Something Wicked This Way Comes… October 17, 2006
Posted by John Hodson in : Television, Film General, Horror , trackbackBy the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.
‘Macbeth’ (4.1.45-6)
Seen any scary movies recently? Anything that makes your skin crawl, the hairs stand up, cat-like, on the back of your neck, that make you rush for a light switch in a darkened room?
How about one that makes you peek at the screen through your fingers (Casualty doesn’t count - that’s not ’scary’, that’s ’squeamish’. And I’m not just talking Simon McCorkindale’s acting), or quicken your step down that dark alley?
Tough one isn’t it? After all, it’s only moving pictures, men and women dressing up and pretending, and I’m a little older now than the days when Daleks or Yeti sent me scurrying behind the sofa at Saturday teatime, so my buttons aren’t quite so easily pressed. Or are they…
I must admit to avoiding the mirror on that 3am trip to the bathroom, eyes half open, a still unrisen sun casting an eerie monochrome shroud over the bedroom. I know there’s nothing in the mirror, I won’t see some misshapen ghoul gazing at me with hideous yellow eyes, just over my shoulder, from the glass.
I know. So I clamp my eyes tight shut and won’t look.
When I return home late at night alone, park the car, walk the handful of yards to the front door, I know there’s nothing waiting for me in the shrubs. Nothing mean and slavering, nothing other wordly with blood shot eyes, red in tooth, claw and intent, waiting to tear me limb from quaking limb. So, again, I don’t even look. I just hurry as I try, hands trembling ever so slightly, to jam the key in the lock and hurry inside, the hot breath of imagination on my collar. Nothing to be afraid of, save a totally irrational fear of fear itself.
Each one of us has a different threshold of fear. I recall, quite clearly, sitting in a cinema audience that were laughing - in all the wrong places - at Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. The chap next to me professed to being an aficionado of The Hills Have Eyes, so Kubrick’s horror film must have seemed like just another Grimm fairy tale compared to that particular nightmare. Not for him the beautiful compositions of Mr Kubrick, the high-wire thespianism of Mr Nicholson. Bring on the cinema of the abattoir…
But gore stuffed films about serial killers - families of inbred mutant serial killers, killers with chainsaws, axes, or a liking for fresh liver and Chianti - have never been high on my watch list, even if some, against my expectations, have turned out to be better or classier - even funnier - than their premise (Psycho or Hannibal for instance).
No, first Universal and their series of 1930s and ’40s monster movies and then Hammer from the ’50s to the ’70s, aided and abetted by piles of imported American horror magazines devoted to the genre (containing handy tips on how to recreate the magic of Jack Pierce in the comfort of your own home with, say a little flour and lots of ketchup…), gave me that first frisson of fear. I’m still a big fan; do they scare me? Well, no, not really, but they do call up from the dark recesses of my memory the feelings of fear from decades ago, which might be some kind of second hand scare. Besides, I’m mightily entertained and thrilled by films that did genuinely have cinema audiences screaming.
My mother, who is old enough to recall, tells me of people actually fleeing the local flea pit when James Whale’s Frankenstein was shown in the ’30s, and there were similar scenes 20-odd years later when the camera dollied in on Christopher Lee, tearing off his bandages and snarling with feral intent at Peter Cushing. Do I flee, either physically or metaphorically, now? Obviously not, we denizens of the 21st century have simply seen too much, but my heart still beats a little faster at these images of this ghoulish, unstoppable monster that I know could, if it so desired, thrust its fist into my chest and emerge clutching my still beating heart, dripping life’s blood from between the creature’s boney fingers. Despite my protestations, am I not just a little bit frightened? If I’m honest, maybe…
Strange when De Niro’s creature did that very thing in Ken Branagh’s 1994 version of the story, it wasn’t in the least terrifying. Not seeing it was more terrible somehow (or maybe, in deference to Kathy Burke, I was cheered by the fact that it was Helen Bonham Carter who was the victim); now the camera lingers too long, the buckets of Kensington Gore are filled to the brim. Less really is more, for this viewer at least.
Watching in quick succession Paul Schrader’s Exorcist prequel Dominion and Jacques Tourneur’s Night of the Demon last weekend provided two excellent examples of just what I’m attempting to explain. Dominion, with its God-awful levitating demon, it’s piss-poor cliche ridden script and pathetic ‘good’ (in this instance the Catholic Church) versus ‘evil’ (Satan and all his hoardes, natch) premise was about as scary as your average episode of Buffy. What do these demons want, I found myself asking halfway through; world domination? Death and destruction? For me to vote Republican? Or put three sugars in my tea? Do I care? Do I buggery…
MR James however tapped into an ancient irrationality, a fear of something as old as time itself, with his story Casting The Runes, brought vividly to life in Night of The Demon. It’s a tribute to Tourneur that the marionette (modelled on a slightly angry looking Irish Wolfhound) foisted on him by the producers, doesn’t diminish the power of the story of a rational man of science stalked by the promise of a ghastly death. The image of Niall MacGinnis conjuring up a hellish supernatural storm, dressed as some kind of clown from Hades is fabulously creepy. I know exactly what Julian Karswell (almost certainly based on Aleister Crowley; a contemporary of James) wants; he wants money, pots of it, and a long, comfortable, life…the price is his soul. A deal many of us have mulled over at some point in our lives, I suspect. Some of the scariest moments are simple shadows, shards of light, a few puffs of smoke and the wheeling sound of some antediluvian evil, gathering its power, in the distance.
Now, do I believe all this mumbo jumbo? You betcha. Hook, line and big daft doll…
And that’s the key to some of cinema’s best monsters isn’t it? Unseen terrors; humungous rubber sharks and big guys in even bigger rubber suits aren’t scary, but the audience, given the right suggestion of terror, can create visions of monsters better than the best special effects. Monsters from the id.
Among my recently watched pile were a trio of BBC TV ’Ghost Story for Christmas’ adaptations, made with little budget, no special effects to speak of, but which still, I’m pleased to report, hold the power to make the pulse race some three decades on from first broadcast. What scared me in Whistle and I’ll Come to You? A bed sheet being dragged along on a piece of string and an eerie understated soundtrack; and it did, it truly did. What about The Signalman? The look of horror, sheer bloody visceral terror, on Denholm Elliot’s face and the ringing of an otherwise unheard bell. A Warning to the Curious? A black clad shade, first glimpsed as if from the corner of one’s eye, then hurtling hell for leather through the woods, illuminated by a watery winter sun, the merciless thing’s hand raised to strike. MR James again and Dickens; class will out.
Which brings me to Nigel Kneale who tied all these fears together very neatly in Quatermass & The Pit, ancient horrors ‘rationalised’ through science. Kneale’s boogie men, his ghosts, are made all the more real when science provides the answers (it’s for that reason that I find Carpenter’s Kneale tribute Prince of Darkness better than many would have me believe). What’s really scary here is that science, as we know, can never fully control it’s manifestations. Once the genie is out of the bottle, can we get it back in? Ask Kim Jong-il.
Speaking of ‘real’ terror and I must come to Nic Roeg’s sublime Don’t Look Now, a film wherein almost every character has some form of psychic power, but what is it? A British ‘horror’ film (it has been described as such)? A thriller? An exploration of coincidence, the supernatural, the ties that invisibly bind the human family? A love story? However you describe it, it’s a fabulous piece of film-making and and I’m really looking forward to Optimum’s forthcoming DVD special edition, Roeg commentary and all.
Of all the ’scary’ movies I’ve watched and rewatched recently, this is the only one that had the power to genuinely terrify, that leaves me sweaty and agitated, my gorge rising; and that’s only the first scene. Maybe, just maybe, that was one of Mary Shelley’s subtexts in Frankenstein, the petrifying obligation of being a parent, of being responsible for a life.
Real life. Scares the hell out of me…
Comments»
Very good piece, John. Must confess I’ve only ever heard of ‘Night of the Demon’ in passing, but it’s been added to the DVDPacific wishlist now. It’s getting to that time of the year that I’ll start rewatching some creepy movies: ‘The Thing from Another World’ (and remake), a few of the Val Lewtons, ‘Queen of Spades’ (and ‘Dead of Night’, on the same DVD but which I have still to get around to), ‘Halloween’, and a few more modern entries. I sat down to Carpenter’s ‘The Fog’ again the other night, and from that eerie John Houseman prologue, I was sucked in again. In among the occasional (rather unnecessary) gore shots, it’s the slow, creeping dread of the fog itself, the old-fashioned ghost story, that sticks with me.
I’m a big fan of ‘The Fog’; it’s terrific fun and like ‘Halloween’ has less gore than one would imagine. I’ve often told my children ghost stories prefaced by a passable Houseman impression. Scared the bejeezus out of ‘em!
You’ll love ‘Night of The Demon’; promise. Pretty good transfer too - one of the few genuine 1.66:1 anamorphic presentations I own.
Watched ‘Night of the Demon’ last night, and very much enjoyed it. Some very creepy scenes, and Dana Andrews is perfectly cast as the sceptical investigator. I’m so used to him playing tough, no-nonsense characters in gritty noirs, that his presence helped to ’sell’ NotD’s premise for me.
Glad you enjoyed it; I knew that would be one of the main reasons!