Horror Fest VIII (Day Two): The Haunting and The Woman in Black

 I have a piece of advice for any character in a Nightmare on Elm Street sequel (remakequel?): if you really need to stay up, like not fall asleep at all, just watch The Haunting and The Woman in Black back to back. Do it alone in the middle of the night and you'll be too terrified to close your eyes, let alone fall asleep. Freddy will just be twiddling his thumbs, waiting impatiently while you seek every shadow for the terrible ghosts waiting to murder you.

  Nancy had the right idea trying to watch The Evil Dead, but there's something to be said for an atmospheric haunted house movie. Many contenders are out there, and horror fans have their favorites, but for me, Robert Wise's The Haunting edges out The Innocents and The Uninvited. The only one that comes close for the Cap'n is Lady in White, and that has everything to do with the fact that it terrified me as a child. But The Haunting is, for me, the haunted house movie to go to and it's all about atmosphere.

 You never see a ghost in The Haunting, and, in fact, the only "effect" on camera is the pulsing door between Nell (Julie Harris), Theo (Claire Bloom), and whatever might be on the other side. Wise relies entirely on sound and the cast does the rest of the work, with Harris handling the brunt of the scares. It's a fair argument as to whether Hill House is actually haunted or if Nell's tenuous grip on reality is feeding off of the creepy vibe. She's not helped in any way by the distant Dr. Markway (Richard Johnson), the emotionally manipulative Theodora, or the pragmatic but otherwise "audience surrogate" Luke (Russ Tamblyn). Is she losing it or do the spirits haunting Hill House really have it in for the most vulnerable member of this research team?

 The Haunting is a brilliant exercise in audience manipulation, slipping you into Nell's mindset without the benefit of snapping you back to reality. The response from other members seems unwarranted, but we're predisposed to her perspective, so of course something is trying to get her. Only on the other side of the credits is the ambiguity more clear - are they really under attack or feeding off of each other's anticipation for something to happen? Did something really move or were we not paying attention to the background carefully? The imagination is really quite a powerful tool to scare, and you won't find many better of building tension merely by suggestion until things literally go careening off of the road.

 The Woman in Black is less subtle, and designed with more "jump" scares - although nowhere near the level you'd find in a Paranormal Activity or Haunting in Connecticut - as well as making it pretty clear there IS a ghost and that she has the power to directly impact the world of the living. That said, the second theatrical release from the newly branded Hammer Films (the first was Let Me In) has enough atmosphere to carry it past the mandatory "scares" modern audiences seemingly require.

 I've already reviewed The Woman in Black here at the Blogorium, and I selected it specifically because it does make you fear the darkness in your own home. Where the Cap'n lives, there's an upstairs "loft" section that overlooks the living room, and I won't pretend I haven't glanced up there while writing this. It's late and there's nobody else here but... you never know.

  While I'm pretty sure I mentioned this last time (forgive me, it's late... or early, I guess), but I do appreciate that director James Watkins takes a slow approach with the ghost. Instead of lots of "jump" scares, there are long scenes wherein Arthur (Daniel Radcliffe) is sleeping or distracted while in Eel House and the "woman in black" appears and creeps up on him. We can see her, but he can't, and the tension is palpable. It's so much easier to have "nothing, nothing nothing, LOUD NOISE," but until late in the film Watkins resists doing that much with the titular specter. It's much appreciated, and to be honest, that set up / pay-off isn't going to work as well after Sam Raimi took modern horror directors to school with "jump" scares in Drag Me to Hell.

 I'm still not gaga about the very end (what happens to Arthur is appropriate and narrative-ly inevitable), but that last shot is... I don't know. Yes, it's one last jolt to the audience and it does its job, but there's something about letting Arthur wander off into the mist that's in keeping with the slightly ethereal, fairy tale tone of the film. I know that Hammer is planning on a sequel, set (I believe) in the 1940s, which could be interesting. I'd be curious to see what direction they head in. I've been told the original version of The Woman in Black (the TV movie, but also the novel) is much creepier, but for the moment I'm having a hard enough time wanting to close my eyes. She might be up there...

 Oh well, I must give in to sleep, so maybe it wouldn't work out for the children of Elm Street. At least I know I have to be up in a few hours for the last three films of Horror Fest VIII, so chances of waking up are pretty high. I hope... 

 Up Next: The Wolf Man and Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man, and then... John Dies at the End!

A Very Auteurial Meme for Your Amusement.

 So there's this "movie director" meme thingy out there, making the rounds on social network sites (particularly ones with "like" buttons). The rules are actually pretty simple: someone gives you a director, and you list three movies by them: one you like, one you love, and one you hate. You can simply list the films, or provide and explanation. So far, the people I'm aware that do it have a mix of both, usually because film fans that are willing to subject a director's body of work to a like/love/hate spectrum often feel the need to clarify their choices. I know I did when trying to explain that there isn't really a Woody Allen film I hate*.

  I thought it might be fun to continue this in a non-meme format, so I asked the person who pulled the Cap'n into this to provide me with a few more directors. The Cap'n will also throw in a few, just in case nobody thinks of them. It's a fun and harmless meme, and this time I'm not going to ask anybody to do their own. You're welcome to simply enjoy and carry on doing whatever it is you do when you aren't at the Blogorium.

 We'll begin with an easy example: Robert Wise

 A Movie I Like: West Side Story.
 A Movie I Love: The Haunting (although The Day the Earth Stood Still is a close second).
 A Movie I Hate: Star Trek - The Motion Picture. The part of the title that distinguishes the film from the show is also totally inaccurate.


 Makes sense, right? Let's continue with one of the most difficult possible, a challenge I jokingly posed to Doctor Tom: Michael Bay

 A Movie I Like: Heh, in the interest of fairness, not hating The Island counts a "like," right? I also didn't hate Bad Boys 2 (but was kinda bored), so that counts, right?
 A Movie I Love: Okay, love might be overstating the case, but I can watch The Rock pretty much any time, which is more than I can say about any of Bay's other films. I do really like it, and not just as a guilty pleasure.
 A Movie I Hate: Armageddon.

Moving right along, let's try Charles Chaplin.

 A Movie I Like: I like, but don't love, A King in New York. It's fine until the very end, for similar reasons that keep me from loving The Great Dictator. I really like Monsieur Verdoux.
 A Movie I Love: Modern Times.
 A Movie I Hate: A Countess from Hong Kong.


Spike Lee

 A Movie I Like: Bamboozled, or Summer of Sam.
 A Movie I Love: Do the Right Thing.
 A Movie I Hate: I'm not a fan of Girl 6.


Werner Herzog

 A Movie I Like: Little Dieter Needs to Fly.
 A Movie I Love: Aguirre: The Wrath of God.
 A Movie I Hate: Even Dwarves Started Small. Sorry.


Terry Gilliam

 A Movie I Like: The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus or Jabbewocky.
 A Movie I Love: Tough, but let's go with the outside choice - Time Bandits.
 A Movie I Hate: Nothing about The Brothers Grimm works. Nothing. Tideland is very difficult to watch, but even then I wasn't bored.


John Carpenter

 A Movie I Like: Prince of Darkness.
 A Movie I Love: Geez... The Thing. Possibly sets the bar for remakes.
 A Movie I Hate: Hands down, Ghosts of Mars, but because that's universally hated, here's a curveball - The Fog.


Mike Nichols


 A Movie I Like: Closer.
 A Movie I Love: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
 A Movie I Hate: I really dislike What Planet Are You From?

Jim Jarmusch
 A Movie I Like: Permanent Vacation.
 A Movie I Love: Ghost Dog - The Way of the Samurai.
 A Movie I Hate: The Limits of Control.

George A. Romero
 A Movie I Like: Martin.
 A Movie I Love: Night of the Living Dead.
 A Movie I Hate: The Dark Half.

Richard Linklater
 A Movie I Like: A Scanner Darkly.
 A Movie I Love: I know you're expecting Dazed, but Before Sunset.
 A Movie I Hate: Waking Life, for the same reasons I hate Slacker.


 There's not a lot of foreign representation on here, I realize, but I already used up Pier Paolo Pasolini, Luis Buñuel, and gave others Akira Kurosawa, Michel Gondry, and Takeshi Miike elsewhere. I thought about Jean-Luc Godard, Ingmar Bergman, and Jean-Pierre Jeunet, but I'll leave space open to expand later. Until then...

* There are Woody Allen films I don't like, but it takes a lot for me to hate something. I also try to skip out on the universally panned Allen films, so I've never seen The Curse of the Jade Scorpion or Small Time Crooks.

Five Movies I Haven't Seen (but know I should...)

Remember earlier this week when I said that I hated writing negative reviews of movies I wanted to like? Well, there's something the Cap'n hates to do even more than that, which is admit that there are movies - well known, highly respected movies - that I have not seen.

Actually, every self-identifying cinephile feels the same way; we love to hang our hat on the assumption that we've seen all there is to see, save for the truly obscure, rare, or hard to find films we trade as currency to raise our stature among other film geeks. Oh sure, there are the movies that cinephiles are "too good for", or other excuses to deflect the "wait, you didn't see this or that", but what many of them will never tell you is that there are movies they should have seen but have not.

I could qualify this and say "yet", but let's not mince words here: I know that I should have seen the following five movies, but I just haven't. Hopefully I will, but right now I won't continue to hide behind the "film scholar" shield.

Think less of me if you will; certainly, you'd have every right. I have have no excuses.

1. The Shawshank Redemption - I know. Everybody loves it. I've seen The Green Mile, or most of it. I've seen The Mist, but for some reason I never got around to watching Frank Darabont's first Stephen King adaptation. It's on all kinds of "top" lists and critics and audiences love it, but the Cap'n has yet to make time for Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman. I honestly don't know what happens in the movie, which may be as amazing to you as the fact I never saw it.

2. West Side Story - I can honestly say that I've never seen West Side Story. I've seen clips from it; I may have even watched entire sequences, but I know for a fact that I've never seen the movie from beginning to end. The Cap'n is a BIG Robert Wise fan (The Haunting may be one of the creepiest horror films I've ever seen) from The Day the Earth Stood Still to The Sound of Music*, and I have seen productions of West Side Story. Just not the film.


3. Mean Streets - I talk a lot about Martin Scorsese here, so it's a crying shame that despite the fact I have seen Boxcar Bertha, Cape Fear, and The Color of Money, I have yet to make the time to watch Mean Streets. I have no good reason whatsoever. I have a copy of Mean Streets in my apartment, and must have seen the same clip of Robert DeNiro losing it in the bar over and over again, and yet it has not entered my dvd player.


4. The Dirty Dozen - I'm not sure why I'm including this, because I have started watching The Dirty Dozen. I've just never finished watching it. There are a lot of movies I can say that about, some of which I'm simply too embarrassed to put out in public. Someday I hope to finish the "men on a mission" World War II movie, so I can put it alongside The Great Escape, Where Eagles Dare, and the original Inglorious Bastards in my "seen it" pile.


5. Rebel Without a Cause - Okay, this is kind of a cheap shot, because I have no intention of watching Rebel Without a Cause either. I don't care how influential it was with "teen" culture in the 1950s; I don't like James Dean. I just don't. I think people mistake his inability to act for "raw emotion" and it annoys me. The only movie I ever kind of liked Dean in was East of Eden, and that's pushing it.

Since I'm an unabashed member of "Team Brando" in this situation, allow me to qualify (and admit) that I've also never seen The Wild One. There's a slight chance I will someday see that, but Rebel Without a Cause is probably S.O.L. as far as the Cap'n is concerned.


I don't quite know why, but I too realize that this list is almost entirely about angsty guys dealing with their drama. Take from that what you will. To be fair, there are a number of other movies I simply couldn't bring myself to admit to you good readers that I a) have not finished watching or b) simply haven't seen. Considering some of the ones I have, it's just better if you don't know right now. If - or when - I decide to give up writing about film, I'll share the rest of the list with you (honestly, it grows both longer and shorter every day), but for now you have five to chide me about while I attempt to rectify the situation.


* But not Star Trek: The Boring Picture.

Digressions, Tangents, and So You Won't Have To's

I believe that there's a new movie for the Cap'n to watch So You Won't Have To, although it isn't the one you just thought of. No, I'm not watching Platinum Dune's Friday the 13th (or, as Cranpire calls it: Shit Coffin). I just can't bring myself to that kind of low, even if it comes into the store and I've brought home every other disc I could find worth a damn. Hell, even if I brought home The Underworld Trilogy* - because, hell, if you've watched the first two you might as well watch the last one - I would not watch Shit Coffin.

The only thing good to come out of the release of that movie on Blu Ray is that Paramount decided to put out Part 2 and Part 3 (yes, in 3-D**) in High Definition. They also released new dvd versions of Parts 4, 5 and 6 but since I know those too will be on Blu Ray before the end of the year it's kind of silly to buy them. The point is we're all going to have fun watching Part 3 in 1080 3-D, even if it looks like a cheap movie shot in the 80s (which it is). Now what was I talking about?

Oh, right. I got off on a little Friday the 13th tangent there, and forgot all about the movie I'm going to watch in your stead. The goal with these is to watch something you wouldn't bother with in the first place but have some scintilla of curiosity about, even if it's just morbid at best. With that in mind, the Cap'n will buckle down and suffer his way through the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still.

See, it's a horrible idea in theory and, as I've read, execution. Yet I think that in some manner this idiotic "re-imagining" of the Klaatu / Gort story needs a better post-mortem than "it sucks." Of course it sucks, but I watched Tim Burton's lifeless retread of Planet of the Apes; I watched Steven Spielberg's mean-spirited War of the Worlds. Hell, I watched I Am Legend and kind of liked it. Not really liked it, maybe not even "liked it the same way I like The Omega Man" liked, but I didn't regret watching it.

What I'm saying here is that there's precedent for the Cap'n to sit through remakes of Classic Science Fiction Films, and you don't get much more "classic" than The Day the Earth Stood Still. I will accept arguments from Tom about 2001 and Cranpire about Planet of the Apes and the one fan out there who hasn't talked himself into hating all of the Star Wars films because of those rotten prequels, but I'll stick to my guns. That's something Robert Wise did very well: he'd take a genre and bend it to his will. The Haunting. The Day the Earth Stood Still. The Sound of Music. The Set-Up. Star Trek: The Boring Picture.

Okay, maybe not the last one; it did have some nice model photograpy, so if he did that then I'll give him points for that. Still, Star Trek: The Motion Picture sure does suck. I guess that's one thing the Star Trek remake has over the "original" first film: lens flares. Robert Wise just didn't anticipate how much people would overlook a lack of coherent plot turns as long as there were lens flares. Poor guy.

Also, I watched the remake of The Haunting, and that sucked too. We all know The Day the Earth Stood Still Because Keanu Reeves Was Too Damned Boring is going to be terrible, but I'll watch it So You Won't Have To.

Except for Cranpire, who already watched it. Sorry I didn't get there sooner, buddy.


* which I may or may not have done. to be fair, I do like the first two Underworld movies, mostly because of how stupid and self important they are. It's not that they're good, but they are silly and sometimes fun.
** I know that I keep qualifying that, but once upon a time no home video release of part 3 was in 3-D and unless you went to the Durham horror movie festival every October you couldn't see it as it was made.