CULT MOVIE REVIEW: Open Water (2004)

Amidst all the recent buzz generated by the low-budget Paranormal Activity (2009), I began contemplating another low-budget horror initiative of the 2000s; one that attempted the same alchemy (at least to some degree...), and also met with financial success. Yet this "other" movie has virtually been forgotten these days...

I refer to Open Water, a venture that cost a little over $100,000 to produce and which, like Paranormal Activity was also widely compared to The Blair Witch Project in terms of genesis, production, marketing, and even cost. After American and international theatrical release, Open Water grossed somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 million dollars....making it an unqualified hit. There was even a DTV sequel in 2006.

Shot on digital video, the original Open Water was a fictionalized account of a harrowing real-life incident. In 1998, an American couple was accidentally abandoned at sea by a commercial scuba diving boat following an incorrect head count.

That leaping-off point doesn't sound anything like Paranormal Activity, I readily acknowledge, but I suppose the association was triggered for me when I recalled that Open Water also featured, essentially, a cast of two (a man and a woman), focused intently on our use of and over-dependence on modern technology, and, finally, concluded in grim, unrelenting terms.

Directed by Chris Kentis, Open Water (like Paranormal Activity) depicts the routine of a very modern, very professional, very youthful American couple, Daniel (Daniel Travis) and Susan (Blanchard Ryan). They've ceded too much of their lives to all-consuming careers. When the couple needs a respite from incessantly ringing cell phones and e-mail, Daniel and Susan steal away on vacation to the Caribbean.

Ironically, when the exhausted Dan and Susan get to the islands, they don't relax. Instead, they fill every iota of free time planning expensive, colorful excursions, including a scuba diving trip. But once on the dive, a simple mistake results in the heretofore unimaginable: Daniel and Susan are left behind by their diving boat!

Adrift together in a turbulent, endless sea -- with night falling and sharks circling ever closer -- Daniel and Susan start countenancing the incomprehensible truth. No cell phones are available to call for help. No e-mail can type out a distress message. No rescue infrastructure, bureaucracy or "mommy" government will pluck them from the immediate and mortal danger. The easy, automatic, nay thoughtless technological "connectedness" of their daily lives proves an illusion in nature. And out here -- in the swallowing, hungry sea -- they have only each other to hold onto.

The majority of Open Water's scant seventy-nine minute running time is indeed spent at sea, featuring endless, vertigo-producing ocean-level shots of the couple coping with their horrible circumstance. Dan and Susan grow hungry. Fish nip at their legs. They vomit. They urinate. They fall asleep. They clutch at life, and, finally, to each other. It's a chronicle of unceasing agony...a hell on Earth.

The authentic location, the naturalism of the nearby threat (no CGI or mechanical sharks here...just the real thing...) and the capable hand-held camera work weave a more-than-sufficient tapestry of dread. This isn't a movie to watch dispassionately, it's one to experience almost literally as a participant. Those eye-level shots put you in the water too; so that you can almost feel the endless, merciless lapping of the waves.

Yet Open Water also remains an effective horror film because of the template that forms the bedrock of its simple narrative. This movie -- with such spare aesthetics and a blunt depiction of the worst no-win scenario imaginable -- intriguingly mimics Elisabeth Kubler-Ross's famous "five stages of death and dying."

Basically, Kubler-Ross's theory is that in facing mortality, human beings transition through a series of developments or stages. Open Water walks the audience through these five stages, as our protagonists attempt to come to terms with their fate in the pounding, eternal ocean. In other words, the movie -- once it hits the water -- is about preparing for the inevitable.

In accordance with the first stage of death and dying, at first, there is complete denial on the part of these tech-savvy, over-scheduled Americans. Daniel stubbornly clings to the hope that they will be miraculously rescued. In fact, he doesn't even swim towards another boat that is visible on the horizon because he believes so fervently that their diving vessel will recognize the mistake and return to the exact spot where it left them. Needless to say, that doesn't occur.

After a time, anger swallows-up denial. Splashing his hands in the water like a petulant child, Daniel bellows at the top of his lungs and throws a temper tantrum. He is bitter that they "paid" for this experience, the opportunity, essentially, to die at the mercy of the sharks. This too is a subtly funny comment on modern Americans, I suspect. Daniel seems more upset that the company took his money than that he is going to die. Soon.

Daniel and Susan then argue a lot, and she blames him for their crisis. This is her encounter with anger. He remained underwater looking at fish for too long, she complains, and that's why the boat left. It's always nice to be able to blame someone else, isn't it?

Ross's third stage of death and dying is bargaining. So Susan and Daniel talk about how -- if only they could just return to their comfortable life in front of the television and the Discovery Channel -- they wouldn't be so foolish as to entertain a venture like this again. They stepped out of their natural habitat (a technological one, interestingly), and have paid the price.

Shortly, the fourth stage, depression, sets in on our unlucky protagonists.. The doomed couple realizes that no one is coming to rescue them and that this is, indeed, how they are going to die. Here. Today. Now. No TV, Hollywood bullshit. No last minute cavalry coming over the hill.

Ross's fifth and final stage -- acceptance -- is at last broached. In one of the most coldly realistic, unflinching and horrifying scenes I've ever seen in a horror movi, Susan analytically accepts the reality of her situation. This protagonist makes a choice that is carefully weighed as a better option than being eaten by sharks. Our final survivor dips below the sea on purpose...and willingly drowns. With Daniel gone (eaten), Susan lets the ocean take her under...and away from life.

Open Water follows the Ross-style transition from one stage of death and dying to the next stage, from denial all the way through acceptance. The movie climaxes only when all five stages have been adequately vetted, and this structure grants the horror film a kind of artistic completeness and intellect that is all too rare in the American cinema today. It rings scarily true.

I still recall leaving the theater after Open Water feeling discomforted and troubled. The movie doesn't blink, doesn't retreat from the reality of the horrifying scenario, and there is no sunlight to part the dark clouds. Instead, the film reminds us that we don't control our fate. Something as simple and ultimately as meaningless as a mistake — a frigging arithmetic error — could impact our very lives. It's a horrifying thought, and one that we have all considered, no matter how briefly, after the terror we saw on 9/11. And this thematic terrain makes Open Water a profound statement about the human condition today.

Paranormal Activity features a couple in a similarly harrowing situation (only dealing with demonic possession), and it makes a comment about our dependence and fascination with technology -- and the belief that technology somehow barricades us from danger. But Open Water is a more hardcore, believable, natural and ultimately moving variation on the same theme: Our American Any Couple -- confident and affluent -- realizes that life isn't as secure as it seems.

Paranormal Activity made a lot of "best horror films of the decade" recently, while Open Water made relatively few or none. I suspect that's because Paranormal Activity has more fun with the premise; and because it lingers on things that aren't real (like demons). It ultimately gives us gimmicky horror touches that we can discount as fake: CGI demon faces and harness stunt work. Open Water relies on no such trickery. It is nihilistic in the extreme and doesn't tread into the supernatural. That might make it too strong a film for some.

Da Vinci once stated that water is the driver of nature. In Open Water, water is the medium that drives our human nature. How do we face inevitable death? Denial? Anger? Bargaining? Depression? Acceptance? Open Water is a brilliant horror film and a great character piece because there's something universal in Susan and Daniel's progression through Kubler-Ross's gauntlet of mortality. We recognize the steps.

And we fear them. For after acceptance...oblivion.

CULT MOVIE REVIEW: Home Sweet Home (1980)

"A little craziness never hurt anyone..."

- Dialogue from Home Sweet Home (1980)

In honor of the approaching holiday, today I'm looking back at a really terrible horror film that I first encountered while writing Horror Films of the 1980s (2007).

Conveniently, it's both Thanksgiving-themed and a turkey.

Advertised with the ad-line "The Bradleys won't be leaving home. Ever," Home Sweet Home (1981) is the not-so-riveting story of a deranged serial killer and his holiday rampage.

Said serial killer is portrayed by Body by Jake's (1988) gleeful Jake Steinfeld. The enthusiastic exercise guru -- also known for his music label, "Don't Quit Music" -- plays this muscular madman as a cackling, bulging-eyed freak. This looney killer has the tattoo "home sweet home" emblazoned on his fist, and was incarcerated for eight years over the bludgeoning death of his parents.

In one of the film's first scenes, this hyperactive, super-fit killer takes PCP by injecting it into his tongue, guns his car engine rowdily, and then runs over a little old lady crossing the street.

Lots of maniacal, silent-movie-style, villlainous cackling over that. Unfortunately, Jake has no moustache to twirl.

Meanwhile, at a Southern California ranch, the unconventional Bradley family is preparing for a holiday that may or may not be Thanksgiving. Let's see: there's a turkey. There's a celebratory meal. There's a family gathering. And there are guests. But no one mentions Turkey Day by name. The VHS box does it for us.

Anyway -- for some reason -- the obnoxious Bradley son, charmingly named "Mistake," is dressed as a mime for the occasion. He's a practical joke-playing mime, no less. And did I mention, Mistake also dabbles in the electric guitar?

Unfortunately, the mime is one of the last characters to die in Home Sweet Home, meaning the audience must endure Mistake's lame antics for a very long time before the movie arrives at his fateful, and wholly-deserved electrocution.

The holiday meal with the Bradley family promises to be an unusual one too, not just because Mistake is a mime and because an uninvited serial killer is on his way, but because one of the invitees "won't drink anything," since "she hates to go to the bathroom." WTF? You know, I don't particularly like going to the bathroom either. I think I'll stop drinking too. I didn't realize it was that simple...

And did I mention that some crack cops are on the case, investigating the murders and pursuing the body-builder killer? The classy cops gawk at one character's overripe breasts after stopping her for speeding, and share this colloquy:

"Did you see that chick with the big bazooms?"

Since Home Sweet Home is incompetently shot, written and acted, one might hope that the violence Jake ultimately inflicts on the Bradley family would at least prove entertaining. But it isn't (well, except for the death of the mime, to be fair...). One character dies when she falls over and cracks her head against a rock. Can you really blame Ole Jack for that? Another character gets his head crushed under the hood of a car.

Home Sweet Home exhibits the familiar flaw of the worst slasher films, meaning that the killer is always positioned right where he should be in order to kill the one character who happens to be left alone at any given moment. You might accept that level of expertise from a Michael Myers or a Jason...but by Jake Steinfeld? I just can't ascribe supernatural abilities to this guy. Enthusiasm, gung-ho inspiration, yes. Boogeyman capabilities...no.

Mere words can't truly convey how irrevocably horrible this movie is. So Happy Thanksgiving, caveat emptor, and...gobble, gobble.

And The Worst Horror Film Remake So Far Is...?

...Wes Craven Presents Carnival of Souls.

The original Carnival of Souls (1962) was a one-of-a-kind experience. Forged on a tiny budget in the middle of nowhere Kansas, it was undeniably crude. Yet the film by Herk Harvey was surreal and creepy too; a mesmerizing, unsettling journey into a disturbing, black-and-white netherworld.

In my review of the film, I wrote:

"Performances in Carnival of Souls are truly variable, from the exquisite and sublime (the entrancing Hilligoss) to the terrible (there's a moment when a stranger by a water fountain addresses the camera directly), but there's an alchemy at work in Carnival of Souls, one impossible to dismiss.

The film's production deficits somehow manage to play into the overriding sense of the unreal and dream-like. There are no zombie attacks, no fierce action sequences, no bouts of blood-letting here. Instead, the venture methodically and memorably (and with unforgettable imagery) charts one woman's tragic plight as she slips slowly - piece by piece - from the world of the living to the world of the dead. In that half-detected twilight between life and death, she begins to regret that she never embraced life as meaningfully as she should have. Because now, death's cold embrace - a dance partner in the carnival of souls - is all she can look forward to.

The 1960s Carnival of Souls had budgetary drawbacks but viewers could easily overlook them because the film nonetheless expressed something powerful and resonant about mortality. That abandoned Saltair Carnival was a realm of terror, and our heroine was never going to escape it; no matter how hard she tried. Ultimately, we're all going to have our dance card punched by Death too; and thus something rings true about the stark, mysterious film and the hopeless, inevitable air that dominates it.

The same could not be said for the dreadful 1998 remake. It stars Bobbie Phillips as Alex Grant, a young woman who witnessed the murder of her mother twenty years ago by an abusive clown, Louis Seagram (Larry Miller). On the anniversary of her Mom's murder, Alex is accosted by Louis once more, and she drives her car into the waters of a California harbor rather than let the sadist endanger her younger sister, Sandra (Shawnee Smith). Following the accident in the harbor, Alex begins to move throughout different stages of her life, is terrorized by Louis repeatedly, and even sees gesticulating, spasming demons straight out of Jacob's Ladder (1990).

Technically-speaking, Wes Craven Presents Carnival of Souls is a much less-accomplished effort than the original film, an odd fact given that the remake undoubtedly cost far more than Herk Harvey's groundbreaking original. In fact, this 1998 film is staged so ineptly that sometimes reverse angles don't even match. And the characters are so often shot in in close-up and medium-shot that you can't tell where characters are positioned in relationship to each other. One scene that features Louis popping up in the back-seat of Alex's car is so badly composed and edited that you aren't even sure that Miller and Phillips were in the same car at the same time to shoot the scene. Additionally, the movie is over-lit and blandly shot in a style that makes your average Sci-Fi Original Movies look like Fellini.

The newer Carnival of Souls also boasts all the tell-tale marks of bad 1990s screen-writing. In the original film, we met a character who happened to be in a car wreck, but the audience knew little about her background. As the movie went on, we learned she was a bit of a cold fish, and that she had held a job as a church organist. But we came to sympathize with her through her experiences; through the strange events occurring all around her. We identified with her because something strange and terrible was happening to her; and because, we felt, it could happen to us too.

By contrast, the 1998 film layers on facile psychology and off-the-shelf characters (in much the style as Rob Zombie's Halloween remake, actually...). Alex is a "psychologically damaged" character with "a tragic past" she must overcome. The events of the film take place on the anniversary of her Mother's murder...the event she could never get past. How many times have we seen that kind of predictable set-up before?

The Boogeyman of Carnival of Souls this time around has changed too. He is not some wide-eyed, pale-faced personification of Death, but rather Alex's "personal" demon: the groping, gruesome and utterly obvious Louis. The focus on the inner life -- on mortality itself -- has been turned outward to the simple defeat of a two-dimensional "bad guy" the audience can hiss at. Certainly, a good film could be made from these concepts, but this isn't it. These changes only make Carnival of Souls much more two-dimensional, much more run-of-the-mill than the original film.

The 1998 film is also slathered with dopey New Age, touchy-feely dialogue about death. Alex shares a discussion with a man who might be an angel. He tells her, "It's time to let go." She replies "I can't. I haven't lived yet." At another point, during a discussion of closing down her bar (The Mermaid Bar), Alex tells her sister "I'm not ready to go." Sandra replies "I know, but you're closer than you think." Welcome to Foreshadowing 101. But once more, the whole concept of the original film is undercut because death is now a safe harbor, a peaceful zone...not a realm of the unknown and the terrifying. I suppose this change has occurred so that the film can end with a kind of happy ending: our heroine has beaten the bad guy, "achieved" the rescue of her sister, and moved on to a "good place."

This movie should have been titled Horrorway to Heaven.

Really, I could go on and on about what a lousy film this is. There's a gratuitous sex scene on a boat that pops up out of nowhere with bizarre urgency but then leads nowhere. And the movie constantly skips time frames -- back and forth between scenes -- thus negating even the most rudimentary sense of narrative momentum (and precluding the need for that pesky thing called "continuity.")

And rather ungraciously, Wes Craven Presents Carnival of Souls even fails to credit the original 1962 film as a source of inspiration. There's no "based on" opening credit here, despite the fact that the overall outline of the film is the same as the original (a woman dies and doesn't know it...) and despite the fact that certain shots are explicitly re-staged (the car pulled from the water...). The IMDB lists John Clifford, the writer of the original Carnival of Souls in the credits for this film, but I watched this film yesterday and his name is nowhere on the front of the film. The opening credit reads: written for the screen and directed by Adam Grossman.

Bottom line: Wes Craven Presents Carnival of Souls is a bad remake, and an arrogant one too. It has the audacity to adopt the title of a beloved older film but then substitutes weak ideas for the powerful ones of the original. A remake of Carnival of Souls need not have been slavishly imitative of the original, but it could have captured at least some of the ambiguity, some of the terror, some of the spikiness of the 1962 effort. This remake fails on all fronts.

I'm a big admirer of Wes Craven, but I sure as hell wish his name didn't appear before the title of this travesty, the lousiest of horror remakes.

What were my other contenders for that title? Next in line: the remake of The Hitcher (2007), and Jan De Bont's The Haunting (1999).

Of Men, Morality and Microwaves: A Trip Back to The Last House on the Left

Writer/director Wes Craven created The Last House on The Left (1972) as a "Generation Gap" Era re-interpretation of the 1960 Ingmar Bergman film, Jungfrukallan (or The Virgin Spring), an Academy Award winner for best foreign film. Going back further, you can trace the film’s violent tale to a twelfth-century Swedish ballad sometimes known as “Töre's daughter in Vänge."

There are some two-dozen variations of this particular ballad, but all versions are built upon the bloody pillars of rape and revenge. The story also involves the destruction of innocence or purity, and the moral price of vengeance.

The filmed versions of "Töre's daughter in Vänge" all feature a relatively affluent doctor, his innocent young daughter, and the violent, unwashed “herdsmen” who -- after raping and murdering the girl -- arrive at the doctor’s home to stay the night. In the end, after learning of his daughter’s death or suffering, the doctor exacts bloody and righteous vengeance against the murderers.

The three celluloid versions of this long-lived story offer starkly different interpretations of the ballad. Bergman's take is overtly religious and redemptive. Craven's "God is Dead," Manson-era take seeks morality in a universe totally absent the Divine. And the post-Bush/Obama era version of Last House on the Left offers a sort of "let's turn the page" approach to morality; leaving us to draw conclusions for ourselves after we have witnessed horrific, cruel, pre-meditated violence.

"You See It and You Allow It:" Violence and Faith in The Virgin Spring

Bergman’s The Virgin Spring explicitly concerns faith. Indeed, the tragic incident from start to finish may even be interpreted as a "test of faith" for Dr. Tore, played by Max Von Sydow.

He wonders why God permits such atrocities in the world of man. “You see it and you allow it! The innocent child’s death and my revenge…you allowed it! I don’t understand you!” he laments near the film’s conclusion.

Tore searches for meaning in the death of his beloved child, Karin (Birgitta Pettersson); but also in his own blood-thirsty, violent actions. He is a faithful servant…so why was he punished in this cruel fashion? Why was his dignity -- his sense of civilization -- stripped from him? Was he right to act so barbarously?

Mareta (Birgitta Valberg), Tore’s wife, believes that the innocent child was taken from the family because the parents loved and adored the beautiful Karin more than they worshipped and honored Christ. In other words, the parents were punished for not putting their love of God first. A shaken Dr. Tore swears to erect a church in the very spot in the forest that his daughter died; a kind of testament to the Mystery of Faith.

God rewards the tortured, doubting Tore. The Supreme Being miraculously creates a bubbling spring at the very idyllic location where Karin died; a sign that Tore’s continued faith is justified; and that his violent actions were justified too. Tore sees his faith restored by this miracle. A rapturous, high-angle shot reveals the creation of the virgin spring, and Tore’s awe at God’s wisdom and power.

An affirmation of religion (specifically Christianity), The Virgin Spring suggests that God forgives even the most atrocious acts of violence…if only the perpetrator is faithful. Tore may never have all his answers (God moves in mysterious ways), but the doctor can satisfy himself that God exists...and that God has heard him; and that he remains the Lord's servant.

Brilliantly and artfully crafted, Bergman’s version of "Tore’s Daughter" may boast a darker, more sinister interpretation too, especially given our times. The film seems to suggest that after committing heinous violence, the self-righteous will be rewarded with a miracle, and more than that, even be granted certainty of the existence of the Divine...something most human beings are denied on this mortal coil.

Today, we see doctors murdered for performing legal operations, terrorists bombing innocent civilians, and nations launching into bloody war...all over personally-held beliefs or delusions that “God is on their side.” Religion thus becomes the excuse for ideological and literal warfare. Here we see the same thing on a smaller, more intimate scale: bloody vengeance is deemed okay, and forgiven...if one is devout.

The Road Leads To Nowhere And the Castle Stays the Same: The Last House on The Left (1972)

Wes Craven re-interpreted The Virgin Spring and "Tore’s Daughter in Vange" for The Last House on The Left, his widely-despised debut film.

The New York Times reviewer walked out of the film (with an hour still to go) and called it “sickening tripe,” (December 22, 1972). Even Danny Peary, author of Cult Movies decried the film as a “sick sexual fantasy” and “an incitement to violence.” (Delacorte Press, 1981, page 348).

In The Last House on The Left, young Mari Collingwood (Sandra Cassel) -- the equivalent of the Karin character -- is raped and killed by the sociopath Krug (David Hess). Her path intersected with Krug's while she was trying to score some weed on the way to a rock concert performance (by a popular group called "Bloodlust.") In The Virgin Spring, Karin had been on her way to "lighting candles" for Christ, to honor his suffering, when attacked. The distinction, of course, is critical. Mari is a self-involved modern teen of the Peace Generation; not a devout supplicant like Karin. Craven has thus stripped the religious veneer from the tale. But importantly, he has not stripped the moral underpinnings of the ballad. On the contrary, he has actually augmented them.

Although Mari prays to (an absent) God before she is murdered -- in a harrowing scene staged in almost identical fashion to Karin’s rape and murder in The Virgin Spring -- there is no salvation for her or redemption for her fallen parents here. Unlike the Tores in The Virgin Spring, Dr. Collingwood (Gaylord St James) and his wife in the 1972 Last House on the Left are not enlightened in the finale by the existence of God, or by a comforting awareness of Divine Method. Rather, they are left totally isolated in their shattered, middle-class living room, surrounded by the blood of villains. The camera does not majestically swoop heavenward to give the impression of God’s support; or even presence.

Instead, by freeze-framing on the shattered Collingwoods in the final (close-up) shot of The Last House on the Left, Craven reveals the futility of bloodshed and retribution in a way that the spiritually uplifting finale of The Virgin Spring does not. Very simply, the film ends on the face of two shattered people. They have been as violent and brutal as Krug and his fellow attackers (Sadie and Weasel)...and their daughter is still dead. They have achieved nothing...except the lowering of themselves to barbarism; to the level of the criminals who were so monstrous. They have survived; they have prevailed...but now they don't even know who -- or what -- they are.

On the soundtrack, a song entitled "The Road Leads to Nowhere" (composed and performed by David Hess) plays, and the title itself (also a lyric featured in the body of the pieces) expresses the futility of all the violence portrayed in the film. Despite the brutality, despite the revenge completed, "the castle stays the same," meaning that nothing changes. Mari remains dead and God does not right that wrong because the Collingwoods have "won." The subtext of the film is simple: as bad as the low class Krug and his compatriots are...the affluent, middle-class Collingwoods are really no better.

There's a fascinating moment in Last House on The Left, when Krug, Sadie and Weasel all pause by the lake, following the rape and murder of Mari (and her friend, here named Phyllis). For a brief instant, the criminals are silent. And they actually appear chastened. As if, for one fleeting instant...they have awareness of what they are; what they have done. At the end of the film, the Collingwoods kill with comparative abandon and glee. Mrs. Collingwood even bites off Weasel's penis while giving him head (a macabre touch not retained in the remake). The "respectable" Collingwoods seem to have no recognition of what they've done...not until that "freeze frame" captures them in the hell of their own making; in the aftermath of a bloodbath. In both these moments, violence is not championed, not even in the name of retribution. The opposite is true.

Why is The Last House on the Left so reviled by so many, so despised? In part because it accomplishes the unthinkable and the totally unsavory: it treats violence as real...and horrible. Most films, even great horror films, treat violence in a "tolerable" way, meaning that we may be frightened by the scary images...but we're not, ultimately, undone or debauched by them. Movie decorum keeps "the horror of violence" at an acceptable distance from our psyches..

Not so Last House on the Left. After titillating the audience with early glimpses of the comely Mari in the shower, arousing lascivious interest, Craven turns the table on his audience and stages a brutal, affecting, prolonged, utterly monstrous rape. He lingers there. The scene goes on and on until you feel sick to your stomach watching. Again, this is Craven's desired manipulation: he makes you thirst for the blood of Krug, Sadie and Weasel right along with Mari's parents. Your anger is justified and righteous. We identify with the Collingwoods. With their loss, with their pain. We want the bad guys to suffer too.

But then, there you are, at the end of the film -- having wallowed in the violence with the Collingwoods. And you don't feel good about it. You feel - like the Collingwood's in that traumatized, valedictory freeze frame -- ashamed . The Collingwoods have stooped to Krug's level and gotten their revenge...but what's left? The road leads to nowhere. Violence, while perhaps satisfying on first impulse, ultimately solves nothing. Forged during the time of the Vietnam War, Craven's Last House on the Left is perhaps the ultimate anti-violence, anti-war film. It doesn't romanticize violence, and furthermore, decries violence even when the situation is an archetypal Biblical "Eye-for-an-Eye" setting. It's ironic that Last House on the Left is constantly attacked as being an incitement to violence, when nothing could be further from the truth. It's just that -- as movie goers and perhaps even as critics -- we prefer our violence palatable...not authentically disturbing.

"Are You Ready to Be A Man?" The Last House on the Left (2009)

The remake of Last House on the Left (2009) makes a number of interesting and telling modifications to the Swedish ballad and original story of "Tore's Daughter."

In this cinematic version alone, for instance, the doctor's daughter -- again named Mari (Sara Paxton) -- survives the attack. Her survival removes some of "anger" that, theoretically, Dr. Collingwood should feel. His victimization, in other words, is not as severe.

Also, the leader of the "herdsmen" or thugs, Krug (Garret Dillahunt) is defined more in the terms of being one of Craven's "Bad Fathers," than in the original film. This Krug is almost constantly seen goading his son into violent action; telling him to cowboy up and be a man. Even the rape of Mari here seems to stem more from Krug's cruelty to his son than his own feelings of sexual desire. The point, I believe, is the cycle of violence: the passing of "abuse" from one generation to another.

Also, alone among the filmed versions of the tale, Dr. Collingwood in this film (Tony Goldwyn) gets to utilize his skills as a physician.

Some of these changes in the "Tore's Daughter" template are just superficial; and some run far, far deeper. For instance, in the last act of the remake, Dr. Collingwood stabilizes his badly-wounded daughter and plans to escape in a boat (and get her to a hospital alongside his wife). With the aid of Mrs. Collingwood (Monica Potter) and Krug's son, Justin (Spencer Treat Clark), Dr. Collingwood also incapacitates Krug, eliminating any and all immediate danger..

But instead of simply escaping -- or killing Krug in the heat of a kill-or-be-killed moment (as was the case in the Craven version) -- this Dr. Collingwood takes his time and, with extensive pre-meditation, plans for the torture and death of Krug utilizing a malfunctioning microwave oven. In other words, this is no longer a case of flight or fight. Mari is safe. Krug is down for the count. But Collingwood -- a man sworn to protect life -- nonetheless breaks his oath and engineers a complex plan (involving a delicate surgery...) to kill Krug. Here's how I see this: Were my loved ones attacked and in jeopardy, I would certainly respond violently in the moment...perhaps even murderously...to protect them. But, were my wife and daughter attacked, and the situation safely ameliorated, I can't imagine I would respond by engineering -- over a sustained period of time -- a brutal surgery and torture scheme. That goes beyond preservation of self and family. That's...extreme sadism.

There are two ways to read this alteration in the tale. Either this is a pander-fest to the modern audience, ostensibly a bread-and-circuses demographic, who demand Krug's blood and want him to suffer in a horrifying way. Or, as I believe, this is a comment on our post-9/11 age, just as Craven's version commented on the 1970s. Yes, we were brutally attacked in September 2001 and three thousand Americans died horrible deaths and the terrorists were EVIL. But The Iraq War occurred in 2003, the torture at Abu Ghraib happened in 2004, and over 101,000 Iraqis are now dead in the year 2009. Exactly when, you might rightly ask, do we get to stop avenging 9/11 with a free conscience? Exactly when does the "heat of the moment" of 9/11 fade away, and reason...and restraint...and LAW set in? We were right to strike back against those who hurt us and killed our loved ones...but how long do we continue striking back against enemies with moral impunity before we are the ones provoking a new cycle of violence?

In the 2009 version of The Last House on the Left, Dr. Collingwood expresses not one recrimination about his actions; and that's also the official take of our government, even today. President Obama wants to "turn the page" on American moral abuses of the Bush Years...thus leaving them unaddressed and unpunished. That's also the state in which we leave Dr. Collingwood. Mari (like America) is safe and sound, but he (like our nation) hasn't yet looked in the mirror and faced the consequences of his bloody actions. That needs to happen. For him and for us.

This is a fascinating change in the enduring Swedish original. In the past, Dr. Tore and Dr. Collingwood responded to violence with savagery, but it was always in the passion of the moment. And they had motives we sympathized with: the death of the daughter. Here, this Dr. Collingwood has time for reflection, time for pause, and his daughter yet lives. And despite time, despite the survival of his daughter, Collingwood still knowingly and mercilessly fries Krug's brain in a microwave.

He doesn't feel bad about it...and in this case -- I hate to say it -- that makes the Tore character worse than the despicable Krug. Because this Krug, like his previous incarnation, at least experiences that moment of humanity by the lake in which he realizes that he's a monster. This Dr. Collingwood still thinks he's a doctor and an upright citizen. He marches on...but his violence is left unaddressed. And Krug, for all his brutal crimes, clearly didn't set out one morning to hurt Mari or Page...he happened upon them...and his brutal nature asserted itself. That assertion doesn't take him off the hook for his crimes in any way, but they were crimes of opportunity. By contrast, Collingwood is the only character in the movie who plots out and executes -- in detail -- a torturous death for another human being.

In some ways, this newest Last House on the Left is the most disturbing version of the tale yet produced. It doesn't find answers in God, like Bergman's version. Nor does it find answers in man's nature, like Craven's tale. Instead, it just punts moral judgment down the line. The 2009 Dr. Collingwood feels he was justified in the pre-meditated torture and murder of another human being because he was attacked first....and I suspect many modern viewers feel the same way.

"Bloodlust" isn't just the name of a rock group. And it's not a feeling limited merely to black hat bad guys, either. We can find it right here, dwelling in our very own neighborhoods. Just turn by the lake, and stop at the last house on the left...

The Vault of Horror Presents: The Horror Canon

The amazing B-Sol at The Vault of Horror recently tasked the Horror Cyber-Elite -- a veritable "Justice League" of horror bloggers -- to assemble selections for a Horror Canon.

As B-Sol describes the mission:

"My plan was to create a list of absolutely indispensable horror films that every fan needs to have seen in order to consider themselves a proper horror geek. This is not to be confused with "The Greatest of All Time." For example, Plan 9 from Outer Space would not be on my list of the greatest of all time, but I might very well consider it "must-see" viewing for any wannabe horror fanatic!"

"Think of it this way: If someone came to you and said, "I want to get into this whole horror thing, what movies do I need to see?" Which movies would you give them to watch?"

Check out the post in its entirety to see the Cyber-Horror Elite's tally of 35 films for inclusion in the Horror Canon!

To my delight, eight of my ten recommendations/suggestions made the final catalogue. As always, you may quibble with a specific title, or wonder about a particular omission, but I love these lists because they get the debate started, evoke passion, and foster further blogging. For instance, given the success of recent first-person/P.O.V. horrors like REC (2007) and Cloverfield (2008), I would have liked to see The Blair Witch Project (1999) make the Horror Canon, perhaps in lieu of some 2008 - 2009 films that may -- or may not -- stand the test of time.

Regardless of the titles ultimately chosen, it was an honor to be included in the selection process for The Horror Canon, and one of these days, I plan to post in detail about the films in the canon and why, indeed, they remain so important to a deeper understanding of the genre...

CULT MOVIE REVIEW: My Bloody Valentine 3-D (2009)

Before getting to the specifics of My Bloody Valentine 3-D (2009), let me get something important out of the way first: I enjoy and admire slasher films.

For one thing, I legitimately enjoy experiencing (and indeed, cataloguing...) the myriad twists in the sub-genre's excessively rigid, repetitive format. Because slasher movies tend to be so predictable (almost down to the minute), feature stock characters (the final girl, the Cassandra Figure, the jock, the bitch, the black friend...) and off-the-shelf situations (the cat-jump, the car-won't-start, the twist ending...), a clever filmmaker can inject real surprises -- not to mention shock -- with just a modicum of ingenuity. A slight shuffling of the deck can do wonders.

Just recall for a moment the final revelation of the original Sleepaway Camp (1983), if you need an evidence of a slasher movie curve ball that scales the heights of mad genius.

In addition, I appreciate the traditional, moralistic, thematic undercurrent of most slasher films (vice precedes slice-and-dice...). Whether we admit it or not, we're all judgmental of our fellow man under the skin, and we enjoy seeing the wicked punished and the good...survive.

I have even come to understand why we need slashers in our leisurely, all-too-routine lives. In this buttoned-down, contemporary society of plenty -- in which we don't even procure our own food -- the challenge of the celluloid, mythical super-predator is nearly impossible to resist.

Often connected explicitly with Mother Nature Herself, The Bogeymen Slashers (Jason, Michael, Freddy, Jason, Ghost Face, Harry Warden, etc.) boast powers and capabilities beyond those of mere mortals. Endowed with superior strength, resilient bodies, and the unerring (though also unexplained...) capacity to appear and disappear almost at will, always selecting the right victim at the right time in the process, the Masked Slasher is the superior human predator we don't (thankfully...) have in our real lives.

And in facing down a slasher -- even a mythical one in a scary movie -- audiences get to run the equivalent of a survival gauntlet; matching their wits and skills against the slasher's. Don't run down that hall! Don't fall for that red herring! Get out of the car! Call the police!

The best slasher films are even deeper. Is Michael Myers the bogeyman? Or a developmentally-arrested "child" who doesn't realize the real-life implications of his trick-or-treat games? Or could he be the physical embodiment of Laurie Strode's frustrated id? How about a Druidic avenger protecting his tribe by destroying selected members of said tribe on the eve of Samhain? John Carpenter's Halloween is open to all such interpretations (except, really, that last one...). But perhaps that fact is off message in this review. A good slasher film need not be great art. It just needs to scare us, surprise us, and feature a few ingenious curve balls in that road map of the paradigm.

I don't mean to cover territory that I've vetted here before (particularly in my review of Friday the 13th) but I believe it important to establish up front that I wasn't seeking high art or deep social meaning in My Bloody Valentine 3-D. I'm not a kill joy, a grouch, or a fool. What I sought, simply, was a good time being scared. A few jumps here. A few jolts there. You know...a cheap date for the discerning slasher fan.

But My Bloody Valentine 3-D never connects even on that simple, humble basis. I never thought I would actually have to write this, but all movies (yes, even slashers) must accomplish something basic if they wish to be successful in the slightest. They must forge a sense of verisimilitude; a surface plausibility that indicates the events of the film are actually occurring or actually could occur. There has to be enough "kitchen sink reality" in the film's set-up and execution so that our imaginations are successfully engaged for all the ensuing craziness. Start with the real, and then, once we believe, tread into the unreal or the super-real.

Most people forget it, but the original Friday the 13th film in 1980 featured this quality in spades. Cunningham's film did a more-than-credible job of setting up the environs of Camp Crystal Lake and the surrounding town. After the prologue, the film opened with shots of a babbling, idyllic brook, and a few views of the historic "Americana" architecture of the local town. The idea was that this was a "real" place where the seed of horror had unexpectedly grown. The characters -- though undeniably stock in nature -- boasted a surface plausibility. In their hair-styles. In their wardrobe. In their dispositions and demeanor. They look like they belonged in the world the filmmakers were striving to create. They were recognizable to audiences as people we might meet on the street, not collagen-lipped, eye-brow-plucked products of Hollywood.

This was even more true in the original My Bloody Valentine (1981), an ultra-naturalistic slasher film shot in Canada and involving blue collar miners in the town of Valentine's Bluff.

Off the top of my head, I couldn't tell you the name of a single actor featured in that old film, but I can tell you that every character looked as though he or she belonged in that story. The actors were well-cast and believable in their roles. They didn't draw attention to themselves as "actors" but seemed, rather like regular people living in a regular mining town...and being forced to reckon with extraordinary things.

The director of the original My Bloody Valentine, George Mihalka, was also skilled enough to realize that the film's central location -- the mine -- was an important character in the drama. He focused the film's attention, at points, on the rickety old rail car utilized to travel down a long, dark tunnel into darkness. He provided subjective, point-of-view shots of the cave walls racing by during the subterranean sojourn and descent into hell, as if we ourselves were riding down to the bottom of the mine. He established a geography for the lower levels of the dark mine, and then took that geography away from us by -- in a terrifying moment -- having the killer destroy the string of light-bulbs illuminating the cave. Along with the Final Girl, we had lost our bearings...and were scared.

So along comes this glitzy, superficial remake of My Bloody Valentine, and it simply can't be bothered to do any of the basic creative work I've described above. It's a gaudy, infantile coloring book, not a real movie. The actors (including Kerr Smith and Jensen Ackles) are glamorous, beautiful, perfectly-coiffed, and never appear smudged, dirty or even significantly discomforted. The women all look like professional strippers. Not a single character in this film appears as though he or she has ever set foot in a mine...anywhere. Heck, they probably don't even know that West Virginia is a state in the Union. And even though the movie spans ten years, the actors don't age in the slightest, except for facial hair.

Worse, in this remake, the mine generates not an iota of fear. No terror. No claustrophobia. Not even a basic fear of the dark. The mine might as well be an amusement park funhouse. The only "mining" director Lussier does is for imagery. He cribs the falling miner suits, broken light-bulbs and a washing-machine scene from the original 1981 film. But you know what? In every single case, those once potent images have lost their original power because the underlying world of the characters -- the very thread that connects the movie together -- is so faulty.

The killer himself -- a miner in mask and armed with pick-axe -- appears in the film's first scene with such little fanfare or build-up that at first you might assume you are watching a parody of My Bloody Valentine. A character stumbles into a massacre in the mine, sees the killer, and we're off to the races without the slightest nod to creating an atmosphere or a mood. The movie gets in some great gory kills, but they come at you so fast that they don't register as anything but side-show absurdities.

Then come the 3D effects. I cannot judge how effectively they worked in the theaters (and apparently, they were quite wonderful...), but in the 2d format -- where My Bloody Valentine will exist from now on -- they stink. They are cartoony and seem to exist in their own computer animated world. 3-D has been and always will be a gimmick, and the 3-D staging and execution here is novel and creative enough, I suppose. But after you get over the thrill that - wow, things are coming towards me! -- what's left? After novelty...what? In 2D, the effects only call attention to themselves, and in terms of a horror movie, that's never a good thing. The effects should blend seamlessly with the rest of the filmmaker's world so that we can believe what we're seeing.

The makers of My Bloody Valentine have made their movie with real zeal, but virtually all their considerable energy has been devoted to making it an amusement park ride rather than a movie with a coherent narrative. I've rarely seen a movie, in fact, that so egregiously failed to establish its basic sense of reality.

That's not to say I didn't enjoy some individual moments in the film. By God, there's Tom Atkins (The Fog, Halloween III, Night of the Creeps...) back in action! And I would by lying if I said the film's final twist didn't surprise me in the half-second before I realized it was a cheat on the level of High Tension's. But even writing about these things, I feel as though I'm discussing a roller-coaster ride, not a movie. Didn't you like that last loop? Wasn't the third dip like, totaqlly amazing? Despite such pluses, I never believed in the characters, the town, the violence...or the world of My Bloody Valentine in the slightest. And so it never scared me. I don't think I ever even jumped, either. Bummer.

Seems to me that a good slasher film would somehow combine the visual acumen and distinctive, rich look of Nispel's dull-as-dishwater Friday the 13th remake (also 2009) with the visceral zeal and high-energy impact of Lussier's flamboyant circus attraction, My Bloody Valentine. Then we would have a slasher movie we could believe in.

The tag-line for the new My Bloody Valentine is "get your heart broken." Mission accomplished, movie. Mission accomplished. It's not that the makers of the film didn't live up to the original film, it's that they toiled so hard simply to create...a Universal Studios attraction.

Coming at ya...nothing interesting whatsoever.

CULT MOVIE REVIEW: Saturn 3 (1980)

In memory of the recently-deceased seventies icon, Farrah Fawcett, I decided to blog today about Saturn 3 (1980), perhaps Farrah's most notable excursion into celluloid horror.

Of course, I fully realize that Saturn 3 is widely considered a bomb, a stinkeroo and a blight upon mankind. It was also a favorite of the Golden Raspberry Awards.

But you know something? Critics aren't always right. Stanley Donen's Saturn 3 is a half-crazy, occasionally-inspired mating of Frankenstein and 2001: A Space Odyssey...one played out between three humans and a giant robot against a high-tech, futuristic backdrop.

Taken on those simple terms, the film is enjoyable, literary, occasionally exciting, and consistently watchable.

Saturn 3 depicts the the story of the psychotic Captain Benson (Harvey Keitel), a scientist who travels to the Experimental Food Research Station on Saturn 3 during a twenty-two day eclipse and communications black-out called "Shadow Lock."

There, the good captain provides "assistance" to two scientists working to alleviate a famine on our overpopulated, polluted planet Earth. Major Adam (Kirk Douglas) and his young romantic partner, the beautiful and innocent Alex (Fawcett) are wary, however, of Benson's form of help: a colossal humanoid robot named Hector, the first of the "Demi God" series. Hector boasts human intelligence (not to mention human brain tissue...) and can even pattern his personality on the direct input he receives from human beings. Since Benson is psychotic, this means that Hector is also psychotic. In short order, the robot begins to develop the same lustful feelings for lovely Alex that Benson has rudely begun to demonstrate...

Named after the Trojan Prince beaten by Achilles outside the walls of Troy, the robot Hector represents Saturn 3's embodiment of the classic Frankenstein Monster, a lumbering abomination given life by a Prometheus-style scientist, here essayed by the over-dubbed (but still creepy...) Harvey Keitel.

Hector has been created, it seems, to glorify Benson; to prove to skeptical (and off-screen) co-workers that he is a genius. As is the case in Victor Frankenstein's tragedy, there's a high degree of vanity involved in the genesis of this new life. As Victor sought to "bestow animation" upon "lifeless matter," so does Benson seek to introduce intelligence and even "human learning" to cold machinery. And again like Victor, Benson pioneers a "new way," or new science to achieve his aims. Though he is not technically breaching "the awful boundary between life and death" that Shelley artfully described, Benson is breaching the barrier between man and machine.

Hector's biology also merits comparison to the Frankenstein Monster. This Demi-God class robot is a collection of metallic spare parts and pure brain tissue grown in a lab, not organic corpse parts given life. But much like the Frankenstein Monster, Hector boasts the interesting (and unusual...) combination of a fully formed (or adult) physicality with a naive, almost child-like sense of intelligence. And, as the Frankenstein Monster quickly determines, it is "miserably alone," and seeks companionship. Interestingly, Hector seeks companionship too...sexual compansionship with Alex.

In both stories, the "child" (the monster) turns on the Bad Father, the Creator. In the case of Frankenstein, the rejected/unwanted child draws out the process of killing the parent ("I will work at your destruction, nor finish until I desolate your heart so that you shall curse the hour of your birth...") In Saturn 3, Hector quickly kills Benson and turns his attention towards dominating Alex, a subtle acknowledgment, perhaps of a society (America in the 1980s) more consumed with sex.

Going back to 1968's 2001: A Space Odyssey, one might also be temped to gaze upon Hector as HAL's child: a computer with a menacing, ambulatory physicality to go along with the parent's cold, calculating brain. In the Kubrick film, however, one never knows why HAL goes insane and murders the crew of the Discovery. The reasons for Hector's instability are plain in Saturn 3, and they reflect the Frankenstein story again. Benson, like Victor, is a bad father. One who, through his own intrinsic psychological flaws, overreached and was not able to handle the role of parent. And in this case, the son has inherited the father's psychosis.

Saturn 3 also fascinates in the manner it re-purposes the Biblical story of Adam and Eve. In the Old Testament, God created Adam and Eve and provided them a glorious Paradise in Eden. This couple wanted for nothing until a serpent invaded the Garden and tantalized Eve with the apple from the Tree of Knowledge.

This simple story is re-cast in explicitly technological (and secular, scientific...) terms in Saturn 3 with a character named, of course, Adam dwelling in isolated bliss with his lover, Alex. Their facility is an Experimental Food Research Station featuring an abundance of greenery, a hydroponics bay that could easily be interpreted as...a "garden."

The film also defines the lives of Adam and Alex as ones of unending bliss. Their facility is like a spa. They exercise regularly, jogging the curving, empty corridors. They live in love and peace, sheltered away from the modern, polluted world. Alex is a total innocent, never having visited Earth and knowing nothing of its customs.

Into this paradisical world arrives the Serpent (or Serpents, in this case) -- Hector and Benson. It is not the apple that Benson offers Alex, but lustful sex and recreational drugs, the latter in the form of psychedelic "Blue Dreamers." He awakes in Alex, at the very least, the realization that she has lived a sheltered life. He spawns in Alex a desire to see Earth, which Adam also encourages.

In the coda of Saturn 3, following Adam's sacrifice to defeat Hector, Alex leaves the sealed-up paradise, boards a spaceship and heads for Earth. The Garden is left behind permamently. Alex has tasted the fruit of the tree of knowledge and now returns to the world of fallen man.

There's a nice, commendable simplicity to the narrative of Saturn 3. Against the plainly mythological and literary backdrops, there are but few characters and locations. The movie cleverly isolates its dramatis personae in a trap within a trap within a trap. They're in a hermetically sealed facility on an inhospitable planet during an eclipse. Thus -- again like their Biblical counterparts -- Adam and Alex are really in a sort of "bubble world." The outside world doesn't exist for them, and that means there is no chance of a rescue operation. The future of man (and machine...), it seems, is to be settled here, in this place, with just these few people and their values.

Hector also makes for a powerful, memorable villain. Although he apparently lacks human genitals, Hector has been (inadvertently) programmed with a physical lust for Alex, making him one of the screen's most memorably randy robots (though probably nobody can give Demon Seed's Proteus a real run for his money...). Hector is a murderous child, a sadist, and entirely malicious. At least with the Frankenstein Monster, you felt some sense of compassion. He was "malicious" because he was "miserable." Hector is somehow...colder.

The sets, special effects and costumes in Saturn 3 are all top-notch too, at least for 1980 vintage. And then, of course, there's Farrah Fawcett in a central performance: effortlessly exuding innocence and sexiness at the same time. As in her other roles, there was a winsome and fetching quality to Fawcett. Saturn 3 makes fine use of her naturalness, her seeming sinlessness, even as it exploits her amazing good looks.

Perhaps the aspect of Saturn 3 that I enjoy most involves Adam's journey, however, not Alex's. Adam deeply fears contamination from the outside (from Earth). He has thus set up a utopia on Saturn 3, a perfect little existence. While Earth starves, he possesses plenty of food. While lust and casual sex dominate amongst Earthers far away, Adam has found a perfect, innocent mate who truly loves him. He has attained the goal of intimacy. But when Hector and Benson arrive, they bring "the tree of knowledge" with them. On Earth, Adam would have feared being at the mercy of society, of the government, of his peers. Well, suddenly, in his perfect world, he is at the mercy of Hector, a psychotic who can control every aspect of his environment. Hector controls the air, the food supply, the temperature...everything. Adam is thus made slave to the very technology he has always feared and disdained, and that's a metaphor for the life he fled: one of regimented control where he was but a cog in the wheel. Perhaps that is the reason why Adam chooses to fight Hector to the death, because like Alex, he too has been ejected from paradise by the arrival of this interloper.

Saturn 3 even closes with a commendable message: that it is the capacity for self-sacrifice that ultimately separates a human soul from artificial intelligence. Hopefully, that's the message that Alex takes back to Earth and preaches. That mankind -- in his ability to put the welfare of those he loves before his own life -- can conquer the machines, overpopulation, lust and the other bugaboos that threaten to destroy a species in perpetual crisis.

With DNA culled from the Old Testament, the work of Mary Shelley and even Stanley Kubrick, Donen's somewhat silly Saturn 3 sure has a "great body."

May I (respectfully...) suggest...you use it?

CULT MOVIE REVIEW: John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness (1987)

More than the work of any major director since Howard Hawks, John Carpenter’s films have undergone a unique "second life" -- a period of intense re-evaluation…and new found appreciation.



Even the classic Halloween (1978) originally drew bad reviews and nearly faded into obscurity until a laudatory Village Voice review by Tom Allen, and a well-timed holiday release rescued the film's reputation. Today, Halloween is a fixed star in the horror firmament; even a companion piece for Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960).



Likewise, Carpenter’s The Thing (1981) was ignored by audiences and vilified by critics in the summer of E.T. (1982). Carpenter was even termed a “pornographer of violence” by some short-sighted critics because of the film’s intensity and pioneering (though admittedly gruesome...) special effects.



Yet by the 1990s, The Thing was exerting enormous influence on the genre in Hollywood productions almost too numerous to list. From The X-Files (“Ice”) and the main adversary of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine -- the shape-shifting “Dominion” (detectable only by blood test…) -- to the T-1000 in Terminator 2 (1991), Thing imitations were practically ubiquitous.



In recent years, critical estimations of In the Mouth of Madness (1994), They Live (1988), The Fog (1980), Vampires (1998) and Ghosts of Mars (2001) have also trended positive. But it is the director’s 1987 Nigel Kneale homage, Prince of Darkness that has witnessed the most meteoric rise in appreciation. Once derided as "second rate" and "klutzy," the film is now beloved for its brawny narrative twists, not to mention Carpenter's crisp direction.



The second movement of Carpenter’s so-called “Apocalypse Trilogy” (a cycle including The Thing and In The Mouth of Madness…), Prince of Darkness is elegantly lensed, suffused with a gloomy, unsettling vibe of cerebral terror (the more you understand, the more afraid you feel…) and punctuated with periodic jolts or "stingers" of extreme intensity. It is, as L.A. Times critic Michael Wilmington opined, a film "filled with graceful, gliding tracking shots, and icily precise Hitchcockian setups of the bleak decor and scary effects." (October 23, 1987).

Prince of Darkness also features one of Carpenter’s most memorable, arresting and pulse-pounding soundtracks. The score’s “ominous intonations…grab you and take command of your heartbeat.” (Allen Malmquist, Cinefantastique Volume 13, # 2, March 1988, page 117).



In all, this Carpenter film fires on all cylinders, and holds up exceedingly well on repeated viewing. At the film's heart is a discussion of science as the new "faith;" and an examination of a population -- another alienated population -- searching for spiritual and emotional meaning in a world apparently devoid of it.



He Lives in the Smallest Part of It



Prince of Darkness features a number of John Carpenter touchstones, both visual and thematic. First and foremost, this is a siege picture (like Assault on Precinct 13 or Ghosts of Mars), meaning that the action focuses on a small group of protagonists inside fighting off superior forces outside.

The abandoned police precinct of Assault has become the abandoned Church -- Saint Godard's -- of Prince of Darkness. In both scenarios, the location of the battle is important. The buildings are relics; ones without contemporary meaning or importance. Society has passed them by in both cases; they are symbols, essentially, of impotent infrastructure or bureaucracy.



Writing for Monthly Film Bulletin in May of 1985, Philip Strick compared the two Carpenter films in a way that is illuminating for our discussion: "With Prince of Darkness, the siege of Assault on Precinct 13 is vividly reconstructed: the derelict fortress, the comfortless corridors, the silent army in the night outside, the collapse of logic and security."



You may recall that the oft-repeated "siege" element in Carpenter's films is an homage to the cinema of Howard Hawks, notably Rio Bravo (1959). But Prince of Darkness is also an homage to one of Carpenter's favorite writers : Nigel Kneale. Kneale was the prime talent behind the British Quatermass films of the 1950s and 1960s (The Creeping Unknown, Enemy from Space and Five Million Years to Earth). His films (as well as TV serials) popularized the notion that threats mistaken as being of supernatural origin are actually...extra-terrestrial. In Five Million Years to Earth (1968) it was a Martian psychic force, not the Devil, sweeping through London, and so on. Carpenter resurrected this concept for Ghosts of Mars in 2001, but first he employed it in Prince of Darkness.



In Prince of Darkness, Jesus is an ancient astronaut, and Satan and his Father (the Anti-God) are also extra-terrestrials. In a tip of his hat to Howard Hawks, Carpenter edited the film Rio Bravo under the name "John T. Chance," the name of John Wayne's character in that movie. Likewise, Carpenter penned Prince of Darkness under the name "Martin Quatermass." Quatermass, of course, is the protagonist of Kneale's most famous works.



Prince of Darkness also evidences Carpenter's distinctive anti-authoritarian voice. Here, the Catholic Church has hidden the truth about the nature of Evil for 2000 years. "We were salesmen," says Pleasence's priest with disgust. "We were selling our product." In various films -- as we've seen -- Carpenter also went after movie critics (They Live), religious fundamentalists (Escape from L.A.), and even used the Catholic Church as a target again in Vampires. There, another Catholic sect was hiding a different Devilish secret: a black crucifix that created the world's first vampires.



Where Prince of Darkness pinpoints so much new energy, however, is not in these commonly-found Carpenter homages or themes, but rather in the endless possibilities of Quantum Physics. It's a whole new playground for the director, and he makes the most of the territory. The film discusses every important concept from Schrodinger's Cat to "causality violation" (time travel), and it does so with a sort of breathless, fast-paced intelligence that challenges the audience to keep up.



Let’s Talk About Our Beliefs, and What We Can Learn From Them…



Prince of Darkness begins with the discovery of an ancient and secret Catholic sect known as "The Brotherhood of Sleep." The guardian priest of this mysterious sect dies while clutching a miniature box containing a key; a key to the basement of a rundown Church in poverty-stricken L.A. called Saint Godard's.



There, upon an altar in the basement...is a seven million year old canister of volatile, swirling fluid. The liquid is, in fact, Pure Evil: Satan himself.

In hopes of comprehending and defeating this unusual threat, a Catholic priest (Donald Pleasence) teams up with Professor Birack (Victor Wong), a teacher of quantum physics at the Doppler Institute of Physics. Along with a group of dedicated graduate students -- including lonely Catherine Danforth (Lisa Blount) and Brian Marsh (Jameson Parker) -- the man of science and the man of faith spend the weekend at the old church and undertake a study of the canister and the liquid, as well as the corrupted Latin palimpsest that details its history and secrets.



Over a long, horrifying night, as revelation follows revelation, the forces of darkness invade the Church. As the devilish, pre-biotic liquid "self-organizes," it assumes psychokinetic control over small organisms (such as insects) first, then L.A.'s wrteched homeless, and finally it makes zombie minions of many of the graduate students themselves. The evil liquid also selects a human host, Kelly (Susan Blanchard), and plots to bring its demonic father -- the Anti-God -- into our dimension. At the same time, all the graduate students experience a recurring nightmare: a tachyon S.O.S. warning from the year 1999...

Very much like 1982's The Thing, John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness concerns flawed, lonely, awkward human beings living in a world in which there is no real faith or human inter-connection. In fact, Prince of Darkness repeats verbatim a line uttered by R.J. McReady (Kurt Russell) in The Thing: "Faith is a hard thing to come by these days." As in that earlier film the line is spoken by Carpenter's unconventional protagonist and voice for the audience, here a graduate student in quantum physics named Brian Marsh.



The problem is that in a world of advancing science and human knowledge, the old platitudes of religious faith and belief seem antiquated and stale. At least until dressed up with such scientific candy-coating as "differential equations," "tachyons," "indeterminancy," and the like. Yet importantly, those "new" scientific concepts don't tell us who we are (or who we should be...) in the same authoritative sense that old-fashioned belief systems did.



Thus...a void.



Carpenter -- ever the visual artist -- finds an imaginative way of expressing this crisis in spirituality. As Pleasence's priest views St. Godard for the first time, the camera presents an establishing view of the church from behind an old iron gate, and a holy cross -- a Catholic Crucifix -- can be seen jutting heavenward from the church's roof. Yet above the church is another gate slat, this one horizontal in direction. In other words, the cross (representing religion or faith) is boxed in on all sides, from above and from left and right. Visually, it is trapped, confined and caged by its inability to answer the questions that so many people seek in today's world.



Professor Birack -- a wise elder and interpreter of the quantum runes -- seems aware of these problems in human connection, and he seeks amongst his studentsw -- again according to the dialogue, -- "philosophers" rather than "scientists." Philosophers, he understands, will understand how to place scientific knowledge within the context of man's spiritual or emotional world; whereas scientists, by implication, may not.



In Birack's students, we see disciples in waiting: lost souls who, for the most part, have forgotten the art of being human. Instead, they have come as boxed-in as the crucifix over the church. They have labeled themselves using the prevailing and simple lingo of their culture. "I'm a confirmed sexist," Brian tells Catherine proudly while trying to court her, unaware of how silly and bigoted he sounds. Later, Walter (Dennis Dun) tells a racist Jewish Mother joke ("I said rich doctor, not witch doctor!"), and also comments, condescendingly that Lisa, the team translater, could "pass for Asian."



This is a world in which it doesn't matter so much that a woman like Susan (the radiologist) is married, but rather the degree of her marriage ("how married?" a potential suitor asks). Thus communication between people, especially between people of opposite sexes is dominated in Prince of Darkness by what Catherine terms "miscues." These are wrong, defensive interpretations based on pre-conceived notions of others and even a pervasive non-understanding of self. In his essay, "John Carpenter: Cinema of Isolation" scholar John Thonen saw these graduate students as "selfish," and "lifeless" (Cinefantastique, Volume 30, Number 7/8, October 1998, page 71).



What these lost souls seem to lack is the very thing religion once provided for many: a sense of belonging, a sense of man's innate goodness. These young scientists, as the film notes, get romantic when discussing The New Faith (Quantum Physics) but "clam-up" when it comes to talking about emotions, feelings and humanity. Perhaps that's because science provides no guide-lines, no rules, no equations in such matters.



Catherine and Brian are seekers of truth and more than that, they are seekers of love...which is something more meaningful than just good sex (which ironically, is their first connection). Catherine desires to know "what the numbers mean," a search beyond scientific jargon, and Brian's obsession with card tricks represents a need for an understanding of life beyond mere probability tests; in something like...luck.



Each character has an idea of what specific path will lead them to personal enlightenment, but what they wish to make room for is the person -- the other -- who may bring them, by philosophies unknown and unexpected, to the missing piece of life's puzzle. To love. To real intimacy.



The tragic love story in Prince of Darkness plays out, interestingly enough, as a modern Christ analogy. Because of her burgeoning relationship with Brian, Catherine is finally open to love, to giving. Ultimately, she sacrifices herself to save mankind. She vanquishes the evil, but at the cost of her own life and future. "She died for us," Birack states succinctly, putting Catherine's sacrifice in decidely religious, Christian terms. Catherine knew what was at stake and made a conscious decision to consider others above her own well-being and survival. She saved, literally, a wicked world (one controlled by the Anti-God). She thus changed everything, preserving our future. Her Gospel, perhaps, is the mesage heretofore incomplete, the one beamed back through time (a causality violation) as an unconscious message. Will that message be different after her choice to save our world, or will it simply cease to exist all together?

No Prison Will Hold Him Now

Prince of Darkness debuted in the Age of AIDS, in 1987. This was the very year, in fact, that President Reagan made his first public statement on the epidemic. It was also the year that the formerly promiscuous James Bond 007 (Timothy Dalton) became a one-woman kind of guy in The Living Daylights.



The AIDS epidemic (as it was understood at the time) serves as an important backdrop to Carpenter’s film, since the “Evil” force depicted here is a fluid passed from person-to-person (usually mouth-to-mouth). Susan infects Calder by kissing him and forcing the evil fluid down his throat. Likewise, she contaminates Lisa in a sexually-charged sequence. As Lisa reclines on her bed, supine, Susan mounts her -- ascending into a dominant position -- straddling her. She then ejaculates the fluid into Lisa's protesting, open mouth. In the case of both AIDS and the Devil Liquid, transmission occurs through what appears to be sexual behavior; and the danger is carried in the equivalent of bodily fluids.



AIDS was largely seen originally (in the 1980s) as a "gay" disease, because it decimated that population first. If you look at the pattern of transmission in Prince of Darkness, you may note that same-sex transmission is highlighted. Susan infects Lisa. Susan and Lisa infect Kelly (all women). Professor Leahy (Peter Jason) and Calder (both men...) go after Brian. The one instance in which a woman does infect a man (Susan to Calder) could be read as representing another sexual taboo: interracial coupling. And come to think of it, Susan -- the first to be infected and spread the disease -- is married; thus acting out, essentially, an infidelity. What we're talking about here isn't just sexual behavior then but perhaps sexual misbehavior. Remember, The Thing too featured a single sex population in peril and posited Evil as an easily-transmitted disease; one "hidden" in the blood. In that film as well as in Prince of Darkness, Carpenter reflects American society's rampant fear of and paranoia about AIDs, about disease transmitted from person-to-person during promiscuous, impulsive acts.

Another important context underlining Prince of Darkness involves the 1980s epidemic of homelessness. By 1983, there were 35 million Americans living in poverty, some five million more than when Reagan had been inaugurated in January 1981. Reagan's economic policies involved what The Christian Science Monitor termed "deep budget cuts in the social service area" in order to lower taxes for the wealthiest Americans. The result was that more and more people lost their homes. Reagan once even audaciously stated that many of these unfortunates were “homeless by choice.”



In Prince of Darkness, it is the homeless who first become human minions to the Devil...an army of streetwalkers and hobos who -- ostensibly aimless -- have found malevolent purpose. Idle hands and all. Carpenter returned to the the theme of poverty and the homeless in his next film, They Live (1988), setting much of the action in a Shantytown called "Justiceville."



Say Goodbye to Classical Reality

Carpenter's Prince of Darkness screenplay asserts a "universal mind" or God if you will. However, because this is a Kneale-ean homage anchored in science, it also asserts the Laws of Physics. In particular, the film reminds us that every particle has an opposite or anti-particle. Therefore, if there is a universal mind or God, by inference there is also an anti-God.



In the film, a shorthand for this duality is quickly established via mirrors, via reflections. Accordingly, much of Prince of Darkness visually and contextually deals with doubling, opposites and mirror images. The mirror becomes the portal to the other world; where our "opposites" exist.



Birack and Pleasence's Priest are mirror images of sorts, possessing contrasting world views (science vs. religion) and Carpenter even uses mirror image compositions and mise-en-scene throughout the film, most notably during Brian's "test" leap into the alley beyond the church, and the subsequent attack of the homeless "antibodies." The film cuts to opposing reverse angles moving in on Brian from both sides. It's a visual mirror, with Brian as our point of reference in both shots, from both angles. Brian's prominent placement in the frame even presages Prince of Darkness's electric, portentous climax: a further "test" by Brian...this one staged as he reaches out for his own, possibly malicious anti-self in a mirror.



These final images resonate. They get under the skin. They promise so much yet explain so little. As Brian reaches for the mirror, gazing into his own reflection, the film's many themes converge. He is not only wondering if Catherine is watching him from the other side -- from the anti-verse -- but he is looking into his own face -- sweaty and pale -- and seeking answers. Brian is wondering, perhaps, if, the evil, the contamination could pass to him next. Only a moment earlier, he imagined himself in bed beside a rotting corpse...(the ultimate fear of the AIDS era...) and the uncertainty, the fear of infection, is palpable. It is this moment that Carpenter leaves us to ponder as the film concludes: a close shot of a groping hand reaching for (but not actually touching...) a mirror; the portal to darkness.



Prince of Darkness remains one of John Carpenter's most frightening films, not merely because of the superb soundtrack, the AIDS-subtext, or the clever use of Quantum Physics, but because the screenplay spotlights how much we take for granted in our daily lives. In Prince of Darkness we witness a world where logic is of no use (it collapses on the subatomic level...) and in which Evil is Real. There is indeed an order to the universe, John Carpenter reminds us...but it's not at all what we had in mind...