By Yasmina Tawil
“Life is lonely, boring and dumb.” —The Doom Generation
“I feel like a gerbil smothered in Richard Gere’s butthole.” —also The Doom Generation
Gregg Araki likes young people. He likes their asymmetrical dyed hair and ripped denim, the tight fabrics that look like placeholders waiting to be ripped off. He likes shoegaze and dream-pop music, Cocteau Twins and Ride and the Smiths. He likes drugs,...
By Yasmina Tawil
Wildcats shall meet hyenas, / Goat-demons shall greet each other; / There too the lilith shall repose / And find herself a resting place, reads Isaiah 34:14the only biblical passage that mentions Lilith, the first wife of Adam and historys first witch. The origins of Lilith are frequently conflated with a Mesopotamian demon named Lamashtu, as described in various ancient cuneiform texts. In these stories, Lilith takes the form of seven witches bearing seven names. These archetypal stories about women have firmly established an association of the feminine with monstrosity since the cradle of civilization.
While other creatures, particularly vampires, are often strong, gender-neutral cultural signifiers in fiction, the witch remains a gendered monster that male authors use to exploit the feminine identity and image. Only in recent decades has the trope of the witch been turned on its head and used to examine the implications of its dubious cultural reputation as it relates to the lived experiences of women. In the context of cinema, the classical Hollywood portrayal of witches is largely tied to romantic (or male) fantasies and stories about social assimilation, evidenced in films such as in I Married a Witch and Bell Book and Candle. The former movie follows a reincarnated sorceress who falls in love with the ancestor of her executioner, while the latter film finds a modern-day witch sacrificing her magical powers for love. After the rise of the 1960s counterculture, filmmakers became less interested in portraying the mere otherness of witches and more concerned with imbuing an indelible humanity on these characters, creating complex women who have the potential to be sources of darkness and light.
By Yasmina Tawil
“Wildcats shall meet hyenas, / Goat-demons shall greet each other; / There too the lilith shall repose / And find herself a resting place,” reads Isaiah 34:14—the only biblical passage that mentions Lilith, the first wife of Adam and history’s first witch. The origins of Lilith are frequently conflated with a Mesopotamian demon named Lamashtu, as described in various ancient cuneiform texts. In these stories, Lilith takes the form of seven witches bearing seven names. These archetypal stories about women have firmly established an association of the feminine with monstrosity since the cradle of civilization.
While other creatures, particularly vampires, are often strong, gender-neutral cultural signifiers in fiction, the witch remains a gendered monster that male authors use to exploit the feminine identity and image. Only in recent decades has the trope of the witch been turned on its head and used to examine the implications of its dubious cultural reputation as it relates to the lived experiences of women. In the context of cinema, the classical Hollywood portrayal of witches is largely tied to romantic (or male) fantasies and stories about social assimilation, evidenced in films such as in I Married a Witch and Bell Book and Candle. The former movie follows a reincarnated sorceress who falls in love with the ancestor of her executioner, while the latter film finds a modern-day witch sacrificing her magical powers for love. After the rise of the 1960s counterculture, filmmakers became less interested in portraying the mere otherness of witches and more concerned with imbuing an indelible humanity on these characters, creating complex women who have the potential to be sources of darkness and light.
By Yasmina Tawil
Molly stares into the camera, a woman undone, with bleary eyes close to the color of the red REC icon tucked away in the top right of the screen. She shivers and shakes, ready to make her confession. Whatever happened, she says in a quivering voice, it wasnt me. She produces a knife from off camera, pressing the blade up tight to her throat before pulling it away. He wont let me, she exhales.
This confessional start to 2011s Lovely Molly will seem familiar. Its the same sort of tearful, emotional, one-on-one-with-the-camera breakdown made famous in 1999s The Blair Witch Project, where documentarian Heather apologizes for dragging her cohorts into certain doom. That familiarity isnt an accidentboth Lovely Molly and Blair Witch came from the same filmmaker, Eduardo Snchez. Yet while The Blair Witch Project has entered the horror pantheon, Lovely Molly has slipped through the cracks. This film did not benefit from the same is it real? hype that lifted Blair Witch and it takes a different approach to fear, using its slow, cerebral sense of dread to explore mental illness. But its blurred line between supernatural horror and mental illness is equally compelling. Unlike Blair Witch, Lovely Molly is not purely a found footage film but a commingling of traditional narrative style and the mysterious, voyeuristic footage that Molly films with her mini-DV camera. The film traffics in a queasy, unentertaining dread that even Blair Witch didnt approach. The plot is similar to the wildly popular first Paranormal Activity film but found none of the same renown. Perhaps this is because instead of being filled with harmless jumps and loud bangs that fade from your mind the minute you exit the theater, Lovely Molly is more visceral, more unrelenting. Its an unpleasant film, riddled with open, still-bleeding wounds of trauma. It is, at heart, a horror film about abuse, and the ghosts that linger long after the abuse has ceased.
Lovely Molly evolved organically. On the directors commentary for the Blu-ray release, Snchez says the film was originally going to be more Blair Witch-y, implying a rougher, jerkier experience, until cinematographer John W. Rutland turned it into something more polished. The house the film was using for production was owned by an equestrian, and consequently filled with horse images and memorabilia. As a result, Snchez layered a surprisingly ominous undertone involving horses: heavy sounds of hooves clattering in dark hallways; the wet, thick sound of horses exhaling; hints of the demon Orobas, a horse-headed creature dubbed in demonology as Great Prince of Hell. The horse element is never fully explained, though, which makes it all the more eerie and unnerving.
By Yasmina Tawil
Molly stares into the camera, a woman undone, with bleary eyes close to the color of the red REC icon tucked away in the top right of the screen. She shivers and shakes, ready to make her confession. “Whatever happened,” she says in a quivering voice, “it wasn’t me.” She produces a knife from off camera, pressing the blade up tight to her throat before pulling it away. “He won’t let me,” she exhales.
This confessional start to 2011’s Lovely Molly will seem familiar. It’s the same sort of tearful, emotional, one-on-one-with-the-camera breakdown made famous in 1999’s The Blair Witch Project, where documentarian Heather apologizes for dragging her cohorts into certain doom. That familiarity isn’t an accident—both Lovely Molly and Blair Witch came from the same filmmaker, Eduardo Sánchez. Yet while The Blair Witch Project has entered the horror pantheon, Lovely Molly has slipped through the cracks. This film did not benefit from the same “is it real?” hype that lifted Blair Witch and it takes a different approach to fear, using its slow, cerebral sense of dread to explore mental illness. But its blurred line between supernatural horror and mental illness is equally compelling. Unlike Blair Witch, Lovely Molly is not purely a “found footage” film but a commingling of traditional narrative style and the mysterious, voyeuristic footage that Molly films with her mini-DV camera. The film traffics in a queasy, unentertaining dread that even Blair Witch didn’t approach. The plot is similar to the wildly popular first Paranormal Activity film but found none of the same renown. Perhaps this is because instead of being filled with harmless jumps and loud bangs that fade from your mind the minute you exit the theater, Lovely Molly is more visceral, more unrelenting. It’s an unpleasant film, riddled with open, still-bleeding wounds of trauma. It is, at heart, a horror film about abuse, and the ghosts that linger long after the abuse has ceased.
Lovely Molly evolved organically. On the director’s commentary for the Blu-ray release, Sánchez says the film was originally going to be more “Blair Witch-y,” implying a rougher, jerkier experience, until cinematographer John W. Rutland turned it into something “more polished.” The house the film was using for production was owned by an equestrian, and consequently filled with horse images and memorabilia. As a result, Sánchez layered a surprisingly ominous undertone involving horses: heavy sounds of hooves clattering in dark hallways; the wet, thick sound of horses exhaling; hints of the demon Orobas, a horse-headed creature dubbed in demonology as “Great Prince of Hell.” The horse element is never fully explained, though, which makes it all the more eerie and unnerving.
By Yasmina Tawil
Given that Haunted House stories descend from Gothic literature, its appropriate to begin with a great American artwork, Grant Woods 1930 masterpiece American Gothic. Its the ubiquitous image of a farmer and his daughter, or possibly his wife, standing before an Iowa house built in the Carpenter Gothic style. The farmer looks dour and holds a pitchfork. The woman looks at him with reproach or disapproval. One curl escapes the tightly bound bun of her hair, suggesting things may not be as orderly as they seem. We can only speculate as to why.
Woods painting has always been something of a Rorschach Blot Test. You can see anything in it, from stalwart real Americans of conservative imaginings to a satirical depiction of those fantasies who, the womans gaze suggests, have some unsavory secrets hiding behind their prim faade. Its subjective quality is only exacerbated by the knowledge that only the house is real. The man is Woods dentist. The woman is his sister, Nan. The two never met, nor did they pose before the house.
American Gothic, then, is a story just like any motion picture, with actors playing the part. Let us posit that the story does not end there, but has another chapter: Wood painted another picture of his sister. Gone is the old-fashioned apron, high collar, and severe hair. She has a modern hairstyle now, a sleeveless polka-dot blouse which shows off her neck and a bit of chest, a bracelet and a wide leather belt. In her hands she holds a chick and a plum, suggesting, perhaps, fertility. The Gothic girl has been liberated.
What changed her? If not the farmer, perhaps it was something about the house. Maybe something angry dwells there, something lascivious. In the darkness of night, it whispered in her ear and aroused her lust. The only route to slaking it was to take that puritanical farmers pitchfork and run it through his heart. Then she went to town.
If you find the story of that transformation interesting, then the next complexity to absorb is that neither componentNans change and the agent of that changeis as compelling without the other. That is the nature of haunted house stories and why so many of them fail: Most are satisfied with situation rather than character. That is, they settle for the scares without considering their impact upon the scared. Ironically, in the best haunted house stories, The Haunting (1963, directed by Robert Wise), The Legend of Hell House (1973, John Hough), and The Shining (1980, Stanley Kubrick) among them, that impact is one of liberation. Rather than being scared straight, the characters are scared sensual.
It is not a coincidence that all three films are based on books by some of the best writers ever to work in the horror genre: Shirley Jackson, Richard Matheson, and Stephen King. In classifying stories, its important to distinguish between haunted houses and houses that are haunted. In the former, the house and the ghost are intertwined to the point that the house is the ghost. The latter is the setting of ghost stories. Films like The Uninvited (1944), The Innocents (1961), The Changeling (1980), The Devils Backbone (2001), and The Others (2001), are more about unrestful ghosts than the houses in which they reside. Stories in the former category are careful to focus not on the mover but the moved, the mover being what King defined in his book-length study of horror fiction, Danse Macabre (1981), as The Bad Place. The real problem with the house next door, he says, is that it changes people into the very things they most abhor. The real secret of the house next door is that it is a dressing-room for werewolves. In this context, werewolves stands for any perversion or psychosis residing within a person that said person would very much like to keep suppressed. King put the thematic statement well in the novel on which Kubricks The Shining islooselybased: This inhuman place makes human monsters.
To underscore the emphasis on transformation in these films, its worth noting a film that doesnt, the 1982 Tobe Hooper (with some on-set help from co-writer/producer Steven Spielberg) hit Poltergeist. In that film, whose story would seem to have been heavily influenced by Mathesons 1962 Twilight Zone episode Little Girl Lost, the Freeling family experiences disquieting and ultimately violent phenomena in their house because their subdivision was built on an old cemetery. The twist here is the developers relocated the headstones but not the bodies, leading to disgruntled spirits. This is hardly unheard ofin the 1880s, the British shipped 19 tons of mummified cats from Egypt to Liverpool and turned them into fertilizer, but we have precious few stories about embittered spectral tabbiesbut the characters must escape their home and its hot-and-cold-running special effects as one would exit a runaway dark ride. In doing so, they dont evolve in any sense. Thus, a key moment, when the house appears to have a letch, telepathically raising mom Dianes (JoBeth Williams, 33 and playing mother to an actress, Dominique Dunn, she would have had to give birth to at 11la plus a change, Hollywood) oversized football jersey to reveal her panties, is played for comedy rather than as an attempted rape or seduction, either of which would have forced the character into a psychologically complex situation that reflected an all-too-frequent real-life situation.
As Noel Murray showed recently on this site, the film is less interested in exploring such implications of haunting than in presenting an amped-up satire on how tidy suburban living is just the thin veneer we throw over the chaos and corruption of daily life. In this its successful, at least early on, but it doesnt leave the viewer anyone with whom to hold onto or empathize. Poltergeist doesnt have a structure; it has only a situation, and a bunch of flapping loose ends, Pauline Kael wrote in her review of the film. [Spielberg] is just throwing ideas and effects at us. Its a lost opportunity; the haunted house allows for the exploration of so much more, because in stories that truly embrace its possibilities, The Bad Place serves the same function that capricious fate or an angry and irrational god serves in other fiction, wreaking changes on its captives through twisted whimsy. In short, haunted houses are just like life, only more so.
By Yasmina Tawil
Given that Haunted House stories descend from Gothic literature, it’s appropriate to begin with a great American artwork, Grant Wood’s 1930 masterpiece “American Gothic.” It’s the ubiquitous image of a farmer and his daughter, or possibly his wife, standing before an Iowa house built in the Carpenter Gothic style. The farmer looks dour and holds a pitchfork. The woman looks at him with reproach or disapproval. One curl escapes the tightly bound bun of her hair, suggesting things may not be as orderly as they seem. We can only speculate as to why.
Wood’s painting has always been something of a Rorschach Blot Test. You can see anything in it, from stalwart “real Americans” of conservative imaginings to a satirical depiction of those fantasies who, the woman’s gaze suggests, have some unsavory secrets hiding behind their prim façade. Its subjective quality is only exacerbated by the knowledge that only the house is real. The man is Wood’s dentist. The woman is his sister, Nan. The two never met, nor did they pose before the house.
American Gothic, then, is a story just like any motion picture, with actors playing the part. Let us posit that the story does not end there, but has another chapter: Wood painted another picture of his sister. Gone is the old-fashioned apron, high collar, and severe hair. She has a modern hairstyle now, a sleeveless polka-dot blouse which shows off her neck and a bit of chest, a bracelet and a wide leather belt. In her hands she holds a chick and a plum, suggesting, perhaps, fertility. The Gothic girl has been liberated.
What changed her? If not the farmer, perhaps it was something about the house. Maybe something angry dwells there, something lascivious. In the darkness of night, it whispered in her ear and aroused her lust. The only route to slaking it was to take that puritanical farmer’s pitchfork and run it through his heart. Then she went to town.
If you find the story of that transformation interesting, then the next complexity to absorb is that neither component—Nan’s change and the agent of that change—is as compelling without the other. That is the nature of haunted house stories and why so many of them fail: Most are satisfied with situation rather than character. That is, they settle for the scares without considering their impact upon the scared. Ironically, in the best haunted house stories, The Haunting (1963, directed by Robert Wise), The Legend of Hell House (1973, John Hough), and The Shining (1980, Stanley Kubrick) among them, that impact is one of liberation. Rather than being scared straight, the characters are scared sensual.
It is not a coincidence that all three films are based on books by some of the best writers ever to work in the horror genre: Shirley Jackson, Richard Matheson, and Stephen King. In classifying stories, it’s important to distinguish between haunted houses and houses that are haunted. In the former, the house and the ghost are intertwined to the point that the house is the ghost. The latter is the setting of ghost stories. Films like The Uninvited (1944), The Innocents (1961), The Changeling (1980), The Devil’s Backbone (2001), and The Others (2001), are more about unrestful ghosts than the houses in which they reside. Stories in the former category are careful to focus not on the mover but the moved, the mover being what King defined in his book-length study of horror fiction, Danse Macabre (1981), as The Bad Place. “The real problem with the house next door,” he says, “is that it changes people into the very things they most abhor. The real secret of the house next door is that it is a dressing-room for werewolves.” In this context, “werewolves” stands for any perversion or psychosis residing within a person that said person would very much like to keep suppressed. King put the thematic statement well in the novel on which Kubrick’s The Shining is—loosely—based: “This inhuman place makes human monsters.”
To underscore the emphasis on transformation in these films, it’s worth noting a film that doesn’t, the 1982 Tobe Hooper (with some on-set help from co-writer/producer Steven Spielberg) hit Poltergeist. In that film, whose story would seem to have been heavily influenced by Matheson’s 1962 Twilight Zone episode “Little Girl Lost,” the Freeling family experiences disquieting and ultimately violent phenomena in their house because their subdivision was built on an old cemetery. The twist here is the developers relocated the headstones but not the bodies, leading to disgruntled spirits. This is hardly unheard of—in the 1880s, the British shipped 19 tons of mummified cats from Egypt to Liverpool and turned them into fertilizer, but we have precious few stories about embittered spectral tabbies—but the characters must escape their home and its hot-and-cold-running special effects as one would exit a runaway dark ride. In doing so, they don’t evolve in any sense. Thus, a key moment, when the house appears to have a letch, telepathically raising mom Diane’s (JoBeth Williams, 33 and playing mother to an actress, Dominique Dunn, she would have had to give birth to at 11—la plus ça change, Hollywood) oversized football jersey to reveal her panties, is played for comedy rather than as an attempted rape or seduction, either of which would have forced the character into a psychologically complex situation that reflected an all-too-frequent real-life situation.
As Noel Murray showed recently on this site, the film is less interested in exploring such implications of haunting than in presenting an amped-up satire on how tidy suburban living is just the thin veneer we throw over the chaos and corruption of daily life. In this it’s successful, at least early on, but it doesn’t leave the viewer anyone with whom to hold onto or empathize. “Poltergeist doesn’t have a structure; it has only a situation, and a bunch of flapping loose ends,” Pauline Kael wrote in her review of the film. “[Spielberg] is just throwing ideas and effects at us.” It’s a lost opportunity; the haunted house allows for the exploration of so much more, because in stories that truly embrace its possibilities, The Bad Place serves the same function that capricious fate or an angry and irrational god serves in other fiction, wreaking changes on its captives through twisted whimsy. In short, haunted houses are just like life, only more so.
By Yasmina Tawil
When John Landis An American Werewolf In London was released in 1981 and David Cronenbergs The Fly followed five years later, what initially grabbed peoples attention were the Academy Award-winning creature effects by Rick Baker (whose work on the former prompted AMPAS to create the Best Makeup category) and Chris Walas (whose other reward for his part in The Flys success was the opportunity to direct its less memorable sequel). Charged with updating horror icons of the 40s and 50s for savvy moviegoers primed to be dazzled by state-of-the-art special effects, Baker and Walas stepped up to the plate and delivered unforgettable monsters and set-pieces that have earned a permanent place in movie history. Even today, their work continues to impress, evincing a staying power that modern digital effects have a hard time sustaining. But what keeps viewers coming back to these two films time and again are the human love stories than run parallel with the bloody carnage and acid-spewing monster-men.
While both films have fantastic premisesnamely, that a man bitten by a werewolf will become one himself and a man who teleports himself with a housefly will become a man-sized flytheyre grounded in the mundane and the every day. Take the London flat of nurse Alex Price (Jenny Agutter) in American Werewolf, which reveals a lot about her that she might otherwise be reluctantor unableto say out loud. Having taken a fancy to him, Alex brings home American backpacker (and unwitting werewolf) David Kessler (David Naughton) after hes discharged from the hospital where shes been tending to him while he recovered from an animal attack on the Yorkshire moors. Warning him not to expect too much since shes just a working girl, she shows him around her cramped quarters, which art director Leslie Dilley and his crew make look as lived-in as possible without being too cluttered. The living room has plenty of throw pillows, photographs on the mantle, and shelves crammed with books and knickknacks, while the bathroom has little plants in individual pots. The hallway leading to her bedroom even has a single flower in a box mounted on the wall, which Davids zombie friend Jack (Griffin Dunne) playfully smells when he pays them a visit later that night. The very first thing the viewer sees when Alex lets David in, though, is a Casablanca poster hanging on the wall, closely followed by one for Gone With The Wind. And briefly glimpsed in her kitchen is an enlarged photograph of Humphrey Bogart. Even if shes being truthful when she says shes not in the habit of bringing home stray, young American men, its clear she has a thing for American culture (see also: the Disney paraphernalia scattered about) and a romantic streak a mile wide.
