Monster Serial: Night of Dark Shadows, 1971

By WALLACE McBRIDE

As a cultural phenomenon, DARK SHADOWS ended not with a bang, but a whimper. Four months after the show’s 1,225th (and final) episode, MGM released the second feature film based upon the ABC-TV daytime drama. Directed by series creator Dan Curtis, NIGHT OF DARK SHADOWS reportedly fared well financially, but proved to be a baffling denouement for fans.

Thanks to bizarre creative decisions on both sides of the camera, the movie was just as confusing to new audiences, though. NIGHT OF DARK SHADOWS wasn’t edited as much as it was eviscerated, with an estimated 40 minutes hastily cut from its 129-minute running time thanks to a last-minute studio mandate. The movie that eventually screened to paying audiences was a frustrating compromise that satisfied hardly anyone.

David Selby and Kate Jackson play a young married couple who move into a mansion they’ve recently inherited. Before long, Selby begins to have violent changes in his personality as spirits begin fighting for possession of his soul. This isn’t GHOSTBUSTERS, though. There are few special effects in the film, and the ghosts make most of their on-screen appearances via flashback. Save for a few action scenes, the conflict in NIGHT OF DARK SHADOWS is mostly internal as Selby’s character struggles with nasty impulses he can’t understand.

While not the most sophisticated story ever put to film, NIGHT OF DARK SHADOWS certainly deals with mature concepts that were probably lost on the younger audiences that so loved the daytime series. Selby and Jackson’s marriage slowly unravels throughout the course of the story as director  Curtis and screenwriter Sam Hall narratively argue against the adage “Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.” There’s a greater danger in this film from people who are unwilling to let go of the past, which was always a favorite theme of DARK SHADOWS.

From a creative standpoint, NIGHT OF DARK SHADOWS is “Dark Shadows In Name Only.” Curtis made the bewildering decision to have members of the television cast reprise their roles for the movie, and then change those characters so completely that they were unrecognizable to longtime fans. Lara Parker, the actress who played the obsessed witch Angelique on the TV series, plays another witch entirely in NIGHT OF DARK SHADOWS … a witch also named Angelique. It’s no surprise that the MGM/US marketing department famously screwed up the story summary on the original VHS release of the film, mistakenly referring to the villain as “Lara Parker.” The movie's name-game was enough to confuse anybody.

The half-hearted similarities suggest Curtis had grown tired of Collinwood but couldn’t figure out how to leave, a problem shared by many of the characters in this movie. Still, there are a lot of solid ideas on display in NIGHT OF DARK SHADOWS and I can’t fault it for ditching the blood and guts of its predecessor in favor of a more psychological approach. At its heart, NIGHT OF DARK SHADOWS is about an artist chasing his own self destruction. Throw in a haunted house, not-quite-forgotten murders and the occasional ghost, and you have a story that plays like a rough draft of Stephen King’s “The Shining.” King was a fan of DARK SHADOWS and wrote a bit about the series in his horror memoir “Danse Macabre,” and I have to wonder if this movie played a nascent role in the development of “The Shining.” I’m not suggesting King stole any ideas from NIGHT OF DARK SHADOWS, but it’s hard not to imagine King, sitting in some Maine theater in 1971, ticking off the various problems with the film while letting his imagination seek out solutions.

The biggest problems with the film — pacing, editing, confusing story elements, etc. — were clearly exaggerated by the whirlwind editing session that left approximately 1/3 of the final film on the cutting room floor. I’ve seen the movie a handful of times over the years, but I don’t feel like I’ve ever really seen it. The main story doesn’t end as much as it just stops, with a typically ‘70s nihilistic epilogue tacked onto the end.

While Selby and Jackson aren’t given much to work with from the script (on paper, their characters aren’t any more dynamic than Brad and Janet in THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW) it doesn’t stop them from turning in solid performances. There’s a certain give-and-take between the actors, and it’s easy to overlook Jackson’s role in the film. If you don’t buy her fear, you won’t buy Selby’s growing menace. The reverse is also true, and their chemistry becomes increasingly important as the story unfolds. NIGHT OF DARK SHADOWS could easily be turned into a stage play, leaving every scene in the movie to be driven by the actors.

And then there’s my favorite performance in the entire film: Grayson Hall. Playing an even darker version of REBECCA's Mrs. Danvers, Hall is actually kind of sexy in the film. And, like Collinwood itself, she’s comfortably haunted and totally at ease with her situation. As the house’s favorite agent, she’s left to seduce Selby’s character, which she does with a quiet voice and slinky body language.

Unlike other older films that were extensively abridged before hitting theaters, the excised footage of NIGHT OF DARK SHADOWS still exists, and surviving cast members have re-recorded dialogue tracks in hopes of preparing a restored edition for a future home video release. I don’t know if the lost  footage will have a transformative effect on the overall film, but at least it would give us a chance to evaluate a version of the movie that doesn’t play like a glorified highlight reel.

Perhaps someday we’ll have the opportunity to travel back to 1971 and solve the final mystery of Collinwood once and for all.

This column is among those featured in "Bride of Monster Serial," a collection of horror essays written by contributors to The Collinsport Historical Society. Buy it today on Amazon!

Monster Serial: THE BLACK CAT (1934)

By PATRICK McCRAY

Feast your eyes on the Art Deco inferno of Weimar angst and fury!  The scars of the Great War will never heal!  Satanism runs amok, with potential necrophilia skipping not far behind!  Look there, on the screen; it’s THE BLACK CAT!  Boris and Bela at last match wits and share the screen for the first time!

It can reduce/elevate any horror fan to express the passion of a Sam Kinison.

Plot is not the essential element to THE BLACK CAT, but so what?  There’s no plot to a piece of music by J.S. Bach, but that doesn’t stop it from being a compelling and hypnotic narrative journey. So, it’s much the same for Edgar G. Ulmer’s classic, black and white tone poem, THE BLACK CAT. This is a 66 minute feast of strange and wondrous details from a world of secrets too dark for us to completely know.

At least, that’s what it feels like.

Let me get some things out of the way right now, before the Mikes and Joels of the world make hay. (I feel the need to do this since I once had to halt a screening for a group of MST3K-trained adults who thought they were cleverer than the movie. Spoiler Alert: they were not.)

Okay, so here’s the disclaimer.  As horror movies go, it is neither traditionally scary nor impishly charming, although there are bickering police officials who get solid laughs while debating about tourism.  And, come to think of it, David Manners and Julie Bishop seem to have a lot of fun as the American couple who find themselves in the midst of the war on morals and memory that exists between the protagonists.  The writing is sometimes stiff.  Although only sixty-six minutes, there are moments when it drags. (Perhaps because of the reported interference by Universal.)  But none of those things are the point.

The film still remains one of the most compulsively watchable symphonies of amazing details in all of cinema.  It does what movies are supposed to do; it shows you things you never imagined or possible, with people you never dreamed could have existed, in conflicts beyond the reckoning of anything average or mundane.  Although I would not call it “scary,” it is seeped in dread and mystery and sadness and repressed rage.  That’s a trade I’ll take.

The plot concerns Bela Lugosi as Vitus Werdegast, a brilliant psychiatrist and survivor of a POW camp where he encountered his greatest nemesis, Hjalmar Poelzig, played by Boris Karloff. Poelzig is a visionary architect and Satanic leader, somewhere between Gropius and Crowley. He had stolen Vitus’ wife and child, and then married the latter as the former seems to be held in suspended animation.  Yes, in a 1934 movie.  Vitus has “accidentally” arrived at Poelzig’s home with two American tourists in tow, and the film becomes a sometimes quiet, sometimes furious, always intense test of wills between Vitus and Hjalmar, often with human lives at stake.

By the end, a Satanic ceremony has broken out (with worshippers wearing tuxes and gowns beneath the robes in a touch of class that would have made Dok LaVey proud.)  Guns are brandished.  Bela skins Boris alive.  Manners and Adams escape.  And, in a motif that would be echoed in BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, Vitus concludes that they belong dead, too.  The house is demolished in an explosion he detonates, taking the prison camp upon which it was built, with it.

It’s a grim movie, so what makes it work?

I remember when I first saw it on the late movie when I was thirteen (a good year for me to see old films.)  There were Boris and Bela, dressed to the nines and showing class, panache, and restraint as they went about their war of wits.  (And let this be another nail in the coffin of the argument that Lugosi was incapable of subtlety.  Both he and Karloff show a kind of quietly meditative intensity worthy of a Pinter play.)  The set, though, seemed to be from the future.  I asked my all-knowing mother about this, and she explained that it was Art Deco.  I had seen the style before, but usually in recreations or as small, architectural elements.

I had never witnessed an entire world sliced by its severity.  While it should have been a clean, calming, fear-free setting, Ulmer presents it as a Kryptonian Hell.  It is as icily merciless and nakedly decadent as Poelzig, whose makeup and hair seem equally angular and severe.  The architecture is the story.  It is the mechanized and perfected new world, mercilessly ready to highlight>copy>replace the pomp, ceremony, and style of Vitus’ old world charm. You know, basically the Borg Cometh.  The angst of a Europe desolated by one war and then rebuilt for another is made excruciatingly clear… and nauseatingly seductive at the same time.  What a duality with which Germany was faced. Seductive, simple solutions for living, indeed.

It all seems so clear after World War II. What’s amazing is that the film was sending such a resonant warning and, perhaps, plea for action prior to the war. Of course, Hollywood inherited so many refugees from Germany that it’s also not surprising.

Ironic.  The horror genre is so often marginalized, and yet, had it not been a horror film, would we be looking at it, today?

And was I the one talking about the film being more style than substance?

I take it back.

---

Patrick McCray is a comic book author residing in Knoxville, Tenn., where he's been a drama coach and general nuisance since 1997. He has a MFA in Directing and worked at Revolutionary Comics and on the early days of BABYLON 5, and is a frequent contributor to The Collinsport Historical Society. You can find him at The Collins Foundation.

The CHS gets its third Rondo nomination for BEST BLOG!

The Collinsport Historical Society has received a pair of Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards nominations for its work in 2014! Not only has the CHS been nominated for BEST BLOG, but "Bride of Monster Serial," our collection of essays on horror films, has been nominated for BEST BOOK.

While DARK SHADOWS is sparsely represented on this year's ballots, you'll find several original cast members from the show mentioned elsewhere. An interview with actor Jerry Lacy about the indie film DOCTOR MABUSE has received a nod for BEST INTERVIEW, while THEATRE FANTASTIQUE: MADAME LA SOEUR (with Lacy, Lara Parker and Christoper Pennock) has been nominated for BEST SHORT FILM.

The Rondos are determined by votes from readers, so the results are quite literally in your hands. Here's how you can help.

____________________________________________________________________

There are 35 categories in all, but you DO NOT have to vote for each one in order for your vote to count. Visit the Rondo Hatton Awards site for the full list of candidates, or copy and paste the entries below and e-mail them to David Colton at [email protected] by midnight, April 19, 2015.

10. BEST SHORT FILM

THEATRE FANTASTIQUE: MADAME LA SOEUR, directed by Ansel Faraj. A seance, a disappearance, a mystery with Lara Parker, Jerry Lacy and Christoper Pennock

11. BEST BOOK
 THE BRIDE OF MONSTER SERIAL

14. BEST INTERVIEW (Award goes to interviewer)
 Rod Labbe, interview with DARK SHADOWS' Jerry Lacy in SCARY MONSTERS #90

19. BEST BLOG OR ONLINE COLUMN OF 2014
The Collinsport Historical Society
____________________________________________________________________

One vote is allowed per person. Every e-mail must include your name to be counted. All votes are kept confidential. No e-mail addresses or personal information will be shared.

If you're a regular visitor to the CHS, you're probably familiar with our MONSTER SERIAL feature. Our first collection of essays was published at the end of 2013, with "Bride Of Monster Serial" following in the early part of last year. We've been sharing complete essays from the book pretty regularly, and have a third book planned for release soon. You can read the entire MONSTER SERIAL feature by clicking this link. The book is also available on Amazon.

The Collinsport Historical Society was named BEST BLOG by the Rondos in 2012, and I'd love to see the website reclaim that honor this year. More importantly, I'm incredibly proud of the work done by the writers of "Bride Of Monster Serial" and hope to see their work recognized with an award. I'm honored that they'd lend their thoughts and names to my little website.

 The contributors are:

• Jonathan M. Chaffin
• Ansel Faraj 
• Peter H. Gilmore, high priest of the Church of Satan
• Frank Jay Gruber
• Morgan Ashley Harrell 
• Sara Shiver McBride
• Wallace McBride (that's me!)
• Patrick McCray 
• Jim Mackenzie and Sarah Giavedoni 
• Will McKinley 
• Phil Nobile Jr 
• Danny Reid 
• Desmond Reddick

THEATRE FANTASTIQUE: MADAME LA SOEUR

Congratulations are also in order for Ansel Faraj. In addition to his work on "Bride Of Monster Serial," Faraj is also the director of the Rondo-nominated THEATRE FANTASTIQUE: MADAME LA SOEUR. The nominated interview with Jerry Lacy is also related to one of Faraj's films, DOCTOR MABUSE.

Monster Serial: SECRET BEYOND THE DOOR, 1947

 By WALLACE McBRIDE

Here’s SECRET BEYOND THE DOOR in a nutshell: A woman thinks her new husband might be responsible for the death of his previous wife, and worries that she’s next on the chopping block.
At that level, DOOR is a pretty traditional noir, and might have been a forgettable entry into the genre had it not been for director Fritz Lang. As it stands, the film is a little gross, but not in the way that the sexual politics of older films can be typically offensive.

DOOR goes a little deeper than that, probing into the nature repressed sexual desires ... and not the so-called “normal” urges that preoccupy most on-screen romances, either. These urges are lethal. SECRET BEYOND THE DOOR is wrapped in a flurry of messages, some of them possibly even a little mixed. Joan Bennett plays Celia, a wealthy young woman with too much time and money on her hands. Desperately looking to make a lasting emotional connection (and clearly unable to admit that she craves a little excitement in her life) she casually agrees to marry the attorney handling her late brother’s estate. Her attentions quickly turn elsewhere after meeting a mysterious architect while on holiday in Mexico.

Celia finds herself aroused while witnessing a vicious knife fight on a city street, during which she first lays eyes on the moody Mark Lamphere, played by Michael Redgrave. Bennett’s character is painted as a late-blooming thrill seeker, and her “romance” with Lamphere is clearly a terrible idea for all involved. Swept up in the adrenaline rush (and related sexual adventures, but we’ll get to that in a moment) she decides to marry Lamphere and mothball much of her former life.

It doesn’t take long for Celia to realize she’s made a mistake. Mark has a combative, possibly deranged son named David he forgot to mention during their brief courtship. He also neglects to mention having a deceased wife.

His secretary is a woman who hides a facial disfigurement behind an ever-present scarf, while his sister, Caroline, seems to be filling the role of mother and spouse to her brother. When Mark eventually joins her at their home, his behavior only grows more bizarre: he hosts a party for their friends and gives them a sinister tour of the residence, which has seen more than its fair share of murdered women. He stoically regales them with tales of their deaths as he struggles to hide the same kind of arousal Celia experienced during the knife fight in Mexico. It’s this sexual attraction to death that brought them together, but his unexpected “murder tour” suggests it will also tear them apart. Adding to the mystery is that one of these rooms on the tour is always kept locked, and involves a story that Lamphere refuses to divulge.

In every way that matters, though, SECRET BEYOND THE DOOR is a werewolf story. There are no silver bullets or gypsy curses on display, but DOOR has more in common with THE WOLF-MAN than thematic cousins like THE STRANGE CASE OF DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE, SILENCE OF THE LAMBS or even THE INCREDIBLE HULK. Werewolf stories are almost always all about humanity’s inexplicable rage and violence and, once rendered to their essential components, are essentially myths to explain these phenomena. It doesn’t take much effort to connect characters like Bruce Banner, Norman Bates and the anti-hero of SECRET BEYOND THE DOOR, Mark Lamphere.

The script is a bit of a mess, but its heart is in the right place. Lang’s usual fascination with the politics of sexual entanglement is front and center in DOOR, sometimes to its own detriment. It’s not a subtle movie, which makes for a visual treat, but also contributes to an occasionally obvious narrative. Lang abides by the Hays Code in a way that seems almost trollish, playing by the letter of the code, but certainly not its spirit. For the first half of the movie, Bennett and Redgrave do nothing but screw, and the constant “We’re not talking about sex, but we’re really talking about sex” innuendo and symbolism gets a little tiresome. Had Lang had the luxury to shoot all of the sex scenes that are alluded to in this film, it would have run longer than the restored version of METROPOLIS.

Also, it seems a little artless for a psychological thriller to comment so overtly on psychology as does SECRET BEYOND THE DOOR. Sigmund Freud is referenced often enough in the film to almost qualify for an on-screen credit, which runs counter to the movie’s expressionistic flourishes. One of the film’s most memorable moments is a delirious trial staged by Lamphere’s own imagination. It allows Lang to pull out all the visual stops, and lets Redgrave chew the scenery to splinters. It’s a great sequence, but undermined elsewhere in the film by attempts to explain his behavior via pop (and outright false) psychological theory. Why dabble in symbolism if you’re going to have your characters tell you what it means? It’s a little like telling a joke and then explain why it’s funny.
 

These problems don’t exist without purpose, though. Lang is fascinated by the reasons men and women come together, especially when they most certainly should not. And, while the movie’s sexual dynamics are a little dated, it makes them no less disturbing or compelling. Neither Lamphere nor his wife know how to escape their predicament, leading Bennett’s character to literally offer herself up as sacrifice to his violent compulsions. All of this would be a lot more profound if the film didn’t feel the need to constantly underline its own ideas at every corner, but the movie’s theme is as relevant as ever.

This column is among those featured in
 BRIDE OF MONSTER SERIAL, a collection of 
horror essays written by contributors to 
THE COLLINSPORT HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 
Buy it today on Amazon!

These days, SECRET BEYOND THE DOOR exists in a kind of twilight, in that it’s a movie that’s neither entirely forgotten, nor especially well remembered. Ironically, had it been made by another director, DOOR might actually be a more interesting movie to cinephiles. It’s a psychological thriller tarted up in Universal Monster drag, which is a fascinating conceit ... but, for Lang, the movie is not one of his more inspired works. When you’ve got films like METROPOLIS, M, THE TESTAMENT OF DR. MABUSE and SCARLET STREET on your credits, you have to do a great deal better than SECRET BEYOND THE DOOR.

All that aside, it’s a fun movie. Not only is it fucking weird by anyone’s standards, SECRET BEYOND THE DOOR genuinely earns its tension. Much like PSYCHO (a movie that owes a significant debt of gratitude to DOOR) it’s a film that relies on more than its bare premise to engage the audience. Lang understood that the mystery of Lamphere’s wild mood swings would only carry the story so far, and allows DOOR to not only embrace its bizarre pretensions, but ramps them up to a degree that might even have shamed Bob Clampett.


(Wallace McBride is the proprietor of The Collinsport Historical Society.)

Monster Serial: THE STUFF, 1985

 
By PATRICK McCRAY

Originally, I was also writing about the 1978 INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS as well as THE STUFF. And THE THING. But there are only so many shapeshifting alien invader/political commentary movies made between 1978 and 1985 that one man can write about unless he’s working for McFarland and is hired to do an entire book about it.  INVASION ’78, tonally, falls somewhere between THE THING and THE STUFF, so let’s enjoy the extremes and jump right in to the gooey delights of THE STUFF.

I was thrilled when I saw that a deluxe blu-ray of the movie was coming out. Wallace sent me that news several weeks ago.

My elation was partially because I love the movie and partially because it’s clear that I have company. The only company I had previously in relation to THE STUFF were the people who’d leave the room during screenings before they had time to get the joke.
 

Larry Cohen’s movies feel like no one else’s. Because his voice is so unique, it can take some getting used to. It’s a voice of 1970’s paranoia that just kept going, and seeing that in an Eighties setting is jarring (and to me, delightful — see WRONG IS RIGHT as an example.) Cohen is making horror movies … maybe? There’s so much humor in them, it’s very hard to tell. Are they political satires and social commentaries in horror drag? That’s more like it. But if you tell friends, “Hey, it’s really funny,” you may end up being the only person in the room laughing. Cohen’s wit is at once bone dry and wildly obvious, which is a mix intended for select tastes. CADDYSHACK, it ain’t. In fact, it’s like nothing else, and it may be my favorite “Larry Cohen Movie” in the Larry Cohen Movie canon.

In THE STUFF, a strange, creamy goo bubbles up from a massive sphincter in the Earth. Discovered by enterprising nabobs who immediately stick their fingers in and taste the newest, greatest food in the world, the oozy goop is labeled The Stuff and rushed onto shelves. It is an immediate success. Low calorie. Healthy. Tastes great. The problem is that it moves on its own, shows a diabolical hive intelligence, can take over the mind of anyone who eats it, and eventually corrodes them from within, especially when making a hasty escape from its host. Seemingly dopey corporate spy and ex-FBI agent Mo Rutherford (Michael Moriarty) has been hired by The Stuff’s dashed competition to find the secret recipe. On the job, he stumbles upon the true threat. Luckily, he’s teamed up with a witty ad agent (Andrea Marcovicci), a crazed, right wing General and media magnate (Paul Sorvino), and Cohen’s riff on Famous Amos, played by the always missed and terribly underused Garrett Morris.

And there’s a kid who won’t get on your nerves. They are a team which uses logic and common sense in a way that’s all too uncommon in today’s films. And the ending is — and I really mean this as no pun — just desserts for two of the manufacturers. They, of course, refuse to eat The Stuff. Until Mo incentivizes them. At first reluctant, they are reduced to drooling addicts in one of the most bloodlessly grotesque endings I’ve seen. It’s grotesque merely due to the infantile behavior it shows.
Special props to Michael Moriarty for holding things together. His character has a great sense of irony, and appreciates the threat’s goofiness while being being equipped to kick its… well, it doesn’t really have an ass. But he can electrocute the hell out of it. Mo is not really charming, but rather communicates a self-aware send-up of charm. When one of his bosses remarks that he’s not as dumb as he appears to be, Mo drawls that no one is as dumb as he appears to be.

That’s a great line. It’s not only funny, it’s emblematic of both the sweet-tasting threat they face and of the movie, itself. With zany characters and outlandish effects, it’s on the edge of being a romp… except when it becomes very quietly sad or threatening. Still, it seduces you into watching this vicious attack on consumer conformity and lapping it up like The Stuff, itself. And is the prior sentence supposed to mean that they’re lapping up The Stuff or that The Stuff is lapping up them? Yes!
 

This column is among those featured in
 BRIDE OF MONSTER SERIAL, a collection of 
horror essays written by contributors to 
THE COLLINSPORT HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 
Buy it today on Amazon!

Thinking about it, we see a lot of vicious attacks on consumer conformity — often by things for which I have to buy tickets, order from Amazon, or are sponsored by commercials. Is it hypocrisy? No, I think it’s the only way to get a more specific message out. THE STUFF is not necessarily telling us that consuming things is bad. Larry is out to sell tickets, after all. I think it’s more aimed at the issue of overconsumption. In a time when micro purchases and ebay and one-click-ordering make mindless consuming an everyday habit (just in time to replace cigarettes), I think the warning of THE STUFF is more pointed than ever. And cigarettes are a good analog. These buggers are engineered to be addicting. It’s one thing to like something. It’s another thing to be surreptitiously forced to like it. 

But how often does that happen? Ultimately, we are usually the ones who must take responsibility for wanton consumption. And the compulsion is not from without, but within. And where does The Stuff work? Very clever, Mr. Cohen. Again, no one is as dumb as Mo appears to be. As fans, it’s our job to surround ourselves with tchotchkes that are emblematic of our loves. Where do we head first at a con? The Dealer’s Room. Caveat Emptor. I know that many of my fellow fans and I are now drowning in it. The slogan for The Stuff is, “Enough is never enough.”

Although I saw the movie in 1985, I wish that I’d paid more attention to that.   
 
PATRICK McCRAY is a comic book author who resides in Knoxville, Tenn., where he's been a drama coach and general nuisance since 1997. He has a MFA in Directing and worked at Revolutionary Comics and on the early days of BABYLON 5, and is a frequent contributor to The Collinsport Historical Society. You can find him at The Collins Foundation.

Monster Serial: PRINCE OF DARKNESS, 1987

By ANSEL FARAJ

This is not a dream ... not a dream ...

We are using this book as a receiver. We are unable to transmit through conscious neural interference. You are receiving this broadcast as an essay.

We are transmitting from the year 2-0-1-4.

You are receiving this essay in order to alter your plans for the evening and to watch John Carpenter’s most underrated movie, PRINCE OF DARKNESS.

Our technology has increased, our cinematic resources have increased and we are capable of making flashier, crazier films; but we are incapable of making horror films that understand that it is the idea of the unknown which is truly frightening.

John Carpenter has made some fantastic works of cinema — HALLOWEEN, THE FOG, ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 and of course THE THING; but I feel PRINCE OF DARKNESS always seems to get short shrifted, and I don’t know why.


There’s a canister containing a swirling green liquid that is hidden in a set of catacombs beneath an run-down church in downtown Los Angeles. This liquid is actually a life-form that can perform telekinetic activity, mind control, body invasion. It’s even affecting the world on a cosmic scale — the sun and moon are aligning, the earth is changing, and this liquid life form is gaining power. It’s the “son” of a banished evil, a force of darkness — the antichrist, the “Prince of Darkness.” The Catholic Church has kept this a secret, forming a society named ‘the Brotherhood of Sleep’ to watch over it. Science must prove its existence and find a way to stop it. And whoever comes in close proximity to it, has the same dream ... a warning sent through time.

I first saw this film on Halloween night 2008, I was 16, and I found myself glued to my television, filled with the strangest sense of uneasiness. So uneasy, in fact, I had to take the DVD out mid way through and switch it for BLADE. I’m not sure if the uneasiness had to do with the fact that I was up really late at night watching PRINCE OF DARKNESS on Halloween night, or if it was because I was up really late at night watching PRINCE OF DARKNESS before I had to get up early the next day to take the SAT. But it must have been the former, because the next day, post-SAT, I resumed PRINCE OF DARKNESS and felt all chilly inside once more.

 Here’s why I love it:

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again — if you can deliver effective atmosphere and a realized “world” in a film, then you have accomplished no small feat. And PRINCE OF DARKNESS has some of the best atmosphere I’ve seen in any movie. The story and mystery slowly get peeled away as the film progresses, fueled by a score by Carpenter and Alan Howarth that is icing on the cake. It’s a slow burn movie, filled with existential and scientific questions about life, our universe, God and the Devil, drenched in a Lovecraftian ooze. And when shit does get crazy, it’s pretty unnerving. There are multiple moments in the film where one can feel a chill down one’s spine. For me, it’s when Donald Pleasance’s unnamed priest loses his faith in the middle of performing the last rites on an unfortunate victim. The equal mixture of horror and “why bother?” that crosses his face stuck with me the first time I saw it.

The group of homeless people — some people have called them zombies, but I disagree — come across more as cult members, being controlled psychically by the Prince of Darkness locked up in his canister. I love how they watch from the sidelines, staring quietly, waiting to carry out his bidding. It always felt very INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS to me, and was something I referenced in my film, DOCTOR MABUSE. They bow to unseen forces, are covered in bugs, and are led by a sneering Alice Cooper. Carpenter uses them to great effect as they trap the unsuspecting group of physicists in the run down downtown L.A. church, a ploy he uses in most of his films, such as THE FOG and THE THING. These are films about people trapped together, fighting a force they have no control over, which something that is frightening in itself. We have no control over anything in our lives — we just tell ourselves we do. Carpenter’s work reminds us of that awful truth.

This column is among those featured in
 BRIDE OF MONSTER SERIAL, a collection of 
horror essays written by contributors to 
THE COLLINSPORT HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 
Buy it today on Amazon!

Worse, how do we react when something beyond our normal perimeters of logic, common sense and human origin begins to control us? What if it always controlled us?

The crucified pigeon — it’s just a moment early in the film, but it’s the perfect prelude to what follows — is a symbol of how darkly surreal the film is about to get. Some moments feel like they’re out of a Dario Argento movie: There are scenes that would be at home in SUSPIRIA or PHENOMENA. And there are even moments where Carpenter seems to be channeling Jean Cocteau, specifically in his usage of mirrors as gateways to a dark dimension where the Devil, or more accurately, the Lovecraftian elder god we perceive as Old Scratch waits to be brought back through. There’s a great shot where a pair of fingers push through a compact mirror and come through on the other side, a dark watery abyss. It’s a moment that would not be out of place in a PHANTASM movie, and here Carpenter uses all of these moments to build up his atmosphere of dread — at what, or who, is waiting for us on the other side. 

I’ve got a message for you, and you aren’t going to like it.

PRINCE OF DARKNESS knows what lurks in the unknown.  It is evil. It is real. It awakened back in 1987, and got poor reviews. But the Devil always gets his due, and now’s the perfect time to go back and re-appreciate this film. Grab Scream Factory’s fantastic Blu-ray, turn the lights off, and watch. Seeing is believing.

Ansel Faraj is an award-winning independent American film director, screenwriter, and producer. He recently wrapped production on his latest film, DOCTOR MABUSE: ETIOPOMAR.

Monster Serial: QUATERMASS AND THE PIT, 1967

By PATRICK McCRAY

London in flames!

It is a noble genre unto itself, even if it’s only comprised of a handful of films, my favorite being LIFEFORCE.  The other great in that genre is QUATERMASS AND THE PIT, a 1967 offering by Hammer that may be the studio’s best film.  Really.  Even without Cushing and Lee ... although they would have been more than welcomed.  While I like the idea of Hammer movies, distressingly few live up to what I remembered them as being.  The chief problem is their often slow talkiness.

They rarely live up to the promise of their casts and posters.  Great moments in all, but the whole doesn't always justify them.  In QUATERMASS AND THE PIT, we’re dealing with a radically different situation.  This is a Hammer film of relentless excitement and intrigue.  Every line matters.  Every moment is ripe with high stakes and mystery.  Every moment propels the film forward.  It does so with relentless intelligence, ripe with smart characters who are always one step ahead of the audience.  For a movie that saves its major action for the end, I still find myself captivated by its wondrous blend of science and the occult.

Modern day London in 1967!  While expanding the Hobbs End tube stop, a work crew finds skulls!  Not just skulls, but skulls to missing links!  Going back millions of years! Then they find a space pod!  Full of dead, giant locusts!  And it turns thought into kinetic energy!  Under a neighborhood always considered haunted by Satan!  The pod is from Mars, and the insects genetically engineered apes so that they can escape into them — I think — as Mars was dying!  Now, the pod is gaining power and turns Briton against Briton as London goes ablaze! 

Only one man can stop them.  Well, two men.  But the important one is the guy for whom the movie is named, the roaring and bearded head of the Quatermass Rocket Group, Dr. Bernard Quartermass: Science Man of Adventure!

I first learned of the film from my writing partner, David Raines.  We both have a fascination with the character of Professor Roy Hinkley of GILLIGAN’S ISLAND fame… the ultimate intellectual man of action. Additionally, we both adore All Things Ghostbusters.  The idea of science and the supernatural doing battle is inherently exciting.  QUATERMASS AND THE PIT combines it all, with Andrew Keir as the robust scientist/space explorer, Bernard Quatermass, a bearded bulldog of a principled man.  He’s the kind of the likes of which Brian Blessed and John Rhys Davies would later echo.
 

When I first saw it, I was not disappointed.  It manages to throw in everything imaginable within PG limits, and it’s hard to imagine any film containing more — despite the lack of a Naked Vampire woman.  I enjoyed the film for years to come, and as much as I liked it, each screening showed me a film that was even better than I remembered, especially with its downer/upper, abrupt ending. 

My favorite memory of the film, though had to be the fact that it came within hairs of inducing me to move to Seattle.  It’s amazing what a good movie can do to change everything in a man’s life.

Let me explain and indulge me in an autobiographical tangent.  Yeah, it has to do with QUATERMASS AND THE PIT.  Just follow me on this one. 

Have you ever seen CINEMA PARADISO?  If not, stop reading, go watch it, and come back. 
Done?  Good.  Great movie, right?

Yeah, that was my childhood.  Really.  Except the theater wasn’t in Sicily, and it was called the Vogue.  I mention it a lot.  The Vogue was a type of theater that blossomed in the 1970’s and 80’s: a repertory movie theater.  Rather than show new releases, the Vogue would show classic, foreign films, and deeply psychotronic offerings at midnight.  And you could plan around it weeks ahead because everything was listed on a six week calendar, ubiquitous around Louisville.  No refrigerator in town was complete without one.  Thanks to the Vogue and its wide range of weird movies, I had the childhoods of kids of every decade from the Twenties through to the Eighties.  Later, I ended up working there, standing in a spot and tearing tickets just as, reportedly, Ned Beatty had done decades before.  People still try to throttle me from envy over the films I saw for the first time on that massive screen in Deco Modern splendor. 

A series of poor decisions and cutthroat competition killed it in 1998.  Not a day goes by that I don’t miss it.

I mention all of this because of how much I miss it, and how much I wish there were an equivalent where I presently live.  But there isn’t.  In all fairness (a phrase I normally hate), few cities have them anymore.

In 2009, I finally broke down and visited my cousin in Seattle.  No, she’s fine.  It’s the city that I dreaded.  I just imagined a bunch of stringy haired and chin-bearded non-bathers creating a massive sea of plaid as everyone got drenched in a cold and miserable rain to some acoustic guitar music.  Again, my joy in life is a martyr to my crass propensity to stereotype.  The city was a kind of utopia.  Clean, smart, modern, and yet full of the great things that other cities have abandoned.  Oh, and Archie McPhee.

This column is among those featured in
 BRIDE OF MONSTER SERIAL, a collection of 
horror essays written by contributors to 
THE COLLINSPORT HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 
Buy it today on Amazon!

But the truly golden moment came on the first night I was there.  I had just gotten an iPhone and was drunk on the power it gave me.  Using a movie app, I found all of the local films.  I guess I was just curious.  Tears nearly welled in my eyes as I saw that a local theater was showing, you guessed it, QUATERMASS AND THE PIT.  The next day.  I am no believer in fate, but I do enjoy a good coincidence.  That this film… this arguably obscure offering in the Hammer canon… would be showing on the big screen in any city restored any faith I’d ever lost in humanity. It was as if the Vogue had a lovechild, and I’d found it!

The next day, we went.  It turned out to be a microscopic theater that sat, at the most, fifteen people.  It was attached to a coffee house, and despite its small size, I was smitten.  They had one festival after another, including a Depressing Movie Festival which, strangely, sounded like a lot of fun. 

(Hilariously, there were only about five other people in the theater.  All fanboys.  All, I suspect, employees of Microsoft.  My cousin seemed comfortable, but I knew of the peril she was in.  I feared that she may have been the first woman they had ever encountered, and that she should be ready to bolt at any second.)

But the film was actually a film (as opposed to a video.)  Seeing it like that is a truly special moment for me, and it was only because of my love for my current job that I didn’t pack up and move.
I’ll never forget the close call I had, however. 

Yes, QUATERMASS AND THE PIT is that good.
 
PATRICK McCRAY is a comic book author who resides in Knoxville, Tenn., where he's been a drama coach and general nuisance since 1997. He has a MFA in Directing and worked at Revolutionary Comics and on the early days of BABYLON 5, and is a frequent contributor to The Collinsport Historical Society. You can find him at The Collins Foundation.

Monster Serial: KINGDOM OF THE SPIDERS, 1977

By PATRICK McCRAY

William Shatner is Dr. Rack Hanson in a life and death battle against an invasion of extra deadly tarantulas!

Well, I think that does it. Enjoy the movie.

Still here? Well, my friend, just let these words tenderly caress your eyeballs once more.

Dr. Rack Hanson.

Life and death.

Invasion.

Extra. Deadly. Tarantulas.

William. Goddamn. Shatner.

Does a movie need anything more? Can any film boast of such an explosive combination of Primal Elements of Entertainment?

We all know the answer.

KINGDOM OF THE SPIDERS is the alpha and omega of cinematic possibilities and perhaps art, itself.

No. Not art.

Great Art.

It came out in that magical summer of 1977. I was six, and that finally put me into the PG zone in my father’s eyes. (I still remember the high stakes discussion he had with my mother over whether or not I was ready to handle AIRPORT ’77.) Admission to the forbidden world of the PG was soon unlocked with the agreed upon incantation of, “Okay, but only if we don’t tell your mother.”

That’s a good dad. I felt bad for him when I cringed in my seat or yelped or something during KINGDOM OF THE SPIDERS. I’ll never forget his defeated mumble of, “I knew it was a mistake to see this.”

I didn’t see it as a rebuke or a challenge. I found it funny. I genuinely felt sorry for him. That pulled me about four or five years ahead in maturity in less than a second. It didn’t make the film any less terrifying, though.

But we had to see it. We both knew that. STAR TREK was our weekly ritual going back to his first days of neo-bachelordom, two years before. That was my first introduction to the very idea that there were actors whose names were worth memorizing. Before any useless academic facts crowded my mind with nonsense, my father ensured that I had carefully memorized the fact that Burt Ward was Robin, Adam West was Batman, Leonard Nimoy was Spock, and, most importantly, William Shatner was the titanic, supreme, all-knowing pinnacle of manhood, heroism, speechmaking, and flying-leap ass-kicking: James T. Kirk.

This was my first chance to see The Shat on the big screen, and there was no way I was going to miss it. Not even if I had to traverse the very KINGDOM OF THE SPIDERS, itself. And lo, it came to pass. I saw it all. Shat riding a horse. Shat pumping gas. Shat drinking a lot of Miller Beer. And Shat, covered in spiders that are biting his face, of which I was and am terrified.

Of spiders, not his face.

But there was more. So much more.

Okay, plot. Spiders invade the sleepy town of Verde Valley, Arizona. Shatner is the vet standing in their way. Sammy’s lovely wife, Altovese, and Woody Strode are his close allies. But even they can’t stop the onslaught as the spiders build organized hills and relentlessly kill cow after cow until moving on to the deadliest animal of all: man. The mayor, channeling Murray Hamilton, insists that there’s no problem, and that the fair will go on. It’s tourist season, after all. Why not just spray the town with insecticide? After all, they have a biplane just sitting there. But the spiders are too clever. Not long after taking flight, the once-fearless pilot finds that the plane is full of spiders! Everywhere! And then there’s a big crash and an explosion.

Enraged by this airborne attempt on their lives and incensed that Shat had the temerity to set their precious spider hill ablaze, the spiders mount an organized invasion of the town during the fair. Chaos reigns supreme. They kill and beweb people everywhere. Shatner takes refuge in a tourist lodge with a beautiful scientist (the model in all ways for Veronica Corningstone), the inventor of the porta-potty (no, I’m not kidding), and a lucky few others. So, seal the cracks, right? Not when the spiders can break windows. Yes. They can break windows. Not when they can disable fuses. Yes, they can disable fuses. Not when they can (temporarily) take down the Very Shat Himself. In the words of Michael York, “There is no sanctuary!”

This column is among those featured in
 BRIDE OF MONSTER SERIAL, a collection of 
horror essays written by contributors to 
THE COLLINSPORT HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 
Buy it today on Amazon!

Following this is the kind of satisfying-but-downer ending that no one (save Frank Darabont) can pull off these days. It’s actually one of the great moments in horror, and I won’t give it away. If you’ve seen it, you know what I’m talking about. If you haven’t, you have a gasp coming.

It would be twenty years until I would see KINGDOM OF THE SPIDERS again. My friends and I became obsessed. The camp was ripe, but the film had a straightforward integrity that makes those moments endearing rather than ridiculous. By God, it’s about the Kingdom of the Spiders, and it’s not going to mug. And it won’t let you, either, as tempted as you might be. There are crazy images, wild action, genuinely disturbing moments, Shat showing his sense of humor years before the hilarity of STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE, and a brief-but-memorable glimpse of our loyal friend, the noble side-boob. In other words, the Ultimate Trip.

My only question is this; did something just brush against your ankle?

PATRICK McCRAY is a comic book author who resides in Knoxville, Tenn., where he's been a drama coach and general nuisance since 1997. He has a MFA in Directing and worked at Revolutionary Comics and on the early days of BABYLON 5, and is a frequent contributor to The Collinsport Historical Society. You can find him at The Collins Foundation.

Monster Serial: DELLAMORTE DELLAMORE (aka CEMETERY MAN)

By JONATHAN M. CHAFFIN

DELLAMORTE DELLAMORE, (“On the Death of Love” or “About Death, About Love,”) foolishly branded CEMETERY MAN in English, is a gem of many facets. It is beautifully shot, deliciously weird and, more than once, highly disturbing.

This gorgeous dark comedy is a must see.  I’m going to lose some people with the next sentence, then spend the rest of the essay winning them back. CEMETERY MAN involves loneliness, zombies, rape, impotence, murder, MORE zombies, quite a bit of sex (with “The Girl”[1] admirably played by the stunning Anna Falchi in various guises), body horror and, woven through it all, an amazingly genuine and fun performance from Rupert Everett.

The film has all the “matter-of-fact, zombies are here, let’s deal with them” aspects of films like RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD, SHAWN OF THE DEAD, or ZOMBIELAND.  Lots of nice close-up crushed skulls, blood, and vomit in the finest Italian horror movie tradition.  Wrapped in with all that is the slow unravelling of Francis Dellamorte, the eponymous Cemetery Man.  The story revolves around a gravedigger/watchman, called an “Engineer” by the townsfolk for some reason, who lives in the cemetery near an ossuary [2]. Francis is attended by his feeble-minded assistant Gnaghi who reminds me of a cross between a Stooge and an Addams.

In terms of tone, this movie always puts me in mind of EDWARD SCISSORHANDS; beautiful and sad.  CEMETERY MAN, however, has substantially more violence and nudity.

 If you’re looking for how director Michele Soavi fits in the pantheon of Italian horror, he has worked as an assistant director alongside Dario Argento on TENEBRE (1982) and PHENOMENA (1985), Terry Gilliam on THE ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN (1988), and with Lamberto Bava on DEMONI (1985.)

In broad terms, this movie is set in a graveyard where the dead return to life.  Above the gate is the word RESVRRECTVRIS, which is pretty funny. The caretaker, widely rumored to be impotent, falls in love with a widow, “The Girl,” who then dies. Then a bunch of people die and return to life.  Then Gnaghi, his dimwitted assistant, finds love with the mayor’s daughter Valentina ... projectile vomit is involved. Then Our Hero Francis falls in love with a woman who is terrified of sex (another incarnation of “The Girl”) and goes to extreme lengths to be with her. 

Francis is thwarted when this incarnation of “The Girl” falls in love with another man; in this case, the other man was her boss/rapist. Francis gets a little (more) depressed.  He kills some people (who don’t stay dead) and finally, at long last, meets a woman who is both emotionally available to him and willing and interested in having sex with him. Perhaps the third time’s the charm? Nope. Turns out this incarnation of “The Girl” is a hooker. Francis burns her house down, with her and her flat-mates inside.
Then, in a hilarious, sad, and bizarre twist reminiscent of the ending of AMERICAN PSYCHO, Francis goes on a murder spree, which is entirely unnoticed. So he packs up his bags and his assistant to leave town. More on that later.

Into that mix of psycho drama you add a busload of dead Boy Scouts, arson, voyeuristic will o’ th’ wisps, Death, and all manner of gorgeously billowing diaphanous material [3]. (Really, the visual styling of this movie is beautiful, and it includes one of the most beautifully creepy shots of the female superior/cowgirl sexual positions ever filmed in a graveyard.

OK, buckle your seat belts — here’s where we go off the rails: what follows is some seriously wild speculation involving psychological terms far more complex than I’ll relate in a 1,300-word review. Also, I only know what a few general sociology and psychology classes and Wikipedia entries tell me about some of these topics, but I’m convinced they have a very real and entertaining relationship in this film. Also, spoilers follow, so take this next bit as you will.

Sigmund Freud posited that the “death drive,” or Thanatos, leads an individual on certain occasions to seek to reduce or eliminate tension through repetition of behavior.  Specifically, and I quote, Thanatos can manifest “an urge in organic life to restore an earlier state of things” through repetition (which is why we all make the same self-destructive decisions sometimes.)  The aforementioned urge is played out through the film’s structure. Francis’ repeated assignations with “The Girl” in her various incarnations service this drive.
 
The film begins with Francis living a placid existence as a cog in society. The man doesn’t even fill out paperwork to deal with a zombie outbreak; choosing instead to shoot them and rebury them.  He is a pretty good example of a functioning Superego (society’s grown-up instincts) well-modulated by his Ego. His retarded or “simple” assistant Gnaghi is a benign example of a childish, Id-ridden man-child.  Through the tension between Thanatos and Eros present in the movie (in this context mostly sexual love and survival), Francis moves further and further out of his original orbit (my favorite part is when the Grim Reaper appears to him and tell him to stop killing the dead and kill the living for a change.)

From the impotent “engineer” who kills zombies and lusts after beauty, Francis is driven (through repeat encounters with The Girl) into an active state unregulated by the SuperEgo or Ego, with sex and murder the result.  

Francis’ Ego and SuperEgo are eventually so battered through the repetition of losing “The Girl” that by the film’s conclusion he tries to flee, then finally trades roles and characteristics with Gnaghi (this movie’s representative of the Id.)

The movie concludes with a gorgeously shot and truly circular reveal that hearkens back to the very beginning of the movie.

In addition to that journey from Ego to Id, we have the striking comparison between the Eros embodied by Francis and The Girl and the Platonically idyllic love between Gnaghi and Valentina [4] (which may even be considered to be Ludus, playful friendly love as between children.)

Libido is typically seen as diverting the destructive instinct; in Cemetery Man the relationship evolves, and as the destructive instinct becomes ascendant Francis becomes confused, possibly as unable to affect the world as the dead names he has crossed out in the phone book[5].

To recap: go for the snappy writing, the zombie bikers, and awesome hottie Anna Falchi, stay for the existential struggle between sex and death. 
  
[1] Anna plays 3 different characters, but they seem to be facets of the same woman, or lookalikes, or reincarnations existing in the same temporal space. Pick your poison. She’s gorgeous.

[2]An ossuary is a communal bone pit/catacomb. It was also real, in this film, so the sex scene set there is…extra creepy.  Particularly given its overtones of necrophilia.

[3] More than the music video for “Total Eclipse of the Heart” by Bonnie Tyler.

 [4] Because she is an undead severed head, I’m going to go with completely un-consumatable, “let’s watch TV together with no ulterior motives” love. If your mind wanders elsewhere, shame on you. Also, ewww.

 [5]. (Fun Fact: the Necronomicon is also known as the “Liber Ex Mortis” or “Book of Dead Names: - Thus Francis could be figuratively conjuring zombies by writing in the Necronomicon. While a large stretch, this idea amuses me greatly.
 
JONATHAN M. CHAFFIN is an Atlanta-based graphic designer and art director and a lifetime fan of horror stories and film. His current project is www.HorrorInClay.com where he uses artifacts and ephemera to tell stories... he also produces horror-themed tiki mugs and barware like the Horror In Clay Cthulhu Tiki Mug. In addition, Jonathan occasionally does voice-over and podcasting work and appears on panels at sci-fi fantasy and pop culture conventions on a variety of topics. You can follow him @CthulhuMug on twitter or by friending HorrorInClay on Facebook and G+