It's that screwy, supposedly joyful, yet depressing time of the year again: the holidays. And they're almost over. Thank God, the Master, Freddie Quell or my beloved Marilyn Monroe -- my woman of the year (I'll get to my movies in the next few days).
I despise all year-end parties, which is why I'm now enjoying New Year's Eve, safely tucked away in a sleeper car on a train, ringing in 2013 somewhere at the Oregon/California border. I only wish Sugar Cane was in the next sleeping car, Manhattan in a paper cup. Or better yet, champagne. Marilyn loved her champagne.
When I see MM holding a champage glass in a picture, I often think she is New Year's Eve -- a glistening light, all bright, blonde, silver, slinky-curvy and drunken and gorgeous and who gives a damn if she's had a few too many? Like our New Year hopes, she always embarked on a new start (and succeeded quite well, brilliantly, at times) but fell, like many of us into those ruts. Those fuzzy ends of the lollipops. But she tried. And even if she failed (or fell down drunk), it is she who so famously said, "It's better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring." Thank you, Marilyn.
Marilyn was flesh and blood, but she's such a holiday to the eyes. I wish to god she'd been more careful and not mixed her meds but... I can't change that. She's many things, that artist Marilyn, but she's our drunken angel. She's my drunken angel, anyway.. I love her.
So, this New Year's Eve, I will think of Marilyn and one of my favorite New Year's movies, George Cukor's blissfully ebullient "Holiday." A picture that I think Marilyn (MM obsessive that I am) probably loved. And perhaps related to. Freedom! Expression! It's hard not to. Funny, carefree, silly, inspiring and yet, curiously sad -- sad because you get the feeling that all the exploring dreams its lead character (a joyous, lovable Cary Grant) hopes and plans for, well, they may not work out in the real world. Can one be that simple yet complex and happy and live their life that way?
So, for me, it's the perfect New Year movie, filled with fresh starts, all night parties, dreams and happy/poignant revelations -- those things we make lists of before the clock strikes midnight and usually ditch a few weeks into the month. But not Johnny, we hope.
An extended, wonderful portion of this movie does indeed take place on New Year's Eve during a society party where Johnny is set to announce his engagement to wealthy Julia (Doris Nolan). But he's falling in love wih her rapturous, different sister (a luminous Katharine Hepburn) who's attracted to his counterculture desires. The movie works subtly and elegantly, infused with an almost startling blend of comedy and pathos.
As Johhny and Linda clearly fall for each other and even literally tumble (in a jubilant scene, the two stars perform a beautiful bit of acrobatic talent) they leave us all bubbly MM intoxicated and charged up for something new ourselves. But what? Is it possible to ever feel elation like that? Is it? We can always do as Cary Grant's Johnny does and attempt a little blind faith. Blind faith can get you through the night. I'm sure it helped Marilyn more than a few times. That, and a sweet glass of champagne. Happy New Year.
It's not Christmas without Nat King Cole. I love "The Christmas Song" but "Stardust" is one of the most beautiful songs he ever recorded. And, I think, one of the most beautiful songs of all time.
Another Christmas, another posting of one of my favorite holiday movies -- Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut. I could write about countless other Christmas or Christmas-themed movies I revere (Ernst Lubitsch's masterpiece The Shop Around the Corner is a prime example), but I've got other things on my mind, it's my day off and another Tom Cruise movie opened -- Jack Reacher. I'll see it, but not today. I'm interested in Tom Cruise (I always have been), and for Christmas, he's wrapped up in Kubrick. Cruise is a strange force. A movie star and a fascinating, sometimes brilliant actor, who thinks he's sincere and you really believe that he thinks he's sincere but, man, is he charismatically creepy. And wonderfully so. Is there any other actor like Tom Cruise? No. There is not.
And Stanley Kubrick must have understood this. All that insanity-inducing yuletide anxiety (and then some) is so perfectly conveyed in Eyes Wide Shut via his leading man that Tom Cruise is Christmas stress -- pretty, festive, overly serious, overly grinning, and often hilariously, creepily Christmassy. And then, scared. Terrified, even, delivering Kubrick's social, sexual, surrealist themes within the director's gorgeous holiday milieu. Bathed in Christmas style, Eyes Wide Shut uses Christmas lights, background Christmas trees and traditional colors of red and green with almost perverse relentlessness. And perverse relentlessness is really what I seem to be about this season (I think. And did I just write that?). Well, this year has been an odd one. Wonderful and horrible and inspiring and sad and fulfilling and mysterious. Whatever Tom Cruise is hiding underneath that perfect smile of his, however much he is "quietly judging me" (a la Magnolia), I sensed throughout this mercurial strange-love of a year. So this movie fits my mood. With that, I'm dipping into my archives to consider one of Kubrick's most underrated pictures -- a film that in terms of love, sex, death, fear and träume remains timeless. And again, it's a perfect Christmas movie...
In Kubrick's cinematic universe, reality, dreams, order and insanity progress on distinct, intersecting planes. Whether he was depicting an absurd, chillingly real war room in Dr. Strangelove, the disturbing but oddly sexy ultra violence of an Orwellian future in A Clockwork Orange, the siren call of insanity in The Shining, the hyper fantastical yet authentic Vietnam War in Full Metal Jacket, or the irony and powerlessness among such transcendent opulence in Barry Lyndon, life was a surreal work in progress -- an ambiguous joke that veered from hilarious to sexy to terrifying, sometimes within seconds. Attempting to understand order, or how any system designed to make our universe more rational or safe seemed fruitless. Think Sterling Hayden approaching such a predicament at the end of Kubrick's The Killing. He watches his life literally fly away on an airport tarmac and bitterly spits one of cinema’s greatest final lines: “Eh, what’s the difference?”
Which brings me to the final line of Kubrick’s frequently misunderstood Eyes Wide Shut in which Nicole Kidman states rather flatly, “Fuck” -- as in, that’s the answer, that’s what we need to do. A movie I’ve defended since its release, it’s a picture that deserves closer inspection and a worthy finale for the enigmatic auteur.
The controversial movie (some thought it silly, some, un-erotic) Eyes Wide Shut found the director once again studying the perplexing nature of dreams and reality, this time exploring them in a more personal and private arena: sexuality. As he did with Lolita, Kubrick created more than a film about sexual desire; he created a film about bitter romance, troublesome marital bonds, societal contradictions and, significantly, the fear of death.
An updating of the 1927 Traumnovelle (Dream Novel) by the sardonic Austrian writer Arthur Schnitzler, the picture remains an unsettling blend of antiquated garishness and modern transgression -- an alternate sexual universe haunted by ghouls of the past, present and future.
In this universe “live” the healthy, handsome walking dead -- Dr. Bill Harford (an impressive Tom Cruise) and his wife, Alice (a slinky, wonderfully creepy Nicole Kidman), a glamorous, rich couple who appear the picture of storybook perfection. But like most supposed perfection, there are cracks in that portrait, and in their case, it’s the usual: they want to screw other people (or at least they think they do). At a sumptuous party given by Bill's obscenely wealthy friend Victor (Sydney Pollack), Bill almost strays upstairs with two models while Alice flirts with a bizarre Hungarian man who looks like one of the cadaverous party-goers from The Shining. The next evening, in a fit of jealousy over Bill's near indiscretion (he ended up contending with a beautiful, naked drug overdose instead of a debauched roll in the hay -- though the way her body sits in this shot is disturbingly erotic), Alice confesses that she’s had thoughts of cheating and, even worse, reveals that if things had been different, she would have thrown her entire life away for one flight of sexual fancy.
Unmasking something that should remain one of those deep, dark secrets you never confess to your significant other, Alice deftly rattles Bill's perception of her fidelity and the strength of their marriage in a speech that makes his mind spin out of control (Kidman's performance here is superb). After this confession, Bill is abruptly called away to confirm the death of a patient and keeping in tune with the love/death/sex of the picture, the daughter of the deceased makes a pass at him. The grief stricken but, considering the circumstances, kinky gesture aids in Bill’s decision to not immediately return home. Instead, he wanders the streets of New York and embarks on a sequence of actions that, though not as outwardly comic, somewhat resemble those in the Scorsese movie After Hours: He discovers a surreal sexual underworld that he’s both attracted to and repelled by.
A prostitute, a piano player, a bizarre costume-store owner and his Lolita-esque 14-year-old daughter lead Bill to the film's infamous ritualistic orgy sequence, during which participants are cloaked and masked, and naked women are used as sacrificial sex lambs. The gothic, terrifying yet titillating feel of this sequence walks a fine line between horror and parody and true to Kubrick’s genius, manages to cross into both camps. The magnificent, exacting camera work and unrelenting music compel us to look, no matter what happens, and though I was actually a little scared the first time I saw this moment, I found myself highly amused, laughing even. If ever a person was out of place in a Bohemian Grove-like orgy, it is Tom Cruise’s Dr. Bill. And yet, I was absolutely hypnotized, watching these moments like a waking dream and investing it with multiple meanings. What the hell is going on here besides a bunch of silly old rich men getting their jollies with beautifully breasted, long legged Helmut Newton models? And further, what do all of Bill’s adventures mean? Are Bill's encounters simply nightmares that will damage his marriage beyond repair, or are they mere titillating fantasy -- fodder for a closer relationship and better sex with his spouse?
Well, I can’t answer that. Given the picture's ominous tone, however, there is something definitely rotten within its slinky, Christmas-lit loveliness. Like the impeccable environment of The Shining, the aura of Eyes Wide Shut is one of beauty ready to be defiled, sexuality ready to be slaughtered, lovely exteriors that reek of formaldehyde. The pall that hangs over this picture is fear: fear of the unknown; fear of yourself or of others; and fear that if sex can lead to freedom, it can just as easily lead to death.
In fact, the picture can be viewed as a commentary on sexual attitudes in the last few decades -- a time when meaningless indiscretions can lead to horrifying blood-test results. It is no surprise, then, that Bill is a doctor and that throughout the film, he flashes his physician's ID as a police detective would his badge. "I'm a doctor," he constantly says, for both reassurance and intimidation.
In a profession that requires intimate investigation of flesh that may well be on its way to the morgue, sex is serious. These unsettling references to AIDS, necrophilia and forbidden sex (not to mention Kubrick's own death upon bringing the film to completion, une petite mort of sorts) permeate the picture like one giant prick tease. In today's world, sex is still there for the taking, but at what cost and for what gain? Kubrick's frustrating, brilliant coda neither answers nor ignores its own questions. Rather, it leaves us in a mysterious, contradictory mishmash of dream and reality, where not only are our eyes wide shut, but our legs are too.
“I have too many fantasies to be a housewife.... I guess I am a fantasy.” --Marilyn Monroe
Lists. Numbers. Number ones. My number one movie this year was Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master and my number one woman was Marilyn Monroe, a woman who, no matter how much I research, how much I study in photographs and moving pictures, how much I think about as a living woman and as a departed icon, remains powerful and powerfully vulnerable, real and unreal, obvious and inscrutable and in the end, an artist. A master at her art. She's one of my number one women of all time.
And yet, she often felt unloved. And frequently disliked. "I'm the only one that likes you!" The Master's Philip Seymour Hoffman hollers and repeats to the broken, ugly/beautiful, self medicating Freddie Quell, a line that manages to be simultaneously manipulative and completely honest. I thought of how I have heard that in real life, and how much that schoolyard taunt works when you're feeling especially vulnerable. It resonated so much that I thought of Marilyn, who surely heard the same, and probably from a few attempted Masters (good, bad or likely a mixture of the two) who could never contain her (Hyde, Lytess, Miller, the Strasbergs, Dr. Greenson). But in front of the camera, she was her own master, even if she wasn't entirely sure of it, and even if she, like Quell, popped the pain away with booze and pills and feared genetic insanity (real life Marilyn and movie-made Freddie both had mothers stuck in loony bins.)
Which led me to last year's number one movie, Lars Von Trier's Melancholia, a movie that never left my thoughts in 2012 and reached out to Monroe in dreamy reveries. I felt many personal things as I was writing about Marilyn (and Bob Dylan played a vital role) but Von Trier and Melancholia were right there, holding her up, not down in its beguiling, joyous expression of depression. I thought, My God would Lars Von Trier have understood the artistry of Marilyn! And he would have worked with her beautifully.
As I wrote of Cherie, her Bus Stop "angel" to Don Murray in this December's Playboy, "she’s an earthly woman. A woman who sleeps in
all day and a woman who probably bleeds on the sheets and spills liquor on her
clothes and continually embarrasses herself, and a woman so lost or sacrificial
that she just gives up her dreams and leaves with that insane Cowboy. But that
makes her even more interesting, and
almost guiltily desirable... I can imagine
Marilyn, like Kirsten Dunst’s Justine, basking under that doomsday planet, naked
and pale and accepting -- absorbing and eroticizing that pain -- and, as Marilyn did
in film, giving us the pleasure of looking at her beautiful body."
When I absorb my thoughts about Melancholia, I feel I could be describing Marilyn. She got it. When calling up photographer André de Dienes late at night, Marilyn insisted he snap photos of her as she was: tired, sad and disheveled. She directed the powerfully poignant and darkly beautiful shoot and she even titled it: "The End of Everything."
So before I discuss my new lists and those damn numbers (one and two and three) I'm returning to Melancholia. And Marilyn and Von Trier who are universal and personal, blatant and mysterious, sorrowful and funny, nihilistic and yet, sublimely, romantically celebratory.
Lars Von Trier’s Melancholia takes the black bile of its namesake -- the depression of its heroine -- and transforms the “humor” into exaltation. A planet -- a terrifying, dazzling planet that, true to Dane Von Trier’s inspired swan dive (black swan dive) into German romanticism, is set to destroy life on earth: Götterdämmerung via "Tristan and Isolde" (which he uses in the picture’s rapturously beautiful overture), via Ophelia via Cassandra via Marilyn via Von Trier’s own personal mythology. Marilyn and Milton (Greene) and Von Trier's sexy, gorgeous enigmatic "Black Sessions."
Clinically depressed Justine (a stunningly raw Kirsten Dunst -- Von Trier’s surrogate) does what’s often expected of those afflicted -- wear a brave face and don that damn wedding dress (a creamy dream of a dress that Justine seems strangled by, until she lifts it up and fornicates with another man on a golf green…). Further, she must embrace love, work, family (no matter how dysfunctional) and rules.
Well, Von Trier cannot accept that fate, and in the picture’s first half, in which Justine destroys her nuptials, her actions serve as depressive, rebellious self awareness: “What did you expect?” She asks. Indeed (Marilyn may have asked the same). And then comes planet Melancholia, inching closer and closer, leaving stable sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg) panic stricken while Justine, calmly, grimly and at times, cheekily, accepts annihilation, not as easy suicide but as a kind of cosmic extension of despair. Yes. Finally. Justine isn’t wallowing in depression, she’s embracing, seducing it, and in one of the picture’s most exquisite moments, lying beneath it naked -- luxuriating in the glow of doom.
Von Trier, a notorious and real sufferer himself, sincerely understands depression (just as he understood the horrors of anxiety in his brilliant and deeply misunderstood Antichrist), which may be why he maddens so many. How can he do this to these women? Well, because women do suffer, women get depressed, and not merely in simplistic, eye-rolling, I-cry-at-weddings ways (and Justine is not your usual runaway bride, god bless her), but in complicated, sometimes terrifying ways. And sometimes they die.
Von Trier gets women. I've been stating this for years and have fallen into heated arguments over my stance. But here's something else -- he’s also in awe, baffled and scared of them, which makes him one of the most honest male (and female) filmmakers working. I often don’t understand myself, frequently, and many women engage in curious, sometimes destructive acts that leave their lovers, family and themselves baffled. Not solely because they’re weak (which is actually a forgivable trait in a person) or simply irrational or evil, but because they’re multi-faceted human beings. He certainly understands much about human nature -- male and female -- but to me, he is the consummate woman's director. Like Dryer, Cukor, Sirk, and Fassbinder before him (but clearly, his own beast), the experimental, profound, bizarre, sickening, poignant and often genius Dane creates female characters of, sometimes, Joan of Arc proportions -- Breaking the Waves, Dancer in the Dark and Dogville are the most prominent examples -- and lets them both fight and fold under the weight of their existence.
His women, or martyrs, as many would, often rightfully assert, live in a hard, oppressive world, peopled with individuals who harbor little concern for their goodness or, at least attempt to understand their ugliness. They are human, and so, how they respond to such pressures or the conflicts within themselves often create knee-jerk reactions toward Von Trier. Chiefly, he must hate women. No. He does not. He appears to love women. And then, perhaps like most men, at times, he does not love them. They are maddening and victimized and glorious and, in the end, good (or not?). And master von Trier adds to it all a sardonic touch, spicing up his experimental melodrama with heavy doses of dark humor and personal reflection -- he surely both loves and hates himself as well.
Weaving himself into his characters, he’s sadistic, masochistic, empathetic, self-obsessed, morbid and morbidly funny and then honest and honestly confused. Which again, makes me think of Marilyn, on film and in photographs -- she weaves a similar spell. As I wrote in Playboy, "through it all, no matter what was happening in her life, Marilyn gave us that gift: pleasure. Pleasure in happiness and pleasure in pain and the pleasure of looking at her. And like the great artist she was, looking at her provoked whatever you desired to interpret from her."
Much like Melancholia, in which Von Trier grants depressives a gift. Taking Justine’s depleted darkness and imbuing her with celestial life through doomsday, he, to recall another German Romantic and again, Marilyn, creates an Ode to Joy through heartbreaking and gloriously inspirational…woe. "The End of Everything." Marilyn. Her beginning, middle and end is neverending.
The Winnipeg Free Press was kind enough to interview me regarding my Playboy Marilyn Monroe essay. Marilyn, Hefner's dedication to classic cinema, Bob Dylan and Rabbit Angstrom are discussed and more. Here's Randall King's introduction and the interview that follows:
Fifty years after her death, Marilyn Monroe is once again on the cover of Playboy magazine for the December issue.
That is appropriate, given that Marilyn put Playboy on the publishing map in December 1953, by serving as the magazine's cover model and its first centrefold. The story goes that Monroe posed for the photograph for $50 before she became one of the most popular movie stars in the world. It had shown up on common nudie calendars before Playboy publisher Hugh Hefner employed it to launch his fledgling magazine.
This month's pictorial, "The Nude Marilyn," includes appreciations by film critic Roger Ebert and novelist John Updike, but is anchored by an article by Los Angeles film critic Kim Morgan, better known in these parts as Mrs. Guy Maddin.
The tone of Morgan's piece is elegiac but also somehow fiercely loyal to Monroe as a woman and an artist. Morgan dismisses Elton John's tribute, for example ("Marilyn wasn't a candle in the wind") and demonstrably resents patronizing views of the actress, who was presumed to have died of a drug overdose.
"Much has been written about Marilyn's vulnerability, much of it irritating," Morgan writes, specifically decrying "the sad-eyed pat on the head, the poor-little-girl-lost attitude."
Morgan, who divides her residences between Los Angeles and Winnipeg, has written about Monroe before, in her blog Sunset Gun, on the Huffington Post. She spoke to the Free Press via email from L.A.
FP: Congratulations on sharing editorial space with Roger Ebert and John Updike. That is respectable company you're keeping.
KM: Thanks. It's wonderful having the cover story and to share space with legendary Roger, who has become a friend, and Updike, a brilliant novelist and critic as well. Rabbit Angstrom is iconic. That's a big bunny.
FP: The tone of your piece was almost protective, loyal, calling out those who took a more condescending attitude to Marilyn Monroe. Where does this loyalty come from?
KM: I wouldn't say that I was being simply protective, though I do feel loyal towards her. I think there's more complexity to how one approaches Marilyn, whether they know it or not, which is why she remains powerful to this day. And I mentioned Candle in the Wind briefly, a well-meaning song, in opposition to the song that runs through my piece, Bob Dylan's She Belongs to Me, even though Dylan didn't write it for MM. But to me, that song feels like Marilyn in all her beauty, complications, mystery and art. 'She's an artist.' Marilyn was an artist.
FP: More than most contemporary critics, you have a real reverence for the riches of Old Hollywood. Did you acquire that appreciation at an early age?
KM: I think any good working movie critic is interested in the history of cinema. I hope so. And I have been obsessed with classic cinema since I was a child, ever since I saw High Sierra on TV at age seven or eight. I was hooked on revival houses and video stores -- where I was late returning a lot of movies. I still have a very muddy VHS of Of Human Bondage -- for sentimental reasons. And Bette Davis. You just can't chuck a Bette Davis movie out.
FP: While this assignment probably didn't involve any visits to the Grotto, how was it writing for Playboy? What are your feelings about that magazine and its history?
KM: Well, I loved writing for them. They gave me so much freedom in terms of how to approach Marilyn. I love the magazine, past and present. And actually, I have been to the Mansion a few times for Hefner's movie night and the Grotto, watching some Playmates go for a swim. I did not swim.
The mansion and its rooms are rich with history. Hefner always shows classic movies in his theatre. He's a true movie lover and contributes so much to keeping classic cinema alive. He's produced docs on everyone from Lon Chaney to Clara Bow to Rita Hayworth and more. And he's been a major figure in film restoration and education. In 1995, he gave $1.5 million to USC for the Hugh M. Hefner Chair for the Study of American Film, and in 2006, he made a $1 million donation to the UCLA Film & Television Archive. Right now in L.A., UCLA and The Hugh M. Hefner Classic American Film Program is running a month-long series on the cinema of Mitchell Leisen at the Billy Wilder Theater -- a dream for me, because I've always wanted to watch a Leisen picture on the big screen. Writ large!
Hefner is an important figure in so many ways, there's not enough space to list his contributions (Lenny Bruce on "Playboy's Penthouse!" And Ike & Tina to Harry Nilsson and Otto Preminger on "Playboy After Dark!").
And the history of the magazine, (from) the gorgeous Playmates through the decades (I have a large collection of vintage Playboys, myself) to the writers he's published -- from Vladimir Nabokov to Anne Sexton to John Cheever -- it's major. My god, all that beauty and brains. Just like Marilyn.
I'm honored to have written about Playboy's first, most famous and greatest cover girl, the magnificent Marilyn Monroe. My essay "The Nude Marilyn" along with Roger Ebert's "A Sense of Control" and John Updike's "A Broken Venus" are not available for online reading (though Playboy offers a peek of MM here) so pick up a copy of the print edition on newsstands now.
You'll be happy you did because Monroe's pictures are ravishing. How could they not be? As Updike wrote, "like a broken marble Venus, she defies time."
I finally saw a picture. Little Dorothy Gentry -- the girl who grew up on an orchard in Oregon's Rogue River Valley. The woman I barely knew while growing up in Seattle, Bainbridge Island and Oregon's Willamette Valley. As I wrote and experienced last month, the woman who went to Alaska and who passed away this October.
When Dorothy died, I discussed the scant photos I'd seen of Dorothy and her family -- her mother and my mother. There were only two pictures I could remember, and one I didn't see in this collection. Maybe I imagined that picture?
But for the first time in my life, this week, I saw less than a dozen old pictures. I looked at my great-grandmother Ethel for the first time in my life. I saw Dorothy as a baby, as a girl and as a 13-year-old, sitting on her bicycle, appearing almost protective with a boy I'd never seen before. I saw their house. I saw Dorothy's friends. I saw Dorothy as a young mother with her brood. I saw my little mother. I saw my aunts and uncles as children.
Many of us can relate to this -- grandparents leave us -- and often we have no idea who our family really is. And we'll never know. Dorothy and her kin, her entire life, haunt me. I've always felt rootless, yearning to understand my blood ties, where they came from and what kind of people they were. I heard bits and pieces of ancestral drama and tragedy (abandonment, prison, mental institutions) but only through my mother, and from what she could piece together.
Dorothy was not the matriarch to discuss her past. As far as I know, she rarely talked about her mother, she rarely discussed her first husband (who left the family and went to prison), and only a few days ago did I learn she had a younger brother. My mother told me. His name was Bobby, like my brother. Dorothy's Bobby, sometime in his early thirties, was killed by a drunk driver. Bobby is the boy, standing with his big sister next to the bike. He's wearing a hat. He appears to have liked hats. And I like to think that his mother Ethel was happy to see him in hats. She liked them too.
That's half of what I glean from these mysterious, first-seen photographs. There's so much I don't know. I should have asked more questions -- but I never felt I could. I rarely saw Dorothy to ask, and the few letters were about happy things -- flowers, books, movies. I worried that her past would only bring sadness. Though I'm sure there was joy and some wonderful stories, I didn't want to dredge up painful memories. Chiefly, about my great-grandmother Ethel, who was sent to a mental institution when Dorothy was a young girl and remained interned until her death. When I was a little girl, my mother took us out to visit Ethel -- I barely remember. We stopped to eat hamburgers and everyone seemed happy. I was too young to understand her mental state, but according to my mother, she was not crazy. She'd been through a lot at that institution (I can only imagine what kind of treatments occurred during that time in Salem, the real Cuckoo's Nest where they filmed the movie. Did Ethel meet Jack Nicholson? Most likely not.) and that was her life. She was used to it now. "Normal" life, she felt, was too late. She could not re-enter regular society.
It's my strong belief that she should never have been locked away. It always has been, and I was always fascinated by her. I remember, at around age ten or so, discovering her old, snazzy suitcase in a closet after she died. I went through her carefully folded clothes and noticed her name "Ethel Gentry" marked on all of her garments. Maybe this was the institutional rule. Maybe she didn't want people touching her pretty things. I knew she'd feel fine if I did. I put on her fancy nightgown and wandered around the house. I went into the kitchen and filled a highball with soda and ice and pretended it was liquor. I thought this was something she would do, sexily swill a drink -- something I saw in old movies. I staggered around, goofing, pretending to be angry and drunk but thinking I was so crazy glamorous. I imagined this was how Ethel might have conducted herself towards all those jerks and orderlies in the loony bin. Movie Star. (Ethel's mother was a dressmaker and reportedly a costumer for the movies. Ethel was born in California. Her father died in Los Angeles. I just learned all of this today). Well, now my play-acting makes more sense, even if I had no idea at the time.
But Ethel has never been clear to me. I don't know what happened to her. Those times, especially for women suffering depression and anxiety, were obviously different when Ethel was a young woman. My grandfather McKinley (he went by Kim), who I do remember vaguely as a little girl (I have a memory of picking cherries with him, eating so many on the drive back home that us kids swore off cherries forever) -- I adored him. But I've never understood why he agreed to send Ethel away. Was she dangerous? Did she want to go? I can't believe that. In these photos, she looks what has been described to me -- unique, smart, stylish, musical (she played piano beautifully) -- an interesting woman. There she is. Fantastic. Sitting with her children, a tree and a ladder, clad in menswear complete with a fabulous hat and tie. And, in another photo, lovely in her silky shirt, bobbed hair and long necklace. But I have no idea what was really going on during this period. If I romanticize her, I say she was a woman ahead of her time, a woman who spoke her mind -- a woman who could not be contained. But then, of course she was.
I've written about how we view images in pictures and in movies, sometimes as time-capsules, and looking at these photos reminded me of how I took in The Virgin Suicides -- how those memories, by the boys who never really knew those girls, unfolded in their minds. I feel my blood when I look at these photos, but as I've stated before, recollections never play out in fully developed narrative timeframes, as perfectly balanced and structured strands of thought. As I wrote, "they are not tangible, easily understood events. Memories can be visited but never wholly embraced. They can be strong and unforgettable, but bit by bit, they lose their edges, making them, for many, even more melancholic. The more they elude us, the less simplistic they become -- never just happy or sad, but mysterious and bittersweet, replete with or bereft of emotion for reasons often beyond comprehension."
I'm trying to comprehend. And I certainly feel things. I feel nearly overwhelmed, in fact, looking at these photos for the first time. And I think of Dorothy, the little girl who lost her mother, her husband and then her brother. She was not a perfect mother. I don't think she should have left for Alaska so early in my mother's life -- leaving my teenage mother alone to watch over her younger brothers. But now, I better understand her need to flee. She wanted to start her life all over again. Her mother, confined and creative and lovely, undergoing god knows what, could not leave. Dorothy could.
I started with ten. That was impossible. I moved to eighteen. That made no sense. And then I thought ... how about thirty-one movies for Halloween, October 31? That'll really tie the room together. Well, that was a ridiculous attempt because I ended up with thirty-six and I still feel like I've forgotten more than two dozen other movies (Japanese horror requires its own list, Hammer, giallo, more silents, Peter Lorre, Vampyr, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane for heaven's sake). But I had to stop (until I got to thirty-seven). Many of these are iconic, some are lesser known, some aren't even technically horror movies, but all are favorites of mine. Happy Halloween!
The Haunting
Remember when Jan de Bont thought (or someone who told Jan De Bont) it'd be a good idea to remake one of the greatest haunted-house movies ever made? No? Well, good -- maybe some unseen force cleansed the memory right out of your brain. Or maybe the original film, Robert Wise's classic The Haunting (adapted from Shirley Jackson's enduring novel "The Haunting of Hill House") worked some mojo, ensuring the redo would fall into a crack in the earth. Whatever the reason, the original Haunting is powerful stuff. With its tale of three very different people staying in a haunted New England mansion under an observant parapsychologist, the film gives us the requisite bumps in the night (loud pounding noises, cold spots, dead people pulling dwellers into their thrall) but amps up the terror with intriguing, complex characters. Led by a wonderfully poignant Julie Harris (the house wants to keep her -- very scary), the film is not only tense and psychologically interesting, but also gorgeously shot, showing, once again, Wise's previous schooling under the great Val Lewton. The Haunting is still terrifying.
Cat People
There are so many Lewton pictures to list (Isle of the Dead, The Seventh Victim, The Curse of the Cat People, Ghost Ship, Bedlam), but I am sticking to my favorite -- Cat People -- it's simply one of the most beautiful films ever made -- ever, ever, ever. With a small budget and only a title to work from, a title promising a potential cheapie, lurid movie, producer Lewton (a man every horror filmmaker should study), crafted a film about, not women running around in cat suits, but fear. What scares us? What we can't see. With director Jacques Tourneur (who would later direct the seminal noir Out of the Past and the great Nightfall) and beguiling star, French actress Simone Simon at the helm, the movie about a woman enduring a cat curse, manages to be about a lot more -- loneliness, sex, fear of the other, fear of oneself, fear of letting go. And it contains one of the creepiest, yet classiest scenes in a swimming pool. And the women...
I Walked With a Zombie
This may be the only zombie movie inspired by Jane Eyre, and perhaps, the only zombie movie that is about well, real zombies. As in, voodoo. It's ambiguous and therefore more mysterious, scary, gorgeous, intelligent, sensitive -- all those things producer Val Lewton excelled at. Directed by Jacques Tourneur after he made the masterful Cat People, the picture, while dealing with voodoo and devil worship, is elegant, poetic, expressionistic and still inventive in use of shadows, light, dark, daylight, and wind. The quintessence of haunting.
Pretty Poison
I will never, ever stop talking about Tuesday Weld. I love her so much, that as I've said numerous times, it almost hurts. Lord Love a Duck, Wild in the Country, The Cincinnati Kid, Play it as it Lays, Thie fand on and on. But my favorite Weld performance? As Sue Ann Stepanek in Pretty Poison. Pretty Poison is the definitive Tuesday Weld movie. Playing the beautiful but deadly high-school majorette to Anthony Perkins twitchy, creepy fire-starter, she is the deliciously deviant underbelly of America's heartland. Where blondes are supposed to be good girls but, in her case, are most definitely not. Made in 1968 and directed by Noel Black, the picture was something of a dud upon release (too sexually disturbing? too strange?) and has achieved cult status ever since. And deservedly so. With it's violence, pitch black comedy and sexy viciousness (watch Tuesday commit murder and immediately want to have sex after) the picture is wonderfully subversive and deeply strange. And Weld...she is charming, scary, beautiful and sickly erotic. Need I explain the plot? The manipulation of Perkins (who thought he was doing the manipulating)? The killing of her mother? The crazy, beautiful, psycho intensity of Weld? No. You really should watch it for yourself. Again, Tuesday, Tuesday. As Tiny Tim sang, "If only Tuesday Weld would be my wife."
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
This vicious bit of brilliance is as scary as it is strangely beautiful. Spawning sequels and even a stupid remake, it's the arfully rendered low-budget horror of Tobe Hooper's original that sticks in your nightmares. You can choose what scene scares you most, but for me, the most iconic is Marilyn Burns being chased by Leatherface -- seemingly forever. The length of the chase (over two minutes), along with the screaming and running and screaming and running through the brambles while a beastly freak donning a human face for a mask and wielding a chainsaw is hot on her tail, just gets me where I live -- or die. And may I just pause for a moment to discuss --- Edwin Neal? Holy shit. Leatherface is horrifying, for sure, but Neal's overly eager, smiling, goat-cheese-eating hitcher provides one of the film's creepiest sequences.
Before you know anything about the rest of these meat eaters, you're introduced to this young guy who is probably kind of weird, maybe even a little Manson-family like, but when his van ride is over, far worse. There's just something about him taking the picture and setting it on fire and then cutting his hand that feels totally and terrifyingly authentic. Like Tobe Hooper really did find this guy on the side of the road. And when the kids wise up and finally kick his crazy ass out of the van, that silent shot of Neal with his arms flapping is like observing documentary footage of total and complete madness.
Repulsion/Rosemary's Baby/The Tenant
Repulsion remains one of the most frightening studies of psychosis ever filmed. It's also one of the most sexually mysterious. Deneuve's nervous young manicurist finds herself languishing about her apartment, where, her pathological shyness, sexual repression and repulsions spiral into madness. Perplexing hallucinations haunt Carol as she's holed up in her pad: sexual acts with a greasy man whom she simultaneously loathes and lusts; greedy hands poking through the hallways and kneading her soft flesh; and the moving and cracking of walls. Left alone, she is able to act out what she is so afraid of: the dark sludge of desire. The obscure, slippery and decayed complexities of such desire are conveyed brilliantly and the diseased atmosphere of Carol's apartment/womb is meticulously created through Polanski's inventive camera angles, sound effects and images of clutter. This is a gorgeously elusive, unsparing vision of sickness, and Deneuve's performance is brilliantly mysterious. As Polanski cameraman Gil Taylor muttered during filming, "I hate doing this to a beautiful woman." A masterpiece of madness.
Rosemary's Baby One of Polanski's most famous, iconic and unforgettable movies, Rosemary's Baby is just as effective as a dark comedy as it is a horror movie. It also works as a strange celebration of one woman's love for her baby, no matter what, and the institutions that attempt to control her (yes, you can read Rosemary's Baby as a feminist work). We all remember young-mother-to-be Rosemary (Mia Farrow) moving into a lovely, though creepy, apartment building and eventually finding herself impregnated by Satan himself. Her ambitious actor husband, A powerfully desperate and touching performance by Farrow carries the picture (as well as unforgettable turns by John Cassavetes, Elijah Cook Jr., Ralph Bellamy, Sidney Blackmer and a charmingly though frighteningly coarse Ruth Gordon) and Polanski's colorful, tense and at times, surreal direction (the dream sequence/Satanic seduction is a particular standout) and attention to detail is superb. And again, it's at times, morbidly hilarious. "What about Dr. Sapirstein? What about ME!"
The Tenant Though Rosemary’s Baby remains Polanski’s classic horror picture (and I do love it), for psychological terror, hysterical paranoia, existential break-down and a man really going through hell in a dress, I thinkThe Tenant supersedes Rosemary in thought-provoking terror. We can relate to it. It makes one fearful of every friend, neighbor, sound and the very thought of attempting a romance -- not to mention the task of simply taking out the garbage. Polanski wisely cast himself as Trelkovsky, a beleaguered, nervous Polish file clerk who takes over an apartment after the previous tenant commits suicide. With neighbors who are all kinds of creepy (gotta love a thoroughly disagreeable Shelley Winters), he’s spying strange things in the bathroom across the courtyard and, in one of the picture’s more memorable moments, discovers a tooth hidden in the wall. What else? There’s donning the prior tenant’s clothes, complete with dress, wig and a thick smear of perverse red lipstick and then that double jump, which I won’t reveal here but, it's a spectacular leap. And such shattering of glass. And that crawl. All in that dress. It all becomes an odd mixture of impotence and satisfaction.
And it’s all so human, horrifying and morbidly hilarious -- a tough combination to successfully convey, but Polanski, master of the dark humor, does so effortlessly. For instance, watch Polanski smack a kid in the park, or observe an especially frightening and imaginative moment when Polanski’s head is bouncing like a basketball, and feel confused by your terrified bemusement. Try not to laugh. And then cringe. And then laugh. And then think of yourself and all those you don't trust (there are many).
The Exorcist
William Friedkin's still-shocking movie about a girl possessed by a demon deservedly ranks as one of the scariest of all time -- and not just because I saw it on cable, babysitting at 12-years old and promptly stopped sleeping for .... six months. This movie really messes with girls entering puberty -- how out-of-control it all feels -- I was terrified that surely the next "change" was demonic possession. Though some watch the film with a bit of camp these days (the head turning just isn't as horrifying as when you were 12-years old), I completely understand why many viewers fainted or ran back to the confessional after watching cute little Linda Blair push a priest out of a window or shove a crucifix in her privates. There are many, many scenes and touches in this movie that'll stop the heart, but I think Father Karras' dream of his dead mother is one the creepiest dream sequences ever put to celluloid. Envisioning his mother walking up the stairs from a subway, Karras is seen across the street flagging her down. Sounds perfectly normal except that Friedkin fills the entire exchange with an anxiety that makes the viewer so uncomfortable that we literally gasp when the "subliminal" -- a painted white demon face with red-rimmed eyes -- flashes on the screen. What in God's name was that? FUCK! Evangelist Billy Graham wanted to know, branding the film as a subliminal incendiary work of the devil with "evil embodied on the very celluloid." Well if that doesn't make you want to see a horror movie, I don't know what does.
Don't Look Now
Don't Look Now is one of the scariest movies ever made. It's also one of the saddest and, by film's end, astoundingly shocking. With a sublime Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland starring as a couple staying in Venice after their young daughter dies, they struggle to come to turns with grief while Sutherland is commissioned to restore a church, and Christie befriends two strange middle-aged sisters, one of whom is psychic. And then it just gest weirder. And darker. And heartbreaking. The story (adapted from a Daphne du Maurier tale) is fascinating enough, but director Nicolas Roeg ladles the film with stylistic flourishes (bizarre angles, nonlinear cuts, off conversations) that are anxiously bewildering. And Venice has never felt so chilling -- this is not a romantic lovers' getaway but a place of shadows and doom and a creepy creature in a red coat. A masterpiece.
Black Christmas
Director Bob Clark (who would later craft that little subversive yuletide favorite A Christmas Story) made a first of its kind--a sorority house slasher picture, complete with deranged lunatic (whom you never see), extra crazy obscene phone calls and sexy girls--especially Margot Kidder and the beautiful Olivia Hussey. Atmospheric, gorgeously shot, intriguing and filled with genuine fucking scares, Black Christmas is wonderful for two holidays. RIP Bob Clark.
I Saw What You Did
One of my favorite William Castle movies (and I love a lot of them- see: "Jacket, Straight"), this one takes the perfect concept of grounded teenage girls babysitting a little sister, their innocent though, dirty-flirty prank phone calls, a murderous John Ireland, a vengeful Joan Crawford and a hilarious night time car ride to meet a sexy mysterious stranger. Well, this is before Facebook and Twitter and Instant Messaging and all that business, so the jailbait girls can only think Ireland (no slouch in the looks department, mind you, but a bit old for them) is the hottest thing since Elvis. These girls are just dying for some thrills and jump into their parent's car (kid sis in tow) so the more daring of the two can meet up with this manly man for a little action. And who can blame her? Never mind hunky voiced Ireland really thinks they "saw what you did" and "know who you are" -- the menacing setup makes it all the more subversively sexy. And then it gets really frightening. A jealous Joan Crawford spies the teens, reaches into their car and steals the girl's parent's car insurance -- perhaps the scariest moment in the entire movie. Being busted by Joan fucking Crawford when you're grounded? Jesus Christ. That would make any teenager wake up in a cold, virginal sweat.
Eyes Without a Face
Georges Franju's Eyes Without a Face still shocks me. I won't describe the scene (it involves a...face and ... surgery) but the shock is furthered by the picture's potent sadness. A brilliant combination of French art film and shock, the movie is a fiendish study of guilt after a doctor accidnetally disfigures his daughter in an auto accident. Beauty is snatched via his lovely nurse/assistant/partner in crime -- young women who will hopefully be the new face of his mask wearing daughter. To describe the beauty and horror of this movie is tough -- its cinematography, art direction, scary yet, gentle perforamnces, fragility mangled by blunt instruments, and guilt induced evil hits you in every soft spot. It's so damn beautiful and yet, so ghastly.
The Innocents
The Innocents, a reworking of Henry James' novel "The Turn of the Screw," finds Deborah Kerr as a governess hired by Michael Redgrave to care for two of the freakiest kids this side of The Brood. Are these children (played by Pamela Franklin and Martin Stephens) just precocious little buggers? Or, are they under the control of the deceased evil former servants? A suitably terrified Kerr sticks around to find out, which, as it turns out, probably isn't such a good idea.
The Brood
Are these freaky things even kids? Well, yes... sorta. After watching Samantha Eggar birth them (licking the newborns and all, a scene every libidinous teen should watch to prevent pregnancy) in David Cronenberg's classic (and one of his greatest movies), they definitely come from her womb. But what are they exactly? That's what Eggar's husband (Art Hindle) wants to find out after mysterious, deformed blonde kids in ski jackets show up unannounced to kill people. Worse, they take away his daughter. And things become even more complicated when he realizes his wife's psychiatrist (a fantastic Oliver Reed) has something to do with it. So let me re-phrase this: they aren't really children but, when referring to the shrink's eccentric methods they are "shapes of rage." Shapes of rage that do your bidding. Damn. I have shapes of range in all shapes, sizes and eye colors. I'd like to birth a few. Oh, Ollie Reed. Damn the world for taking that man away from us too soon...
Peeping Tom
Even over 40 years later, Michael Powell's controversial Peeping Tom (and one that unfarily hurt his career) still manages to make me feel dirty after watching. In the spirit of killers we can't help but feel empathy for (say, Peter Lorre in M), Carl Boehm plays a soft-spoken, nice-looking but clearly twisted filmmaker who kills girls, filming their deaths on his snazzy 16mm camera (complete with attached knife). Even sicker, he places a mirror on his camera so he can watch their reactions while filming. When you get to know Mark, you understand how his perversion was formed (his scientist father used him as a terror guinea pig) and even hope he may improve through the kindness of a female neighbor. But could that really happen? No. A beautiful picture that examined sleaze, fetishism and voyeurism (which is the film's intriguing question to viewers: Do you like to watch too?) with vivid color and simultaneous darkness, the picture remains a classic in the canon of cinematic psychos.
The Night of the Hunter
Is this a horror movie? It's certainly a nightmare -- a beautifully filmed elegaic nightmare. Robert Mitchum is absolute genius in James Agee's adaptation of Davis Grubb's novel, directed by actor Charles Laughton (famously his only directing effort). An expressionist classic, the film works as gothic horror, children's nightmare, and fairy/religious tale all in one. As the mysterious, sadistic preacher Harry Powell who is shot at times, straight out of James Whale's gallery of monsters (Laughton picked up a few things), Mitchum is so powerful a presence, you almost forget to be attracted to him (almost -- but not quite). Riding into town -- a fantastically handsome wolf in sheep's clothing, Mitchum's Powell pursues a fabulously pathetic widow in Shelley Winters, whose two children know where their dead father's money is hidden, and then promptly kills her. Slitting her throat and dumping her body in the river, Laughton gives us a death scene that is one of cinema's most beautifully haunting -- she sits in a car, hair floating in the water like gracefuly seaweed. The children's escape, their magical trip down the river and love in the form of Lillian Gish . Love comes from Lillian Gish who never fails to turn me into a puddle of tears when she receives that apple. Or when she bravely sings her duet with Mitchum. Notice Miss Gish sings "Leaning on Jesus," while Mitchum never mentions Jesus once.
The Shining
I've seen this movie so many times and each time I think, it's not going to scare me. It's too ... "Here's Johnny!" Wrong. The moment Jack Nicholson begins talking about The Donner Party, I should be amused, but I'm terrified. Cabin fever and most especially cabin fever as directed by Stanley Kubrick scares me -- on a personal level. So does staring at a blank page. In that isolated Colorado hotel, the unsettling Torrance family endures forces beyond daddy going bonkers. Nicholson's caretaker/writer not only talks with the ghosts of hotel past, he also attempts to seduce one -- the beautiful naked woman in Room 237 who shrivels into a bony old woman, those Arbus looking girls in the hallway, the elevator gushing tidal waves of blood, "Red Rum" which should be stupid (murder spelled backwards? Ohhhh .... scary! But then, it is!) and poor Shelley Duvall. From opening shot to closing, freezing finale, The Shining is a cold stunner, spiked with powerful music (Bela Bartok was never fucking scarier) and stupendously upsetting. The death of Scatman Crothers remains one of the most traumatic viewing experiences of my life.
Dead of Night
Some consider this British Ealing quintet of horror tales one of cinema's most chilling -- especially the final film, "Ventriloquist's Dummy" (directed by Alberto Cavalcanti) -- the scariest of the bunch. That terrible tale concerns ventriloquist Maxwell Frere (played by a remarkable Michael Redgrave) who believes his dummy, Hugo, is out to get him -- like really, distressingly, sneaking out of the box, out to get him. Since Maxwell's act is based on disparity between him and Hugo, the realization that Hugo is running the show more than Maxwell makes their banter extra disturbing. When Maxwell suspects Hugo's ambition is not only causing him to look at other dummy masters for partnering but purposely sabotaging his shows, his fears result in one truly terrifying hotel room confrontation. The picture's structure (flashbacks and even flashbacks within a flashback) is expertly handled with Hugo's horror equaling Redgrave's potently freaky nuttiness. And, well, dummies. Dummies attacking you.
Nosferatu
The ugly vampire. Not one of these lovely Twilight creatures. Ugly. And sad. And scary. And weirdly beautiful. F. W. Murnau's Nosferatu features the wonderfully rat-like Max Schreck as the vampire Count Orlok, creeping around his digs in expressionistic though understandable psycho sexual torture. The movie is re-known for many innovative techniques, but the biggest creep out is simply watching Schreck walk, reach for things, and sleep in, of course, a coffin. This film never ages with time. Schreck is truly the symbol of nightmare -- the guy who would send you running to an insane asylum if you woke up to him sucking your neck, or finger or whatever else.
Carnival of Souls
This low-budget ($30,000) cult film may well be one of the freakiest pictures not well known enough to the general public. Pre-The Sixth Sense, the story finds Candace Hilligoss "surviving" a fatal car crash after it plunges into the river. She moves on to Salt Lake City and gets one of the creepiest jobs you can acquire in a movie like this: church organist. But life is not normal. She constantly sees "The Man," a corpse-like specter who seems to follow her every move. And she's oddly pulled by a deserted pavilion that, in the film's frightful climax, will prove exceedingly horrific. The picture is filled with wonderfully eerie touches, including a bus full of ghouls, our heroine's realization that people can neither see nor hear her, and the carnival-esque dance of the dead. Once you watch Carnival of Souls, you cannot get this movie out of your head.
Psycho
An obvious one, but it's one of the best. Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho was so shocking in its time (people had rarely seen a toilet, much less a shower drain, in a movie before, much less gorgeous Janet Leigh being knifed by a transvestite) that if you ask your parents or grandparents, they can remember the exact time and place of viewing the masterpiece. And again, they especially remember Janet Leigh's infamous wash. Not only was it taboo to watch a major star being murdered before the first half of the film was over, but to view the stabbing, screaming and dying scored to the infamous musical shrieks of Bernard Hermann was a landmark in our cinematic lives. It still is.
Don't Deliver Us From Evil
Never released in the United States and "banned" for blasphemy, the masterful movie presents a wonderfully deceiving package. The story of two teenage convent girls who "dedicate ourselves to Satan" could have been some dippy horror movie--a T&A fest with demons and multiple slayings and loads of sex (I know, you've probably lost interest ... just stick with me). It could have been one of those '70s horror films that make you run for the shower directly upon watching because even your soul feels soiled. Which isn't a terrible thing. But that's not what Don't Deliver Us From Evil is going for. It's really about the obsessive nature of female friendship, of living in a boring world filled with hypocrisy, of becoming fueled by literature and the forbidden and all the stuff that's so intense when you're 15. Here it's gorgeous raven-haired Anne (Jeanne Goupi) and her best friend Lore (Catherine Wagener), two beautiful but curious (yes, curious) girls marking their time at Catholic School by sneaking into bed with each other and reading erotic literature under the sheets.
They're especially fascinated by evil, which, isn't that strange considering their Catholic environment. But when they renounce Jesus Christ and all his works to become baby brides of Satan, they one-up the typical Catholic schoolgirl naughtiness. They kill animals, torture men and...I don't want to spoil the, uh, fun. I love movies that are able to crawl under your skin and almost make you feel guilty--complicit even--with the character's intentions. With loads of sacreligious imagery and the director clearly giving the Church a big, fat middle finger, the general ambiance of the movie is unsettling and cheeky, but in an intoxicating, magical way. You really fall in love with these girls. And that, quite simply (and subversively), makes you feel evil. And you'll never, ever forget their recitation of Baudelaire's "Les Morts des Amants" (Death of the Lovers). If only all poetry readings were this insanely brilliant.
The Uninvited
An A-project at the time (most horror films -- even great ones -- were relegated to B status), director Lewis Allen crafted a creepy, classy film starring a terrific Ray Milland and Ruth Hussey. Brother and Sister (Milland and Hussey) buy a country house that's not only riddled with curious sounds, smells and temperature shifts, but also inhabited by two female apparitions - one evil, the other friendly. What's particularly distressing is the mean ghost's constant attempts to kill the pretty girl who lives next door (with whom Milland is smitten). Nicely paced and atmospherically shot, The Uninvited is witty, nerve-racking and a wonderfully scary/solid Haunted House movie.
The Changeling
Peter Medak’s film is as sad as it is scary, but the melancholic tone just underscores the terror. George C. Scott plays a lonely musician who moves into a house haunted by a dead little boy. When we learn what happened to the child, the sounds of loud knocking (nope - it's not the radiator this time) make perfect sense. But we sure don’t feel any better - especially when that red rubber ball keeps appearing by the stairs. One of the film’s creepiest moments has Scott throwing the thing over a bridge only to return home to that same ball, bouncing down the stairwell wet. Yes, The Changeling makes a ball scary.
Burnt Offerings
I love this movie. I don't care how cheesy some viewers find it. It scares the hell out of me. And when Karen Black's scary, she's beyond terrifying. But when you add some Bette Davis and Oliver friggin Reed, things get wonderfully weird. This Shining-like tale of a family affected by the hauntings of an old mansion they’ve rented for the summer showcases some seriously horrifying moments. Especially when Black becomes possessed. Creepy, sometimes funny but grim to the end, the film offers up some helpful advice -- chiefly, don’t rent a home from Burgess Meredith. Ever.
The Phantom of the Opera
All you Andrew Lloyd Webber fans just stop. OK, OK, enjoy the Phantom. But -- I'm not talking about some heartbroken guy with a face mask like Tom Cruise's in Vanilla Sky bellowing out pop opera tunes. I'm talking a genuinely scary, tortured man/monster played by a genius, one of the greatest actors of all time -- Lon Chaney -- in the 1925 silent picture. The movie and Chaney are so effective, so creepy, so sad, so transcendent and so weirdly beautiful. Lon Chaney is the phantom.
Suspiria
And you were worried that sending your daughter to a dance academy might expose her to bad habits like excessive dieting or smoking cigarettes. Please. You didn’t hear about the Dario Argento Dance Academy. At this place, young Suzy must contend with a school run by a coven of witches. Suzy survives, enduring some of the most demonic plies of her life. After successfully killing the worst witch, who is (of course) the headmistress, we have to wonder what the future holds for Suzy. That's all I can write. This movie digs into corners of my mind and makes me too frighted to sleep, let alone walk through glass doors.
Halloween
Poor Laurie Strode. Did she know a masked lunatic was going to make her senior year such a goddamn bummer? 21-year-old Myers, who stabbed his teenage sister when he was a wee-one, has escaped from the loony bin in pursuit of the likable Laurie. With his understandably concerned and stressed-out shrink (Donald Pleasance) on his tail, Myers still manages to terrorize and murder nearly all of Laurie’s friends before finding himself face to face with the one power he can’t contend with…virginity! Well, that’s not really the power at hand though Laurie’s good-girl antics do keep her away from danger. And... well you've all seen Hallowen. I hope.
Lost Highway
It's all about Robert Blake as the ”Mystery Man.” Jesus Fucking Christ he's terrifying. Since David Lynch knows creepy better than Leatherface knows a good slab of beef, it's no surprise, but casting Blake was a touch of genius. Blake’s unwelcome party guest was his last role (and I’m wondering if he’ll do any more pictures in the future ... I hope) swirled in my grey matter days after viewing, notably for his white makeup and his way with words: “We’ve met before … at your house … I’m there right now.”
The Village of the Dammed
The picture hasn't worn as scary throughout the years, but there is something iconic about these blonde, mod-looking children with their blank, penetrating glow-eyes. And disturbing, too, since they can make people do things they didn't intend to do (like, oh, drive their car into a wall). Taking a cue from the blonde psycho from The Bad Seed, this cult classic decided to flood an entire English village with flaxen freaks, unleashing a horror that's tough to fight -- who wants to attack the kids? After women become pregnant under bizarre conditions (let's just say their husbands have nothing to do with it), out pop scores of Vidal Sassoon-haired babies who grow up freakishly fast and claim superior brains, but are seriously lacking in the social skills department.
They also appear to be in on some secret, which is truly the film's scariest conceit. If you just think about it and transfer it to real life, the idea of a bunch of grimly serious little blonde kids, dressed in matching clothes, glaring at you, would be terrifying. And if George Sanders is having a rough go handling these brats, well, something is genuinely wrong.
The Funhouse
Why aren't more movies set in haunted carnival fun houses? But, more importantly, why aren't more slasher films this great? The Funhouse has gone relatively unknown, which is baffling because the picture is a tight little horror film imbued with some tremendously scary (and funny) sequences. Dig this idea -- a group of stoned friends decides it'd be a kick to stay the night in a fun house after closing time. Yeah, such a kick -- especially when a deranged albino fond of wearing a Frankenstein monster mask begins terrorizing you. Directed by Tobe Hooper, Funhouse benefits from an effective lead killer and the already creepy setting of a carnival, making it an under-looked classic of the genre.
Carrie
Though much of Brian De Palma's Carrie is more sad than scary (tricking poor, mousy, abused and telekinetic Sissy Spacek into thinking she's really prom queen -- so mean!) there are horrifying moments that stick. Yes, we know the pig's blood dumped on the poor girl is pretty gruesome, but then, Carrie White wreaks major revenge for the taunting. The moment that really made us jump out of our seats was Amy Irving's dream at film's end. As she visits Carrie's grave, suddenly a bloody hand pops out of the dirt and attempts to pull her in. No matter how sorry we are for Carrie, we're sure as hell not going in the ground with her. And no matter how much we tell ourselves this is only a movie, this is not something we want to think about before retiring for the evening. Though, I have to say, Sissy is even sexier covered in blood.
The Unholy Three
So unsettling was this picture that it was made twice -- and with most of the same cast. Talkies had something to do with it also, but if you're going to re-make( the first by Tod Browning, the second directed by Jack Conway) a movie especially one involving a ventriloquist, might as well assemble the cast and let them speak. Though the movies (again, one silent, the other most famously the great Lon Chaney’s first and only talking picture) aren’t technically dummy stories, ventriloquism plays such a key role in the picture’s dirty deeds that it can’t be ignored. Discussing the talkie -- -the ventriloquist here is named Echo (Chaney), a man who forms the triad of unholy thieves with Hercules (Ivan Linow) the strong man, and Tweedledee (Harry Earles) the midget, after their carnival is closed down.
Disguising themselves to scam people, Tweedledee dresses up as a baby, with a pretty pickpocket named Rosie (Lila Lee) playing his mother while, in the picture’s most impressive twist, Echo disguises himself as a little old lady named Mrs. O'Grady. Working a pet shop, Echo throws his voice to sell "talking" parrots among other misdeeds. Though the silent Browning version is considered the superior film, the talkie is interesting, graced by the presence of that genius Chaney. It’s especially tragic that his last role was in a talkie, proving the brilliant man had a career ahead of him outside of silent pictures. Still, it’s the silent version that boasts the picture’s scary/sad ventriloquist ending in which Echo’s dummy bids an sad farewell. But the talkie is even sadder. The last time we'd see that genius Lon Chaney on screen again.
These Are the Damned
Directed by the great Joseph Losey, the masterful These Are the Damned was made in 1961, hacked up by producers and not released in England until 1963. It finally found its way to America in 1965, thank God (or Satan, whomever). The story is convoluted and... sad. Macdonald Carey plays an American tourist who, while vacationing the English seaside, falls for Shirley Anne Field, a young woman who just happens to be the sister of the great, bad boy sexy Oliver Reed, a tough-ass motorcycle gang leader to a bunch of Teddy Boys. Reed hates Carey and exhibits some decidedly incestuous feelings for sis, but that's just part of the problem. Reed is such a violent hoodlum (wonderfully so -- it's a thrill to see him so young here), the new couples run off, but... to a cave under a nearby military base which is where some incredibly weird kid action starts.
In this case, a group of children, who've suffered experiments conducted by a scientist intent on developing a race of humans who can survive an atomic blast. So, naturally, the kids have all become radioactive and have the power to kill anyone who dares to get near them. What's makes this movie so powerful and poignant, is that rather than recoil from these children, the couple yearns to save them. But alas, life isn't so easy (you can't just adopt a brood of radioactive children) and the picture remains hauntingly grim. I'm not begging for any type of remake -- but this seems like something Cronenberg could accomplish, and with some added layers ... of birthing scenes. And too bad Reed, Cronenberg's Shape of Rage guru, couldn't have returned to the scene of the brood..
The Old Dark House
James Whale's penchant for the perverse, darkly humorous and finally, just flat out scary is on full display here as travelers Raymond Massey, his wife Gloria Stuart, Melvyn Douglas, Charles Laughton and his chorus girl companion Lillian Bond find themselves stranded in an isolated mansion. A scarred, crazy, mute butler (a terrific Boris Karloff) is there to greet them, but that's just the start of it. The homeowners are nuts (one's a whacked-out atheist, the other a religious freak) while the rest of the family includes a bedridden 102-year-old grandfather and a pyromaniac son who is locked up. Gorgeously, stylishly photographed and containing outrageously freaky performances, this is as wonderfully bizarre as it gets.
And here's another one (37!) -- Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
This an absolute favorite -- a movie I'm obsessed with. Rouben Mamoulian's cinematically inventive, innovative, experimental, sexy, scary, pre-code masterpiece of perversion, blue-balls repression and twisted desire moves me on so many levels -- I can watch it over and over again. It was far ahead of its time and never dates in theme, style and special effects.
And it boasts one of Frederic March's most brilliant performances (next to Design for Living and another sexy-scary-funny-drama -- Death Takes a Holiday -- and so much more). And Miriam Hopkins was never hotter. Neither was March -- as both Doctor and Hyde. Call me a sicko, but I have a strange case for both man and beast.
And some more:
Audition, Antichrist, Vampyr, Pulse, House, Nightmare, Dracula Prince of Darkness, Black Sabbath,
The Invisible Man, The Other, Freaks, Black Sunday, Night of the Living Dead, The Curse of the Cat People, Ghost Ship, Bedlam, Night Tide, The Golem, The Exorcist 3, Let's Scare Jessica to Death,
The Unknown, M, The Isle, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Straight-Jacket, Shivers, Alice Sweet Alice, Homicidal, Frankenstein, The Bride of Frankenstein, Island of Lost Souls, The Black Cat ... I will never stop this if I don't stop ...
For Montgomery Clift’s birthday. Revisiting his eyes...
No one has Montgomery Clift’s eyes.
Those haunted, sensitive eyes that gazed at the viewer with method modernity and timeless emotion -- pleading and gentle, but with the potential for reckless selfishness. He wasn’t the sweet bad boy; he was the conflicted, tortured bad boy who wasn’t even sure if he wanted to be so virtuous in the first place. In this disappointing, alienating world, what’s the point of being the good guy? But then, cruelty isn’t necessarily the answer either, even when he spurns an Heiress.
Clift’s eyes held secrets, and not merely the secrets we know about after discovering his real life. There’s more to Clift than hiding homosexuality, there’s pain and romance and passion and hopelessness mixed with bursts of happiness that will never grow towards contentment. For a man so beautiful, his inherent existential angst almost seems perverse. But it also draws us to him -- we want to help Monty Clift, and I have a feeling, no matter what that man did, I would forgive him anything, even if he’d surely become one of the most unreliable presences in your life. In movies, he’s the man who’d promise to do anything for sad-eyed sister Marilyn in The Misfits, but, in the end, he probably wouldn’t stay. Though I love their chemistry in that picture, and their bond feels real and strong (and apparently, off screen, they understood one another), you know his cowboy was too damaged, too self-destructive to take care of anybody but himself.
And yet, damn if he doesn’t untie those Mustangs for Monroe. I think because it’s Clift who performs this noble gesture, that the moment becomes so overwhelmingly moving, so eloquent. Yes, it’s a movie, but I will eternally love Monty for saying fuck the money, honoring Marilyn’s humanity, and letting those Mustangs free. It’s one of his most touching acts on film.
Today is Clift’s birthday. The man who influenced Brando and Dean would have been 92-years old. Of course he would never have lived that long -- alcoholic, drug addled, unhappy, he died in 1966 at the age of 45 (though he was quoted that he wished to direct in his later years). There are many performances I could discuss here, since I love him so, (Red River, The Heiress, The Big Lift, A Place in the Sun, I Confess, Terminal Station, Raintree County, From Here to Eternity, Lonelyhearts, The Young Lions, Suddenly, Last Summer, Wild River, The Misfits, Freud and Judgment at Nuremberg) and yet not enough performances -- he died too soon. Instead I keep thinking about his eyes -- an Avedon Into the West character (particularly after his accident -- and he was still gorgeous), a Dorothea Lange Dustbowl Farmer, a Bruce Weber beauty and then, quite simply Montgomery Clift. He was his own masterwork.
A few years ago, when I first wrote this post, I had the desire to watch A Place in the Sun with a friend who’d never seen it before. And I couldn’t stop talking about Clift's... eyes. My god, every scene is almost too much to bear. His insecurity (in that tweed suit), his desire to make something of himself, his loneliness with Shelley Winters, his criminal, terrible, and yet tragically human act in the boat, his rapturous love for Elizabeth Taylor, his fleeting moments of happiness and then his final, failed understanding of himself -- director George Stevens got his eyes. Adapting Theodore Dreiser's masterpiece An American Tragedy, Stevens’ vision of Liz and Monty’s heart-stopping beauty immediately puts the viewer in the lovers' corner, no matter what they do. But it isn't just their looks that make you swoon; it's the chemistry and fragile performances, most especially by Clift.
And that dance scene -- Stevens’ close-ups. They obviously reveal the actors' beauty, but also how much they, and particularly Monty, could say with their faces. Clift may be blurting out that he loves Taylor, but his beseeching, poignant eyes reveal so many layers of desire, you know something is haunting him even if you don't fully understand the circumstances (he has just witnessed his pregnant girlfriend drown and, frantically in love with Taylor, he's chosen to do nothing about it). It's a dance macabre, and it scares Liz (it would scare me too) but one of the most romantic of all time.
Again, no one had or ever will have those eyes.They were so complexly beautiful that I wish Dreiser could have written of the power they conveyed. They were sublime -- a triumph of acting, a wonder to behold and a sublime American Tragedy.
