DVD - Poltergeist

Poltergeist

With Halloween only days away, what better way to celebrate than with a classic horror movie. Ghost stories and movies are nothing new these days, but back in the early 80's movie goers were shocked by this little movie about a family living in a nice suburban neighborhood. A happy couple living the ideal life with their three children until one day things begin to move by themselves. (no, that isn't the shocking part) At first they are amused by the unusual occurances that begin happening but on the night of a terrible storm the pranks turn ugly and the youngest daughter is sucked into another dimension. Mommy and daddy can only communicate with Carol Ann through the static in their television set.  I was just a new teen when the movie came out and I'm sure I'm not the only one who was creeped out by the static when the TV went off air. Teens today wouldn't know what that was like since most everyone has cable or satelite these days and channels don't go off air. But in those days, Poltergeist did for static screens what Jaws did for the ocean.

Poltergeist, although no longer scary to me is still a classic horror film and doesn't lose any of it's appeal decades later. It has great special effects, lots of skeletons, ghosts and an evil entity. The cast is superb, the plot moves quickly and the real villain of the story, the real estate developer, is appropriately sleazy. Who builds a nice family neighborhood on top of graves? Who does that? Who moves the tomb stones and leaves the bodies? Well, probably most real estate developers if they thought they could get a way with it. Remember this movie was made back in the 80's and there were not a million activist groups to regulate such things. 

Zelda Rubinstein will probably always be remembered best for her roll as Tangina, the miniscule medium, who is instrumental in helping the Freeling family get Carol Ann back and clearing the house of spirits. They made two more Poltergeist movies after this one, but most critics agree, this one was the best. Not many horror movies can boast they got nominated for 3 Oscars. Definitely a movie to revisit for Halloween.

And was it just me, or was the clown in that movie the most evil doll you've ever seen?

I live in a coastal college town, down the road from a Marine base, so I usually choose to stay in and avoid the scary drunk people wandering around our fair city and the ones in costumes are even more frightening.  We always have a horror movie marathon on Halloween at my house. What is your Halloween tradition?

The Gray Man

This weekend I watched a DVD called The Gray Man. The Gray Man is the story of a real life "Hannible Lector" type character from the late 1920's. The story revolves around the kidnapping and murder of a little girl, Grace Budd, by Albert Fish in 1928. It is a gruesome subject but the film was so artfully made that it leaves you with chills, mainly because it is based on the true of these characters and the director lets you fill in many of the blanks for yourself. Albert Fish was a sick and narcisistic man who murdered and ate many children after his wife left him. He had five children of his own. They were all grown when he began his spree of terror and where in denial about his behavior, which did hint at what he was capable of. Although I am sure there are many who will not like the film because it is not graphic enough, and lets face it, modern society is jaded that way. I hestitate to classify this as a horror although the subject matter is definitely horrific. The film makers do a brilliant job of showing you what life was like then. As a former costume designer I can usually spot continuity flaws instantly, and I have to say this is one of the better made films I have seen recently. There are no big name actors, although you will recognize many of the faces. The gore and the acts of violence against the children you never see, instead the director has our vilian call the child upstairs and later you see him eating, so you know what has happened. As I pointed out in my last post, I think this style is so much more effective in horrifying us, the viewer, because we are left to imagine what has happened, what he has done. Towards the end of the movie, Albert writes a letter to the family giving terrible details of what he did with their daughter and it is this letter that allowed the police to finally catch him. Even in that, as the girls older brother reads the letter, we are not given everything it says, but just a taste. Of the other characters in the movie, we get a glimpse of how tough life was on some in the late 20's. And I found that glimpse interesting as we face our own economic depression today.

I also found interesting, that in his trial, Albert Fish, was one of the first to try to use the "insanity" defence, and while yes some could argue one must be insane to do what he did. I like the fact that the jury didn't let him have that "excuse" and saw him for what he was "pure evil". We are given hints throughout the film that it was way he was raised in an extremely religious orphanage that is the cause of his psychosis. I believe there is pure evil in the world. I also believe that more often than not people try to make excuses for their reprehensible behaviors instead of acknowledging them. While I applaud the way the film was made, the irony that our modern society is one based on excuses shows itself in how the film makers made the movie. In many scenes, we see the flash of the ghost of the boy he once was as he punishes himself for his wickedness. Had this film been made 40-50 yrs ago, would we have gotten those glimpses?

How often do we read and hear in the news today, how some killer, child molester, abuser, etc isn't resonsible for their actions because they had a rough upbringing, or their parents didn't love the enough, or their parents loved them to much? When do we stop making excuses for our actions and allowing others to make excuses for theirs?

Modern Horror vs Old School Horror Movies

I grew up watching cheesy horror movies. I still love them today, however I avoid most modern ones. Horror film-makers of today think that for a movie to be scary they must give us an abundance of sex and gore and very little plot. Although, most of the older movies aren't scary either they at least try to engage your brain or at least entertain you with their campiness. Maybe it's my age, but I really don't need to see a bunch of naked bimbos running around screaming and getting slashed or impaled, mostly by their own stupidity. I also don't need to see bucket loads of fake blood, mucus, bile, internal organs, etc. The human imagination is a wonderful thing. Sadly we live in a world where most of us can fill in the gory and sexual details without having to have it thrown in our face for ninety minutes straight on the screen. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a prude. I have no problem with nudity and if it enhances the story or has a purpose by all means have it in the movie, but the majority of nudity used in film today is extraneaous. At one time it was used as shock factor as was all the gore, but today's society sees so much of it on a regular basis that the majority is numb to it. There is nothing creepy about seeing yet another ax (fill in with your weapon of choice) wielding inbred psycho hacking a nubile coed to pieces while mumblng and drooling. Why? Because it has been done a thousand times, we've seen it in countless movies made by people who lack the imagination to come up with something more original. Of course all they care about is how many tickets and DVD's they can sell and sadly the youth of today loves it.

I think the original Friday The 13th, Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street started these trends. And they are classic horror movies. What the film makers of today fail to realize when they imitate these movies is that when those came out they were shocking, they did grab our attention and they did scare us. And yes there was some nudity and there was some gore but those movies centered around the plot not the other way around. Then you have your other great classics like Rosemary's Baby, Omen, The Excorcist. I can watch any of those today and not be fazed (which is sad), but when they came out they scared nations of people. Of course some of my favorite horror movies are the ones that never scared anyone even back then but they had great stories and the campy acting made them classics. Bela Lugosi, Vincent Price, Boris Karlof, Christoher Lee.... those names among others will live on forever, do any of us really remember the names of these modern actors in horror movies? We don't, because like the movies they star in they are forgettable.