Ancient Images

Sinister: written by Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill; directed by Scott Derrickson; starring Ethan Hawke (Ellison Oswalt), Juliet Rylance (Tracy), Fred Dalton Thompson (Sheriff), and James Ransone (Deputy) (2012): From the producers of the Paranormal Activity movies (which I mostly enjoy) comes another supernatural tale pitting dumber-than-average humans against the forces of darkness.

The title, as with the similar Insidious, has no specific relevance to the movie. It's a generic horror title, so don't start watching with the expectation that the monster's left-handed or anything.

Ethan Hawke plays a formerly best-selling true-crime writer who needs a bestseller to pay the mortgage. Juliet Rylance plays his wife, who's never in the house during the day but doesn't seem to have a job, either. Their older boy suffers from a combination of Night Terrors and sleep-walking, which seems a bit odd to me given that Night Terrors generally involve sleep paralysis, but I'll go with it. Their younger daughter likes painting on walls.

Hawke's character cleverly moves the family into a house where a brutal multiple murder took place about a year earlier. Ah ha, but he doesn't tell his wife! And as his wife apparently neither speaks to anyone in town or is in any way curious as to why they moved where they moved, she doesn't find out the truth until fairly late in the movie.

Anyway, the supernatural forces in this movie really enjoy recording everything on Super 8 film. Then they stick the Super 8 projector and carefully labelled film canisters in the attic for the next family to find. Yes, there are a series of serial murders taking place across America. As one of the murders involved setting fire to a car inside a garage in the dead of night, I'm a little unclear as to how the house in that case survived for someone else to move into. I assume they had really good fire suppression installed. But not monster suppression, more fools they!

Sinister is nicely photographed. Much of the horror comes from the voyeurism of watching (fictional) snuff films along with Ethan Hawke. But boy, is everybody in this movie dumb except for Sheriff Fred Dalton Thompson and Vincent D'onofrio in a cameo as an expert in occult mythology and iconography. There's probably a pretty good movie to be made about D'Onofrio and his trusty coffee-dispensing sidekick Jessica, but I'm not sure these filmmakers could make a movie about what happens when smart people deal with occult forces, and do so by actually going to a library instead of relying solely on the Internet for potentially life-saving information. Lightly recommended.

　

The Awakening: written by Stephen Volk and Nick Murphy; directed by Nick Murphy; starring Rebecca Hall (Florence Cathcart), Dominic West (Robert Mallory), Imedla Staunton (Maud Hill) and Isaac Hempstead Wright (Tom Hill) (2011): Broody ghost story set in 1921 follows the efforts of professional debunker Rebecca Hall to solve the mystery of whether or not a boy at a boarding school in the North of England was a-scared to death by a ghost.

World War One is the major intertext here, as Hall lost her fiance and several of the teachers fought in the conflict and came home with both physical and mental wounds. Hall's character also has a somewhat bizarre past, as she was adopted after her parents were killed and she was mauled by lions.

Debunking and debunkers are again portrayed as sad bastards screwing it up for everyone else, which seems to be the default setting of every fictional movie that ever dealt with debunkers. Given the real-world cost that awful, awful 'psychics' such as Sylvia Browne exact when they insert themselves into police investigations (which Browne has never once actually helped solve) and the lives of the bereaved (whom Browne has put through the wringer on numerous occasions by describing horrible modes of death for victims who in fact did not actually die the way she described), it would be nice if a movie dealt with this fairly important aspect of debunking: namely, that it keeps 'psychics' from doing terrible things to innocent people in the name of publicity.

In any case, once you realize that Hall's character is indeed another sad orphan who really wants to believe, you know where the movie is going. Well, sort of. The final major plot twist verges on O. Henry Playhouse territory, though it is somewhat foreshadowed. Enjoyable and atmospheric. Lightly recommended.


Trouble with the Curve: written by Randy Brown; directed by Robert Lorenz; starring Clint Eastwood (Gus), Amy Adams (Mickey), John Goodman (Pete) and Justin Timberlake (Johnny) (2012): Once you get through the hilarious scene of octogenerian Eastwood talking to his bladder, this is a slight, pleasant movie about an old baseball scout, father-daughter issues, and how wily old baseball scouts are way better than computers at locating baseball talent, even though in the real world they actually aren't. Lightly recommended.

Ghosts and Allegories

Joyland by Stephen King (2013): A melancholy coming-of-age story narrated by the late middle-aged protagonist in the present day, Joyland's main narrative is set in 1972 and focuses on three college students working the summer at the North Carolina amusement park that gives the novel its title.

While there are two ghosts, two psychics, and one serial killer in the novel, these elements often take a back-seat to King's depiction of his protagonist's struggles with love, loss, and a giant dog costume. It's an enjoyable, low-key affair in line with other relatively recent King efforts that include Blockade Billy and The Colorado Kid, in which the genre elements often fade away behind the more realistic concerns of the text.

Indeed, the ghosts and psychics make me think of the Yeats poem "The Circus Animals' Desertion" in the sense that King might be better off abandoning such elements entirely when he writes novels that are so much concerned with other things: the supernatural and the suspense tropes herein feel like props, taking up the space that might be better expended on straight-ahead, non-genre world and character creation instead. Recommended.

Blood and Fire: A Star Wolf Novel by David Gerrold (2003): The fourth Star Wolf novel is a humdinger of a 'bottle show,' as the crew is mostly confined to one of two starships as they seek to find a cure for a deadly plague of...Regulan bloodworms. Though they're never referred to in that exact phrase, they are bloodworms and they are from Regula.

The novel began life as a script for a first-season episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, for which Gerrold was contracted to work upon during its development and first season. The bloodworms were meant by Gerrold to be a metaphor for AIDS, with the episode exploring the stigma of the disease allegorically (as many Star Trek episodes did with many topics).

However, Gene Roddenberry ultimately turned it down (or perhaps his infamous late-life attorney did -- the introduction and conclusion go into some detail on the behind-the-scenes shenanigans on TNG's first season that ultimately led Paramount to essentially freeze Gene out of all decision-making for the Trek franchise). The AIDS story, and a brief dialogue exchange that would have established that there were actually gay people in the 24th century and that they were serving on the Enterprise, were both scrapped (these two bits were separate -- gayness had nothing to do with contracting Regulan bloodworms!).

As the Star Wolf series is Gerrold's attempt to show how Star Trek could have been done much, much better, he reworked the rejected episode into this novel. And it's a doozy, especially if you like technically specific science fiction that doesn't skimp on characterization and social theorizing. Highly recommended.


The Arrow Book of Horror Stories: edited by Elizabeth Lee (Collected 1965): Enjoyable, very much traditional horror anthology of stories from the 19th and early 20th century. Classics include F. Marion Crawford's "The Upper Berth", H.P. Lovecraft's "The Dunwich Horror", and Bram Stoker's "The Squaw." For some reason, Lee includes two stories by several authors, making the anthology more idiosyncratic than representative. Recommended.

Fun-Sized Superhero

The Atom Archives Volume 1: written by Gardner Fox; illustrated by Gil Kane, Murphy Anderson, and Mike Sekowsky (1961-63; collected 2005): When the great DC editor Julius Schwartz decided to reboot the humdrum Golden-Age Atom for DC's ascendant Silver Age, he wisely gave the character actual super powers.

The Golden-Age Atom had been a short guy who was pretty good in a fight. The Silver-Age Atom was a scientist who figured out how to shrink himself while also controlling his mass.

This latter ability -- which allowed the Atom to be light as a feather or to weigh his full 180 pounds when he was six inches tall -- really could have been dangerous, as he could conceivably have been the first superhero to be constantly in peril of collapsing into a black hole. But apparently the Atom kept good track of his mass-to-size ratio and avoided this terrible fate.

This new Atom allowed for Gardner Fox and Schwartz to play with size and perspective within a quasi-scientific framework. The explanation for how the Atom could travel down phonelines required a half-page of text, and actually explained to me how the sound of a voice or what-have-you supplied power to analog phone lines. Science!

The elegant and dynamic Gil Kane and the detailed Murphy Anderson made a really nice art team on these early adventures. As with most Silver Age reboots, the Atom eschews a cape. And Kane makes the little fellow quite balletic and acrobatic, just as he did the Silver Age Green Lantern. A lot more fun and engaging than I expected. Recommended.

The March of Time (News on the March)

Babes in Toyland (aka March of the Wooden Soldiers): written by Frank Butler, Nick Grinde, Anna Alice Chapin, and Stan Laurel; directed by Gus Meins and Charles Rogers; starring Stan Laurel (Stannie Dum) and Oliver Hardy (Ollie Dee) (1934):

Enjoyable Christmas musical from Laurel and Hardy, set in the world of Mother Goose. The slapstick is fun, the romantic leads forgettable, and the musical numbers occasionally puzzling: why doesn't Hardy, who showcased a nice singing voice in other movies, get a number here?

A monkey dressed up to look like Mickey Mouse is really quite disturbing, especially when it's flying around in a toy zeppelin throwing bombs at the Bogeymen who have invaded Toyland. Recommended.


　

The Magnificent Ambersons: adapted by Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, and Jack Moss from the novel by Booth Tarkington; directed by Orson Welles with Fred Fleck and Robert Wise; starring Joseph Cotten (Eugene), Dolores Costello (Isabel), Anne Baxter (Lucy), Tim Holt (George), Agnes Moorehead (Fanny) and Orson Welles (Narrator) (1942): The follow-up to Citizen Kane is revered both for what it is -- a broody slab of American Gothic -- and what it isn't -- 50 minutes longer.

Yes, the studio re-edited the film without the input of Welles, chopping it down to 88 minutes and filming a newer, happier ending. Legend has it that the lost footage was quickly destroyed by RKO Pictures to prevent Welles from editing it back in.

While Welles was already notorious for going over budget, the fault really lay with RKO. They knew that The Magnificent Ambersons, a Booth Tarkington novel Welles and his Mercury Theatre had previously adapted for radio, was a tragic downer when they greenlighted it with an unheard-of-for-RKO million-dollar budget. But Welles would get the blame, and never really have full control over a decently budgeted studio film again.

What's left here is a magnicent, truncated Gothic tale with more than a hint of Great Expectations about it, though it's Great Expectations as seen in a funhouse mirror. Welles' brilliant use of shadows and textures, and his uncommonly fine understanding of how to achieve depth of field with the camera technology of the early 1940's, is on display here. The movie looks great as the camera flows through the chiarascuro rooms of the Amberson mansion.

The other fascinating intertext for this film would be The Great Gatsby, again in a funhouse mirror as the pseudo-Gatsby character, played by Joseph Cotten, becomes a true (and benevolent) success while the old-money family of the woman who rejected his love in a fit of pique, played by Dolores Costello, disintegrates under the onslaught of Time and the 20th Century. Tim Holt is suitably un-formed and callow as the spoiled rich kid, and Anne Baxter is radiant as Cotten's daughter Lucy. Highly recommended.

Ghosts and Tygers

Carnacki the Ghost-finder: written by William Hope Hodgson, containing the following stories: "The Find", "The Gateway of the Monster", "The Haunted 'Jarvee', "The Hog", "The Horse of the Invisible", "The House Among the Laurels", "The Searcher of the End House", "The Thing Invisible" and "The Whistling Room" (1910-1947; Collected 1974):

One of the earliest recurring paranormal investigators in horror literature, Carnacki remains a delight today, a century after the stories were first written. William Hope Hodgson made him fallible and capable of fear, thus making him a much more interesting protagonist than Algernon Blackwood's nigh-omniscient John Silence or Seabury Quinn's hyper-competent Jules de Grandin.

Science, or at least the appearance of science, plays a big role in Carnacki's investigations. Behold the Electric Pentacle, proof against supernatural powers. Carnacki's theories on what certain supernatural entities actually are give the reader glimpses of the weird world Hodgson has created: the malign, eponymous monster of "The Hog" may look and sound like a giant hog when it manifests on Earth, but it's actually some sort of massive, gaseous enemy from space that's trying to force its way into our world. The cosmic gulfs are haunted by things much worse than ghosts.

There's much quoting from fictional magical texts, and references to the codified and catalogued powers with which Carnacki contends. It all seems about twenty years ahead of its time, Lovecraft before Lovecraft, but with happier outcomes and a more interventionary race of Good Cosmic Beings.

Carnacki tells these tales to a small circle of friends. He refers throughout to his own fears and mistakes, and to his own fallibility. Several of the stories deal with fake hauntings or with explicable events of the natural world which only seem like the supernatural. Throughout, Carnacki marshals science and magic to do his job. Really a fine series of stories. Highly recommended.


　

The Middle of Nowhere by David Gerrold (1995): David Gerrold wrote the beloved original Star Trek episode "The Trouble with Tribbles" and went on to become a writer of some note, periodically working with the Trek franchise again. This novel, the third of his Star Wolf books, originated as ideas for a new Trek during the development of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Set hundreds of years in the future, The Middle of Nowhere tells us Gerrold's second story of the Star Wolf, a military 'liberty ship' of humanity's space fleet. Considered a 'Jonah' because of her inadvertant role in the devastating (for humanity) Battle of Marathon, the ship and her crew now race frantically to find a saboteur on-board so that they can join the fleet in its latest battle with the Morthan Authority.

The Morthans (More-than, get it?) are a genetically, biologically, and technologically engineered off-shoot of humanity that no longer consider themselves human. And they've decided to eradicate humanity. Not all Morthans are down with this plan -- the Star Wolf's security officer is a Morthan 'Tyger' named Brik. But enough are. Humanity may be doomed.

One of Gerrold's points in this and other Star Wolf novels is one that he also made in his non-fiction books on Star Trek. The probable distances involved in space combat should make the whole enterprise resemble submarine warfare. This makes for some tense combat scenes.

Portions of the book don't read like a novel so much as they read like technical sections from a 'Bible' for a TV show that never existed -- we learn an awful lot about the technology of the world of Star Wolf. I enjoyed these sections, but they may be tough, technobabble sledding for some. Recommended.

Short Horrors

Masters of Terror Volume 1: William Hope Hodgson: edited by Peter Tremayne, containing the following stories: "The Voice in the Night", "A Tropical Horror", "The Mystery of the Derelict". "The Terror of the Water-Tank", "The Finding of the Graiken", "The Stone Ship" and "The Derelict" (1905-1914; Collected 1977): This 1970's collection concentrates on early 20th-century horror and science-fiction writer William Hope Hodgson's fantastic tales of the sea. Well, OK, and a water tank. That seems a bit anomalous. But water! His great stories about ghostbuster Carnacki are collected elsewhere.

Hodgson spent years as a sailor before turning to writing, so the tone of the stories rings true even when the events become improbable. Two of the stories deal with the debris and seaweed-choked Sargasso Sea, a location Hodgson would often use for his tales of horror. His fine horror novel The Boats of the 'Glen Carrig' also spends some time there among crabs the size of houses; giant, man-eating octopi; hordes of rats; and an assortment of other awful animals, plants, and dire weather and oceanic conditions.

One of the great lessons learned from these stories and other Hodgson work is that if you're not sure what it is, don't poke it with a stick. And if a 100-ton carnivorous sea-monster invades the deck of your ship, stop running around on the deck.

Besides their dialogic verisimilitude, Hodgson's stories excel in their depiction of the weird and sublime creatures and events on Hodgson's wide and fear-haunted ocean. The finest and most-anthologized stories herein are "The Voice in the Night", a seminal story about a particular type of oopy goopy monster, and "The Derelict", a nice bit of science-fictional horror. Hodgson's major horror stories and novels are well worth seeking out in newer editions than these, or older. Highly recommended.

Monster Mix edited by Robert Arthur containing the following stories: The Day of the Dragon by Guy Endore (1937); Mrs. Amworth (1922) by E. F. Benson; Daniel Webster and the Sea Serpent (1937) by Stephen Vincent Benét; Creature of the Snows by William Sambrot; Aepyornis Island (1894) by H. G. Wells; Fire in the Galley Stove (1937) by William Outerson; The Mannikin (1937) by Robert Bloch; The Wendigo (1910) by Algernon Blackwood; The Derelict (1912) by William Hope Hodgson; O Ugly Bird! (1951) by Manly Wade Wellman; Mimic (1942) by Donald A. Wollheim; The Hoard of the Gibbelins (1911) by Lord Dunsany; and Footsteps Invisible (1940) by Robert Arthur (Collected 1968):

Fun Young Adult-directed horror anthology edited by the prolific writer and editor Robert Arthur, who ghost-wrote a lot of the early Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators novels and ghost-edited a lot of Hitchcock-brand short-story anthologies.

And yes, "Mimic" by Donald A. Wollheim was adapted into the movie of the same name, though the movie has a much different take on the whole affair. Guy Endore, prose source of the 1930's Wolfman movies, could probably have sued the makers of Reign of Fire over his dragon story here. Or his estate could have, anyway.

The monsters in this anthology aren't all bad (the Benet story is comedy, not horror), though most of them are. Algernon Blackwood's "The Wendigo" is one of his two undeniably pivotal novellas (the other being the even-better "The Willows"). While Blackwood wasn't Canadian, many of his horror stories were set in Northern Quebec. It's interesting to see how he reconfigures the Native-American legend of the Wendigo to fit his own fears about the dangerously Sublime wild country of Canada. In its original, the Wendigo story is a cautionary legend about the dangers of greed and gluttony, not about getting spiritually overwhelmed by the wilderness.

Arthur's own story, "Footsteps Invisible," is one of my favourite short stories about Egyptian curses: I'd actually forgotten who'd written it until I read it again here for the first time in thirty years. Recommended.

Lost Devils

Raising Hell: The Unmaking of Ken Russell's The Devils by Richard Crouse (2012): Fascinating account by the ubiquitous Crouse about Ken Russell's The Devils, possibly the most controversial film ever released by a major studio. And I was fascinated even though I, like a lot of people, have never actually seen the movie.

Russell was a stylistic iconoclast in even his most pedestrian films, but never moreso than in The Devils, which adapted a non-fiction-based Aldous Huxley book about a possession frenzy in a 17th-century French nunnery into a metaphysical and carnal horror story about faith and politics.

Widely reviled by critics and moral pillars alike when first released in 1971, The Devils was cut and recut by the studio afterwards. Today, I'm pretty sure it's still impossible to get a non-bootleg director's cut of the film. Puritanical Warner Brothers has spent 40 years trying to pretend the film doesn't exist. Nonetheless, it's a cult film among viewers and film-people alike, as testimonials in this book to its greatness from Alex Cox, Guillermo del Toro, Joe Dante, David Cronenberg, David Lynch, and many others show.

Crouse also does a solid job of demonstrating how studios have changed since 1971, and not for the better in an artistic sense: no major studio would even think about making or releasing an expensive, controversial 'Art' film like The Devils today. The blockbuster mentality has pushed most movies that aspire to do something more than sell action figures to the fringes, while 'serious' studio movies must be dignified or feel-good in their quasi-artistic pretensions. Because as we all know, mental illness can be cured by ballroom dancing. David Cronenberg taught us that in Spider. Oh, wait a minute, no he didn't.

If there is such a thing as an auteur, Russell was one, though Crouse does a fine job of laying out the necessity of Russell's collaborators, most especially the protean wild-man actor Oliver Reed and set designer (and later director) Derek Jarman. Man, I really want to see The Devils now. Highly recommended.