CULT MOVIE REVIEW: Paranormal Activity (2009)

I am very much aware that many mainstream critics and horror bloggers whom I respect did not care much for The Blair Witch Project (1999). I've listened to their careful arguments and I do understand and appreciate them. But for me, the film remains an absolute masterpiece, even ten years later.

Yes, The Blair Witch Project is a messy and chaotic film, I readily acknowledge that fact. But it is gloriously messy and chaotic; in a fashion that is extremely frightening to me; in a manner that reflects some cogent truths about our human existence (and the American cultural experience...) circa the mid-to-late 1990s.

The film either concerns three students who are bedeviled by their own arrogance and incompetence; or it is a film that concerns three students who are bedeviled by something infinitely worse. It is either a shaggy dog, chasing-your-tail story about three kids who get lost in the woods and come to a bad end, or a story about three kids cursed by a witch and led to their inevitable doom, Hansel & Gretel-style.

Whichever answer is the "right" one, The Blair Witch Project is a living, breathing paean to ambiguity. It is open to multiple interpretations, and the visuals of the film artistically reflect that.

Sometimes we're watching events unfold on film stock; sometimes we're watching them on videotape. Sometimes, the players in the drama "stage" their surroundings (for a mock documentary...), and sometimes they are overcome by the reality of nature (or is it the witch?) surrounding them. In short, the film splinters the narrative both visually and thematically, and then asks us -- as the primary percipients -- to find facts. Because of the tabloid nature of television in the late 1990s, and the increasingly "he said/she said" political-spin of the new 24-hour news cable shows (commenting endlessly on such matters as the Clinton Impeachment), The Blair Witch Project said something about us. It reflected our sudden inability -- even with abundant and easy technology -- to easily see "truth."

Many, many good friends and colleagues of mine complain because The Blair Witch Project concludes without explanation and ultimately reveals nothing. For me, that's not a problem. On the contrary, that's part of the movie's incredible charm and enduring power. Like The Birds (1962) or 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) the answer to many a riddle is left to the viewer here. The mission is to grab the dangling threads of an ambiguous narrative and somehow tie together strands in hopes of finding meaning or order. This is an activity I cherish as a viewer and as a critic.

This is also, as I've noted, an activity that reflects our human life and explains one reason our existence can be so scary. We don't get answers all the time for why things happen. Often, events that most dramatically affect us happen outside our vision; outside our control. Why do planes crash? Why do some unlucky souls board planes that crash? Why is a person we love afflicted with a brain tumor, or some other disease, when we would prefer it happen to a stranger? In an aggressive, post-modern, technologically-savvy way, that's what The Blair Witch Project is all about: the struggle to assemble a sense of order out of pixelized images that don't make sense in a traditional or conventional way. In the hyper, information-overload era of the Internet and 24 hour news cycles, The Blair Witch Project asked us to fill in the blanks, to imagine the horrors that our eyes didn't actually witness.

Now, a full ten years later, along comes Paranormal Activity, a horror film that utilizes the some m.o. as The Blair Witch Project (found footage and a cinema verite approach to what seems a spontaneous, "real" story). Unfortunately, however, Paranormal Activity goes to absurd lengths to satisfy the still-vocal anti-Blair Witch Project crowd by positioning every demonic "event," -- every horrifying moment in the film -- literally front and center. This way, no one can complain the film doesn't deliver the "goods" that were expected, I suppose.

In truth a sort of anti-Blair Witch Project Project, there is precisely nothing left to our imaginations (or speculation) in Paranormal Activity, a fact which -- for me (and for my wife, who watched alongside me) -- rendered the film intriguing but ultimately powerless to scare us. The film did not rattle either of us in the slightest. I slept soundly last night after viewing the film, my psyche entirely untroubled by what it had witnessed. By contrast, I have watched The Blair Witch Project probably a dozen times over the years and every time I do so, it haunts me. It perplexes me. If The Blair Witch Project comparison doesn't work for you, I also felt the same way after seeing the brilliant [REC] (2007). Hell, I was was even suitably rattled by Cloverfield (2008).

All those films looked like real life unfurling before your eyes, in all its messiness and half-glimpsed madness. But again, not so Paranormal Activity (2009), which spoon-feeds you a traditional, predictable narrative, and satisfies the urgent audience need for "closure" with a sad aesthetic capitulation: A CGI close-up of a demonic visage.

I want it clearly understood: I am not part of some Paranormal Activity backlash. I have no horse in that particular race. I'm simply responding to a film I just watched.

I suspect that a central problem here is that Paranormal Activity is very stagnant in visualization, an admittedly interesting opposite conceit to the shaky-cam aesthetic of Blair Witch, REC and Cloverfield.)

In other words, much of the film is static: photographed from a stationary camera planted firmly on a tripod. Therefore, much of the demonic activity in the film occurs right in front of that unmoving camera, even symmetrically-framed at points. Accordingly, the film's weakest moment finds a Ouija board planchette come to demonic life -- in the center of a frame.

But it doesn't just move imperceptibly. It hops, dances, turns around, and then even catches fire, going up in flames before the camera's unblinking eye. Because of the staging, the moment plays more like an amateur magic trick than an authentically scary moment. If the staging had been different, if we had been forced to seek a less egregious bit of paranormal activity in the corners or background of the frame, the moment would have proved frightening. What's missing is ambiguity...and subtlety.

Later, an invisible demon actually pulls one of the lead characters, Katie Featherston, out of her bed, and, in the same vein, we see it all happen without impediment: perfectly framed, perfectly lit and perfectly clear. Moments later, her boyfriend Micah goes after her, and the demonic entity obligingly tosses his body right into the camera. The camera falls over and still captures the action perfectly, as the demon -- now visible in a human body -- gets ready, literally, for her close-up.

I don't want to be unkind and call this approach Blair Witch For Dummies, but Paranormal Activity is certainly a Blair Witch-style film designed for -- shall we say -- more mainstream audiences. No one will walk out of this film with any questions, uncertainties about what happened or any disappointment that the monster wasn't revealed.

And that's to Paranormal Activity's deficit. The film also shoots itself in the foot by almost immediately attributing the pervasive demonic activity to a "connection" between the unseen monster and Katie. She tells us how a supernatural entity has followed her from house to house since she was eight. Then a paranormal expert interviews Katie and explicitly tells her that it is "basically connected" to her.

Some critical quality of the horror genre is our capacity to "universalize" the horror on screen and identify with it on personal terms. Jaws is so damn frightening because we all swim in the ocean...and can imagine ourselves in the position of a shark attack victim. Ditto Psycho...we all understand the vulnerability of a shower. On and on it goes. We must, eventually, sleep, so Invasion of the Body Snatchers gets under our skin too. Even The Blair Witch Project -- a movie about getting lost in the woods -- harks back to something primal and powerful in our human nature; a fear of what's out there in nature; a fear of being lost.

Almost from frame one, Paranormal Activity goes to great lengths to stress that this horror is happening to Katie and only Katie. We could all show up for afternoon tea or a nightly sleep-over and be treated to quite the show...safe and sound (since the demon doesn't want us.) This plot-point reduces Paranormal Activity to something akin to a freak show.

There's also a huge gap in verisimilitude inherent in the film's aesthetic choices. I'll put it this way: For the last quarter century, hand-held video cameras have been everywhere. They've been affordable...and ubiquitous. And not once -- NOT ONCE -- in a million-upon-a million-instances, has a video camera recorded anything as overtly supernatural as the most simple "paranormal" incident featured in this film (for argument's sake, let's say the bedroom door swinging open of its own volition.)

Yet here, Micah's always-filming camera records doors opening and closing, demonic footsteps appearing in powder on the floor, a shadowy mass moving across the bedroom wall, a Ouija board planchette spontaneously moving and then burning for several seconds. And, finally, the whopper: a human being tugged out of bed, down the hall, by an invisible force. Oh, and the smiley demon face in close-up.

I should stress, these events do not happen at all once. They happen over a period of something like twenty-one nights according to the film's time-line. After the spontaneous explosion of the Ouija board planchette, wouldn't any reasonable person start uploading this footage to YouTube? Or contact the local news? Nothing even approximating this scale of supernatural intervention has EVER been captured anywhere, and yet Micah and Katie remain sequestered and alone in their house, increasingly vulnerable to attacks.

I hasten to add, this decision doesn't seem to ring true with Micah's character: he's in this "game" for the fun and the excitement. "Do you know any tricks to make it happen?" he asks Katie early in the film, considering the whole thing a lark. Later, he insults the demon ("you're worthless!..."I'm calling you out!") after explicitly being warned not to do so. The underlying and implicit idea here is that Micah -- ever the confident day trader -- wants to capture on film that which has not been filmed before and make a name for himself in the process. He's the Balloon Boy Dad, only with demons instead of dirigibles.

So why -- when such incontrovertible proof exists on camera -- would Micah not immediately produce it for the world? What good is all the fancy, expensive AV equipment if he's never going to actually show his footage to anybody? What's he waiting for? An Actors' Studio-style one-on-one interview with a Demon?

I often write here about how form and content should intertwine; how images and visual style should interact meaningfully with a narrative. This is the fatal disconnect of Paranormal Activity: it is mounted as a "realistic," experiential film like Blair Witch in visualization (the static camera and cinema verite-style), but the characters make unrealistic choices. Furthermore, especially during the demonic attack sequences, the camera work proves absolutely untrue to life as we experience it: providing us crystal-clear proof of that which has never, ever been proven conclusively with our technology: the existence of demons. Listen, I've been fisked up-and-down about this topic before from another blogger: I'm not saying that movies that reveal demons, vampires or monsters are bad; I'm saying only that Paranormal Activity suffers from two opposite impulses: it wants to be an experiential, cinema-verite film (like REC or Cloverfield) and yet it also tries to give us the clarity of vision in terms of the supernatural that we are afforded in a more traditional horror film, like The Exorcist, for instance.

Despite these concerns, I don't want to give the impression that Paranormal Activity is a terrible or awful film. I was intrigued throughout, and enjoyed elements of it. But ultimately, it simply didn't scare me.

In fact, the parts of the film I appreciated the most occurred outside the demonic attacks and horror elements. I was fascinated, for instance, by the constant push-pull-tug between Micah and Katie as they each sought to be the dominant partner in their relationship. Micah pushed and pushed, beyond reason, to get his way (again, he's a confident day trader...) and Katie -- who spent her whole life being terrorized by the unseen (a demonic man?) -- permits her boyfriend to terrorize her again with his perpetual disregard for her safety and her wishes. More than anything, Paranormal Activity is about the game of control in a romantic relationship. It's about a woman who has lived her life has a victim and the boyfriend who knows that; and who uses that quality against her to push the agenda that what he wants.

The performers playing these leading roles don't hit a single false note. They are uniformly good and utterly believable. I just wish that the screenplay had trusted them a little more, and not felt the need to rely on perfectly-captured supernatural parlor tricks during the horror moments.

The real crux of Paranormal Activity is revealed early. The ghost hunter asks Micah and Katie if there is any negativity in their relationship. They falsely answer no, and the ghost hunter is relieved. The demon feeds off negativity, he warns. The remainder of the film is actually about this conversation and about this lie: about how totally dysfunctional the Micah/Katie relationship really is. Micah constantly bull-dozes over Katie's wishes and betrays her trust again and again. He lies about the camera being off; he lies about acquiring a Ouija board, and on and on. These "little" lies add up to the very negativity that allows the demon into their house. At the same time, Katie is so passive that she permits Micah to run roughshod over her. He possesses control over her life. And so, accordingly, when her body stands to be possessed, literally, by a demon, it hardly looks like an effort. Once you lose control of your life, control of your spirit isn't far behind.

That is a great, human story. Yet Paranormal Activity is finally so unsubtle, so without nuance in its approach to the horror elements, that the character story is all-but sacrificed. A line is crossed. In this film, our eyes should be scanning every frame, every background and foreground, for signs of Katie's demon. The filmmakers should be making us hunt out evidence of the demon. We should be working hard; engaged.

Instead, the film doesn't trust us to pay attention. The paranormal activity is so obvious, so unreal, so-in-your-face, that the movie sacrifices the cinema-verite approach it covets. I'm delighted the film will spawn many new low-budget genre efforts. I'm thrilled it has launched the career of director Oren Peli, and that we can expect more from him in the future. But I still wish Paranormal Activity had been more....skillful.

Because Paranormal Activity comes across as a Cliff-Notes variation on The Blair Witch Project formula, one designed for those among us who prefer our ghosts served up front-and-center, our answers lined up neatly in-frame, and ambiguity forever banished to the nether-realms. I guess it comes down to this: do you want your horror movies to engage and deal with the questions we face in real life; or do you simply want them to serve as an "escape?" Ultimately, I judge The Blair Witch Project far superior to Paranormal Activity because it engages the questions of real life. Paranormal Activity passes the time well-enough, and has a nice jolt or two, but there's nothing about the demon (and the depiction of the demon) that I ever recognized as "real."

Now Micah? He's another story. I have a friend who's dating a guy just like that. And that's why Paranormal Activity works as well as it does. The characterizations and relationships are indeed very human. It's just the staging of the horror -- of the inhuman -- that totally undercuts the film's suspension of disbelief.

Four Underrated Vampire Movies to Watch Instead of Twilight

Do you have an insatiable appetite to watch a really good, really original, vampire flick? One that takes the familiar, tired concept of the long-lived bloodsucker and twists it to new, subversive ends? (And by that, I don't mean tween romance...).

If so, I humbly submit this list of four bizarre, ghoulish, and off-beat vampire flicks that are certainly worth a second look, especially for the horror connoisseur.

Again, I'm leaving out the obvious examples of well-known vampire movies here (Let the Right One In [2008], The Hunger [1983], Near Dark [1987]] in favor of more obscure, more oddball titles that carry the vampire myth in new and daring directions.

1. The Addiction (1996) : This incendiary film by Abel Ferrara connects the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam, the atrocities of the Holocaust and ethnic cleansing in Bosnia to vampirism and blood lust. "Our addiction is evil" declares grad student Kathleen Conklin (Lily Taylor) after vampire siren Anabelle Sciorra passes the appetite for hemoglobin onto her during a vicious attack on a New York street corner.

What follows this savage torch-passing is a cinematic meditation on philosophy, human nature and the face of evil. The film quotes Descartes, Jung, Sartre, Kierkegaard and William S. Burroughs. Lensed in stark black-and-white, The Addiction even features an extended cameo by Christopher Walken. He's a vegetarian vampire who quotes Naked Lunch and informs a vampiric Kathleen that "you learn, like the Tibetans, to survive on a little." This is advice she ultimately rejects, and there's a metaphor for self-actualization here; for finding a mentor figure, absorbing all of his or her knowledge, and then, in due time, utterly rejecting that which was given freely. Both a satire of modern academia and a commentary on human nature (we're all vampires...), The Addiction is one fascinating, thoughtful, and disturbing vampire flick.

2. The Wisdom of Crocodiles (1998). Jude Law portrays handsome but cold Steve Grlscz, an urbane, city-dwelling vampire, in this underrated gem. Steve's body is rapidly breaking down and he needs the blood of women to hold it together. But there's a catch: Grlscz needs the perfect love of those women too, which means he must romance them -- must make them fall in love with him -- and then kill them. "Love is what I feel; what I eat," he explains.

Human emotions, you see, are carried in the blood, according to Grlscz, and he needs that love as a primary ingredient in his feasts. Cold, spare, and unrelentingly wicked, The Wisdom of Crocodiles envisions Grlscz as a kind of evolutionary throwback. Human beings have three brains, he confides in one lover, a human brain -- which is built upon a mammal brain -- which in turn is built upon a reptilian brain. Grlscz, it seems, in his coldness and emotional emptiness, has much of the crocodile in him. The Wisdom of Crocodiles even exhibits a great metaphor about the ultimate boredom of immortality; discussing the "agony of holding on," and the "wonderful feeling of letting go" in connection with Grlscz's childhood plunge from a tree. Can a crocodile (or a vampire) experience real love, real connection? Or does a vampire only cry crocodile tears so as to lure his next meal? That's the question this movie raises.

3. Blood Couple (aka Ganja & Hess) (1973): This is an odd, inventive work that re-interprets vampirism in the context of the African-American community and experience. Written and directed by Bill Gunn, the story revolves around Dr. Hess Green (Duane Jones), a black scholar investigating the long-dead culture of Myrthia in Africa. After he is stabbed with an infected ceremonial dagger from the long-dead civilization, Green falls prey to the same plague of vampirism that corrupted and destroyed that advanced society.

Before long, the noble Green reluctantly begins feeding on the "lesser" members of American (black) society, including pimps, junkies and hookers. The movie is about race loyalty and betrayal; about the way the upper class feeds off the lower class, and more. Even debating the role of Christianity in the black community, Blood Couple defines vampirism as essentially addiction; on the feeding off of others.

Critic Harry Benshoff captured well the film's essence in his essay "Blaxploitation Horror Films: Generic Reappropriation or Reinscription," Cinema Journal, Volume 39, No. 2, Winter 2000, pages 43 - 45.: "At the heart of the film lies vampirism as a metaphor for capitalism and cultural imperialism, dramatizing in horror movie iconography how some human beings live off the blood, sweat, and toil of others."

4. Let's Scare Jessica to Death (1971): I've written before (at length...) -- here -- about this remarkable horror film from the disco decade. Let's Scare Jessica to Death depicts the travails of a woman named Jessica (Zohra Lampert). Only recently, she has recovered from a nervous breakdown. With her husband, Duncan (Barton Heyman) and a friend named Woody (Kevin O'Connor), Jessica relocates to a small town in Connecticut, a town haunted by the memory (and perhaps presence...) of a vampire woman named Abigail Bishop.

Directed by John Hancock, the film is beautifully photographed, and it captures hazy, dream-like images in a powerful way. One shot (of Jessica alone in a canoe by sunrise) calls up resonances of The Lady of Shallot. And the villainous Abigail -- a porcelain specter in diaphanous white gown -- is a contemporary Rappaccini's daughter who brings terror and death to anyone who falls under her spell.

The vampires of the film, other than Abigail, are all wrinkled old men and denizens of the town. At one point, the geriatric vampire brigade accosts Jessica in her bedroom -- a hungry mob -- and it's a freaky, disturbing moment. In Horror Films of the 1970s, I termed Let's Scare Jessica To Death a great example of "New England Gothic," and that's exactly what it is. There's an ancient evil, a town with a dark secret, a struggle with personal sanity ,and a coven of blood-thirsty, gnarled old vampires. The result is one of the most hypnotic, unsettling horror films of the decade.

The Tao of Michael Myers? Or The Hidden "Shapes" of John Carpenter's Halloween (1978)

I have written about John Carpenter's Halloween (1978) on several occasions. In The Films of John Carpenter (2000); in Horror Films of the 1970s (2002) and here, on this blog, over the last four-and-a-half years.

And yet despite this fact, I am drawn to revisit the film again and again, across the years, to further detect new and intriguing aspects of the masterpiece. This is a fact which differentiates it from Rob Zombie's 2007 ill-advised remake, and some of the piss-poor, latter-day sequels.

So the question becomes: what is it, precisely, about John Carpenter's Halloween that stands up to --- and actually encourages -- continued, intense scrutiny?

And hell, it isn't just my scrutiny either, it's the scrutiny of other scholars, authors, bloggers, list-makers and admirers the globe around. Over thirty years after the film's release, Halloween's reputation only continues to grow.

But the answer to the question about the Tao of Halloween, The Tao of Michael Myers, is deceptively simple, and it very much concerns my favorite cinematic conceit: visual form echoing narrative content.

Specifically, as percipients of Halloween, we gaze intently at that blank, white, featureless mask of "The Shape," Michael Myers, and then immediately recognize, at least subconsciously, that we are missing some crucial aspect of understanding.

Michael's true motives -- just like his concealing, ivory face-mask -- are not entirely filled in; not fully circumscribed. His personality and purpose seems oddly incomplete, and thus the shadowy, featureless mask fully and trenchantly reflects our inability to conceptualize or understand the thing that he represents. From this lack of understanding grows the seeds of terror. Why does Michael kill? Is he the Boogeyman? What drives him? How does he survive point-blank bullet strikes? As in life, Halloween provides no easily digestible answer to myriad questions about mortality and murder, destiny, choice, and chance.

Yet Halloween does brilliantly provide the attentive viewers some intriguing clues about Michael Myers and the things he signifies. Some of these hints actually seem to conflict with one another; and some are just barely enunciated. But again, this very facet of ambiguity makes the film (and the iconic character himself) resonate more powerfully in our minds. In other words, Halloween lets our imagination fill in the narrative, explanatory gaps, and again, a sense of terror takes hold. We see reflected in that blank, chilling mask all the things we fear -- all the things we don't understand -- about our lives in this mortal coil.

Basically -- to boil it down -- I believe that Halloween provides us at least four important "leads" about Michael Myers true and highly unusual nature (and it is important to remember that all of these clues don't take into account the "Laurie is his sister"-revisionism of the sequels. and the remake). These clues are, in no specific order:

1. Michael Myers is a Physical Representation of Laurie's Id.

This is the Freudian-interpretation of John Carpenter's Halloween. As you may be aware, the Id is a component of Freud's so-called "psychic apparatus" or "structural model for the human psyche." Basically, the Id houses our unconscious, our basic drives, our instincts. It controls our desire for sex and our other appetites too. It is amoral, chaotic and egocentric.

Consider now the buttoned-down, Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), both a good student and a responsible babysitter . She clearly symbolizes the rationalist Ego, the part of us that holds the reigns of control over our lives and seeks to "please" the Id in a socially and culturally acceptable fashion. The Ego represents common sense; even consciousness itself. This is the Freudian "borrowed face," the veneer of appropriateness we all put on over our Ids.

Accordingly, underneath the mask, Michael represents Laurie's Id, unfettered and on-the-loose, lashing out at those around her who more "honestly" contend with their drives and libidos (Annie and Linda) than do the Ego. Laurie even seems to "activate" Michael Myers, at least in a sense, by singing aloud a modern magical incantation (a ballad) on the day he stalks her. The lyrics to that ballad go: "I wish I had you all alone, just the two of us," and set up, rather nicely, the thrust of Michael's murderous mission on October 31st. He systematically kills all of Laurie's friends and acquaintances until it is, indeed, just the two of them. They have sex (or hope to have sex), and he destroys them because they express what Laurie cannot.

Now, of course, some readers may rightly remind me that Michael cannot possibly be a product of Laurie's Id, since Michael was alive and killing before she was even born (back in 1963). That's right...but.. do we know for certain that Laurie's mission of murder isn't the the very thing imprinted upon that mentally-deranged mind behind the blank-white mask?

Horror scholar and professor Vera Dika wrote that "Carpenter openly represents Michael as Laurie's "id." This reading is supported by the inclusion of footage from Forbidden Planet (1956)...The earlier film had portrayed a situation in which the unconscious desires, or the id, of the main character became manifest and threatened to destroy him and his world. Similarly, Laurie is almost destroyed by the strength of her repressed unconscious impulses. Her battle with Michael is a substitute for the sexual act." (Vera Dika, Games of Terror: Halloween, Friday the 13th and the Films of the Stalker Cycle. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1990, page 51).

John Carpenter himself lends some credence to this Freudian interpretation of Halloween by noting that Laurie, "The one girl who is the most sexually uptight just keeps stabbing this guy with a long knife...Not because she's a virgin but because all that repressed sexual energy starts coming out. She uses all those phallic symbols on the guy...she doesn't have a boyfriend, and she finds someone -- him." (Danny Peary, Cult Movies. Delacorte Press, 1981, page 126).

This theory won't exactly find popularity with feminists or "Final Girl" proponents, since it positions Laurie as the repressed "creator" of the monster in Halloween, not a Girl-Powered heroine. Her suppressed sexual appetite and longing is the drive that brings Michael to life and even selects his victims. In this way, the noble Laurie somehow becomes responsible for Michael; or at the very least, connected to him in a very intimate, very personal way.

2. Michael Myers is Just a Developmentally Arrested Child Playing Halloween Tricks.

There's a such a thing as "psychological neoteny," the retention by adults of what are generally considered juvenile traits. In Halloween, Michael Myers seems "arrested" in an early point of childhood, acting out instances of so-called play but, because of his delayed maturity, failing to understand the true consequences of his actions.

A hallmark of childhood is the total and immersive interface with a world of make-believe play. In theory, make-believe play should teach a child to self-regulate and even learn self-discipline; a quality known as "executive function." But in Michael's specific case, nothing positive results from the fact that his mind is "frozen," essentially, in childhood. It's as though he's an overgrown kid, playing an elaborate trick-or-treat game without any acknowledgment of the harm that very game is causing to others outside himself.

It is impossible to deny the "game"-like aspects of Myers' behavior in the original Halloween. He sets a "stage" or "show "for Laurie in Lindsey's house a prank involving the corpses of her friends and a stolen grave marking/head-stone. Also, at least to some extent, it seems that Michael strongly identifies with young Tommy Doyle...since he follows the boy home from school too. Halloween II and later films seem to forget that Michael actually stalked two people on October 31st, 1978: Laurie and Tommy. I suggest that this is because Michael is essentially delayed at Tommy's age and somehow sees Doyle as a contemporary; or surrogate; someone his own age.

Michael evidences some interesting physical reactions after he kills the teenagers on Halloween night that also, if interpreted in a certain way, bolster this theory. He just stares and looks at them, tilting his head to one side. You must wonder if this is because the dead are -- counter to his expectations -- not getting up and continuing to play. Michael has killed them, but doesn't really understand the finality of death. He is thus quizzical and curious over the corpses, wondering why the teens don't want to play anymore. We can also judge that Michael is developmentally arrested at/or around 1963, the time when he committed his first murder (an action that no doubt also slowed down his formal education, another characteristic of many with delayed maturity.)

3. Michael Myers is the Physical Embodiment of Fate

Early in Halloween, there is a fascinating if brief scene set in a high school English class. Laurie is in attendance, listening only sporadically as an off-screen teacher drones on endlessly about the concept of fate in literature.

The unseen instructor then asks Laurie about her reading assignment, and Laurie answers by making a distinction between two authors, Samuels and Costaine. She notes that "Costaine wrote that fate was only somehow related to religion, where Samuels felt that fate was like a natural element; like Earth, Air, Fire and Water." The teacher further notes that Lauriie is correct, that Samuels definitely "personified" fate. "It [fate[ stands" where a "man passes away."

Who else stands where a man passes away? Michael, of course, a character who survives stabbings and shootings and keeps on coming like a freight train. He is Fate "Personified" (as Samuels dictated) and you can't kill something like Earth, Air, Fire or Water, can you?

This revelation of Michael as Agent of Fate opens up the whole "Boogeyman" Argument; that perhaps there is actually a fifth natural element, Earth, Air, Fire, Water...And Evil. And that Michael as a representative of this natural force is thus unstoppable; in kiddie slang, The Boogeyman.

The film's discussion of fate contextualizes Michael not as a supernatural avenger, but as a heightened, natural one. He is not magical, but rather a force as natural (and as essential?) as Air or Water. So there is an order to the universe, it's not just what we had in mind...

4. Michael Myers is an Indictment of Contemporary, Rational Society: The Undiagnosable Amok in The Scientific World

Finally, I believe Halloween suggests (or at least implies...) that Michael Myers represents some kind of modern-day "dragon" in a society that no longer recognizes dragons as real monsters.

As I wrote in The Films of John Carpenter, Halloween willfully "deconstructs" our technological, contemporary world so that (as viewers experiencing the film) we actually appear have more in common with ancient proto-humans huddling in caves than with our rational, 21st century brethren. In particularly, nothing in Halloween works the way it is supposed to work by our "rationalist," "daylight" brand of thinking.

To wit: Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasance) is a total and complete failure as a psychologist, unable not only to heal Michael Myers, but to understand what drives him. Loomis's role in Halloween is not that of a doctor, nor of a psychiatrist, but explicitly that of St. George: hunting down and slaying the dragon. But specifically, Michael Myers suffers from no diagnosable or treatable psychological disorder. He is "purely and simply Evil." If you look in the DSM-IV, you won't find "Evil" listed as a malady.

It is utterly unacceptable that rational, middle-class teenagers in Haddonfield should die at the knife of Michael Myers on the eve of the 21st century. That's just not supposed to happen in modern-day America. For one thing, there is the blanket of parental protection and love, which should shield children, right? Yet in Halloween, the parents (and most adults for that matter...) are mostly an afterthought. We see Laurie's father only briefly, never see the school teacher, and never get to meet the parents of Lynda, Annie, or even Tommy Doyle. Adults do not represent a positive, let alone helpful force in this horror vision.

Well, okay, if parents can't help save the children (representing our tomorrows...), then there's modern medicine and cutting-edge science, which should not only diagnose Michael, but keep him behind bars. Right? Not surprisingly, it fails too. The "system" fails, and Michael escapes.

All right, what about another imortant societal construct then: the law? Well, kindly Sheriff Brackett can't even protect his own daughter, let alone capture a mad-dog killer! Not a single cop on patrol even notices Michael's car parked on the street!

In other words, all of our carefully-constructed traditional bureaucracies and cherished codes of justice, belief and conduct ultimately offer Annie, Lynda and Bob zero protection. These kids are on their own. They are prey.

In fact, these teens have it much worse than our cave-men ancestors in pre-history. At least the cave-men knew to be afraid, knew to fear the forces in the dark that they could not comprehend. The characters in Halloween are thoroughly unprepared and unable to conceive of a reality that includes Michael Myers, and that's why they are such easy pickings. The movie thus indicts modern society rather fully: it is woefully unprepared to combat what may be a "natural force," Evil Itself.

J.P. Telotte wrote that "What Carpenter seems intent on demonstrating is how consistently our perceptions and our understandings of the world around us fall short...We are conditioned by our experience and culture to see less...to dismiss from our image contents those visions for which we might not be able to account..."(American Horrors: Essays on the Modern American Horror Film: "Through a Pumpkin's Eye: The Reflexive Nature of Horror." University of Illinois Press, 1987, page 122).

Now, I am not suggesting that any one of these four interpretations is absolutely the "right one" to come to a perfect understanding of Carpenter's film, only that Halloween retains such power because the truth of Michael Myers seems to dwell in all these interpretations.

Ultimately, Halloween preserves the Shape's mystery and thus lets you decide about the important things like meaning. Many of the sequels and indeed the Rob Zombie 2007 remake fail so egregiously to live up to the original Carpenter film because they work diligently towards an opposite (and inferior) end; because they seek to diagram in details the answers about Michael for the audience's consumption and peace of mind. Yet peace of mind -- closure itself -- runs counter to what good horror ought to be, at least by my personal barometer. Who wants to leave a horror movie content that you understand everything you saw; that it all fits into a neat little box? As I've said before, I want my slumber troubled; I wantmy mind bothered by the things only the genre can show me and tell me. If I desire peace of mind or resolution from ambiguity, I'll watch network television.

As a direct result of all the well-meaning but psychologically facile explanations of the sequels and the remake, the magic of Michael Myers is somehow bled away. When we understand Michael is simply hunting his biological sister down, he becomes nothing but a garden variety wacko with a tough hide. When he is infused with supernatural powers and becomes a genetically-engineered Druid observing Samhain, he's just another easily explainable Devil, only one with an alternate religious belief system.

And finally, the magic of Michael Myers is totally squandered when we bear witness to the peculiarities of his abusive childhood; when we come to understand that he was raised in a violent, redneck household and is merely carrying on in the family tradition. Thus the later movies, and especially the re-imaginations nullify The Shape's Power; the Shape's Tao. They turn it to ashes.

When considering "The Shape," I submit that it is better to ponder and speculate about Evil's True Nature than to know it all. Oscar Wilde once wrote that the greatest mystery in life is actually "one's self," and Halloween remains such an indelible viewing experience because -- in addition to technical expertise and canny imagery -- it leaves more than abundant psychic space for our imaginations to ponder it.

Trick or Treat TV

As Halloween nears -- if you're anything like me -- you haul out your all-time favorite horror films on DVD, VHS or Blu-Ray and enjoy them all over again...for the umpteenth time. However, if you care to mix things up just a bit this year (and if you possess a vast video archive...) you may want to celebrate this All Hallow's Eve with the most memorable Halloween episodes of classic genre TV series instead.

Specifically, if you're looking for holiday-themed efforts from TV history, these are some of the notable titles to consider:

1.) "Halloween" from Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997) In this second season episode of the beloved Joss Whedon vampire series, we learn that Halloween is the one night of the year in which Sunnydale's vampires stay in and watch television. Apparently they don't appreciate the crass consumerism of the Halloween holiday. But Buffy, Xander and Willow are vexed anyway when their Halloween costumes turn distressingly real (courtesy of an evil shop owner named Ethan...). Dressed as a soldier, Xander gains courage. Buffy -- as a 17th century damsel in distress -- loses hers. And Willow, garbed as a ghost, develops the powers (and physical limitations...) of an apparition.

If you want to make it a Buffy Halloween all-together, another Buffy the Vampire Slayer Halloween-themed entry is the sixth season's entry "All the Way," which involves Dawn dating a vampire on All Hallow's Eve.

2.) "The Curse of Frank Black" from Millennium (1997). This memorable episode of Chris Carter's cult classic provides a peek at what an average Halloween is like for everyone's favorite "dark" profiler, Frank Black (Lance Henriksen). The episode features a nod to both The Simpsons and Space: Above and Beyond (1995), but more meaningfully, it gazes at a specific Halloween from Frank's youth, and the way that it has continued to affect him throughout his life.

"The Curse of Frank Black" is part whimsy and part tragedy, and it goes a long way towards contextualizing the history (and unusual abilities and insights...) of Frank Black. "The Curse of Frank Black" occurs during a spell in which Frank is estranged from his wife and the Millennium Group, and banished from his paradise...his perfect yellow house. Frank visits that house in this episode, and -- among other things -- confronts some of the ghosts haunting him.

3.) "Freddy's Trick or Treats" from October 30, 1988 is an episode of the mostly-forgotten Freddy's Nightmares: A Nightmare on Elm Street the Series, the cheap jack syndicated anthology starring horror icon and Elm Street dream demon, Monsieur Krueger (Robert Englund). The series ran for forty-four episodes in the late 1980s and featured appearances by future stars such as Brad Pitt.

Here, Freddy Krueger terrorizes future Law & Order star Mariska Hargitay and her friends on a Springfield college campus. There are actually two stories featured here, but this Halloween entry wasn't exactly Freddy's finest hour...

4.) "Hellowe'en" from Friday the 13th: The Series aired on October 31, 1987. It was the fifth episode of the beloved syndicated series' first season, and the story involved a Halloween costume party held at the cursed antique store, Curious Goods. The party goes awry thanks to some unwanted guests, and soon the episode involves the dangerous conjuration of the series' recurring evil antagonist, Uncle Lewis Vendredi (R.G. Armstrong). Micki (Robey), Jack (Chris Wiggins) and Ryan (John D. Le May) have to save the (holi)day.

5.) "All Hallow's Eve" actually aired on the same Halloween as that memorable Friday the 13th episode, and it's a fun installment from Fox Network's Werewolf: The Series. The story involves series protagonist Eric Cord (John J. York) locking himself in a haunted house on Halloween, just as the irksome werewolf pentagram appears on his palm. Inside the house, he meets a strange, spooky denizen. Just think, we could be enjoying this episode on DVD right now if the series' DVD release hadn't been canceled just last month...

6.) "Halloween Candy" aired on October 31st, 1985, and was featured in the second season of the syndicated anthology from George Romero and Laurel, Entertainment called Tales from the Darkside (now available on DVD). Directed by the great Tom Savini, this creepy half-hour show involved a nasty old miser who stingily refuses to dole out candy on Halloween night. At least, that is, until a rea life goblin shows up on his doorstep for some authentic trick-or-treating...

And don't forget these Halloween-based episodes either, especially if you prefer romance and sci-fi to horror:

7.)"Masques" from CBS's cult series Beauty and the Beast aired on October 30, 1987 and while it isn't horror -based per se, it is set on Halloween and involves a monster of sorts. the regal-lion like Vincent. Here, Ron Perlman plays that Shakespeare quoting "Beast" and at a costume ball set on October 31st the lonesome Vincent is able -- for one night -- to mingle with the "normal" people of the Big Apple. The denizens of New York mistake his monstrous appearance for a (really scary...) costume and so the Beast's intense isolation is soothed. Linda Hamilton plays Vincent's love, Catherine.

8). "Catspaw" from Star Trek (1967) isn't exactly a horror show either, but in this story, the U.S.S. Enterprise encounters all kinds of Halloween "spooks" on an alien world, including a giant black cat, a sorcerer, and a malevolent witch. "Captain Kiiiiiiiiiiirk," the witch calls...

This House You Have To Watch Every Minute: The Seen and Unseen In The Haunting films (1963/1999)

When first we glimpse Hill House in Robert Wise's chilling The Haunting (1963), the imposing old structure is a featureless black obelisk: a jagged silhouette carved out from brooding night sky.

Secrets dwell inside Hill House -- in the dark; in the night -- and yet the director's selection of visualization (a shadowed, blackened house with no distinguishable architectural features) purposefully confounds our desire to peer inside this monument to the unknown; to learn about the "unquiet dead" who may walk the lonely, vast hallways of this spectral monolith.

Hill House is a place "born to be bad," according to the film's opening narration, but it is something more than that too: "an undiscovered country waiting to be explored." And The Undiscovered Country, as we remember from our Shakespeare, is Death Itself.

Robert Wise structures his horror film (based on the sterling novel by Shirley Jackson) as a probe into that ultimate unknown; but more than that too, as an ambiguous probe into that unknown. Never in the film, for instance, is the audience 100% certain that it has actually witnessed the supernatural and the ghostly. On the contrary, our senses are heightened and tweaked by disturbing noises, by the sinister-seeming twist of a doorknob, and more. Yet certainty still eludes us; just as certainty about the paranormal eludes people in real life.

You Should Be Receptive...and Innocent: Exploring The Self in The Haunting.

It is no mistake or coincidence that the four explorers countenancing the chaotic, uncertain terrain of Hill House are -- in the spirit of Hugh Crain's strange edifice itself -- a determinedly unconventional group. This is important structurally to the narrative. The sojourners reflect the sojourn.

Dr. Markway (Richard Johnson) gave up a "conventional" life and a proper upbringing (courtesy of his upper-crust English family) to prove the existence of the supernatural. This is his life's work, which makes him either commendably dedicated or utterly foolish. He says he wants his people "innocent and receptive" so that they will discover the secrets of Hill House. If someone is innocent and receptive, however, he or she is not looking for the angles that might be played; and every little noise becomes significant and meaningful. So Markway may (intentionally or unintentiaonally...) be encouraging hallucinations or delusions (though he says, explicitly, that this must not be the case if their research is considered to be legitimate).

Theodora (Claire Bloom) also fits the bill of "unconventional." She not only boasts extra-sensory perception, but is "out" as a lesbian. To some people in traditional society in the 1960s the latter quality would make her untrustworthy at best, abnormal at worst. And when strange handwriting appears on the wall of Hill House, Theodora is the first suspect. She's jealous of the attention Markway showers on Nell, and this spooky handwriting (which names Nell...) may be her petty revenge; her game playing. She has a cruel, jealous streak that could effect the exploration of Hill House.

Then there's Luke (Russ Tamblyn), a playboy and would-be millionaire who has a frat-boy sense of humor; but also a burgeoning curiosity and conscience. Is he just a money-grubber, a dabbler, or something more? What's his angle?

And finally, we arrive at the most unconventional of the explorers: Eleanor or Nell (Julie Harris), a spinster who had a poltergeist experience as a child but who, in essence, has never truly left the confines of her home. The sheltered, inexperienced woman has spent years caring for her invalid mother (now deceased...) and the chance to explore Hill House is most definitely an escape from the drudgery of her day-to-day existence. She is motivated to stay at Hill House; to "belong" to the group. We wonder: is Nell's subconscious somehow causing the noises that bedevil Hill House at night (as it caused the rock storm that fell upon her house in childhood?) Or is Nell hallucinating? Or, worst of all: is she so desperate for attention that she is "pretending" all the experiences with the supernatural. When Nell almost falls off a veranda at Hill House, who can adequately judge what caused her to grow dizzy? It is convenient that Markway, the object of her affection, would rush in to her to care for her...

These idiosyncratic individuals -- who don't conform to the boundaries of society-at-large and who don't entirely fit the bill of "normal" or "trustworthy" -- investigate the home of a 19th century robber baron of sorts, Hugh Crain. He too is a kindred spirit: an unconventional person and one who didn't believe in the rules of society. He built his oddball house to reflect those beliefs. For instance, all the doors in Hill House are hung crookedly...so that -- after a time -- they slam shut, apparently of their own volition. And all the angles inside the house are off-center a bit....just like the characters in the drama. The house --as Markway reminds us -- "does have its oddities." Just like every team member...

In such a strange environment -- with four such anarchistic individuals in close-quarters -- the probe into the unknown is tainted by the frailties of the individual personalities. We can't rule out that one or all of the explorers is perpetrating some kind of hoax; or simply that some one's imagination has gotten out of control. Consider the moment in which Nell becomes convinced that someone is holding her hand in the dark. She believes it to be Theodora, but when the lights come up, Theodora is across the room, in her own bed. Wise's camera never leaves Nell's face during the "event." It stays on Nell, in extreme close-up throughout the purported "visitation", and thus we are left to wonder if she is hallucinating, or really countenancing something supernatural. If something were holding and crushing her hand...why don't we ever see it?

Similarly, on the night of the loud noises at their door; Theodora and Nell never actually see anything abnormal. And importantly, Luke and Markway are elsewhere in the house at the time...they could easily be responsible for the noises. Similarly, anyone could have written Nell's name on the wall. When the film's biggest scare arrives -- Mrs. Markway's (Lois Maxwell) sudden appearance from the attic -- even it is not ghostly in nature. She became lost in the attic and tried to escape...stunning Nell.

And finally, Nell's death could be suicide brought on by the fact that the attention seeker was being ostracized from the group, and on and on...

My argument vis-a-vis the original The Haunting is this: I believe Hill House is haunted and that the explorers experience paranormal or supernatural events there. However, the film retains an authentic sense of terror because Wise walks the line of ambiguity brilliantly. Nothing supernatural is ever truly seen, and we become perched on the edge of our seats by the things we don't see; but which we believe to exist. I'm not making the argument that showing ghosts in horror movies is always less effective than hiding them, only noting that The Haunting still scares -- 45 years after it was made -- because it exhibits this spine-tingling sense of uncertainty and ambiguity. We don't know what is making the horrible noise outside the bedroom; we don't know if that is a human face in the sculpture on the wall, or merely a trick of the light. We can't be certain if the door is bending because of a supernatural force...or someone leaning on the other side of it. But taken all together, these events are chilling and add up to something meancing. More so, they are chilling because we never get satisfactory answers about them.

Wise's exquisite camerawork in The Haunting generates genuine terror, but notice that the camera truly grows perturbed only when the dramatis personae have also grown perturbed or hysterical. Theodora and Nell are worked up to raging terror by the time Wise deploys that prowling, angling camera which circumscribes the perimeter of the bedroom door. We interpret this odd, angled movement as the search by something inimical -- on the other side of the door -- seeking an entry point. But we see nothing; and the camera's twisted perspective could simply be the perspective of two very frightened women Similarly, Nell's fainting spell on the veranda coincides with the camera lunge from the high tower; again as though something invisible is approaching...or attacking. Yet the sudden, alarming camera movement could be interpreted as a reflection of Nell's sudden, dangerous vertigo. Especially if we are to believe she is suicidal (a belief which also plays into the climax and the staircase set piece).

And by the time we see a Hill House door swell and retract (as if breathing by itself...), every character -- especially Markway -- is desperate and fearful. These apparent manifestations of the supernatural could be the manifestations of the characters' out of control hysteria and fear.

One of The Haunting's central set-pieces involves Nell and Markway's ascent up a rickety, vast spiral staircase. The staircase is loose from the wall (again, not a danger that is supernatural in origin). But the quest to reach the top metaphorically reflects the team's overall quest. Markway and his people are climbing the tallest mountain and seeking answers on the summit. But even they cannot reach Heaven for answers about life beyond death. And again, notice that when Nell and Markway do finally achieve the top of the spiral staircase, Nell is frightened out of her mind not by a ghost...but by another desperate human, Markway's wife. In other words, Nell has reached the pinnacle of Hill House -- climbed as far as she can possibly climb -- and the terrors/answers she gets are still of the human, not supernatural variety.

The Haunting succeeds as a great horror movie because there exists enough ambiguity in the camera-work, the characters, and in the script to support multiple interpretations. Either the house is haunted, or Nell is a very disturbed individual responsible for the so-called haunting, or all the characters are just "innocent and receptive" to their admittedly creepy environment. These interpretations compete for primacy in The Haunting, and that competition results in an incredibly active viewing experience; a high-level of engagement with the material. And that engagement leads to unbearable suspense...


Just Because You Can Do A Thing: Remaking and Unmaking The Haunting (1999)

Ambiguity was not in fashion in 1999 when Jan De Bont re-made The Haunting. Therefore, what remained unseen but detected in Wise's classy original film became seen....and predictable. Not just seen actually, but dramatized in full-color, in ample lighting, utilizing the latest in state-of-the-art computer generated special effects. Because of this see-it-all approach, the remake leaves itself only one possible interpretation: Hill House is haunted by a malevolent spirit who can re-shape reality to his liking.

You can almost detect how the makers of The Haunting (1999) were onto the kernel of something clever in reconceiving the film. They seized on the good idea that Hill House was an outward manifestation or reflection of Hugh Crain's twisted psyche. But they went too far. The filmmakers thus transformed Hill House into a bloated monstrosity with oversized rooms that might resemble a human rib-cage, or a bizarre drawing by H.R. Giger more than a real house. Again, you can understand this approach at the same time that you realize it just doesn't work. Houses -- even haunted houses -- aren't hatched or born out of twisted psyches. They are built and constructed plank-by-plank and it is simply impossible to believe that the out-of-proportion, bizarre Hill House of The Haunting (1999) was ever built by 19th century hands, using 19th century techniques and plans. Because of the house's egregious (though inventive) design, the film sacrifices some vital piece of believability. A house with a Godzilla-sized fireplace? With a hall of mirrors? With a virtual river inside one hallway?

Bottom line: If we can't believe in the house as a real, tangible place from human history; we don't believe in the story being told there, and the movie automatically fails to suspend our disbelief.

Another bad move in The Haunting grants the Crain-spirit seemingly invincible powers over flesh and blood, stone and mortar. The house repetitively grows appendage-like vines out of the walls and entraps human characters in them on a regular basis. Stone gargoyles come to life and attack people in broad daylight. Curtains dance with ghostly apparitions whose shapes we can see, process, and comprehend. The digital special effects are repeated so often and in such ample light that the "horror" imagery becomes commonplace instead of frightening. A flying gargoyle and ambulatory statue are things you can run and hide from, things you can strike with your fist or with a weapon. Contrast that kind of nemesis with the amorphous, unseen thing perhaps prowling in Wise's original. How could you escape an angry spirit that seemed to exist by its own set of "laws?"

The Haunting remake eschews ambiguity in other ways. We also see and detect here the all-too-human motives of Hill House's ghost, Hugh Crain. He's apparently enslaving all the children he used to exploit in life (just like Kathie Lee Gifford...) and this version of Eleanor (Lily Taylor) -- a surprise(!) descendant of Crain's second wife -- must free the children from his hellish grip. All is made right when Nell and the children ascend to Heaven and Crain passes through the "door of judgment" to Hell itself.

Again, there's nothing like taking uncertainty entirely out of the equation. In the original Haunting it wasn't even plain whether one ghost or multiple ghosts (or no ghosts...) were at work. The new Haunting provides us an "earthly" agenda for a specific ghost (enslavement of the children), a proper fate (punishment for bad deeds) and a reward for the righteous victor in the fight against him. De Bont's The Haunting takes the shivery indeterminism of Wise's classic and shelves it in favor of mind-numbing, imagination-crushing certitude.

No expense was spared to remake The Haunting in 1999, but the spine-tingling ambiguity and uncertainty of Wise's original were abandoned in favor of an onslaught of digital effects. This is a case where seeing is not believing; and where certainty crushes the mind's capacity to imagine the unseen. That's why the original The Haunting still "walks alone" as a classic.

The remake, in every sense of the word, is un-"Wise."

For Each Man's Evils a Demon Exists: Jungian Archetypes and the Morality of Vengeance in Pumpkinhead (1988)

Bolted doors and windows barred,
Guard dogs prowling in the yard,
Won't protect you in your bed,
Nothing will, from Pumpkinhead.

- Pumpkinhead (a poem by Ed Justin)

A contemporary Grimm Fairy Tale, the 1988 film Pumpkinhead (directed by the late Stan Winston) is also something more than that general description implies. The film actually serves as an example of modern, cinematic folklore. In the Jungian sense of that term, it contends explicitly with the human unconscious and human archetypes.

Pumpkinhead is the story of kindly Ed Harley (Lance Henriksen), a man and father who sees his young son, Billy (Matthew Harley) recklessly killed by a group of irresponsible tourists: dirt bikers led by the brutish Joel (John Di Aquino).

After his boy's death, Harley visits an old witch, Haggis, seeking help. Alas, even this sorceress cannot raise the dead. Instead, the old crone suggests a wicked alternative: Ed can make his vengeance manifest in the form of an invincible demon called Pumpkinhead. Ed once saw that very monster in childhood, in 1957, and so he follows the witch's instructions for conjuring this monstrous Personification of Vengeance.

Before long, Pumpkinhead goes on a vicious murder spree -- a surrogate for Ed -- attacking Joel and all his friends and eventually murdering them in horrible, merciless ways. However, Ed soon begins to see the nature of the terror he has willfully unleashed on Earth, sharing Pumpkinhead's "sight" at critical moments. Ed then comes to the realization that he must pay the ultimate price to curtail the evil he has loosed on the world...

When discussing folklore, Swiss philosopher Carl Jung pinpointed specific universal character archetypes, many of which are given a new life in this Winston horror film. Henriksen's Ed Harley, the film's protagonist, is a manifestation of the Ego. He is a man of gentleness and reason, who has repressed his "emotional" past (the vision of Pumpkinhead) and now lives in relative seclusion with his son, far from the dangers of noisy city life. We have every reason to believe that Ed is a "good" salt-of-the-earth type character, at least until his quest for justice turns punitive; becoming a quest for vengeance.

Pumpkinhead himself is another Jungian archetype: "The Shadow." He is the opposite of the Ego (Ed) but with qualities nonetheless present in the Ego, only ones not identified or openly acknowledged. In other words, Pumpkinhead is representative of Ed's buried, undetected blood lust; his vengeance personified. These blood-thirsty, merciless qualities have always been present in Ed, we must believe, but without a catalyst (the death of his beloved boy), they would never have boiled to the surface and found expression. Ego and Shadow are connected in another way too: inside the very shape of Pumpkinhead. The beast soon begins to take on the facial features of the man who raised him, Ed. So part of Ed -- the ugly part -- is literally inside the demon. They Ego and the Shadow share "sight," they share a face, and they share a destiny: damnation.

Finally, we come to Billy, a blond-haired little boy. He represents an archetype that Jung believed was present in every one of us: The Child. The child symbolizes innocence, naivete, the future, tomorrow, even treasure. To Ed, Bill is indeed the greatest treasure in the material world; the innocent thing to be protected from an increasingly cruel, loud, and fast modern world. Billy is Ed's hope for a better future, and Pumpkinhead features many beautiful, sweet scenes (including one at a kitchen table...) that involve Ed and little Billy -- father and son -- living their life of togetherness and fellowship. Though Henriksen is often called upon to play sinister roles these days, it is his tender, fatherly side that resonates most powerfully with me, as both a viewer and a critic. It's a side you often see on display in two of best productions: Pumpkinhead and Millennium. And it's also a side that brings forward, with great power (and emotion...), the scope of Ed Harley's loss; the scope of his pain and suffering. With Billy gone, Ed has lost his hope for the future; his purpose for living. He has lost all his tomorrows. So when Ed seeks vengeance, the audience is definitely on his side. We know he's a good man; we understand what he's lost and we -- with him -- demand justice.

But folklore -- again in the Jungian definition of that word -- always serves a specific moral purpose. It excavates the unconscious, the very instincts and failings of mankind as a species. It intentionally deals in stereotypes and absolutes so as to make a cogent point ,and in Pumpkinhead that is indeed the case. Billy is not just sweet...he is angelic. And Pumpkinhead is not just Vengeance made manifest, but the epitome of Vengeance Made Manifest: an ugly, snarling, horrible, murderous, unstoppable, sacriligeous demon. Ed is not just tortured, but he is tortured in a Biblical sense, like Job himself. The point of Pumpkinhead, of course, is that "two wrongs don't make a right," and that vengeance is not justice. Vengeance is something else entirely: the unquenchable need to inflect some greater pain on a person who has wronged you. The Bible writes of "an eye for an eye" because violence tenfold against your enemy was too draconian, too horrible. That's Ed's sin in Pumpkinhead, seeking an out-of-proportion punishment for the crime. But our emotions are engaged, our imaginations stirred by the universal, almost stereotypical nature of the beautiful child, the bereaved Dad and the monster from Hell.

Like some of the best horror films ever made, Pumpkinhead remains determinedly anti-violence (and anti-vengeance) -- in much the same manner as Wes Craven's misunderstood Last House on the Left (1972) -- because it it points to a painful and often forgotten human verity: vengeance solves nothing. And the cost to the person pursuing vengeance is often, literally, his soul.

In Pumpkinhead, Ed is forced to reckon with the fact that he has called an unearthly presence to right an earthly wrong. His response to a tragedy was understandable, but ultimately out-of-proportion. The teens in the films are careless and rude, and they did kill Billy in that incident. But Joel -- who is reckless and negligent -- is actually guilty of simply being an arrogant, thoughtless asshole. He never set out with malice to hurt anyone. The wronged Ed, by contrast, does proceed with malice. He calls a demon that doesn't discriminate between victims, that doesn't weigh evidence, but merely judges ALL the involved teens as guilty, despite their varying levels of responsibility. Again, this is not justice, and Ed learns that the hard way.

In Pumpkinhead, the Ego unleashes the Shadow, a force of incredible evil, and in process poisons his own soul. I always wonder: what would Billy think of his father's conjuration of the beast? Isn't Ed's decision to revenge Billy's death, actually, the very thing that destroys Ed's goodness? That destroys the innocence inside him?

These are the questions that the original Pumpkinhead contemplates with great style and intelligence, and it is rewarding to view a horror film in the decade of Death Wish-sequels, Chuck Norris, Dirty Harry and Rambo that advocates a stance against vigilantes and eye-for-an-eye "justice." Pumpkinhead sees no benefit, no reward, no healing in blood lust. Even more commendably, the film offers a didactic lesson: Ed sought revenge but didn't how how messy and monstrous revenge could be until faced with it, through Pumpkinhead's inhuman, eyes. Again, this is a film that argues against violence, but in a society that still pursues "shock and awe," pre-emptive war and relies on "you're either with us or you're against us" platitudes, the message hasn't gotten much traction.

Pumpkinhead is a beautifully crafted horror film, one routinely aglow with a cold, blue-gray palette, and heavy on oppressive atmosphere and atmospherics (including fog and mist). The film seems to exist outside any specific modern decade, granting it a timeless, universal visual quality that matches the theme. And the pumpkin patch where Pumpkinhead is born is not soon forgotten: a Stygian landscape of ruin...as though vengeance has made the earth itself lifeless and decrepit.

So many horror films trade in black-and-white homilies, but Pumpkinhead even opens the door to ambiguity, particularly in the depiction of the sorcerer witch, Haggis. Essentially a "neighborhood witch" that expresses the tensions between country-folk and city folk and between the natural and supernatural worlds, her role is never exactly clarified in the screenplay or by director Winston. Essentially, she sends Ed to Pumpkinhead, but is it because she divines his purpose (vengeance) and wishes to expedite that purpose? Or is it because she seeks to destroy Ed's soul? Is she just using necromancy and other tricks of her trade to facilitate a "customer's" order, or is she a more sinister agent who gets something personal from the corruption of the innocent?

By utilizing Jungian archetypes (the Ego, the Shadow, the Child), and by focusing intently on a shared trait of our contemporary culture (the desire for personal revenge after a crime), Pumpkinhead dramatizes a universal tale about the human condition. The film's characterizations are "well-developed for the genre," (The Houston Chronicle, October 14, 1988), and the film has "heart...and a touch of sweetness" (The Daily Morning News), but more than that, it serves as a statement against the times it was made. It sees revenge as a wrong doubled; not as a wrong corrected.

Pumpkinhead 2: Blood Wings (1994) drags the premise of Pumpkinhead down to cartoonish levels, maintaining the universality of the material but at the expense of the intellectual themes. Here, a deformed boy, Tommy, is actually the son of a demon and a witch, and is conjured as Pumpkinhead to murder the brutes who killed him years ago, in 1958. In this film, Pumpkinhead is actually diverted from his blood quest by reason; by a heart-felt speech from a sympathetic law man, Braddock (Andrew Robinson). Although this unexpected climax saves the innocent damsel in distress (Ami Dolenz), it betrays a core human truth: vengeance does not sleep with reason. On the contrary, they are strangers to one another. Vengeance is a desire of the angry heart; reason a construct of the rational mind. Once engaged, vengeance cannot so easily be disengaged. In other words, it's hard to believe that Vengeance Personified would be swayed from his bloody mission by a well-delivered plea. Indeed, if this were the case, Ed Harley -- our protagonist in the original film -- would not have had to lay down his life to stop Pumpkinhead. So in some way, this sequel -- for all the good intentions -- only serves to diminish and undercut the original film.

Shakespeare wrote that "The rarer action is /In virtue than in vengeance." (The Tempest, Act V: Scene I), a plea for people to forgive their enemies rather than punish them. It's human nature, perhaps to hate those who hurt us, but Pumpkinhead is a reminder that revenge actually solves nothing. In preferring this moral point with archetypal clarity, Pumpkinhead serves ably as modern American folklore, not to mention cautionary tale.

CULT TV FLASHBACK # 92: Werewolf (1987 - 1988)

"There are those who believe...and those who will..."

-- early ad line for the TV series Werewolf (1987 - 1988)

Well, I'm suffering from the flu right now (for the second time this season...), so I am going to leave today's Brian De Palma retrospective installment for next Friday when I (hopefully...) can do it justice.

Instead, I'm going to present this piece that I have been working on all week: a look back at a terrific horror TV series that I'm not watching, primarily because the official DVD has been canceled due to a stupid tussle over music rights.

On July 11, 1987, a new network called Fox aired the first installment of a horror series called Werewolf. It was created by the appropriately named Frank Lupo, and it featured on a weekly basis Rick Baker''s and Greg Cannom's remarkable man-to-wolf transformation effects; much like those seen in 1981's An American Werewolf in London.

The series -- which ran for twenty-nine half-hour installments -- depicted the tragic destiny of Eric Cord (John J York) a typical American college student who, one day, learned that his roommate, Ted, was a werewolf. Eric himself became a werewolf after being bitten by Ted. He skipped out on his trial (for the murder of Ted), and -- like a latter day version of Dr. Richard Kimball -- went out in pursuit of Captain Janos Skorzeny (Chuck Connors), the one-eyed man whom Ted believed had turned him into a werewolf (by bite...) the previous summer. Only by severing the original bloodline, by killing the brutish Skorzeny, could Eric hope to return to a normal life and end his curse. Meanwhile, he was pursued across the country by a half-Indian bounty hunter named Alamo Joe (Lance Le Gault).

On Werewolf, Eric always knew when the metamorphosis to wolf man was impending because a bloody pentagram formed like a scarlet letter on the palm of his left hand. The only thing that could kill the werewolf was a silver bullet, and Eric's lycanthropic cycle was not tied to the full moon. The series often featured werewolf-vs.-werewolf fights.

Critics were not too pleased with Werewolf. Rolling Stone said it was basically "The Incredible Hulk with a body Afro" and noted that "York is treated to every form of humiliation...you wonder when some grizzled yokel cradling a shotgun will walk up to him..and say 'Boy, you sure got a pretty mouth." ("Terror By Mattel," May 5, 1988, page 32).

The New York Times opined that the series pilot was "slow, turgid and self-conscious," ("Werewolf on Channel 5," July 10, 1987) while Variety noted that "what is missing...is the vitality, chilling fun and imagination of those 1940s Lon Chaney Jr. films." (July 15, 1987, page 50).

I disagree, for the most part, with these slams. Looking back, Werewolf boasted some intriguing distinctions. For one thing, it was one of the rare prime time horror series (at that time) to feature regular characters, a continuing storyline...and even the inkling of a story arc. Before Werewolf, I can think of only two such series off-hand: The Sixth Sense (1972) and Kolchak: The Night Stalker (1974-1975). Dark Shadows did it on afternoon television too, but that was a different ball game. Other horror efforts that had been prominent and well-received (the likes of Night Gallery, Ghost Story, The Evil Touch, Darkroom, Tales from the Darkside, etc.), were all anthologies. Today we sort of take this accomplishment for granted, post-Buffy, post-X-Files, post-Twin Peaks but it's no small matter. Werewolf attempted to forge an internally consistent world with "rules" and consistent characters when such an effort was not the norm.

Also, Werewolf exhibited a legitimate sense of danger (if not outright terror...) on a weekly basis. Again, no small feat. Even though Eric Cord (York) was our handsome, young lead, he seemed generally imperiled and overwelmed by his situation. Accordingly, the world of Werewolf was unpredictable, dark, and constantly changing. Mid-way through the series, for instance, Cord learned that Janos Skorzeny (named after the vampire in the TV-movie The Night Stalker) was not the head of the bloodline after all. On the contrary, it was a powerful yuppie tyrant (think Ted Turner or Donald Trump) named Nicholas Remy (Brian Thompson) who was the real head werewolf. The overwhelming sense of unpredictability and danger was also heightened by the very thing that has now kept Werewolf off our DVD shelves: a revolutionary, unconventional, hard-pounding rock score.

It's tempting to gaze at Werewolf and dismiss it as a "man on the run series" like The Fugitive, The Phoenix, The Immortal, Starman, or indeed, The Incredible Hulk. But here's the thing about those shows: for the most part, life on the run seemed pretty easy. The leads were often well-coiffed, comfortable-looking, and seemed to have the money to get from one place to another.

By contrast, on Werewolf, Cord grew dirtier, scuzzier and more-emaciated the longer the show continued. He went from Izod-wearing preppy boy to homeless, crazy-eyed derelict. He was forced to beg for food and money in an episode called "Amazing Grace," a fact which reflected the uptick in America's homeless at the tail end of the Reagan Era (when the president noted callously that many of them were actually "homeless by choice.") I remember that Eric bedded down in a train car with bums in one episode ("King of the Road,") and spent all night in a bus depot in another ("Nightmare at the Braine Hotel"). The result was that this was no typical glamorous TV trip. As I wrote in my review of the series for Terror Television (2001), even the extras cast on Werewolf appeared scruffy and menacing. Thus there was this atmosphere of a seamy, unfriendly America; one existing just underneath the "don't worry be happy" surface.

What I also appreciated about Werewolf was the manner in which the series was willing to let go of The Fugitive-style format when necessary. In other words, the program frequently discovered ways to be innovative within the contexts of format limitations. For instance, Alamo Joe's history was studied in depth during an episode called "A World of Difference." Remy's and Skorzeny's long histories were also excavated in various installments. Forecasting myth-heavy efforts such as Highlander, Forever Knight, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and other modern series, Werewolf explored the notion that monsters carry long legacies from the past into the present.

When Werewolf was bad, it was because formula and TV convention simply overtook the series' better instincts. We could have all lived without the episode in which Eric helped a cute old Lady escape from a cruel nursing home ("Amazing Grace") or "Nothing Evil in These Woods" in which he predictably fell in love with a sexy new age witch. And sure, it was awfully convenient that Eric would always transform into a werewolf just when those werewolf abilities could do some good and he could defend/save/rescue the "good" guest star of the week.

Still, given the late-1980s vintage, Werewolf often played like Miami Vice on acid, and the series would frequently strike this trance-like groove of pounding rock music and startling, music-video era imagery. Non-linear story lines (the kind you'd see in Jackie Brown [1997] or Out of Sight [1998]) were featured from time-to-time (before they were cliches...) and some episodes felt positively avant garde in the dedicated use of bizarre symbols and cryptic characters. And remember, this was pre-Twin Peaks (1991).

When Werewolf hit these spiky chords -- like a drug trip gone bad; like a sleazy Sid and Nancy (1986) horror venture dominated by startling imagery -- it was truly a great, even trail-blazing series. A unique and memorable fusion of genre horror mythology, rock music and TV conventions, Werewolf may have begun life as Fugitive rip-off but it quickly transformed itself into something monstrously entertaining.

And it's about bloody time we got to see it on DVD.