#101: The Shining

The Shining
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
Written by Stanley Kubrick and Diane Johnson (based on the novel by Stephen King)
Released May 23, 1980


Having crossed the century mark with Something Wicked This Way Comes, I wanted to celebrate with one of my all time favorite films, the absolutely unnerving Stanley Kubrick classic The Shining. If you were constructing a short list of movies to watch on Halloween night, this one has got to make that list. Hell, if you just upgraded to a high-definition TV set, there are few movies I could imagine that would be better to break in your new system.

The Shining, possibly even more than the original The Haunting, is the ultimate "haunted house" movie. It's just that in this case, the "house" is a massive hotel. The opening shots, which have the audience soaring like a vulture over massive Imax-style landscapes, immediately set the tone for the entire movie. I've seen this flick dozens of times and still watched these opening shots three times tonight before moving on.

When it comes to stunning imagery that is going to stick with you for years, The Shining is pretty much the high water mark. They way Kubrick composes his shots... the incredible steadicam work, revolutionary for its time, by Garrett Brown... the patience the film makers take it lingering on shots to make them unsettling as possible... this movie is a fucking masterpiece before you even consider other important elements like story, acting, editing or music. Just keep your eyes peeled for scenes like the elevator doors, or the sequence where Danny Torrance (played by Danny Lloyd) rides his Big Wheel through the halls of the hotel.

Speaking of Danny, I suppose we should get to the story. You know all those modern Horror movies where they use the weirdo kid who may or may not have supernatural abilities (like The Ring) as a creepy kind of protagonist? The Shining's Danny is like the template of that whole character idea. We find out early on that Danny has a strange psychic sense, along with an invisible friend who "lives in his mouth" who speaks to, and through, him.

This power really begins to manifest itself when Danny, joined by his mother Wendy (Shelley Duvall) and father Jack (Jack Nicholson, in a role that would come to define the rest of his career), move into a Colorado hotel to help with maintenance during the hotel's 5 month off-season. What seems like a simple job to Nicholson's Jack Torrance becomes slowly complicated by what goes on within the confines of the not-so-empty hotel. Unfortunately for Jack, who initially spends his days trying to write the book he intended to complete during the snowy winter, he soon becomes consumed by the strange draw of the hotel and its "inhabitants."

Unfortunately for Danny, he can see what the rest of his family can't. Unfortunately for us, we can see it, too. There's a particular scene with a woman in a bathtub that has been in my head since I saw it as a child. When I saw that I was nearing the scene during this viewing, I pondered skipping it or even stopping the film completely.

If there's a small weakness to The Shining, it's in the fact that Jack's descent into madness doesn't take very long. Stephen King was never a fan of Kubrick's choice of Nicholson as the father because he felt there were more sympathetic actors who would make Jack's character arc more tragic. In this case, King was maybe half right: Nicholson's Jack never really shows any warmth toward his wife and son. Hell, it's Nicholson we're dealing with, so it's like he's gone insane weeks before we even join the events of the movie.

In another regard, Nicholson still delivers a hell of a fucked up, crazy performance. The scene where we find out what Jack has been writing is one of Horror cinema's greatest reveals, and Nicholson eats up the screen in every shot he's in. And really, if you were paying any attention to those opening shots I was talking about, you'd know that Kubrick isn't trying to sneak up on us; he was sharpening his knives before the title of the movie had hit the screen. Who am I to quibble about how Kubrick chooses to tell this story when he does it so unbelievably well?

Sorry Mr. King. I see your point (and I'm sure having Kubrick fuck you around during the screenwriting process didn't help matters), but complaining about this would be like Bob Dylan complaining about the foot pedals Jimi Hendrix used when recording his version of "All Along the Watchtower."

NOTE: If you buy the DVD, make sure you get a version that includes the "Making of The Shining" documentary, filmed by Kubrick's wife. It's incredible behind the scenes footage, including some great stuff where Danny talks about how he couldn't wait to see what his parents were going to buy him with the "5 or 600 dollars" he thinks he's making, and the scene of Scatman Crothers brought to tears talking about how happy he was to be involved with Danny and the other actors on the film.

Plus, watching it is a great way to come down after having the shit scared out of you by the actual film.


For more on The Shining:
- Movie information at IMDB and Wikipedia.
- A pretty interesting FAQ about the movie and Kubrick.
- Buy the DVD, or the BluRay DVD. Both are insanely cheap.


The awesome alternate trailer for The Shining:

#100: Something Wicked This Way Comes

Something Wicked This Way Comes
Directed by Jack Clayton
Written by Ray Bradbury
Released April 29, 1983


So, when you're thinking of the Horror genre, pretty much the last name that comes to mind is Disney.

Granted, Something Wicked This Way Comes isn't full of the blood and gore that most of the genre has come to rely on. It's smarter than that, but that figures: it comes from the pen of Ray Bradbury.

At the film's opening, we meet Will and Jim, two mischievous small town friends and next door neighbors who seem to really have only each other. Jim's father has gone missing for years, while his mother barely notices him while she entertains strange men. Will's father, played by Jason Robards, wanders around haunted by an incident in Will's childhood, when he's not locked away in the town library feeling old and close to death.

We follow the boys and are introduced to an entire town full of regret and broken dreams. There's the ugly shrew of a teacher who used to be the town beauty, the cigar shop owner who is obsessed with money, and the crippled bartender who can't forget the days he spent as a college football star.

Then, a mysterious train comes to town in the night, bringing with it a surreal carnival owned by the shadowy (and aptly named) Mr. Dark, who employs a smoking hot fortune teller (Pam Grier). As the townsfolk begin to see their dreams realized (but not without a hefty price tag attached) by the carnival's attractions, the boys begin to witness its nefarious underbelly. One night they are discovered sneaking behind the scenes, and Mr. Dark knows he must destroy the boys before they bring his scheme to an end.

Story-wise, it's all a little thin, with no real explanation of where the carnival comes from or why it has returned to this small town. What is Mr. Dark looking for? Why must they travel at all, if what they offer is so enticing to any town where they set up shop? Of course, almost any movie falls apart under that kind of skeptical scrutiny, so I guess sometimes it's best just to let a premise be a premise.

If you're a parent looking for Halloween movies that aren't going to traumatize your children with violence, Something Wicked This Way Comes is a perfect alternative. Of course, there's still plenty of potential for psychological damage, like a late night spider attack, or Jonathan Price's dark, if unsubtle, work as baddie Mr. Dark. Price makes more out of a scene where he tears pages from a book than half of the antagonists in this month's movies.

There's a dramatic payoff on the carnival's carousel that would satisfy anyones taste for revenge, so I suppose if you do wind up watching this with the young'ns, you might want to be handy to cover their eyes.


For more on Something Wicked This Way Comes:
- Movie information at IMDB and Wikipedia.
- Buy the DVD.


The trailer:

#99: Dead of Night (aka Deathdream)

Dead of Night (aka Deathdream)
Directed by Bob Clark
Written by Alan Ormsby
Released August 30, 1974


"Okay," I thought, "this is my third movie tonight. This one had better not suck."

The elements were all in place for a good time: Deathdream was directed by Bob Clark, whose Black Christmas I enjoyed last week (and whose A Christmas Story is one of my all time favorite comedies), and the make-up was done by zombie expert and Horror legend Tom Savini.

Dead of Night is an especially edgy horror movie if you consider the time period in which it came out, the early 1970s, not long after the U.S. had pulled out of Vietnam (it was actually made in 1972 but unreleased until '74). It must have been especially strange for Savini, who claims to have learned more about Horror make-up as a war photographer than he did in his years of playing around with stage make-up prior to his time in Vietnam.

The movie opens with two soldiers surrounded by explosions in the jungle. Before we really even learn their names, they are shot and presumably killed. The credits roll and then we sit down to dinner with the Brooks family. There is a rapping at their door, and we learn that one of the soldiers killed was their son Andy (played by Richard Backus).

Mrs. Brooks does not take the news well, and her husband finds her awake at nights, denying her son's death and praying for his safe return. As a twist on the classic story The Monkey's Paw, soon Mrs. Brooks' wish comes true: her son returns home, seemingly alive but behaving much differently than she or her family remembers. Andy is a shell of his former self, barely speaking and almost unable to act human.

As a metaphor for the effects of the horrors war on an individual, their family, and even their community, Dead of Night couldn't be more apt. Andy spends his days rocking silently back and forth in a chair, observing his family from afar and scaring the family dog.

Speaking of the family dog, there's a confrontation between Andy and the adorable mutt -- executed in front of a group of neighborhood kids who idolize the Brooks boy -- that really sets the tone for how dark and dramatic of a movie we're dealing with. Dead of Night is fucking DARK. This isn't the kind of scary movie where you cheer the violent death of a bad guy or await the next morbid set piece.

The acting in the movie carries the whole picture, with especially good performances from Lynn Carlin as Andy's mother Christine, and of course Richard Backus as Andy, in what could have been an embarassing one-note performance.

By the end of the movie, you might just be blown away: Dead of Night winds up being a poignant, sad and ultimately thought-provoking movie, "horror" or not. While Clark wound up in his later years filming dreck like Baby Geniuses and Karate Dog (are you kidding me? Karate fuckin' Dog?!), you have to give the guy credit for making something as brave as this movie so soon after America was still tending to its post-Vietnam wounds.

I can't say I've ever really seen a Horror film like this one. It wound up being so much more than I expected, and more than made up for the two disappointments that preceded it.


For more on Deathdream:
- Movie information at IMDB and Wikipedia.
- Buy the DVD.


The Deathdream trailer:

#98: Fiend Without a Face

Fiend Without a Face
Directed by Arthur Crabtree
Written by Herbert J. Leder (based on Amelia Reynolds Long's "The Thought-Monster")
Released July 3, 1958


Tonight we're jumping back the the 1950s to check out another black and white oldie but goody: Arthur Crabtree's Fiend Without a Face, which struck me as a must-rent when I read that it was one of the first film's to employ bloody/gory special effects.

Fiend begins as yet another 50s Sci-Fi movie that plays on the world's fears of the Atomic Age, with a U.S. Air Force base sharing occupation in Canada coming under fire for mysterious deaths that have begun arising in the local population. While the deaths appear to be related at first to radiation, the town coroner and the Air Force soon discover that something is sucking the brains and spinal cords out of these victims. On top of all that, the damn thing appears to be invisible.

By the time the movie was half over, four people had died and I still hadn't seen a drop of blood (granted, with a 75 minute run time, I hadn't waited that long). Since this long lost B-movie had been released by Criterion, I had been expecting something much more subversive... maybe something from the 50s that really crossed the boundaries of good taste for the era.

One lesson about making movies that Crabtree needed to take to heart is to give the audience a little taste early on of what they're going to get in the finale. The director saves all of the juicy stuff for the last fifteen minutes. In a way, these scenes of the creatures attacking are a kind of precursor to George Romero's Night of the Living Dead, in that the menace is a mass of slow moving but persistent enemies which may be easily dispatched if not for their persistence.

I tried to put myself in the place of a viewer from the 50s, but I could only wonder how much longer I would have waited for a payoff among the stiff acting and silly script before putting the moves on my girlfriend at the drive-in theater. I wondered if my gal would have even lasted through the long-winded description of how the "fiends" were birthed, or if she would have slapped me and walked home in the night.

Now there's a set-up for a decent 50s Horror movie.


For more on Fiend Without a Face:
- Movie information at IMDB and Wikipedia.
- Buy the Criterion DVD.


A scene from Fiend Without a Face:

#97: John Carpenter's Cigarette Burns

Cigarette Burns
Directed by John Carpenter
Written by Drew McWeeny and Scott Swan
First aired November 2005


In searching around this month for Horror movies I'd never seen, I stumbled upon a batch of really good reviews for an hour-long episode of the Showtime "Masters of Horror" TV series. This particular program, entitled Cigarette Burns was directed by one time Horror god John Carpenter (Halloween, The Thing). Since I'd pretty much seen everything he had directed, good or bad, I figured it was worth a shot.

The plot was appealing, considering my own quest, for both this month and this project:

Udo "I Play Bad Guys" Kier plays Bellinger, a movie collector who specializes in horrifying images. Bellinger seeks the help of Kirby (the shitty Boondock Saints' Norman Reedus), a movie theater owner who helps collectors like Bellinger find high priced obscurities like movies, movie props, posters and more.

Bellinger's quest is to find the sole existing copy of a movie called La Fin Absolute du Monde, which had screened only one time and apparently had the power to drive the audience into a violent, murderous rage. Bellinger claims to be dying, and that his only wish is to view La Fin Absolute du Monde before he dies. For such a rare, infamous movie, it's kind of funny that Bellinger offers such a low price for its acquisition. By the time Kirby doubles the price, you'll be hard pressed to not think of Dr. Evil scheming for "One million dollars!"

Unfortunately, this is the least of the issues with this short film. I guess I should be fair, because for a television series with a low budget, Carpenter does manage to accomplish a lot here, especially considering that he shot Cigarette Burns in only 10 days. There's some great gore, especially a beheading, that will make even the most jaded Horror fan curl their toes.

One of the downfalls of the "movie" is the fact that the story is a bit too ambitious for how little time Carpenter is allowed to tell it. It takes place in three different countries and at least five cities (it all looks like Canada), as if this journey takes a bit of effort, and yet there's no time spent in any location. After making a few brief phone calls and a couple of visits, Kirby pinpoints the rather obvious location of the movie and walks away with it as if he was the only person to ever have the audacity to just ask for the thing. The ending also feels rushed, with characters making some idiotic choices even for people who may have supposedly "gone mad."

Carpenter does do a good job in showing only brief bits of the infamous movie, making it look effectively disturbing enough to have a power over those who watch it. For a short so heavy in exposition-via-dialogue, Cigarette Burns maintains an effective level of tension. As a Horror movie, it still winds up being a bit simplistic (Carpenter dissects the thing so brutally in the commentary that you almost wonder if he even likes the results).


For more on John Carpenter's Cigarette Burns:
- Movie information at IMDB and Wikipedia.
- Buy the DVD.


The Cigarette Burns trailer:

#96: Phenomena

Phenomena
Written and Directed by Dario Argento
Released August 2, 1985


The opening of Dario Argento's Phenomena is like a Greatest Hits tape of all of the director's trademarks: someone enters a room or house they were not supposed to enter, they get strangled, they get stabbed with scissors, and for some reason they go crashing through a window.

From there, it only gets better, with the introduction of Halloween's Donald Pleasance, thousands of insects and even a highly intelligent monkey wielding a straight razor. Did I mention that it also features the gorgeous young Jennifer Connelly, and the music of Goblin, Motorhead and Iron Maiden?

Did I just hear you say, "Fuckin' A?" Damn right.

Similar to Suspiria, Phenomena (which was released in the U.S. in a heavily edited version called Creepers) is about a girl who comes to a private school and immediately starts to interrupt the normal swing of things. In this case, Connelly is Jennifer Corvino, the daughter of a famous actor who has the strange ability to communicate with insects. As these insects start leading her to clues about the identity of a serial murderer, Professor John McGregor (Donald Pleasance), an entomologist who uses his knowledge of insects to help the police solve crimes, tries to tap into her powers to find the killer before he/she finds Jennifer.

As Jennifer discovers the depths of her own powers, she is ostracized by her schoolmates and from the school itself. She immediately seeks help from McGregor, who (I'll skip the somewhat convoluted narrative here) pairs her with one of his insects, a fly that he believes will lead her to the missing victims' bodies and the killer. It, of course, does. Thanks for that bit of irresponsible decision making, Professor!

Once Phenomena gets to this point, with Corvino trapped in the killer's house, things get good and nasty (like that giant bowl of human soup that awaits our heroine). There's even a fantastic finale with not one but TWO murders you couldn't possibly see coming.

While a lot of 80s horror movies were busy making rehashes of Halloween like the Friday the 13th franchise, Dario Argento was still making skewed, original and creepy horror movies, some better than others, sure, but most of them seem to have elements of a real story and a real passion for the art of filmmaking. Bugs, blood and brilliant monkeys? Phenomena is scary fun.


For more on Phenomena:
- Movie information at IMDB and Wikipedia.
- Buy the DVD. While it is out of print and expensive to buy as "New," Amazon has several used copies for sale.


The Phenomena trailer:

#95: The Brood

The Brood
Written and Directed by David Cronenberg
Released May 25, 1979


When you do a search on the Internet Movie Database for The Brood, the first thing that pops up in the search results is a link to The Brady Bunch. This would be like going to buy your niece a stuffed animal for her birthday and walking out of Toys R Us with a dead body. If you know anything about the work of director David Cronenberg (A History of Violence, Naked Lunch, Dead Ringers), you know he's about as far removed from The Brady Bunch as any director in the history of film.

The Brood is about family, and more specifically about the myriad of ways a family can pass along its scars and demons. . . in this case both literally and figuratively. It presents a few classic Cronenberg themes as well, including bad doctors, bad doctors and really bad parents. Oh yeah, and a good bit of physical deformity.

Oliver Reed plays creepy Dr. Hal Raglan, a psychiatrist who has invented some sort of new science called "Psychoplasmics." I'm not quite sure what is entailed in Psychoplasmics as it is never fully explained, but it appears to be the practice of fucking with a patient's head and making them confront their inner demons until their psychological symptoms begin to manifest themselves in physical form.

Raglan's star patient, the one with whom he has begun to focus most of his time, is the wife of Frank Carveth (Art Hindle), a dude who isn't exactly winning any Father of the Year awards by leaving his nearly mute, disturbed daughter with pretty much anyone within earshot who has an urge to babysit. That's because Frank is too busy trying to take his wife to court over custody.

In the meantime, Raglan is making some unfortunate breakthroughs with Mrs. Carveth and some of her enemies are beginning to wind up dead. What's more strange is just how the victims are being done in; let's just say that Nola Carveth has gone beyond scars and sores.

In other words, some of Frank's babysitters are winding up dead. While most of these deaths are relatively tame for the director who brought us the exploding heads of Scanners, Cronenberg gets real Cronenberg-y when he stages a murder in plain view of a classroom full of children. At first you think he's just using clever editing, so as to avoid traumatizing a bunch of kids, but no, there's a straight up murder and a bloody corpse laid out in front of these kids. Classy!

The Brood is a decent film that really picks up in the last 10 minutes, when Mr. and Mrs. Carveth confront each other and Mrs. Carveth reveals her latest, um... production. This is the one real point where it totally feels like you're watching a Cronenberg movie, and it's a hell of a payoff.

In the canon of Cronenberg horror, however, the movie is relatively tame and can't even hope to crack his top 10.


For more on The Brood:
- Movie information at IMDB and Wikipedia.
- Buy the DVD.


The trailer for The Brood: