young people such as securing a career, starting a family, and identifying yourself within and without the earlier generations, and worst of all, whether any of your concerns are even of any value.  In this, ROSEMARY'S BABY is not exactly a terrifying or directly scary film most of the time.  Most of the time, it's disconcerting, which can have a more enduring effect than mere spooks.
In terms of identifying oneself within and without the older generation, as Rosemary both depends upon and strives to avoid her neighbors, the Castavets, this issue is paralleled by the story behind the film as well.  ROSEMARY'S BABY marked the first major horror event of the New Hollywood movement (1967-early 1980s), an era in which the horror genre would play a significant part, and like the rest of the industry at this time, it signaled a passing, and more often wresting, of the baton from the old masters to the new auteurs.  William Castle, who produced the film, had discovered the book's cinematic potential and urged Paramount Pictures to purchase the film rights.  Castle had made a career out of making low-budget campy horror films which he sold on gimmicks, such as primitive rumble packs in select seats for THE TINGLER (1959), advertised as being film in "Percepto", or HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL (1959), filmed in "Emergo," which basically meant that a skeleton would dangle from a wire in select theaters at the appropriate point in the film.  Castle was a master showman, but his work was schlock, representative of the juvenile, campy, gimmick-driven horror films of the 1950s and 60s.  Castle hoped that ROSEMARY'S BABY would be the film to legitimize his career, but while he convinced Paramount to make the film, they wouldn't allow him to direct it; instead, studio executives sought to capitalize on the New Hollywood interests in European cinema by courting Polish-French director Roman Polanski to make it his American debut.  Polanski was by no means a stranger to real-world horrors, having witness Nazi war crimes firsthand when his family was forced into the infamous Krakow ghetto, and his parents were among the millions of Jews killed in concentration camps during the Holocaust.  Some speculate that this firsthand experience contributes to the threatening atmospheres he creates in his work.
ROSEMARY'S BABY resulted in a great deal of controversy, mainly with populations of the Catholic faithful.  Polanski has recounted the influence of Catholicism on him during his time as a child vagabond after being separated from his parents during the war; although never being baptized, Polanski posed as a Catholic and was sheltered by Polish Roman Catholic families, but some were more "Christian" than others.  The first family, arranged with by his father as a precaution, evicted him after a few days but refused to let him take his personal belongings, and he recalls confrontations with parish priests who accused him of being Jewish.
There's no doubt that Polanksi's personal history factored into ROSEMARY'S BABY and its heavily Catholicism-inspired plot, about a young woman who's become estranged from her Catholic faith and becomes the mother of the Antichrist, but it's hard to say how much and in what way, especially because the script, written by Polanski himself, is a relatively faithful adaptation of the book, though he probably sympathized more strongly with certain elements.
The ending was most controversial, both for the religious and others, as Rosemary discovers her baby.  She passes out while giving birth, and when she awakes, her husband and the doctor inform her that the baby didn't make it, but later, she hears a baby's crying in the Castavet's apartment.  It is then that she learns her child was not intended as a sacrifice, but is the child of Satan.  She approaches the child's bassinet, gripping a kitchen knife in hand, and after all the buildup, the infant is not seen as explicitly described in the book, nor seen at all.  Other than a couple of non-revealing glimpses of movement, the only indication of a child their is the reactions and interactions of Rosemary and the others; no visual could satisfy the monster of the mind.  This was a highly divisive mood for audiences, but what happens next, as Rosemary hesitates and Roman Castavet pleads with her to act as a mother to the child, even without joining their cult.  She drops the knife and sits down beside the bassinet, and rocks the cradle while cooing a lullaby, having accepted her maternal role, even to the Spawn of Satan.
This cryptic conclusion was seen by many religious audiences as a passive acceptance, if not outright endorsement of Satanism, and Polanski, as well as others involved with the film received hundreds of raving and threatening letter of damnation from the zealously religious population around the country, even as the film's box office intake soared.  The next summer after the release of ROSEMARY'S BABY, Polanski's eight-and-a-half months pregnant wife, actress and sex symbol Sharon Tate, was found gruesomely stabbed to death in their home in L.A., along with four of their friends, while Polanski had been working in London.  Victims of the infamous Charles Manson "family," preexisting controversy about Polanski and a newly-rekindled stereotype of a "Godless" Hollywood helped fuel the media frenzy that followed in the wake of the sensational murders, with speculation that Polanski was a Satanist and involved with the killings, and others claiming that it was punishment for ROSEMARY'S BABY.
Today, ROSEMARY'S BABY isn't quite so shocking, with the worst of it probably being the brief glimpses of naked senior citizens during the famous dream sequence.  It works on a surrealist, psychological level, and even the big "payoff" moments, the birth and the baby reveal, that would take the spotlight in any other horror movie are practically excised.  From a director who's witnessed such real-life horrors and is famous for a pessimistic tone in his classic films, it's still a very subtle horror, working its way under the skin, but never providing the catharsis, for better or worse.

Halloween Horrors: The Oscar Darlings

THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS  (1991)
Directed by Jonathan Demme
Starring Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins, Scott Glenn, Anthony Heald
R for unspecified reasons (contains strong disturbing violent content including graphic grisly images, and for some strong sexual content and language.
SCAREmeter: 8.5/10
GOREmeter: 9/10
OVERALL: 4 out of 4 stars 

Only three films have ever won the coveted "Big Five" at the Academy Awards; the Big Five being the awards for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Screenplay (either Best Adapted Screenplay or Best Original Screenplay; all three Big Five winners were adaptations).  The first to do this was Frank Capra's pre-war road trip romantic comedy IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT in 1934, and the second was Milos Forman's 1975 counter-culture mental health drama ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST.  The third and most recent was about an FBI trainee who his forced to bond with an incarcerated cannibalistic psychopath in order to obtain information that may lead to the arrest of a man who's been killing women and skinning them in order to make a "woman suit."  Oh yeah.
All kidding aside though, THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS is one of the great masterworks of horror, as well as cinema in general, in spite of its sensationally lurid subject matter.  It is a story that takes place within our lurid world; not all of our stories can be sweet and good-natured, nor even just a little nasty.  The spectrum of the human experience spans a wide range of the good and bad, and you cannot simply ignore the bad.  SILENCE OF THE LAMBS is a very good, great, in fact, movie about some of the worst of our world, which is what horror is about, after all.
Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) is an accomplished trainee at the FBI Academy at Quantico, Virginia, when she is tapped by the Bureau's Behavioral Science Unit to interview a total psychopath, former psychiatrist and serial killer who cannibalized his victims, Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins), from his maximum security cell.  The FBI has an ulterior motive to this supposed evaluation though; Lecter is believed to have insider knowledge about the currently at-large serial killer, Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine), a man who has been dumping the bodies of heavy-set girls in rivers, with large patches of their skin removed.  What follows is a series of mind games between Lecter and Starling, who meet intermittently through the film as Lecter teasingly offers puzzles to Starling that reveal clues to the identity of Buffalo Bill.
Some people learn that it's a film about a killer who skins women, and in their disgust assume it's a misogynistic, masochistic film, which could not actually be farther from the truth.  In fact, SILENCE OF THE LAMBS is a powerful feminist story, with a capable and grounded heroine in Clarice Starling.  Sympathetic but very tough, she's a woman in the midst of a male-dominated and often misogynist work environment, forced to deflect the inappropriate advances of her colleagues and to work twice as hard to prove her worth against the established prejudices.  A frequent pitfall of films that attempt to depict feminist characters, is the 'honorary boy' system, female characters that are indistinguishable from male characters in terms of character traits and story, completely abandoning their essential femininity.  The screenplay by Ted Tally skillfully steers well clear of such foibles, and like the best female characters, Starling is a realistic, multi-layered woman, not necessarily "sexy" (although some spiteful opinions hold that "sexy" women in movies are demeaning, which is obviously ridiculous), but with distinct feminine traits that contrast with the distinct masculine traits of her colleagues (for better or worse as they are).  The fact of her womanhood is essential to what makes her so indispensable, providing her with the ability to crack through the facade of Lecter which is impenetrable to all the psycho-analysts and interrogators.  It's not a fictionalized depiction of femininity, rooted in shallow sexuality and biased falsehoods, from either side of the issue.
Levine's performance as "Buffalo Bill," the alias of Jame Gumb, is often overlooked in favor of Hopkins' legendary performance, but his is also an equally complex characterization of mental abnormality.  Gumb is not a transsexual, although that didn't keep LGBT advocates from protesting the film.  Lecter is clear that Gumb's psychosis is more complicated than that, because he only thinks he is a transsexual, not through any honest gender identity issues, but through broad identity issues.  His history of abuse and emotional damage leads him to hate what he is, feeding into a simplified pseudo gender identity conflict, but of course, since he is denied by the gender reassignment clinic because of his apparent psychosis, he has set about to become a woman by his own dubious (to say the least) means.  Big and deep-voiced, with a curiously demure and uncertain demeanor, he is very unsettling, and the "Buffalo Bill dance" is justifiably infamous.
Hopkins is justifiably iconic in his role of Hannibal Lecter though, quickly dismissing the convenience of the cannibalistic killer's given name through the sheer power of his performance.  His introduction is one of the best in any film, as the boorish Dr. Chilton leads Starling down to the maximum security unit of the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.  Chilton is practically boasting about Lecter as one of the inmates, making audacious note of being Lecter's "nemesis," and showing Starling a photo of what happened to a nurse years before, bringing about the strict guidelines of interviewing Lecter.  Although we as the audience cannot see the image in the photograph, we see Starling's quiet and restrained reaction of disgust, while Chilton mentions that Lecter's pulse never got above 85, "even when he ate her tongue."  The elevator descends to the lowest floor, where the light takes on a red glow, and the walls are made of red brick.  It is a symbolic descent into Hell, and as Starling walks to the farthest cell, taunted by the inmates she passes, she finally reaches the window to Lecter's cell, where he stands neat and unassuming with his hands held behind his back like a butler awaiting a request.  For a character utterly lacking in empathy, Hopkins' Lecter is a sympathetic killer, gripping with his carefully calculating intelligence and highly selective respect that smacks of sympathy or human interest, despite all evidence to the contrary.  He represents darker areas of human desire, not necessarily of cold-blooded murder and cannibalism, but of incredible self-discipline, even if outside of social decency, and his powers of manipulation.  Lecter clearly influences the great villains of more recent movies, particularly Heath Ledger's perfect interpretation of the Joker in THE DARK KNIGHT (2008), a practically inhuman villain who is so powerfully in control, while others seem to be going about their own business, they inadvertently serve the foresight of the psychopathic genius.
Lecter and Starling make up one of the most unique "romances" ever created.  It is not sexual or even really emotional; it is a cerebral romance.  In a physical sense, they are not of worth to one another.  Lecter is far too disconnected from any human feeling to have a 'human relationship,' and as a person, he is hardly desirable to Starling, but as mental entities, they prove to be a perfect match.  As Lecter notes, "People will say we're in love."
It's not a movie for the faint of heart, obviously, with very hard-R violence and depravity, but it's greatly rewarding for viewers of strong constitution.  It's incredibly intelligent, thrilling, and even a little sweet.

Halloween Horrors: So Bad They're Great

THE HAPPENING  (2008)
Directed by M. Night Shyamalan
Starring Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Deschanel, John Leguizamo, Ashlyn Sanchez, Betty Buckley, Spencer Breslin, Robert Bailey, Jr., Alan Ruck
R for violent and disturbing images.
SCAREmeter: 1/10
GOREmeter: 6.5/10
OVERALL: 1 out of 4 stars

Note: Although it can't do much to ruin an already terrible movie, fair warning that we'll be embracing spoiler territory here...

It's a popular point of ironic movie trivia that in 2002, in anticipation of the release of Academy Award-nominated writer/director M. Night Shyamalan's new film, SIGNS, Newsweek magazine published an issue with Shyamalan on the cover and a headline that read "The Next Spielberg".  While even in 2002 it was an awfully bold statement to make, today, when you point it out to anyone familiar with Shyamalan's last several films, it elicits reactions that range from indignant disbelief to gut-busting laughter.  His earlier movies that first made him a household name were not without their flaws of course, but beginning with THE SIXTH SENSE in 1999, nominated for six Academy Awards (call Conspiracy Keanu!), then the under-appreciated twist on the superhero genre, UNBREAKABLE in 2000, Shyamalan's work was a gripping tribute to The Twilight Zone-style chills.  SIGNS was still a huge hit, but the beginning of the descent seems most identifiable there, with some severe lapses in logic and sense, but chilling enough to get by.  In 2004, THE VILLAGE continued Shyamalan's now-reliable series of ending "plot twists" with the worst one yet, utterly nullifying the film as a whole, wherein more stupidity was already seeping into the staging.  Then, LADY AND THE WATER (2007) dealt a staggering blow to Shyamalan's reputation, with a story reportedly based on a bedtime story he made up for his children, about an apartment complex repairman who rescues a narf hiding in the swimming pool from the menacing scrunts, and the closest thing to an antagonist in the film is a cynical film critic, representing all those who didn't appreciate Shyamalan, who becomes monster fodder, and Shyamalan has a major role as an unappreciated storyteller destined to change the world but die a martyr.  Seriously.  LADY IN THE WATER was a flop though and most people hated it, and Shyamalan tried something new by taking his supernatural-thriller formula into R-rated territory (R for retarded).
One day without warning, people in Central Park suddenly stop what they're doing and commit suicide en masse without explanation, prompting hysteria over terrorist attack speculations.  Mark Wahlberg plays Elliot Moore, a high school science teacher who puts Mr. Chips to shame, joshing the handsome popular kid who doesn't care about science into participating.  As similar mass suicides spread across communities on the Eastern Seaboard, civilizations falls into disarray, and Elliot, along with his wife, Alma (Zooey Deschanel), and Julian (John Leguizamo), a fellow teacher, with his little girl, Jess (Ashlyn Sanchez), leave for a less populous area and to find their loved ones.  Along the way, Julian is separated and Elliot and Alma are left to look after Jess, and they meet up with new people, including a wild-eyed botanist who insists that it's the result of plants releasing a toxin as a defense mechanism against mankind's disregard for the environment.  After it's well enough decided that the suicides are the result of a plant toxin, and all the plants are coordinating an effort to make people kill themselves, the plot is even less directionless, as Elliot and Company wander from place to place trying not to breathe the toxin, and sometimes running away from wind that may or may not be carrying the toxin.
Ever since LADY IN THE WATER, Shyamalan's films seem to consistent in unrepentant stupidity, but THE HAPPENING is so bad in such an over-the-top, unsubtle way, that it's hard to believe that their isn't some deliberate b-movie intentions at play here.  There is so little going on for one, with reliably stagnant plants representing the threat, accompanied by many hilariously ominous shots, and the most kinetic it gets is running away from wind that comes in conveniently singular waves over long grass.  This hardly represents how silly this movie is though.  People do not just kill themselves.  They could just bash their heads against the pavement or something until they die, or some other simplified manner, and some of them, such as police officers shoot themselves with firearms (except at the crown of the skull for whatever reason, and then as the gun falls, another person picks it up and does themselves, and so on), or people driving may suddenly ram into a tree or a wall.  There are several though that are positively hilarious in their convolution, such as a man starting up a ride-on lawnmower, then jumping off and running out to lie down in its path, or my personal favorite, a zookeeper who dangles his arms in front of lions which bite them off.  Even better, it's like they didn't even try to create credible-looking prosthetics; the arms don't match the actor's body size and the lions just tug at them until they tear off.
Wahlberg is not a bad actor, not at all, but some of his role choices are better than others.  Elliot Moore is a lot different than most of the roles that he's played before (when dismissing the film in 2010, Wahlberg defended himself by saying, "At least I wasn't playing a cop or a crook."), but he really is hamming it up, and so is Deschanel.  I don't think Leguizamo is in on the joke though.  Wahlberg returns to the topic of disappearing bees several times, says, "Be scientific, douchebag!", and tries to smooth-talk a houseplant.  Most of the time though, he looks bewildered at things.
The ending, even by Shyamalan's standards, is really, really, really bad.  After all the other directly-involved characters have died, most of them by toxin-induced suicide, a few of them casualties of a culture of fear, Elliot, Alma and Jess have resigned themselves to their unfortunate fate and decide that if they have to die, then they want to be together when it happens.  As the wind rushes over them, they wait and then... nothing happens.  Seriously, just as they are about to meet their fates, it's no longer an issue.  I guess the plants were all agreed that this was all a carefully planned effort to bring this family together and once they had been scared enough, the plants would just stop.  There's no explanation, so justification, no background, no point; I suppose there's a one in a trillion chance of that kind of thing just ending at such an exact moment of imminent peril to this family, but it's unreasonable to expect an audience to go along with that.  Otherwise, all the personages of evil or random chaos could just stop at the 90-minute mark in any film.
I believe that the well-being of the global environment is a crucial issue that doesn't get  due attention by politics and that global warming-denial and/or dismissal is very foolish, but the fact that it seems to resonate so strongly with filmmakers on the much less-talented end of the spectrum doesn't help very much in pro-environmental protection cause.  Even still, THE HAPPENING does make for great 'so-bad-it's-good' viewing.

Halloween Horrors: BEETLEJUICE

BEETLEJUICE  (1988)
Directed by Tim Burton
Starring Michael Keaton, Alec Baldwin, Geena Davis, Winona Ryder, Catherine O'Hara, Jeffery Jones, Glen Shadix, Sylvia Sidney
PG for unspecified reasons (contains PG-13-level comic/fantasy gore, brief strong language and some thematic elements).
SCAREmeter: 2.5/10
GOREmeter: 5/10
OVERALL: 3 out of 4 stars 

Following the great success of PEE WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE in 1985, former Disney Animation misfit Tim Burton was suddenly a director of interest, and while many scripts were now being sent his way, none of them sparked his unusual imagination.  Then came along a very dark and violent horror-comedy script titled Beetlejuice, about a young couple who die in a horrific car crash and accidentally unleash a malevolent poltergeist called Betelgeuse who attempts to kill the new inhabitants of their home and rape their daughter.  Burton agreed to direct the film, but brought in another writer, Warren Skaaren, to rewrite much of the script as more of a supernatural comedy than a horror-comedy, removing most of the more malevolent elements and creating an overall sillier and lighter sort of film, though no less strange, to be sure.
The resulting BEETLEJUICE is arguably the definitive example of "Burtonesque," packed chock-full of the distinctive characteristics of Tim Burton's trademark style, such as zany and whimsical treatment of morbidity, campy kitschiness, postcard-perfect suburbia, German Expressionism-inspired designs and B-movie special effects.
Adam and Barbara Maitland (Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis) are a quaint suburban yuppie couple spending their "vacation" decorating their large New England country home, and finding time to try again for a much-desired child.  What's meant to be a simple errand into town changes everything though, when they swerve to miss a dog in the road and drive off a bride and into the Winter River.  After realizing they died in the crash, the Maitlands also learn that they're unable to leave their house, with only The Handbook for the Recently Deceased as a technical guide and limited assistance from the bureaucratic offices of the netherworld.  Then the Deetzes move in; Charles (Jeffery Jones), a real estate developer looking for some peace and quiet, Delia (Catherine O'Hara), a wannabe avant-garde modern artist, and Lydia (Winona Ryder), Charles' dramatically morose Goth daughter, the only living person able to see the Maitlands' ghosts and becomes their ally.  Delia, with the coordination of like-minded interior designer Otho (Glenn Shadix), redecorates the country home as a gaudy monument to ghastly modern art, to the dismay of the Maitlands, who begin the trial-and-error process of learning to haunt the house, but once they get good at it, Charles and Delia are only to thrilled at the prospect of opening a museum of the supernatural.    In desperation, the Maitlands unleash Betelgeuse (Michael Keaton), a mischievous and perverted imp who freelances as a "bio-exorcist," who turns out to be more unmanageable than they intended, but who may become necessary when Otho discovers the Handbook for the Recently Deceased, with intentions of revealing the Maitlands at the Deetz's museum pitch.

"I've seen THE EXORCIST about 167 times, and it keeps getting funnier every time I see it!"

BEETLEJUICE is not a very solid movie, with weak characterizations and little substance, relying primarily on morbid sight gags.  On the other hand, it has strong likability, and the performances are enthusiastic, even if written on a superficial level.  Keaton, as the titular character, has relatively little screen time, and is a classic example of the "trickster" character-type, the havoc-causing supporting character defined by his outsider status from society, creating chaos whether by amusement or to achieve his own selfish means, part anti-hero and part villain.  Naturally, the trickster is the most fun character to play, and as per usual, the most fun to watch.  Keaton introduces the now annoyingly-typical Burton look of white face makeup and dark, sunken eyes, and speaks in a growling guttural.  He's a shameless pervert and an impudent troublemaker, coming close to causing real damage, but generally just making people uncomfortable, he's a far cry from the sinister demon of the original script.

"We've come for your daughter, Chuck."

The look of BEETLEJUICE is not really an appealing one, filled with garish tones and extreme designs, more pastel and less polished than Burton's later films like ALICE IN WONDERLAND, but it doesn't interfere with the rest of the film either, so it's not a significant issue.  The special effects are deliberately cheap-looking, but also creative, like the stop-motion animated sandworms and the giant snake with a Betelgeuse head.  The low-budget, B-movie look of the special effects-heavy film works well for it, given the film's relatively low $15 million budget, but even for that, a relatively low percentage went to creating the visual effects.
The humor is primarily based in sight gags, an abundance of which revolve around the gory personages in the netherworld, such as the Maitlands' case worker, Juno (Sylvia Sidney), who smokes cigarettes as smoke leaks out the laceration in her throat, or the grisly beheading that the Maitlands stage in an attempt to frighten Delia and Otho.  Curiously, for all the deceased who make appearances, the Maitlands are the only ghosts without severely disfiguring mutilations.  Another curiosity, which I'm tempted to think must have some form of unrealized significance, is that the town store that Adam goes into has a storefront sign that reads "Maitland Store," and this is never taken note of otherwise.

"The only one I think I can deal with is Edgar Allan Poe's daughter."

Unfortunately, much of Burton's work is associated with the adoration he receives from the angsty drama queens of the mall-goth and moody individualist teen cultural factions, but ironically, BEETLEJUICE seems to be lampooning these types.  Lydia, a sympathetic and self-proclaimed "strange and unusual" character, is obsessed with death and her whole life is "one big, dark room," but when she writes her would-be suicide letter, she comically takes time to make revisions to ensure the most melodramatic letter possible (such as replacing "jumped" with "plummeted").  When she meets Betelgeuse and mentions that she wants to be dead too, she just looks up at her with puzzled disgust; "Why?!"  Whether or not it's true, the major point of the movie is that being dead does not make anything easier, so stop being such a weirdo.  Be a little weird, sure, but make some friends, dress with some color and enjoy your damn life.

Halloween Horrors: BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN

THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN  (1935)
Directed by James Whale
Starring Boris Karloff, Colin Clive, Ernest Thesiger, Valerie Hobson, Elsa Lanchester, Una O'Connor, Dwight Frye
Not Rated (PG-level violence, scary images and thematic elements.)
SCAREmeter: 2/10
GOREmeter: 2.5/10
OVERALL: 3.5 out of 4 stars 

No other film studio is so well-associated with monster movies as Universal, thanks to their legendary series of classic sci-fi/horror films that continue to define monsters for the world of cinema.  In the midst of those many classics including THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (1925), DRACULA (1931), THE MUMMY (1932), THE INVISIBLE MAN (1933) and THE WOLF MAN (1941), the undisputed crown jewel of that era is still THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN.
It is also considered one of the best sequels ever made, alongside the likes of THE GODFATHER PART II (1974) and THE DARK KNIGHT (2008) (maybe?), and often regarded as the magnum opus of director James Whale, who returned after directing the original.  Following the many deviations which the 1931 original made from the source material, Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley, THE BRIDE, while still a very different creature than the novel, restores more of the elements from its source.
In the film's prologue, Mary Shelley (Elsa Lanchester, who also played The Bride) shares a fire with her husband, Percy (Douglas Walton) and Lord Byron (Gavin Gordon) on a stormy night, a tribute to the reportedly true-life origins of the story which was the result of a ghost story competition between friends, as they commend her on her horrific story (as told in the first film).  But that is not the end, she counters, and the Monster did not die in the windmill fire as was supposed at the conclusion of the previous film.  After a short recount of events from the original, the Monster (Boris Karloff) emerges from the watery wreckage beneath the destroyed windmill.  Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive) has also survived and is being nursed back to health in his ancestral castle by his fiancee, Elizabeth (Valerie Hobson).  A sinister and flamboyant former mentor of Henry's, Dr. Pretorious (Ernest Thesiger), whose ungodly experiments have gotten him kicked out of the university, shows up at the Frankenstein castle with a proposition for Henry, after hearing about his "success."  While Pretorious has been able to create fully-formed homunculi grown from petri dishes, but together with Frankenstein, he aspires to create a full-size person like the Monster, but beautiful like his own creations.  Frankenstein is reluctant, but Pretorious hardly gives him any choice in the matter and is perfectly willing to resort to less scrupulous tactics.  Meanwhile, the Monster stumbles along the countryside, constantly shunned and feared by the peasants, before he comes across the little forest cottage of a blind hermit (O.P. Heggie), who assumes the Monster is a dumb mute and befriends him, teaching him a rudimentary vocabulary.  When two lost hunters come across the cottage though, they panic at seeing the Monster, and the mayhem that ensues results in the cottage burning down.  Devastated, the Monster enters a graveyard and having resolved that he belongs dead, he descends in a crypt, where he meets Pretorious, who, coincidentally, is collecting a skeleton to be used for the Bride of the Monster, an effort which the Monster is all too willing to take part in.  To ensure that Henry follows through on his part of the work, the Monster takes Frankenstein's fiancee captive, and helps drive the work.  But when the work is completed, even the Bride is repulsed by the Monster, and after ushering out Henry and Elizabeth, the Monster destroys the lab with himself, Pretorious, and Pretorious' convict henchmen within.
Naturally, that would not be the last film in the Frankenstein series, next followed by SON OF FRANKENSTEIN, which would be final appearance by Karloff as the monster, but THE BRIDE was the last of the series directed by James Whale or starring Colin Clive as Dr. Frankenstein.  [On a side note: Contrary to popular belief, there was no Igor in either of the original FRANKENSTEIN films; the hunchbacked assistant in the original was named Fritz (played by Dwight Frye, who plays Karl the henchman in THE BRIDE); the character "Ygor" first appeared in SON OF FRANKENSTEIN, played by Dracula-actor Bela Lugosi.]
After making a couple more horror movies, THE OLD DARK HOUSE (1932) and THE INVISIBLE MAN (1933), Universal and Carl Laemmle, Jr. (who produced most of the classic Universal Monsters movies) were very eager to get James Whale back to make a follow up to his hugely successful FRANKENSTEIN.  At this, Whale bargained for the opportunity to make ONE MORE RIVER (1934), a much lesser known personal film, and would then make THE BRIDE.  This time, Whale wielded much greater creative control, and because he was resolved that the sequel could not live up to the original, he decided to make a "hoot" of it.  THE BRIDE is deliberately campy, heavy on humor and with a surprising level of special effects work for a film of the time.  The "Homunculi" scene is great example of all three, being

a special effects showcase with miniature people inside jars, and some rather funny stuff involving the little "King" trying to get into the jar with the little "Queen," to the disapproval of the pious little "Archbishop."
The most common commentary in regards to THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN are the allegations of homosexual subtexts.  James Whale was probably the most high-profile of the exceptionally few openly homosexual persons working in Hollywood, and what's more, Ernest Thesiger, in the role of Dr. Pretorious was also openly gay (despite a marriage to his friend's sister), while Colin Clive, playing Frankenstein, may have been gay, but such claims are disputed (Whale's lover of 22 years, David Lewis, claimed Clive was not gay).  Whether or not any of these supposed subtexts were at all intentional is in dispute, but it's abundantly clear that Whale's sexuality is informing his work, consciously of unconsciously.  Pretorious, the best character in the film, is a counter-cultural figure with a flamboyant personality and is frequently identified as gay, although in 1935, especially with the recent establishment of the Breen Office which enforced the Production Code with an iron grip, the character could never be explicitly identified as gay within the film.  There are accounts however that indicate that Whale told Thesiger to play Pretorious as a "caricature of a bitchy and aging homosexual," which, however conflict with dismissals by some of Whale's colleagues that anything beyond camp humor identifies with Whale's sexuality in his films (personally, I'm very doubtful about the latter's seemingly defensive claims).  Either way, this is a film about two men creating life together.

Ironically, there's also a lot of Christian imagery and subtext in THE BRIDE as well, although whether or not it is meant to be divine or "a mockery of the divine" is in dispute.  The most redeemable character in the film is the blind hermit, upon whose wall is a crucifix, and is shown praying and professing God's goodness, but the Monster is also shown as an ironic Christ-figure, trussed to a cross-like shape when captured by the villagers, after having been raised from the dead, and eats bread and wine with the hermit in a sort of "last supper."  It has been suggested that it is a mockery of the divine to show these Christian symbols in a creature made by man rather than God; blasphemous imagery has long been a an effectively discomforting staple of the horror genre.
The cast is a mixed bag, with the best by far being Ernest Thesiger as Dr. Pretorious, as smooth and sarcastic drama queen who steals every scene he's in.  On the other hand, I do not like Colin Clive's performance as Henry Frankenstein, who like in the original, switches back and forth between being pathetic and whiny about his situation without providing reason to sympathize with him, and being the maniacal "It's alive!" mad scientist.  I have mixed feelings about the comic peasant woman Minnie played by Una O'Connor, who played a similar schtick in THE INVISIBLE MAN, which largely involves reacting with goofy, indignant expressions and squealing in over the top fear.  In very small doses, she's pretty funny, but it becomes too shrill very fast.  Boris Karloff protested to the introduction of speech to the Monster's character, believing it lessened the power of his presence and that it might as well have been played straight then, but the Monster is actually vastly more sympathetic in this film.  More of a presence in the original, which, while having an aesthetic appeal, the addition of speech and more interactivity with the events of the plot exposes the Monster as childlike, even if menacing in the way a 10-year old can be (with the strength of a very big man).  The women, unfortunately, have a minimal presence in this film, but Elsa Lanchester as the Bride is iconic in only a short amount of screen time, thanks largely in part to the makeup designed by Jack Pierce.
I find it incredibly hard to believe the honesty of claims that these old monster movies are still "scary," I think that has more to do with wishful thinking than anything else, but THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN doesn't really strive to be especially scary, except in a few moments anyway.  Like Whale is reported to have been aiming for, it is a "memorable romp."  It is the epitome of Universal horror.