day 3: four days with three scary movies each

The Innocents (1961)

My very second blog post ever references this (somewhat forgotten) scary movie gem.... and I probably said it best over there. Deborah Kerr (who just recently passed away and whose film archives are likely being combed to compile a fifteen second "In Memoriam" clip for countless awards shows this coming year) plays a British governess who comes to care for two pretty disturbed little tykes. This is a perfectly freaky ghost story (all the bump-in-the-night creeps are there), filmed in crisp black and white, that has some horrifying reveals in the bright light.... sometimes what we can see clearly can be a lot more terrifying than what is shrouded in shadow (David Lynch uses this technique to shows us some of the scariest stuff he's got in his films). My favorite is when Kerr glances up across the lake to see the distant (and all-too-real) apparition of a woman staring at her (watch it here!). Ultimately these kids are a possessed little lot, and toward the end we get some rather squirm-in-your-seat screentime logged of a ten year old boy making out with his thirty-something babysitter. If you haven't seen this film, go rent it now in time for Halloween and watch it with lights off.


The Ring (2002)

Naomi Watts stars in (what I believe is) the first of the Americanized Japanese-horror-film remakes (see also: The Grudge and Dark Water).... and in this case I think the first is probably the best. Gore Verbinski (better known for directing the Bruckheimer-a-thon Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy) proves himself to be a director with a good eye for mood.... the shots in this film are rich in color, setting, and atmosphere, and he paces the film just right to keep us unsettled the whole way throughout. Even the final sequence of the film worked on me.... usually it's clear that once you think the killer is dead the killer actually isn't quite dead, but I was successfully duped this time around. Despite the presence of the tired expressionless-little-kid stereotype, the film succeeds in taking us around to another creepy little kid who likes to kill people via VHS. Of course, once you watch this tape-from-hell you've got a ticking clock of seven days to live, thanks to the angsty revenge of a little girl who haunts from the bottom of a covered-up wishing well. The surrealist/uncanny reanimated movements of the girl-from-beyond-the-grave/beyond-the-white-noise (filmed at the end, especially, in plain sight) are freaky as hell.... I think that might stand the scary movie test of time alone. Some of my favorite bits have to do with Verbinski's sly fitting-in of "ring" imagery throughout.... sudden flash cuts of "the ring", and (my favorite) the stain left behind from a coffee mug. No joke.


Psycho (1960)

Probably not a shock to find this movie on the list, as it is likely considered the greatest horror/thriller movie of cinema history. I had heard about it a lot before I had seen it, and when I finally did see it I wasn't disappointed.... terrified in parts, actually. The writer in me is fascinated by this film because of the uncharted territory it breaks on a storytelling level.... never before have we seen our protagonist killed after the first act. Quite a brilliant little trick on Hitchcock's part to recruit a screen star like Janet Leigh to dupe us into thinking this movie was going to be about her.... the entire first act is fraught with her backstory and a bit of intrigue about what she's going to do with her life, which comes to a quick close once she meets her maker in the shower. So who do we identify with now? We're stuck with Norman Bates, someone we hadn't exactly planned on following along as our anchor. I don't know of many rule-bending examples of three act screenplay structure that have blown apart the box like this one.... I do have to say though, as a cute wink to Psycho as the granddaddy of modern horror movies, Scream (see yesterday's post) plays a similar trick by opening the movie with blond-and-sunny-smiled Drew Barrymore only to have her strung up by her intestines ten minutes in. Psycho definitely has its freak-out moments.... not only the shower scene (watch it and notice that we don't really see Marion Crane getting stabbed, but instead her visceral reaction to the stabbing.... coupled of course with the frightening strings on the soundtrack), but also the reveal about where Norman Bates' mother actually is. My favorite (and most terrifying) part: when Inspector Arbogast decides to enter the Bates homestead to ask "Mother" some questions and gets sliced down the face and tumbles down the stairs. What makes this particular scene so unsettling is the camera angle at which Hitchcock decides to shoot it at: directly above. Something about this unnatural angle immediately puts you on the edge, and the speed with which Mother comes tearing out of her bedroom with her knife raised freaks me the hell out every time.


....and tomorrow, the final three.... including two of my favorite scary movies of all time.

day 1: four days with three scary movies each

Certainly lists of the "top" movies of whatever genre are already everywhere and already somewhat exhaustive that any such list I would make would only serve my purposes to be applicable to my own likes and desires.

So.... I present you with a countdown of sorts to Halloween with twelve movies (three movies each for the four days leading up to All Hallow's Eve) of twelve movies (in no particular order) that spook the crap out of me. And, more importantly, particular elements of these films that do the trick. These are not all the movies I've seen that do so, of course, but they are all well-liked by me, and on the whole are pretty undebatably terrifying in parts. Besides, I think it's about time I pay my respects to the cinema of the scary.... it's an art form that I think that has been degraded too much by dimensionless and storyless torture-porn in the tradition of the endless Saw movie franchise and other horror schlock of the desensitized era.

....*drum roll*....


Lost Highway (1997)

I suppose it's no secret I'm a little bit of a fan of David Lynch. That said, I bet you were thinking that Eraserhead is the more appropriate of the Lynch canon to be considered a "horror" movie on the whole. To be honest, all of Lynch's films have elements that creep me the hell out (yes, the G-rated Walt-Disney-presents The Straight Story counts). But the creepiest on the whole for me is easily Lost Highway, perhaps one of the richest-filmed but most unevenly plotted of Lynch's movies. The movie suffers on the whole from really not knowing what story it's trying to tell, but there's lots of meaty Lynch-isms everywhere and can be at times quite intriguing. The majority of the creep factor comes from the performance of now-acquitted once-accused murderer Robert Blake who plays, for all intents and purposes, the Devil. Blake's sheer calm creates such an indelible menace that's hard to deny.... the scene, in fact, where Robert Loggia's mob boss character passes the phone to Blake, who has been standing just off screen for minutes without us being aware still gives me the shivers. The 2005 French film Cache is in many ways an ugly rip-off of this film (the inital premise, folks, is identical), but likely succeeds in logical ways that this does not. Unfortunately, thanks to Blake's recent trial-debacle, Lost Highway may not see the light of legitimate DVD release for some time. Because, after all, Blake does play the Devil. But he does it so well.


Sorry, Wrong Number (1948)

Barbara Stanwyck, perhaps the screen siren of film noir, stars in a tweaked variation on a haunted house movie in Sorry, Wrong Number, a movie that slowly and painlessly digs its talons into you until you try to pull away. She also picked up her fourth (and last) Oscar nomination for the role. Bottom line: rich/bored/lonely woman picks up the phone to make a call one night and, thanks to a crossed line, overhears a plot to murder. (If this were to be remade, it wouldn't be so much a crossed line as a garbled reception error on a cell phone.) The genius of the movie comes as Stanwyck starts to get more harried as time passes, letting her mind take her in all kinds of directions about how to stop this plan.... her calls to the police and the phone company make her seem like she's raving mad. The greatest revelation though...? Wouldn't you know it, the victim in question of the overheard murder plan happens to be herself. Looking for a good suspense movie in a world that is quickly ignoring the genre? Fire up your netflix for this.


The Birds (1963)

I saw this movie at a young age and it did a good amount of damage. Who would think birds to be a device for one of the greatest horror movies of all time? The movie, Alfred Hitchcock's first to hit the screen after his magnum opus Psycho, is pretty widely known, and that's likely thanks to the fact that it gets under our skin so easily. Basic premise: birds of all kinds (birds of a feather? heh.... eh) swoop down in droves to terrorize a Northern California coastal hamlet. People are pecked to death. People have eyes gouged out by beaks. That's terrifying enough for me still, no less at the tender age of eight or however old I was when I first saw it. Perhaps the most unsettling point of the movie is that the droves of bird attacks aren't explained.... Tippi Hedren, plucky and young and ultra-mod and as damsel-y as they come, decides to buy two love birds on a whim to deliver to some guy she falls for on the spot in a pet shop (as Hitchcock nonchalantly strolls by on screen with two schnauzers). Perhaps she's the cause of the bird attack? Is it the love birds? Who knows. I'm still spooked the hell out to see a bird perched on a jungle gym.


....and three more tomorrow....