Film Friday: The Exorcist (1973)

When is a terrifying horror movie not a horror movie? When it’s one of the greatest films of all time and it was made in the 1970’s. As we’ve mentioned before, the films of the 1970’s were different. They tended to be contemplative and involved solid storytelling rather than being about quick emotional triggers. The jokes took time to develop. Love was the goal, not sex. And when it came to scary movies, filmmakers strove for building psychological terror rather than quick shock. The movie that demonstrates this best was The Exorcist.

The Plot

The Exorcist begins with a character you won’t even see again until near the end of the film. The film starts with Father Lankester Merrin (Max von Sydow) on an archeological dig in Iraq. In a scene that involves more sights and sounds than words, you see Merrin uncover an amulet which resembles a demon Merrin defeated in an exorcism years ago. The exorcism lasted several days and nearly killed Merrin. The demon he exorcised was called Pazuzu.

The movie then switches to the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Actress Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn) is here to film a movie at the Georgetown University campus. Her daughter Regan (Linda Blair) plays with a Ouija board and soon strange things begin to happen at their home. These are very minor at first. In fact, they are mistaken as just being rats. But soon Regan begins to show signs of potential mental illness. MacNeil has her daughter evaluated by every specialist she can find, but none of them has an answer. They finally suggest an exorcism as a sort of placebo because Regan has begun to claim she is possessed.

As this story progresses, we simultaneously meet Father Damien Karras. Karras is a priest and a psychiatrist. He is a firm believer in modern science and he disbelieves things like exorcism. In his story, Karras's mother dies without Karras being able to help her and that causes him to lose his faith in God.

With her doctors having told her to seek an exorcism, MacNeil seeks out Karras, whom she has seen at the film set. She now believes that Regan is possessed and that Regan has killed her director Burke Dennings. Karras tries to dissuade her from pursuing exorcism, but ultimately agrees to see Regan. He meets with Regan several times and starts to believe that she may actually be possessed, even though the demon within her gives both evidence of his existence and evidence that he is being faked by Regan. Ultimately, however, Karras decides to do the exorcism.

To do this, he needs the permission of the Church. The Church assigns Merrin to help Karras. They then do the exorcism, which involves several truly iconic moments in film.

What Made This Film So Special

The Exorcist is perhaps the best example of how 1970’s films were different than today because there are so many films we can compare to it. Indeed, you can’t really find a modern exorcism movie which isn’t essentially a direct copy of The Exorcist. Yet, all of them fail to live up to the original. And the reason all the imitators fail, despite having so many advantages, such as having a success to study and the benefit of being able to go further in terms of effects and scares with modern audience, is exactly what makes The Exorcist the great film it is.

Unlike the modern copies, The Exorcist takes its time, but it does so with a purpose. This is something too many modern directors don’t understand: time does not equal drama, careful use of time does. Consider the sequence where Pazuzu possesses Regan. This begins so slowly that the audience could be forgiven for not even knowing what is happening at first. Indeed, at first, it seems like a game where Regan is talking to an imaginary friend over the Ouija board, and then MacNeil thinks there are rats in the ceiling. Soon, Regan’s behavior starts to grow stranger. At this point, the film cleverly leaves the door open for this being either something demonic or simply Regan having a mental condition or possibly a seizure condition. At the same time, the director slowly isolates MacNeil. By the time we know for sure, MacNeil has no friends outside her home and Regan is showing supernatural signs of being a prisoner in her own body... she has become bait for Merrin and Karras.

All of this is vital because the point to this story is not the possession itself, it is the horror caused by the possession. Specifically, it the horror MacNeil faces as her daughter succumbs to a condition MacNeil cannot treat which terrifies us as we translate it to our own children. It is the horror of being Regan who becomes a prisoner in her own body which makes us shudder at being in her condition. It is the horror Karras feels when Pazuzu taps his guilt over his mother and what Karras must do to save Regan which makes us sick as we ask if we could do the same thing. That is where this film works and it is through the slow build that the film makes this real. The modern copies don’t get this. They think the horror comes from making the demon seem as evil as possible, but the demon is irrelevant here... a mere Macguffin. Indeed, this film could almost end with the possession being faked and be just as terrifying because it sells us a drama of a mother, a little girl, and a priest who endure extreme suffering. The copies would be a joke without the demon, since that’s really all they offer.

What's more, another key distinction is that this film actually cares about the character stories. Consider Karras’s issue with his mother. We are essentially given an entire movie about that story before Karras ever meets with Regan. The reason is that we are meant to be pulled into who this man is and what his problems are long before we are shown the monster who will exploit his weakness. The copies generally replace this entire movie of story with a montage of someone the priest loves dying and then the priest telling his boss that he’s lost his faith. That gives you the form, but nowhere near the substance of The Exorcist which is why you can’t even remember the names of the copy-cat priests, but you remain haunted by Damien Karras’s story long after you have seen the film.

This film worked because it was a story about several people who endure horrific choices and incredible suffering. It was not a film about two priests fighting a demon. That is what makes this film so unforgettable, so re-watchable, and why none of the copies have ever approached its quality.

Thoughts?

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Film Friday: Tucker and Dale vs. Evil (2011)

I despise the hillbilly slasher genre. Seriously, it’s always the same thing: some college kids stumble upon an inbred, deformed hillbilly who starts killing them for no apparent reason. These films traffic in mindless violence and clichés, and they are duller than dirt. In fact, they are so bad they can’t even be parodied because they are themselves parodies. Well, actually, it turns out they can be parodied. That’s what Tucker and Dale vs. Evil does, and I was really surprised by this film.

Plot

When I first heard of Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, I had no idea what it was about. This is one of those films with little marketing muscle and no box office reach; if you want to see this one, you need to go find it, so finding out what it is about is not easy. Even the description at Netflix wasn’t particularly helpful. But I liked the title and I decided to give it a chance.

The story opens by introducing some generic a-hole college kids. We then meet Tucker (Alan Tudyk) and Dale (Tyler Labine), hillbillies from West Virginia. As this film appeared to be setting up a hillbilly slasher film, I almost turned it off at that point. Fortunately, I didn’t.

Within a minute or so, things change and it becomes obvious that Tucker and Dale are not quite what you expect. Yes, they are “country,” but they are also strangely urbane in many ways. In particular, they are clever. They converse at the level of college graduates. They express complex psychological and logical ideas. Their hillbilly background seems to have given them an inferiority complex, which they discuss openly. And they are headed to a “vacation home” they just bought in the backwoods to do some fishing and relaxing. These are not normal hillbillies.

As they stock up on provisions, like a six pound jar of pickled eggs, the group of college students pulls up at the same gas station and tries to buy beer. This leads to a series of accidental confrontations which freak out the college kids, making them think that Tucker and Dale are hillbilly rapist/killers. When Dale then approaches the group to speak to one of the girls, things go wrong because he’s holding a scythe and makes the mistake of following horrible advice about laughing at whatever they say. The college kids freak out and flee the scene.

A few minutes later, we discover that the vacation home is a fixer-upper which needs a lot more work than they originally expected. It also seems to have been owned by a mass murderer as the place is decorated in bones and there are newspaper clippings of killings on the wall. Tucker and Dale don’t seem to understand the significance of this, however, and they go fishing.

While they are fishing, they come across the college students again and they scare one of the girls who is trying to climb into the lake from a rock. She falls into the water and hits her head. They save her, but her friends, seeing this from a distance, believe Tucker and Dale have knocked her out and are kidnapping her. When they yell, “We got yer friend,” that seems to confirm the college students’ worst fears. They vow to get her back! This begins an amazing series of accidents in which most of the college kids end up dead in ways that hillbilly killers have used in other films, but which are purely accidental here.

I’ll leave the rest to you to discover.

Why This Film Worked

Parodies may seem easy because there are so many of them, but few of them are very good. This is because parody is actually quite difficult. The goal of a quality parody is to find some truth within the thing being parodied that the audience normally overlooks and then exploit that truth to poke fun at the original property. Some films are fairly good at this, like the first few Scary Movie films, which mocked various iconic horror scenes while telling their own story. Ultimately, those films weren’t particularly logical or realistic, but they were funny because they put their finger on flaws we overlooked in the iconic films they were parodying. Other parodies have been less successful. Take, for example, Meet the Spartans or any film from that set of filmmakers. These are putrid parodies because they simply repeat a story and throw in whatever gag they can think of into each scene whether they are connected to the scene in any way or not. Hence, most of the jokes were random, low-hanging fruit that just weren’t funny or relevant.

I had little hope for Tucker and Dale vs. Evil on the parody front. For one thing, the hillbilly slasher films are so poorly done as a group that they already operate as parody. Indeed, there’s very little left to laugh at in those films because you’ve already rolled your eyes at everything that can be parodied as you watched the originals. Moreover, it’s just not clear how you could make a hillbilly rapist funny or likeable enough to get you to invest in the character as an object of humor.

But Tucker and Dale vs. Evil did something fascinating. Rather than try a traditional parody, they flipped the story on its head and, in the process, created a heck of a parody that mocked all the usual silliness you find in hillbilly slasher films while simultaneously creating a film that was clever and funny in a totally unexpected way.

Indeed, this film gives you all the scenes you’ve come to expect: the hillbilly sodomy, the wood chipper killing, the chainsaw attack, the dead cop who failed to call for backup, the digging-your-own grave scene, etc.... but each of those scenes is twisted around in ways that are clever, strangely believable, and hilarious. Adding to this are the reactions of the hillbillies, which are polar opposites of what we’ve come to expect. Indeed, rather than being cold-blooded, inbred killing machines like a moonshine fueled T-900, Tucker and Dale are soft-hearted, sensitive, and terrified at what is happening. Dale doesn’t even like fishing because he doesn’t want to hurt a fish.

To give an example of what I’m talking about, consider the wood chipper incident. I can’t count the number of times some hillbilly tossed his victims into a wood chipper in other films. It happens here too, but not at all the way you expect. Here, Tucker is working with the wood chipper when the college students finally decide to “fight back.” To that end, one of the college kids charges Tucker, whose back is turned. Tucker bends over at the perfect time to pick up the next log for the chipper and the college student trips and flies right over his back into the chipper. Hilarity ensues as Tucker turns to discover the body and freaks out, and as the college kids entirely misinterpret what has happened as further proof that the hillbillies are intent on killing them.

Not only does this entire scene work perfectly in the sense of making total sense as to how it plays out and how each side reacts, but it’s also such an intensely clever and unexpected twist on a common scene from hillbilly slasher films that you can’t help but burst out laughing throughout the scene. Making this even funnier though is the priceless reaction of Tucker, who freaks out.

In fact, what really makes this film work are the hilarious reactions of Tucker and Dale throughout as they find themselves in a truly surreal situation with which they are ill-equipped to cope. Tudyk, who is one of the best voice actors ever (e.g. King Candy from Wreck-It-Ralph) and has played wonderfully enjoyable characters in shows like Firefly and films like Dodgeball, plays another gem of a character here. He’s the smart one of the two and he does indeed manage to grasp 99% of what is happening. Unfortunately, that last 1% is the killer as the conclusions he draws in each situation are simply dead wrong. This makes you laugh at everything he does.

Labine is new to me, but he plays Dale as a teddy bear with a crush on the college girl they save. He’s truly genuine and sensitive and it makes him incredibly likable. And the little romance that brews between him and the super sexy Allison (Katrina Bowden) is downright sweet.

And honestly, watching the creative ways the college students kill each other off by accident as Tucker and Dale try to stop them, only to be seen as having caused the deaths, is just consistently hilarious throughout.

This is one of those films that I expected to hate. I assumed it would be stupid and pointless and offer little more than a disguised slasher film. But it wasn’t. Instead, I found a film that is clever, engaging and hilarious. This is a film with characters you will like. This is a film that relentlessly mocks the hillbilly slasher films, but does so in such a good-natured, innocent way that you can’t help but enjoy the film.

I absolutely recommend this one.

Thoughts?

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TV Review: The Strain (2014-)

Non-network television continues to score really great series that show the extraordinary power of television compared to movies. The latest example is The Strain. I can’t say that The Strain is the equivalent of The Sopranos or Game of Thrones, but it is one heck of a series and I’ve enjoyed it very much.

The Strain is a television horror series that premiered on F/X this year and it’s now completed its first season. You can still catch it on demand, however, and I believe Hulu has the whole thing at the moment. Created by Guillermo del Toro and based on a trilogy of novels of the same name, The Strain follows a CDC doctor named Dr. Ephraim “Eph” Goodweather. Eph is extremely talented, but not the best team player. He tends to take his job very seriously and he doesn’t care much about things like the economic effects of shutting down an entire airport, so his boss don't care much for him.

As the story opens, Eph and his team are called to JFK Airport in New York City because an airplane has landed and it’s sitting on the tarmac with no signs of life aboard. A disease of some sort is suspected. When Eph and his team board the plane, they discover four survivors who are only asleep whereas the rest are all dead. They isolate the survivors and send the bodies to the morgue.

At this point, the show feels a lot like the opening of a zombie movie... a high quality zombie movie, but a zombie movie. It’s not, however.

Eph is soon distressed to learn that the CDC has chosen to blame the airline for negligently allowing a gas leak on the plane to kill everyone and they release the four survivors from quarantine. Meanwhile, some key cargo from the plane is stolen, i.e. a massive carved box filled with soil.

The next few episodes follow Eph as his personal life falls apart (fortunately, this ends quickly in the series) and as he continues to fight with the CDC and continues to try to solve what really happened. In the meantime, we follow the four survivors as they become increasingly sick. Specifically, they begin to crave blood and their bodies begin to change in ugly ways. We also learn that the cargo was stolen by a rich man who is working for a German who is the agent of someone called “the Master.” These men have corrupted a great many people and in the first few episodes you see them call in favors. For example, they contact the CDC and get the investigation stopped. They hire someone to shut down the internet. And they have someone on Eph’s team under their control.

Soon enough, you discover that the four survivors are turning into vampire-like creatures. Moreover, the bodies in the morgue all come to life and vanish. Soon, this vampirism is spreading around New York City like a plague.

All told, this is an excellent series. It has high production values, solid writing, surprising twists, and great effects. The characters are compelling. Eph is a very likable hero. Prof. Abraham Setrakian, a Holocaust survivor turned pawn-shop owner, is fascinating, and his backstory (told in flashbacks) really adds to the story – something flashbacks often don’t do. The German villain, Thomas Eichhorst, a Nazi commander turned undead servant of the Master, is an excellent, creepy villain. And many of the minor characters have the kinds of moments that make the story feel rich and realistic, such as when henchmen realize they’ve made a mistake and they turn against their bosses.

The show isn’t afraid to kill main characters either, which is much appreciated in a show like this. The show takes its time too, which is also appreciated. In shows like this, there seems to be an impulse to get to the full on plague as quickly as possible, but that sucks the life out of those shows as it rushes all the high points and leaves little left to do except engage in fights. This show has resisted that and is building very slowly... steadily, but slowly. That leaves it lots of room to tell stories.

I highly recommend this one. It’s not Shakespeare. It doesn’t break all that much new ground, except the viral take on vampirism is pretty fascinating. What the show does do, however, is engross you with great characters and compelling storylines that will make you wish each episode was much longer than it is.

Thoughts?

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Summer of Films: Odd Thomas (2013)

When I ran across Odd Thomas the other day, I honestly wasn’t sure what to expect. Marketed as a mystery-thriller by horror author Dean Koontz, it struck me right away that this didn’t appear to be a horror movie. It wasn’t a mystery either. Nor did it look like a thriller. It obviously wasn’t aimed at the tent-pole crowd either, or the film-snob crowd. So what was it? Well, perhaps the best way to describe it is as a quirky film about a likeable guy in a quasi-horror-comedy.

Plot

Like the kid in The Sixth Sense, the hero of this film, Odd Thomas (Anton Yelchin), can see dead people. Only, in this film, Thomas is an adult and he uses his abilities to catch the people who killed the dead people: “I see dead people, but then, by God, I do something about it.” Helping him in this regard are his supportive girlfriend Stormy (Addison Timlin) and the Chief of Police (Willem Dafoe), who knows about his abilities and trusts him completely – this thankfully avoids the “the police think I’m the bad guy” cliché.

As the story opens, Thomas captures a killer. He then tells us about something he calls “bodaks,” which are like shapeless, see-through creatures that feed on upcoming horror. Thomas can see these too, but he warns us that if they know that you can see them, they will kill you. He tells us that there is usually only one bodak at a time and that he rarely sees them, typically less than one per month. As he tells us this, a man walks into the diner where Thomas works. This man is surrounded by bodaks and more are coming all the time. This means the man will do something truly horrible.

As Thomas investigates the man, who Thomas nicknames Fungus Bob, he uncovers a plot to kill a lot of people, which meshes with a dream he has in which he sees a bowling team get murdered. As he investigates, Thomas discovers that the plot is larger than he originally expected.

Why I Recommend This Film

In the opening paragraph, I called this a horror-comedy, but that’s not really all that accurate. For one thing, this film isn’t scary. There are a few moments where some tension is created, but that’s about it. Instead, the film goes for tense and even that is alleviated by the comedic overtones of Yelchin’s narration and the utter lack of fear displayed by the supporting characters. That said, the film isn’t a comedy either. There are a few moments that might make you laugh, like how Willem Dafoe seems to be having sex every time Thomas calls him, but it’s nothing that will make you laugh out loud and there aren’t any jokes you will recall.

So if this isn’t a horror-comedy, and it’s not a mystery or a thriller or a tent-pole film, what is it? Well, I’d say this is a quirky film along the lines of the original Fright Night or An American Werewolf in London. This is a film that thrives by giving you an unusual character you like, who goes through an adventure involving something unnatural and they must use their unusual traits and their ingenuity to solve the movie. And while you know the film will definitely end well for the hero, what holds your interest is the steadily rising challenge the character faces, the odd twists and turns along the way, and the fact you like the character and the world they inhabit.

Fortunately, that works out well here. Thomas is very likeable and his narration makes him even more likable, it gives the film a comfortable feeling like a friend is telling you a story. The other characters are likeable as well. Importantly, this film has none of the unpleasant ideas often tossed in to ratchet up the drama, e.g. the fight with the frustrated girlfriend, the unbelieving police deciding to arrest the hero, the insanely angry boss, the lost best friend, etc. Thus, there is no phony unpleasantness tossed in to damper the flow of the story. Instead, the film focuses on the plot itself. In that regard, the story moves well and proves quite surprising despise your knowledge that Thomas will solve the film. In fact, the film is full of little surprises throughout as things you expect to happen one way happen another way or don’t happen at all, and I can say that I was not able to guess where the film was headed at any particular moment, even though I knew how it needed to end. All of this makes for an engaging and enjoyable film, and that is the best way to describe this film: it is entertaining. It isn’t much more than that, but that’s enough to make a film worthwhile.

That said, I should provide a note of caution. Films like this tend to be cult films. Either you have a taste for this type of film, or you don’t. Either you get the humor, which is quite subtle, or you don’t. Either you can stomach the ambiguity throughout, or you can’t, as the film does not force-feed you everything you need to know. The critics hated this film, giving it a 34% rating, but I suspect this film will find its audience and will be recognized as a cult classic within a decade.

Thoughts?

** As an aside, this one may be difficult to find. It's on Netflix and DVD, but legal issues apparently kept it out of theaters.

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Summer Of Films: World War Zzzzz (2013)

Why did they make World War Z? I’m thinking it was meant as a sleep aid. On the other hand, maybe there really is a need for Brad Pitt to appear in a generic zombie movie? Most likely, they heard people talking about how the book should be made into a movie, so some Hollywood smart-ass bought the right to use the characters and the title of the book, though not the contents of the book, and slapped those onto a standard zombie film? Oy.

The Plot

If you heard that this was going to be a smarter zombie film, then you’ve been misled. Stop me if any of this sounds familiar. Some dude wrote a book called World War Z. This book involved a UN scientist who roams the world tracing the beginnings of a zombie outbreak. As the infection slowly spreads, this scientist and others struggle to find a cure. After some time, the outbreak finally gets out of hand and a bigger struggle begins between the uninfected humans and the infected. Along the way, the book deals very intelligently with the idea of a zombie infection. Remember that? Well, forget it.

The film starts with Pitt and his family driving through New York City. Within seconds, the zombies attack. Within seconds more, New York City is lost to the zombies. Fortunately, Brad and family flee on traffic free roads in an RV they just happen to find to Newark, where they go a lootin’ and then break into an apartment building looking for safety from the roving bands of zombies. It’s possible this is just a normal night in Newark, but I suspect we’re meant to see this as zombie-related.

Anyway, the US is destroyed before the night is over, but Brad and family get saved and taken to live on a warship off the coast, provided that he agrees to investigate the zombie plague. He agrees and they ship him to Korea because someone in Korea wrote the word “zombies” in an e-mail... no, I'm not kidding. From there he goes to Israel and then Britain to meet Dr. Who.

With the exception of Israel, everything is destroyed, and Israel gets destroyed in a ridiculous way while Brad is there. In fact, throughout, the film does a very poor job of handling how this would really happen. For example, Israel builds a huge wall to keep out the zombies, which works until Brad arrives, at which point the zombies suddenly decide to climb the wall and the Israelis prove helpless. Huh? Why now? As Brad flees Israel, he jumps on board a commercial airliners... which was going exactly where? There's nowhere for it to go, so it takes him to where he needs to go, but it crashes, but he survives it because he's the star. All of this feels like it only happens to help move the plot.

Ultimately, Brad finds a partial solution and tells us there will be many sequels.

Why? Just why?

So why did they make this film? I don’t know. This film adds nothing to the zombie genre, something which even the crappiest of knock-off zombies films on Chiller tries to do. This film doesn’t try to be definitive either, like the one BIG film you should see to understand the state of the genre. To the contrary, it feels narrow and shallow. It doesn’t try to be the best of a tired genre either. In fact, it feels very bland and typical, and it's packed with clichés. There isn’t even that moment that grabs you, where you know the director was telling everyone: “This will be my signature moment which everyone will remember from this film!” So why make a film that adds nothing, does nothing special, doesn’t seem to have any special goal or voice, and doesn’t even have the one moment you know the director had been dying to jam into one of their films.

Money. Brad Pitt sells and "World War Z" was a milkable property. That’s all I can say.

Let’s compare this to what could have been. Most zombie movies are most interesting in the beginning, when the chaos is fresh. But almost all of them rush through this. A film that took its time and really showed you how this virus appears, how it spreads, and how it eventually overtakes the human ability to contain it would be excellent. This is something The Stand does well, as does Lifeforce, but few others. Even Contagion ended up doing a poor job with this aspect, which was sadly the very purpose of that film.

And to make this work in an interesting way, this time, people need to know these are zombies. If this stuff starts small, there is time for people to learn what they are up against, and still show them being overwhelmed by sheer numbers. This film doesn’t do that. It just says “commercial airlines were the perfect way to spread the disease,” and then it presents a scenario under which that can’t work – infection spreading in 12 seconds. Even worse, when the zombies strike in New York, no one except Pitt seems to have the slightest idea what is going on or even that they are facing something dangerous even though the world outside the US has already been destroyed. I guess New Yorkers live sheltered lives. And then, somehow, the city falls within seconds. Nonsense. Above all, zombie films need patience to present realistic time frames. This film had none... it needed it desperately.

This film also needed some other plot to maintain interest. Inject a love story. Have the main character save an orphanage or a zoo. Invent some counter-zombie. Do something other than run around gathering MacGuffins as you try to avoid zombies. Again, this film falls flat in that department. After making a big deal of Brad Pitt as some top investigator who can solve the zombie riddle, he gets sent to Korea for no valid reason. From that point forward, this film is just an action film without any logic to it.

Finally, give us a powerful ending. Either give us reason to believe the humans have won or give us something truly deep and dark. Give us something more than we already know: make the zombies conscious of who and what they are and what they have done – so far, no one has dared do that. Give us the idea of soul death as well as body death. Tell us this world isn’t actually our world, but it’s Hell, and we all face it. Those are endings that take bland zombie films to new levels. Alternatively, find a cure. Find the anti-zombie. Give us some moral or religious conduct that can save us all... give us a lesson to take away. Heck, give the zombies a hive brain, that would be new and interesting and more menacing. Don't just give us Brad Pitt in the lead.

These are the things any big budget modern zombie movie needs to do, but none of this happened here. All we got were a handful of hints at clever ideas from the book that were ignored in the film (in fact, there are websites dedicated to all the ideas in the book that got ignored here), then we got a pointless action film, and finally we got an ending that was sort of original but still underwhelmed.

This is sad, Brad. From a guy whose movies usually stand out as being smarter than everything else in the genre (e.g. Twelve Monkeys, Seven, Fight Club), this was a real disappointment.

Thoughts?

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Film Friday: The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)

The Rocky Horror Picture Show is a cult classic. In fact, it’s the first film I personally recall ever being called a cult classic. We’ve said before that what causes a film to become a cult classic is that the film is original, smart and well written, but doesn’t spoon-feed the audience, so it ends up being rejected by general audiences who lack the ability to understand the film but then finds a home with smarter audiences who “get” the film. This time, that may be a bit of a stretch.

What Is The Rocky Horror Picture Show?

For those who don’t know, Rocky Horror began as a musical by Richard O’Brien. In 1975, it was turned into a feature film. It bombed. Boy did it bomb. But like a Phoenix, it rose from the ashes and became wildly successful. How successful? The film opened in only eight theaters and only did well in Westwood, Los Angeles. It was withdrawn. Seven months later, on April 1, 1976, the film was shown at the Waverly Theater in New York City at midnight. This time, it caught on. By October of that year, people were attending the show in costumes and talking back to the screen. Fan groups formed. By 1979, it was showing twice-weekly in over 230 theaters. Since that time, this film has taken in $365 million on its original budget of $1.4 million... with no end in sight.

So what is it? Well, it’s a musical.

The story begins with Brad Major (Barry Bostwick) and Janet Weiss (Susan Sarandon) driving on a back country road in the rain. They get a flat tire and are forced to walk to a nearby castle. They are let into the castle by the creepy butler Riff Raff (Richard O’Brien) and an even creepier maid, Magenta (Patricia Quinn). The frightened couple are told to wait for the master. As they do, they discover a group of weirdoes dressed in tuxedos and various accessories that appear kind of clownish. They suddenly break out into song and dance, singing “The Time Warp.” As they finish, the master arrives. This is Dr. Frank N. Furter (Tim Curry), and he’s uh... eccentric. To give you a sense of how eccentric he is, the song he sings to enter the film is "Sweet Transvestite From Transsexual, Transylvania."

The film gets weird from there. Dr. Frank N. Furter has built a “monster,” in the shape of a bodybuilder, who comes to life. He fights Meat Loaf (pre-Bat Out Of Hell), who plays Eddie, an ex-delivery boy on a motorcycle. Frank N. Furter molests both Brad and Janet, kills and cooks Eddie, throws a hissyfit or two, and in the end, it turns out that some of the characters are really aliens sent here for no reason you will be able to understand.

How Did This Become A Cult Classic?

So this is the part where I tell you that while most people find this film strange and confusing, in reality, it’s a brilliant and wickedly clever film that has been widely misunderstood by general audiences. Yep, that’s what you’re expecting. Not gonna happen. Rocky Horror, as a film, is bizarre, confusing, confused and ultimately pointless. It feels like a campy comedy that pushed everything too far and became clinically insane. And to put a fine point on it, if this hadn’t been a musical, this film would be long forgotten.

But it was a musical. And therein lies what made this a cult hit, because these songs are unique, catchy, and a cut above what you get from most musicals. How? Well...

For starters, this is a rock musical and that makes it more accessible to a broader and younger audience than it would have been if this had been a more classical musical, and those are the very people who would run with a story like this. At the same time, the songs are nowhere near as pretentious or relentlessly negative as The Wall or Tommy. These are fun songs, meant to be enjoyed, not bitter, angry or depressed songs meant to exploit teenage angst. That fact alone makes this a unique musical. Moreover, the types and styles of songs vary a good deal, which gives the film a lot of reach. Indeed, there is something here for everyone to love, as compared to most musicals that stick with a single song style from start to finish.

Making the songs even better, they fit perfectly into the film. Too often, in musicals, once the song starts, the plot stops. Not here. These songs move the plot along and the characters maintain their personas. You can actually skip all the songs in Cabaret without affecting the plot. You can’t do that here. Again, this is rather unique in the world of musicals and that makes this stand out.

In a related point, these songs are perfectly integrated with the action and the dialog to tie the film together in a manner much like the way The Fifth Element is tied together, where lines of dialog spoken by different characters (often in different locations) are jammed together to form meanings that the audience can pick up. Thus, for example, you may find one character starting a line and another character in a completely different scene finishing it. That gives the film an interesting, clever, quirky feel which cult fans seem to enjoy... it’s like being treated like an adult for once.

Further, the lyrics (and the dialog at times) are sharper than they appear at first glance. The rhymes used are clever, and the analogies, allusions and meanings are complex and deep. And each song has multiple layers of meaning. For example, the song “Over At The Frankenstein Place,” which essentially starts the film, has the obvious meaning that the characters see a light in a building and they believe that means someone there can help them. But the song is awash with deeper meaning as well. Brad and Janet actually sing: “There’s a light, In the darkness of everybody’s life.” Clearly, they are talking about something larger than finding someone to help change a tire. What they are saying is the theme of the film: this film will be about people who aren’t happy in their very normal lives and who want to try something new... and boy are they going to get it. Riff Raff then adds a lyric related to the use of morphine to find “light” in his life.

Throughout the film, the lyrics constantly have these layers of meanings. On the surface, each song is about that particular moment in the film and advances the plot, but simultaneously, the lyrics are also about drug addiction or O’Brien’s struggles with coming to terms with being a transsexual. And then there is the overriding theme which hides in each of these lyrics as well, which is the idea of normal people looking for something new. Consider this lyric:

You better wise up Janet Weiss,
Your apple pie don’t taste too nice

Here, Tim Curry sings this very aggressively at Janet when he’s trying to seduce her and she rebuffs him. On the surface this sounds like Curry is simply telling Janet that she’s not desirable. But there’s more here. The context is actually deeply sexual and there is a suggestion Curry is talking about oral sex and telling Janet she better be thankful for his attentions because she’s not going to get this from Brad or anyone else. Further, the word “apple pie” suggests “wholesome” to most people (as in “mom and apple pie”), which is what Janet is claiming to be and why she won’t have sex with Frank N. Furter. And what Curry is telling her here is not only that she’s not particularly desirable, but that her wholesomeness turns him off. This is the theme throughout as Brad and Janet delve into this bizarre, definitely un-wholesome world. Sadly for them, they are poorly equipped to handle it.

So what you end up with are clever songs that deal with a variety of truly bizarre topics and which offer multiple layers of meaning. The lyrics are edited together, as with The Fifth Element, to make you pay attention to get the full meaning. The music is varied and of a fairly high quality. The tone and songs are unique among musicals. All of this speaks rather highly of the film.

Add to this that the film touches upon a series of taboo subjects (drug use, murder, cannibalism, homosexuality, transsexuality, and swinging, among other things) which is always popular with young audiences, but it does so in a safe and ultimately ridiculous manner that lets people enjoy the topic. In fact, the ridiculousness here is the key because it’s the difference between seeing a murder and joking about a murder. If Frank N. Furter was earnestly examining his feelings as a transsexual or his murder of Eddie had been taken more seriously, then this film would probably be unbearable. But he isn’t. Instead, he’s so far over the top that the black humor of the film crosses over into genuine humor. And what this does is make this a highly entertaining film for audiences who want a little abnormal in their lives... just not as much as Brad and Janet get.

That’s how this film found its audience and why this film has become a cult classic.

Thoughts? (Other than WTF?)

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Top 20 Horror Films You Should Know

October is upon us! Run for your lives! It’s horror movie month! So let's revive this article.

Horror is consistently one of the most popular genres in film, with even middling movies guaranteed to make money. Why? Because audiences want to feel emotion from their entertainment, and no emotion is easier to evoke than fear. Fear comes in many forms, everything from being startled to deep psychological terror. Few movies reach that final level, but when they do they leave a scar on our culture. With that in mind, let’s talk about the twenty most significant horror films. These aren’t necessarily the best or the most scary or even my favorites, but when you die. . . these will be on the test.

1. Night of the Living Dead (1968): The importance of this film cannot be overstated. This film brought horror movies to adult audiences. Before this, horror was costumed monsters aimed at kids. This film also created the zombie craze which continues unabated today in film and within the Democratic party, and it established all the conventions for the zombie subgenre. “Yes we can. . . yes we can.”

2. The Omen (1976): The Omen spawned the “Satan is coming” subgenre and gave us Damien Thorn, a figure who now represents pure evil in the popular culture. There are even indications this film influenced the American view of Satan and the Book of Revelations. And Gregory Peck playing Damien’s father made it respectable for big name stars to do horror movies. “Let him that hath understanding count tonight’s lotto numbers: 6 - 6 - 2.”

3. The Exorcist (1973): Before Rosie O’Donnell’s Potty-Cam Extravaganza, The Exorcist was considered by many to be the scariest movie of all time. This film brought exorcism to the public consciousness and spawned a demonic possession craze in modern horror films. It also introduced the now-clichéd idea of pitting a demon against a priest who lost his faith. . . gimme $20 on the priest. “The Power of Christ compels you, and your little dog too!”

4. Alien (1979): Alien brought modern horror into the realm of science fiction. It established Ridley Scott (who would redefine science fiction) and it taught us that some aliens want to do worse to us than probe our nether regions. “In space, no one can hear you squeal like a pig boy!”

5. Jaws (1975): Jaws sparked a nationwide panic over and fascination with sharks, which continues to this day. Jaws is particularly noted for waiting to reveal the monster until late in the film to build suspense, though ironically this wasn’t intentional, they just had a hard time making the mechanical shark work. . . which is what they get for hiring a union shark. “Be a real shame if something happened to your boat.”

6. Halloween (1978): Though tame by modern standards, Halloween introduced the slasher film. Halloween gave us Michael Myers, as a masked, speechless, killing machine, who escapes a mental hospital and returns home to kill his family and everyone else in town. And they say you can never go home again?! This murderous Marcel Marceau has become the template for modern slasher villains. “It’s not a man, baby!”

7. The Shining (1980): One of the most iconic and oft-referenced horror films, The Shining is the story of Jack Torrance, who ostensibly goes insane while working as the winter caretaker of a haunted hotel. . . ** cough ** drama queen. This movie, more than any other, defined Jack Nicholson and made Stephen King stories a staple of horror films (though, ironically, King and the film “hated” each other). “All work and no play increases Jack’s take home pay!”




"There's no zipper inspector."



8. The Ring (2002): At a time when slasher flicks had become the norm, this film imported the Japanese vision of horror in which creepy, but non-gory images (often involving children or Hello Kitty) terrorize the heroine while she tries to solve the mystery of what created the evil spirit. It also taught us how bad computer viruses can get. A whole slew of identical, remade Japanese films followed (e.g. The Grudge, Dark Water, The Eye, Children of a Lesser Godzilla, etc.). “It’s the Michael Jackson sex tape!”

9. The Haunting (1963): This oft-remade and copied story of a group of paranormal investigators who deserve everything they get for spending several nights in a HAUNTED house established the haunted house subgenre. Seriously, what part of HAUNTED did they not understand? Idiots. “The spirit of Pelosi haunts the House.”

10. 28 Days Later (2002): This movie revived the slowly dying zombie subgenre, by introducing fast-twitch zombies. Suddenly, zombies became a whole lot more menacing. “Repent the end is extremely f**king nigh.”

11. Resident Evil (2002): Resident Evil established the craze of turning videogames into movies, for which we’re all thankful. It also popularized the use of scantily-clad, young women as the butt-kicking heroes, for which we’re all thankful. “You're all going to die down here. . . and not in a good way.”

12. Poltergeist (1982): This anti-clown diatribe introduced the country to the poltergeist, not a ghost but a malevolent force that haunts people rather than places. This has since replaced simple hauntings in films. It also told ghost hunters what kind of equipment they’re supposed to bring and it introduced ideas like the blinding white light you see after paying your taxes. “They’re here. . . and they brought beer!”

13. Friday the 13th (1980): The story of risen-from-the-dead, hockey-mask-wearing, chainsaw-wielding Jason Voorhees, this film added a supernatural element to the silent, killing-machine character first seen in Halloween, and gave us motiveless killers who can’t be killed no matter how many times you shoot them, stab them, or drop a piano on them. . . unless you use dip. This movie also taught us not to go skinny dipping when you’re in a horror movie. “They call this place Camp Psycho-Bait.”

14. Scream (1996): The story of a killer who’s watched too much Sesame Street, Scream revived the horror genre for younger audiences by setting the film around thirty-year-old teen actors and following like a hipper, totally like cynical, tongue-in-cheek style or whatever. “Obama let me down!”

15. Saw (2004): A snuff film with little else to recommend it, Saw opened the door for modern torture porn, which all but abandons story in favor of 90 minute, sadistic bloodbaths. . . a real leap forward for the human spirit. “Let's play a game. How about Clue?”




"You want us to cut through our wrists. . . but only when it's funny?!"





16. The Blair Witch Project (1999): Shot like a home movie, this story of three film students, who vanish chasing an urban legend started the “found footage” horror film subgenre. “We shouldn’t have meddled!”

17. Nightmare on Elm Street (1984): Elm Street gave us Freddie Krueger, who can kill you in your dreams. . . just like noctosoriasis. This film is referenced in dozens of later films, inspired numerous sequels and copies, and encouraged slasher films to step up the special effects and creativity by 16%. “Your eyes are getting sleeeeepy.”

18. The Amityville Horror (1979): Father goes crazy, repeats the murderous rampage of the prior owner, blames house. Now that’s creative lawyering! This film popularized the fake “true” horror story, which has become a bit of a cottage industry. “Honey, I got a killer deal on a repossession!”

19. The Evil Dead (1981): Gory, silly and primitive, Evil Dead is not a good film, but it is a cult classic with a devout following among horror aficionados, who will hate this sentence. The story of four people in a cabin who demonstrate that things actually can go wrong when you open a doorway to hell, this film made Bruce Campbell and Sam Raimi Hollywood names. “Pass me some sugar, baby!”

20. Rosemary’s Baby (1968): Four out of five Satanists think Rosemary’s baby is the Antichrist. This film made Roman Polanski famous before he made himself infamous. It also taught us that perfectly normal looking people could be Satanists. . . or Obamatologists. “He sleeps above his crib. . . three feet above his crib.”

Again, these aren’t necessarily the best movies or the scariest movies, nor are they my favorites. But they will be on the test, so know them. And if you’ve missed any, October is the perfect month to catch up on them.

So what did I miss? Or better yet, what are your favorites?

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Film Friday: Paranormal Activity (2007)

Earlier this week, we talked about how too many horror films fail to take advantage of the things that naturally scare us. Instead, they rely on a final reveal to scare the audience along with a few moments of shock as their monster jumps out at the audience or a few moments of gore as they try to scare us by showing a bloody death. Paranormal Activity is different. This is a super smart film.

** Major Spoiler Alert **

Plot

Paranormal Activity is a “found footage” film about a young couple, Micah and Katie, who have moved into a new house in San Diego in September 2006. As the story opens, Micah is setting up a camera as Katie tell us that she has been haunted periodically throughout her life by an evil presence. Micah is determined to capture evidence of this entity on film.

After a few nights, small things begin to happen: items move, lights flash, etc. These things scare Katie and she hires a psychic, Dr. Fredrichs, to come examine the house. He specializes in hauntings and he warns Katie that she is not dealing with a ghost, but is instead dealing with a demon. He tells her he cannot help her, but he gives her the name of a man who can. He warns her and Micah not to try to communicate with this demon. Micah, however, refuses to take Fredrichs seriously.

Over the next few days, things keep getting worse. Katie wants to call the demonologist, but Micah keeps stopping her. Then Micah buys a Ouija board despite promising Katie he would not do this. They fight and storm out of the room. When they do, the demon takes over the Ouija board and causes it to burst into flames. After this, the demon becomes increasingly more powerful as we move steadily toward the ending.

What This Film Does Right

Wow, where to begin? Let’s start with the fact that they focused on believability, they eschewed cheap gore, and they did exactly what we discussed earlier in the week: they used human nature against the audience. Three great choices!

In terms of believability, they chose a well-known bit of mythology that most of us fear deep down: demonic possession, and they handled it extremely well. For example, to make the audience buy into the demon, they ratcheted up the danger each night as the movie progressed. This made the demon seem more plausible because we feel that we understand how it gained its power: the more they fight, the more the thing grows, and when Micah buys the Ouija board, it really becomes strong. Since you see the cause and effect, it all starts to feel natural to you.

This idea also plays on the part of human nature that looks for patterns. By ratcheting up the demon’s powers and giving the demon more power to manipulate our world each day, the writer establishes a pattern which the audience will recognize and extrapolate. The result is a constant feeling of dread as we see this thing getting stronger and stronger without end. That is ominous to us and makes us feel trapped because we know it will soon be too powerful for us to handle. The writer then makes the characters oblivious to this pattern which triggers our need to warn people of a danger. And since we can’t fulfill that need, we end up feeling helpless and anxious.

Important to maintaining the believability, at no point, does the demon do anything we can’t imagine a ghost doing. At no point, does it show more power than we imagine a ghost or demon might have. At no point does it do something that makes us doubt that it is real. And the more real something feels, the more scary it will be. It even behaves consistently, which adds to the realism. Indeed rather than randomly doing scary things, this demon has a purpose. Interestingly, at no point are we ever really told what it wants, but its behavior is so consistent and so obvious that we realize the demon is sexually obsessed with Katie and it wants her. It acts like a nasty, obsessed (and supernatural) jilted boyfriend, and it portrays the role perfectly. This makes its motive real to us as we can understand this from our own lives. In fact, this is a motive that will already scare a great many people in the audience who have dealt with an obsessed ex-lover.

Beyond this, the director expertly plays upon our instinctual fears. The demon attacks at night. It cannot be seen or fought. It can be next to you and you wouldn’t know it. It cannot be escaped because it can find Katie anywhere. In fact, it has followed her since her youth. Each of those things terrifies us and triggers our “fight or flight” mechanisms. Then they go further. In one scene, we watch as Katie gets out of bed and stands by the bed for more than half an hour watching Micah sleep. This is amazingly creepy to us because we are completely vulnerable when we sleep and the idea of someone standing over us as we sleep is a terrifying one. It also suggest unnatural behavior on the part of Katie, which tells us that the demon is gaining the power to possess her.

All of this is compounded by some smart choices regarding the characters. Throughout the film, the characters do things they’ve been told not to do. But unlike most horror films where the characters are just morons, these two are doing this because it’s in their natures to do them. They are told the demon feeds on negative energy, yet they fight. They fight because their emotions are raw and they are an incompatible couple. Micah is told repeatedly not to use a Ouija board, yet he does. He does so because this is all a game to him and he thinks he can solve the problem in this manner. We know better, but he doesn’t. This frustrates us and makes us feel helpless that we can’t stop them. It fills us with dread too because we know the consequences. And what’s best about this, is that it again draws upon moments in our own lives where people we know refused to follow good advice and then found themselves in trouble. Thus, once again, the film evokes emotions that are already within us rather than trying to get us to imagine something we’ve never felt.

Then, as we near the ending, everything begins to fall apart. We can’t trust Micah anymore because he stopped Katie from calling the demonologist and then he took away her cross and burns it. At best, this is bad judgment and cruel. At worst, this is the final straw which leaves her defenseless to the demon. And either way, he is clearly a hazard at this point. At the same time, Katie puts us into an impossible position. It is time to flee the house. Even Katie agrees. But then Katie suddenly refuses. Yes, she is showing signs of possession, but what do you do with her at that point? If you care about her, and the audience does, then you can’t just abandon her. But it’s clear you can’t stay either. And Micah shows no ability to force her to leave. Thus, the audience is faced with an amazingly difficult decision and ultimate must choose a path they know they will regret.

(spoiler alert reminder)
Finally, we come the ending. There is a huge twist here in a way as the ending unfolds in a most unexpected way. Indeed, throughout this film, we are constantly told that the danger is to Katie. The demon wants her and it has followed her. She cannot escape it... but Micah can, he can just walk away. In conformance to this, she is terrified of the demon and Micah is not. What we don’t suspect watching the film, however, is that the demon will use her to kill Micah. So it comes as a real shock when that happens. This shock is genuinely frightening because it wasn’t something the audience considered. The entire film had built up to the demon taking or killing Katie, and now it instead killed Micah. Unexpected twists like this strongly enhance the terror of a horror movie. The film even does a fantastic job of not showing what is happening, which leaves the audience on the edge of their seats as they wait to find out.

And in terms of this being a twist, it is very well done. Up to this point, you’ve been focused on what the demon wants to do to Katie, but now it flips that around. Yet, when it happens, you immediately remember a whole series of clues that this would be the ending which you missed or misunderstood. For example, the demon wants Katie sexually, i.e. it’s not looking to kill her. It attacks the picture of Micah, but not her, showing hostility to him only. It possesses her several times, once controlling her enough to leave the house and the second time making her stand over Micah as he slept. There is even a strong suggestion that the demon possessed her when she was eight and made her burn her house down. That shows it can use her maliciously. And then Dr. Fredrichs flees the house in a near panic because he senses that the demon resents anyone who helps her. All of this suggests that the demon’s hate is focused on Micah... but you don’t see that because the writer cleverly misdirected you throughout by pointing to the danger to Katie. This is clever, it’s like undermining everything you thought you knew for certain right at the end.

To sum this up, this is a brilliant film. Rather than trying to scare you with fake gore and a horrific ending, this film steadily builds your level of terror step by step by playing on fears you already have, by making you feel helpless in light of the characters’ mistakes and lack of knowledge, and by making each scene count. In fact, you never know what will happen in any scene, if anything, and that keeps you nervous and on edge. Then it finishes strongly by expanding the threat in a way we should have seen coming, but didn’t.

The end result is a truly terrifying film that drew in amazing numbers. With a budget of just $16,687, this film made an incredible $210,391,025, and it was well-deserved.

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Where Most Horror Films Go Wrong

Horror is an interesting genre. It’s the one that’s most accessible to new talent because it doesn’t rely upon specific formulas, established actors, or huge budgets. It also seems the easiest in which to make a decent film. After all, we all know what scares us, right? Well, not quite. A lot of horror films just fall flat. And where I think they go wrong is that they fail in one specific regard: they don’t understand human psychology.

The reason people like horror films is because they want to be able to face their fears in a safe environment. By watching a movie that triggers their fears, they get a chance to experience their fears without subjecting themselves to the danger that would normally entail, and they are afforded an opportunity to try to master their fears. In a way, this is a survival skill in that it prepares us to handle the moment when our fears suddenly appear in response to something real. This is the same instinct why kids test their fears by standing on a high, unstable place, by venturing into a darkened abandoned building, or by seeking to touch an animal that can easily bring them down in the wild. It’s our way of testing ourselves and learning to tame instincts that could one day undo us if left unmastered.

Knowing this, it should be obvious how to make an effective horror story. Essentially, you consider the things that scare us on an instinctual level and you find ways to let people experience those while they are watching the movie. Indeed, I would argue that with rare exceptions, most of what scares us in horror films has little to do with the plot itself. It is, instead, the presentation.

For example, people are afraid of the dark. . . of the unknown. . . of being alone. . . of cramped spaces. . . of confinement. . . of spaces that are too large to monitor effectively. . . of things that creep up upon us when we are vulnerable or from our blind sides. These are all instinctual fears that can be put to use in any film. Yet, too often, filmmakers seem to ignore these, or they take one and use it to the point of abuse.

Kubrick was genius in his use of space in The Shining. He presented rooms that were so small the characters could barely move their arms. Then he would suddenly throw you into a vast room that was so large that anything could be standing in a corner and you just wouldn’t see it because the room was too big to notice. Or consider the maze-like hallways where anything could be around the corner and how scary that is, or how terrified you feel as Jack enters Room 237 where anything could be waiting for him. Those are brilliant choices. Yet, so many horror movies have their characters run across fields or parks or down city streets, areas that are familiar and feel safe to us.

And don’t forget that humans have any number of fears, such as snakes, insects, and disease, but their fears require more than just showing these things. What terrifies us is the danger they represent to us. So a smart filmmaker will find ways to approximate that danger. Yet, again, so many bad filmmakers use these things in a cartoony fashion or show you a spider climb a wall and them move on with their scene... as if that somehow scares us.

Consider also that the fear of the unknown in this context can be your most powerful aid in making a horror film. The less you show the audience, the more they imagine, and their imagination will by its very nature find the things that terrify them. This is the accidental lesson of Jaws and all the smart films do this: less is more! Yet, so many horror films completely lose their audiences early on because the director can't wait to proudly show off his big toy. It’s sad.

There’s more too. Beyond simple presentation, you have to examine the audience’s other real fears to get to that next level in a horror movie. That requires understanding what really scares people compared to what the conventional wisdom thinks scares people. For example, soldiers have long reported that one of the greatest fears in war is not the fear of death, but the fear of permanent maiming and disability. Some of the best Twilight Zone episodes dealt with this fear, just as some of the best horror films have dealt with a form of this through the damaging of the human soul either as ghosts or possession. Yet, most horror films revel in the kill because that's what the conventional wisdom says is the worst thing that can happen to you. But the problem with the kill is that once it happens, the horror ends for us and we forget that character.

Other common fears include making a disastrous choice, facing an impossible choice, having our failings exposed and not being up to the moment when it finally comes. There is much to exploit here, especially among secondary characters. Yet, the temptation in modern horror films is to have several throwaway moronbeciles to use as cannon fodder. That is a totally wasted opportunity. Rather than warming up the audience to their insecurities, these characters become comic relief. Ask yourself: do you think The Exorcist would have been better if Father Karras was comic relief to warm up the audience for the main match with Father Merrin?

Finally, when it comes to plot, remember that humans are creatures of habit and patterns. We find comfort in those things. And when you give them what they expect, you reduce the horror. A horror film should always shatter their comfort level and keep them tense. Do you think it’s a coincidence that The Exorcist and The Shining are two of the greatest horror movies ever made, and that both involve jarringly unexpected moments to the normal patterns you see in films. . . such as when Father Merrin dies suddenly in The Exorcist or when Hallorann dies the moment he appears to be starting his heroic moment in the sun in The Shining? How about Gregory Peck dying before he finishes his task in The Omen? How about the alien NOT attacking when Brett looks up into the water? Take away the comforting formula, and you tap into that fear of the unknown.

The point is this. Most modern horror movies are made the wrong way: they try to scare you with the stakes contained in the storyline and the outcome of the film, when they should be focusing on the journey itself. The great horror films take advantage of all of our fears to discomfort us, to bring us to the edge of our seats, and to make us close our eyes whether the hero ultimate wins or loses. Watching Danny ride his Big Wheel, or Tom Skerritt panic in the ventilator shaft of the Nostromo, or Linda Blair sitting quietly next to the body of Father Merrin, or Gregory Peck too terrified to speak to his son Damien is where these movies paid off... not in the stakes, not in the outcome. Those are the moments that made you shiver later at night. And notice that everything I discuss above are the things you do apart from the story itself, i.e. they can be done regardless of what the plot maybe. This is how horror films need to be built.

So tell, me what do you think? What other things scare you on film? What doesn't?

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