My Top 10 Favorite Scary Movies: The Innocents (1961)

A love letter to light, shadow, and the psychological horror genre as a whole, "The Innocents" is proof positive of Jack Clayton's passion for film. Yet outside of the stunning aesthetics that made this adapted screenplay one of Scorsese's 11 scariest horror movies, it is also a testament to the acting. But Deborah Kerr always lacks the ability to suck, but it is Martin Stephens's role as Miles that makes this movie.

Miss Giddens (Kerr) gets a job as a governess for a rich man's orphaned niece and nephew who are kept at his country estate. Going into the position without any information of the mansion's history or why the children are so impossible to keep in boarding school, the governess, finds herself hearing voices and feeling strange presences at night, leading her to believe the children are being used by the spirits of the ex-dead valet and governess. Once she separates the children in the attempts to break the hysteria between them, Flora (Pamela Franklin) being taken away by the housekeeper (Megs Jenkins), Miss Giddens goes one on one with the young Miles and things get astonishingly scary, courtesy of Stephens's shocking acting ability. 

Both Franklin and Stephens truly own this movie being only the ages 11 and 12 respectively, being mere objects to the lover spirits of Peter Quint and Miss Jessel. They look at each other as if they were an old married couple one minute and like young star-crossed lust-fueled lovers the next. This is more unsettling than all the beautiful effects! But this isn't Martin Stephen's first rodeo as a "creepy kid" in his role as a dangerous half-alien genius in the "Village of the Damned" (1960) and it wouldn't be Franklin's last as the sexually repressed psychic in "The Legend of Hell House" (1973). Both of them are skilled in what little of the script they were given, never knowing they were shooting a horror film.

Although technically adapted from William Archibald's 1950 stage adaptation than from Henry James's "The Turn of the Screw," this film is every bit of atmospheric. "The subtlety with which he [Clayton] and his team established the atmosphere of the two worlds - the everyday and the spirit world - was so evocative of decadence, in the most delicate manner [...] One instance is the way the edges of the screen were slightly out of focus, as though seen through a glass, perhaps." (Deborah Kerr. Eric Braun. 1978.) But perhaps the ambience is something coming from the governess's mind and not an environmental haunting. Regardless, the famous ending of Kerr kissing Miles on the lips is perhaps the most haunting out of any moment in the whole movie. 

Cool Links to Check Out
The Innocents (1961) - Articles - TCM.com

My Top 10 Favorite Scary Movies: The Pit and the Pendulum (1961)

In "The Pit and the Pendulum," Vincent Price finally found his antagonistic footing in "a characteristically rococo performance as the slightly mad Spanish aristocrat." (Vincent Price: A Daughter's Biography. Victoria Price. 2014) It would seem "House of Usher" was merely a launching pad to a successful career in horror, but "Pit and the Pendulum," against his prior performance, has a richer story behind his character as an anti-hero driven mad by both circumstance and his dead wife. 

As the first film of Vincent's key "hammy" performance, to new eyes, it came across as ludicrous and comical to some and legitimately frightening to others. As the son of a famous Spanish Inquisition torturer, Nicholas Medina was already a traumatized human being long before his wife died. The grieving process only gets worse when his brother-in-law Francis Barnard (John Kerr, post-"South Pacific") visits to find out what happened to his sister. But her death is far more complicated as the movie takes an unexpected turn, rendering Nicholas into complete insanity. 

"Pit..." does something different with the role that became synonymous with Price's career. Perhaps it is the antihero aspect as he believes he is hearing things that are only known to him but not his brother-in-law and sister. Price plays tortured beautifully right up until my personal favorite scene when he is driven to ultimate madness. He slowly slides down the wall, Nicholas's eyes in resistance and fright. Closeups enhance the audience into believing he is beginning to mentally check out and then freezing, Nicholas is completely gone. Then, a very slight twitch of his pupil ignites the childhood trauma and he falls completely victim to his past. This is a scene worth playing over and over watching what Price does only with his eyes before performing the evil antagonist he does so well. 

Edgar Allan Poe's original story may only be a few pages long and mostly relying on a first person narrative of the senses, it has become a lush and creative adaptation courtesy of Richard Matheson. The Spanish Inquisition is in the past as the movie is based in the 1600s, but in place and character the past is very much alive in the dungeon full of torture devices.  Unfortunately, the premise was not entirely original as Matheson "took a little short story about a guy lying on a table with that razor-sharp blade swinging over him, and had to make a movie out of it. I just imposed a plot from an old suspense mystery on that basic premise." (Vincent Price: A Daughter's Biography. Victoria Price. 2014) But even knowing this, "The Pit and the Pendulum" is still a perfect scary movie with Vincent Price in top form, so no one should really complain!

Relevant Links The Pit and the Pendulum (1961) - Articles - TCM.com Vincent Price: A Daughter's Biography - Victoria Price - Google Books

My Top 10 Favorite Scary Movies: The Old Dark House (1932)

The "old dark house" movie is a forgotten art. The reading of the dead patriarch's will, the characters' side glances to one another with devious intentions in mind, it's understandable that this kind of film was made only for 30s-40s audiences. Black and white suited this kind of film that often entailed a huge twist in the last five minutes. So one can only assume that the pre-code "The Old Dark House" (not to be confused with William Castle's 1963 Dick Lester homage) is exactly that. Kind of yes and kind of no.

Adapted from Benighted by English author and playwright J.B. Priestley, a car full of travelers find their vehicle unable to start in a violent rainstorm. The closest shelter they end up finding is the Femm estate somewhere in a secluded corner of Wales. What they end up walking in on isn't necessarily supernatural or anything expected of the genre, but entirely human. Horace Femm (Ernest Thesiger) seems relatively sane despite a paranoia of being caught by the cops for a real or imagined reason. His sister, Rebecca (Eva Moore), is a deaf yet hostile religious fanatic and another brother, Saul (Brember Willis) is a pyromaniac and far more insane than either sibling. Did we fail to mention he is also not allowed out of his caged room? Along with this strange family includes a very old bedridden father and the butler, the lustful but mute Morgan (Boris Karloff, of course). 

Slowly becoming even more uncomfortable with their surroundings, husband and wife Philip and Margaret Waverton (Raymond Massey, "Arsenic and Old Lace") (Gloria Stuart, "Titanic"), Roger Penderel (Melvyn Douglas, "Ninotchka"), Gladys DuCane Perkins (Lillian Bond) and the show stopping Charles Laughton ("The Hunchback of Notre Dame") as Sir William Porterhouse in a role Oscar Wilde would find genius, just try to make the best of things as they wait for the rain to relent. The Wavertons discover Patriarch Femm, Penderel and Gladys fall in love despite the fact she is dating Porterhouse who takes the rejection surprisingly well. The night is not without danger, of course, as Margaret is pursued by the drunk Morgan and Penderel interacts with a dangerous but quite humorous Saul. 

That is the strange thing about this movie, it's darkly humorous in a time dark humor was not often scripted. The situational humor, I think, translates well to today. "Have a potato" is one of the better known lines along with "It's only gin, you know. Only gin. I like gin" and unable to translate Morgan's muteness, "Even Welsh ought not to sound like that!" But what makes it scary, outside of the elements and shadows, is Karloff's natural presence even with Bela Lugosi's facial hair artist from "Murders of the Rue Morgue." Finally out of The Creature's makeup after the release of 1931's Frankenstein (also directed by Whale), this muteness translates as something scarier than a man slathered up in green colored collodion. Being mute and drunk heightens things as his actions show Morgan might not like his job all that much in releasing Saul from his bolted room. "Sometimes he drinks heavily," Horace explains to the visitors, "A night like this will set him going and once he's drunk, he's rather dangerous."

My Top 10 Favorite Scary Movies: "The Curse of the Cat People" (1944)

Compared to its origin story, "The Curse of the Cat People" is more of a companion piece than a sequel RKO intended. But somehow within the template Val Lewton had to work in (keep the budget under $150,000, run for 75 minutes, and RKO would supply the film titles), this is essentially a horror film. It's a horror film about childhood, isolation, and a child's perception of terror. 

This is a fairy tale about a slightly creepy little girl (Ann Carter) who just happens to be the daughter of Oliver and Alice Reed from the original "Cat People." Amy just wants to be loved by her father who has not achieved the balance of being a parent and friend rendering her unable to make friends at school. But there is something about his daughter that makes "Ollie" uncomfortable that makes him push her away. "It's something else -- something moody -- something sickly. She could almost be Irena's child." But it isn't a sequel! Remember that!

Amy becomes so lonely and rejected by her schoolmates, she wishes for a friend and achieves one in an impeccably dressed Simone Simon, who calls herself Irena and will be Amy's friend for as long as she needs her. While she plays dolls and learns about numbers, Amy finds a kindred soul in an old woman living in the scariest home in all of Tarrytown. An ex-actress and "not the mother" of Barbara (Elizabeth Russell), Julia Farren (Julia Dean) tells Amy stories of her life on stage as well as the local legend of Sleepy Hollow. 

Oliver is then invested and then not as he still has not achieved ultimate closure over Irena. This blows up in both of their faces when Amy finds a picture of her father and friend together. Since this is not a sequel (I say with staggering syllables), Ollie's person has remained rather consistent since the first movie. He remains utterly self-serving, now having an unhappy experience with Irena and then tells Amy's teacher "Alice and I both saw Irena lose her mind. Do you think I can sit here calmly and watch my child?"

Yes, I know we are to treat "Curse..." as a companion piece, but there are moments that make the links between both movies rather cryptic. Perhaps it is a young white male's unhappiness in a rather charmed life that became greater than him and had been passed off onto his daughter. Perhaps it's what Alice tells Miss Callahan, the voice of reason and Amy's teacher, "It's almost as if there were a curse on us. I wouldn't care if it were on me, but it seems to be directed against the child. Irena haunts this house." 

Now for a little refresher. Irena was either propelled by the sociology of her Serbian legends, whether true or not, in being taunted by her own schoolmates for only having a mother and a dead father, which fed into the concept of "cat people." Now, because of her supposed psychosis, according to everyone around her, a young white man finds himself for the first time in his life unhappy knowing to some degree the woman he married wouldn't touch him! She gives into her personal inevitability and the husband marries the woman he's basically emotionally cheated on his wife with then has a child who ends up an outsider who "wanted for nothing" according to him. Maybe it is the plight of the ignorant, of the parent who doesn't want to listen and that's something scarier than the use of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." 

Cool Things I Found: The Curse of the Cat People (1944) - Articles - TCM.com "The Curse of the Cat People"  A Screenplay by Dewitt Boden

My Top 10 Favorite Scary Movies: "House of Usher (The Fall of the House of Usher)" (1960)

"The House of Usher is alive. The evidence can be seen in the condensation of an atmosphere about the waters and walls. The exhalations of the mansion. Can you not see it rise and gently fall? Yet it is ever present around the clock throughout the seasons." "House of Usher" becomes something more than an elusive psychological link between twins under Roger Corman's direction. Shot in fifteen days on a budget of $270,000 (50,000 going to its top billed star), Edgar Allan Poe's famous short story becomes something even more haunting than its original implications. 

With the exception of the friend who visits the house being Madeline's love interest, Richard Matheson has been faithful to the original Poe text. Vincent Price is barely in his campy horror stride just yet, but devours every last adapted syllable as if it were a Shakespearean character mourning his own despair. 

But, as horror films moved from the psychological to the show-y under this lush landscape of cinemascope, the look almost overpowers the script. Daniel Haller's production design is full of "living and breathing" reds, yellows and browns as well as specialty paintings painted by Burt Shonberg. Poetically enough, the landscape of night and Philip's (Mark Damon) dreams are all designed in blues and purples! The use of the house being a creature itself lends to the art design considerably in the tiniest of details from the tapestry-like patterns on the curtains to the family crest sewn into the backs of chairs. Even the sounds, dominantly in the dream sequence full of the atypical moaning of ghosts over the score and a choir singing runs, is definitely cheesy yet clever against the haunting image!

I would like to think that Corman's first two Poe adaptations were perhaps not only the best [of the 8], but two sides of the same coin. Against a stark backdrop of a dungeon and basement corridors, "The Pit and the Pendulum" (1961) shows off Price's true acting prowess whereas in "House of Usher," his budding talent comes across almost muffled against the deep red carpet patterns. But it comes across loud and clear that Vincent was the star of the movie and rightfully so! But the others (Mark Damon, Myrna Fahey, and Harry Ellerbe) play their parts with not as much raging passion, but they do their jobs as well as they could. But it is true what works best in this film: the right people behind the camera and the genesis of Vincent Price as a horror icon in the years to come. 

My Top 10 Favorite Scary Movies: The Uninvited (1944)

Up until the 1940s spiritual apparitions, or rather ghosts, were never taken seriously. A dead Cary Grant and Constance Bennett mockingly tortured Roland Young in their invisible states (1937's "Topper") and in "The Cat and the Canary" (1939), Bob Hope found the antagonist behind what seemed to be a white-sheeted ploy. But as of February 1944, that all changed. Paramount and director Lewis Allen unleashed a new kind of horror film titled "The Uninvited" starring Ray Milland, Ruth Hussey and introducing a 20 year old Gail Russell. 

Siblings Roderick (Milland) and Pamela (Hussey) Fitzgerald, along with their dog, find themselves enraptured with a Cornwall estate while on holiday. But falling in love with Windward House only brings bumps and cries in the dead of night as well as the daughter of the original owners. "Rick" eventually falls in love "creating" a popular jazz standard popularly known as "Stella by Starlight." But Stella (Russell) is a haunted woman whenever in Windward, believing whatever she feels is her dead mother. But there are two women haunting the house, so which one is Stella's real mother?

The apparitions themselves are quite impressive for their age for being a last minute decision. "The studio was uncertain how to market it and decided to add some special effects [...] to exploit the film's supernatural premise. While the ectoplasmic apparitions are appropriately eerie and more subtle than any present day computer-generated effects, they were removed by the censors when the film was distributed in England and, in many cases, critics and moviegoers preferred that version because it was more suggestive and less obvious." ("The Uninvited (1944) - Articles - TCM.com") Being such a great movie, it would have been a perfect choice either way. The writer finds herself very surprised that the 2013 Criterion reissue did not even include both versions! The "ectoplasmic apparitions" work in giving off a feminine air, sheer and flowing, making the viewer believe that this must be what female "ghosts" look like!

While the story may come across a little dated and even subtly inspired by Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, if you are sensitive, this is a horror movie that will make you cry as a young girl discovers who her real mother is from the beyond.

Turner Classic Movies. Halloween Schedule October 26-31, 2015

Thursday, October 29

6:45 am Freaks (1932) 

8:15 The Devil Doll (1936) 

9:45 House on Haunted Hill (1958) 

11:15 Macabre (1958)

12:45 pm Suspicion (1941) 

2:30 Stage Fright (1950)

4:30 A Bucket of Blood (1959) 

Friday, October 30

7:15 am The Mummy (1959) 

8:45 Dracula, Prince of Darkness (1966) 

10:30 Frankenstein Created Woman (1967) 

12:15 pm Dracula Has Risen From the Grave (1969) 

2:00 Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed! (1969) 

3:45 Crescendo (1972)

5:15 Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972) 

TCM Spotlight: Val Lewton Horror

7:00 Cat People (1942) 

8:30 Martin Scorsese Presents, Val Lewton: The Man in the Shadows (2007) 

10:00 The Seventh Victim (1943) 

11:15 The Leopard Man (1941) 

12:30 am The Ghost Ship (1943) 

1:45 The Body Snatcher (1945) 

3:15 Isle of the Dead (1945) 

4:30 Bedlam (1946) 

Saturday, October 31

6:00 am   Doctor X (1932) 

7:30 White Zombie (1932) 

8:45 Dementia 13 (1963)

10:15 The Fearless Vampire Killers (1966)

12:15 Homicidal (1961) 

2:00 The Tingler (1959) 

3:30  House of Wax (1953) 

5:15 The Devil's Bride/The Devil Rides Out (1968) 

The Essentials: Happy Halloween

7:00 The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945) 

9:00 Curse of the Demon (1958) 

10:30 Dead of Night (1945) 

12:30 am Mark of the Vampire (1935) 

My Top 10 Favorite Scary Movies: The Body Snatcher (1945)

"[Val] Lewton contributed a great deal to the screenplays of his films, from the original story-lines, which were often his, through the various drafts and revisions; and he always wrote the final shooting scripts himself." (Val Lewton B Unit | Ephemera Quotes)  Credited under the pseudonym Carlos Keith, "The Body Snatcher" shows Lewton's love affair with literature. Where he usually compromises with a title card with a quote from Hippocrates or making up one via Dr. Judd ("Cat People"), it was only a matter of time for a cheap and creepy literary adaptation. 

Based on a short story written by Robert Louis Stevenson based on real events from 1820s Edinburgh, Dr. Wolfe McFarlane (Henry Daniell), ex-surgeon and medical professor, takes on one of his students as an assistant and taking him into the deep underbelly of pre-body medical donation. Cab driver by day and grave robber by night, Gray (Karloff) provides him with these bodies, but whether or not they were his own murder victims is another question. It is slowly revealed that the lowlife Gray has something over the doctor from his dark past that will torture him until his dying day. 

Karloff looked entirely in his element, even his costume of a top hat, side burns, and whiskers seemed to be complimented around his iconic face. While it is very easy to gush on Karloff's professionalism and Bela's lack but full of a passionate grit, I want to highlight on the unsung antihero, the doctor himself, Henry Daniell. 

Lewton was known for casting fantastic bit players that time forgot and as full as Daniell's career was, it is heartbreaking that his performance is overshadowed, but yet overshadowed by the greats. A consummate actor with a career spanning over FOUR decades, Daniell was the actor to cast in roles of the aristocratic yet malevolent gentleman. "I was never a villain until Gerald du Maurier said there was something creepingly sinister about me. I was a good, clean-living boy until then! Of course, it may be that I am really a sinister person and that portraying respectability is really, on my part, a display of virtuosity." (1944 interview) Unfortunately "The Body Snatcher" is Daniell's only flirt with horror, imagine what Hitchcock could have done with him!

While the story is consistent, two scenes do remain the most memorable. When Joseph (Lugosi) tries to blackmail Gray (Karloff) out of saying anything about the body snatching operation he had with his employer, it becomes a classic stand off much like the chess game in "The Black Cat!" But Lewton uses this scene of all scenes to basically tell the origin story of the Burke and Hare  murders paralleling both instances of homicidal grave robbers as it is clear one of them will kill the other as the anticipation builds during the storytelling. The last few minutes themselves is a piece of classic horror mastery as Daniell's demons finally catch up with him, literally before ending on a quote from Hippocrates of Cos which seems cryptic against the final Lewtonian mind game.

My Top 10 Favorite Scary Movies: The Black Cat (1934)

Edgar G. Ulmer's "The Black Cat" is nothing like the Poe classic, there is barely a feline in sight for most of the movie! But what is there is a majestic chess game, literally and figuratively, between two horror greats Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. Lugosi's Dr. Vitus Werdergast is on a train to Hungary from a prison camp to meet his "old friend" Hjalmar Poelzig. But a chance meeting with honeymooners Peter (David Manners) and Joan (Jacqueline Wells) leads them to share a car which crashes just a few miles from Poelzig's home. Joan is injured and taken into the sharply modern mansion where Poelzig and Werdergast finally face off, resulting in a Satanic ritual, Werdergast's own Ailurophobia, and a few deaths.

Lugosi is in rare form as an antihero and ex-World War 1 soldier captured and betrayed by his superior, Polezig, to only lose his wife and daughter to the man who Ulmer modeled after Satanist Alstair Crowley. Yet he is not without his own faults in drugging the injured woman with hallucinogens and killing one of Poelzig's cats in a fit of paranoia. This is probably my favorite Lugosi film for this strange antihero protagonist as he is every bit of a gentleman up until he is finally pushed into insanity and ultimate revenge. 

"The Black Cat" could only be called a visceral film from never seeing how Werdergast enacts his revenge or any overt Satanist allusion. Having gained "complete freedom" from Universal Studios, Ulmer and writer Peter Ruric went crazy after taking more creative liberties from Ruric's original faithful mix of the short story blended with "The Fall of the House of Usher." "Ulmer's "complete freedom" came to a screeching halt when Universal Execs saw the filmed footage and script. Lugosi's hero rapes the heroine, the heroine occasionally turns into a black cat, and Karloff's Poelzig is skinned alive and last seen crawling on the floor with his skin hanging from his body as Lugosi's mad hero laughs hysterically. All of these scenes were cut from the film and par, the course at that time, were destroyed. There are conflicting accounts as to whether the scenes were shot and then burned, or merely scripted and axed." (Edgar G. Ulmer's The Black Cat (1934)) Towards the end, it is clear that many scenes were purposefully cut, including a strange transition between Poelzig beginning his Satanic ritual and a woman spontaneously fainting. There are many questions about the plot, but what remains is a beautiful psychological game about revenge and secrets at the behest of the time the film was made. Imagine what it would have been like if the film remained fully intact!

What is lacking in story is made up in Ulmer's gift for set design. Having been trained with the great F.W. Murnau ("Nosferatu," "The Last Laugh") as an apprentice, Poelzig's mansion is a magical wonderland based on clean yet sharp Weimar angles that translate well into night shadows and futuristic minimalism in the daylight which heightens the dark debauchery. Only when the story gets darker and breaks off from the frivolity, they enter the "chapel" and the caves underneath the home. Perhaps this too is a nod and a wink towards "Metropolis" which Ulmer possibly worked on as well. Where "The Haunting" is a love letter to Val Lewton, "The Black Cat" is definitely a love letter to Weimar cinema, which I spent a lot of time watching in college, but I'm probably biased.

Happy Birthday to Bela Lugosi

Bela Lugosi
(October 20, 1882-August 16, 1956)

Coinciding perfectly with my current listing of my favorite scary movies, there is no better detour on this day than to give homage to the great Bela Ferenc Dezso Blasko, or better known as Bela Lugosi. Better known as Dracula and the fan boy object of Ed Wood's affection, Bela had been heartbreakingly typecasted throughout his stage and film career. But in his gentlemanly manner, he never turned down a role which further enabled addictions to drugs and women. Despite his humanity and weaknesses, those beautiful brown eyes expressed themselves through the vampiric stares to the moment where the protagonist he plays finally breaks into insanity. 

The latter is truly Bela's epitaph in Edgar Ulmer's "The Black Cat" (1938) and Joseph H. Lewis's "Invisible Ghost" (1941). To see a horror icon playing a dimensional character is always an event and Lugosi's catatonic dark gaze is more than just haunting, it's sad and tragically underrated. But Lugosi knew what worked and how to play his talents to work for the studio system that did not have an established place for wild card international actors. His body of work may have been on a slow decline, but just remember, he did play against Greta Garbo in the MGM comedy "Ninotchka," proving he was more than what the Hollywood studio system gave him credit for. 

Further Material:
Stuff You Missed in History Class:: Bela Lugosi Part 1
Stuff You Missed in History Class:: Bela Lugosi Part 2

My Top 10 Favorite Scary Movies: "Cat People" (1942)

"But take a sweet love story, or a story of sexual antagonisms, about people like us, not freaks, and cut in your horror and there by suggestion, you've got something" has never been truer than Val Lewton's first masterpiece, 1942's "Cat People" starring Simone Simon. According to the critics and historians, this is indeed a "story of sexual antagonisms" centering on a core hypothetical about women who do not let their husbands touch them. 

Irena Dubrovna, a Serbian living in New York City, has a chance meeting with a very handsome Oliver Reed (Kent Smith) who she immediately invites to tea. Although there is clear attraction, there seems to be a psychological inevitability within Irena. Even while she explains the history of a statue of King John of Serbia impaling a cat kept in her apartment, she becomes lost within her own thoughts finding herself cold towards Oliver who is only further entranced by her. He marries her despite her fears, whether psychological or sexual or even religious, but does not realize she will never let him have her sexually. 

It's clear that Lewton has a gift for the ambiguity which is why my take on "Cat People" comes across like a game of Chutes and Ladders. On one hand, you do have the "sexual antagonism" covered up by fantasy or, to take it even further, her ancestry and heritage. We are to assume Irena is in her early 30s and was raised in the Serbian Orthodox Church with a strong sense of what is good and evil. Even in her explanation of the statue, she explains that marmelukes initially enslaved her people, which led them to "[bow] down to Satan and said their masses to him. They became witches and were evil" which brought King John to kill most of the masses except for the few who escaped into the mountains. Although she never says it directly, it seems keeping the King John statue around keeps her emotionally and possibly even devoutly in check as he is one of the many Orthodox saints.

Where Irena cannot satisfy her husband sexually, she intends to please him by going to see psychiatrist Louis Judd although Oliver is off falling in love with a coworker. But even there, we are told secondhand through hypnosis of the "women who, in jealousy and anger or out of their own corrupt passions can change into great cats, like panthers and if one of these women were to fall in love, and if her lover were to kiss her, take her into his embrace, she would be driven by her own evil to kill him." Judd also tells the audience that Irena didn't know her father who died before she was born, being raised by her mother who was called a witch and a cat woman. "These childhood tragedies are inclined to corrode the soul to leave a canker in the mind," Judd continues slipping in some inadvertent Freudianism.

But the real question of the whole movie, and the principle I base my love of this story on, is if the world Dewitt Boden had written, is a world capable of magic realism or one of total cynicism oblivious to situational inevitability. The horror lies in the Oliver's decision to divorce Irena having fallen in love with Alice. Now Irena has nothing left to lose but to give into the cat people-like paganism she feared, as territorial anger blinds her to pursue Alice twice. The horror lies in bloody paw prints on the sidewalk that slowly morph into the imprints of high heels, a panther-like cat weaving in and out of the shadows around the pool containing the horrified Alice. Even when Irena finally pursues the aroused Dr. Judd, her feline-like eyes twinkling the darker the screen gets, it is the purest indication that she is a cat woman, or giving into murderous inclinations simply as a person.

But are these elements of horror merely what we perceive Irena's anger to the ignorant as or an extension of the prowess of a cat woman? That is the genius of Val Lewton's auteurship! As a viewer, to go back and forth if whether Irena needs to be authentic to her feline pagan roots or to continue to live in an ignorant world is truly a testament to what kind of person the audience member is. Do you believe in inevitability in all its good or bad? Do you believe in a woman and her tragedy of what her mind or soul perceives? Simon's Irena tells Dr. Judd "Yet when you speak of the soul, you mean the mind and it is not my mind that is troubled." Where critics and historians most often focus on the core hypothetical or treat Irena has a person with mental illness via her sexuality, I see someone who is victim to her circumstances, inevitability, ancestry, and everyone who will not listen to her. We are our ancestors to a degree. That is Irena Dubrovna's tragedy, horror is merely an act, a decoration.

"I wake in the night and the tread of their feet whispers in my brain.

I have no peace for they are in me, in me."

Listening Material:
Val Lewton Discussion | Historic Hollywood | Popcorn Talk Cat People | Watchalong! | Popcorn Talk

My Top 10 Favorite Scary Movies: "The Haunting" (1963)

"An evil old house, the kind some people call haunted, is like an undiscovered country waiting to be explored. Hill House had stood for 90 years and might stand for 90 more. Silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there ... walked alone." Is there any better way to set up the plot of 1963's "The Haunting" than the first three lines of the movie? John Markway (Richard Johnson) is out to prove the paranormal exists along with a team of a fragile sensitive Eleanor Lance, unofficial psychic Theodora (Claire Bloom), and the future owner of the estate, Luke Sanderson (Russ Tamblyn). What results from an innocent investigation turns out frightening and even deadly. 

"The Haunting" has a power that's truly, for lack of a better word, haunting. With the use of claustrophobia, a distorting 30 MM lens and cleverly designed wallpaper, it is truly a tribute to Robert Wise's first boss, Val Lewton [Head of RKO's Horror Unit]. "We tossed away the horror formula right from the beginning. No grisly stuff for us. No mask-like faces hardly human, with gnashing teeth and hair standing on end. No creaking physical manifestations. No horror piled on horror. You can't keep up horror that's long sustained. It becomes something to laugh at. But take a sweet love story, or a story of sexual antagonisms, about people like us, not freaks, and cut in your horror and there by suggestion, and you've got something." (White, Buscombe. British Institute Film Classics. 2003) What was shadows and footsteps in Lewton's masterpieces have now become something more, something violently and ambiguously visceral. 

Perhaps there's more than the mystifying exterior of Ettington Park Hotel that makes this movie scary. Maybe it's the neither incredibly good or antagonistic cast of characters. .Maybe it's what we see versus what we don't see courtesy of anamorphic wide angle lenses. Maybe it's Julie Harris's own ostracization from her peers throughout the shooting, or the domineering ghostly patriarch Hugh Crain. Maybe, just maybe, it's simply unreliable ambiguity itself taking the viewer on Mr. Toad's wild hellish ride that stays with you even after your first or fiftieth viewing.