Not A Halloween Post - Part Two.
With an eye on yesterday’s post, here’s the other half of my list.
A Pagan Cult:
I didn’t know what to make of this before it came out because I simply didn’t want Midsommer to be better than one of my favourite films of all time (The Wicker Man) but in the end, it’s just different. And oh my, how it is different. There’s no slow introduction to things getting weird, it simply happens as soon as our unwitting young adults arrive at a Swedish festival.
Again, another folk horror tale, Midsommer is unusual in that it features male nudity (which as much as I don’t want to see it, is refreshing in a horror flick for sure), unusual in that it doesn’t care if you’ve ever seen a horror movie before and usual because it’s all do damned beautiful… until it’s not. The rules went out of the window on this one. Fantastic.
Never underestimate a pagan cult is my advice but to be fair here, you should also be able to see them coming from a mile away.
For the record, The Wicker Man is not on this list because it’s not really scary. Brilliant, yes… but it doesn’t get you in the bones in the same way. (Discuss: what’s the better ending? The Wicker Man or Planet of the Apes? There’s some fun at the restaurant for you and your partner!)
The movie poster was cool but on my travels I found this alternate version of (by Japanese designer Yuko Higuchi) which is interstellar in its brilliance:
Hill House:
One of my favourite movies of all time (regardless of genre) is The Haunting (1963). I stumbled upon this by accident on the TV decades ago and was floored by how much an old black and white movie freaked me out. The Haunting is the ultimate haunted house movie - and has never been bettered in my book - or maybe I’m wrong. I guess the last thing on this list can be classed as a haunted house movie but it’s kind of not too. Anyway…
Aside from a storyline you can’t go wrong with (based on Shirley Jackson’s classic), what Robert Wise got the house to do with no money at all and a camera on a bit of old rope in 1963 is brilliant.
All the correct things are present. Isolation. Not many people. But it’s the house that swings it as the villain. It’s alive - even if just in Eleanor’s mind and there’s the beauty. You’ll never know.
Richard Johnson’s character sums it up best: “I know the supernatural is something that’s not supposed to happen, but it does happen.”
The moral of this story is never take a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown to a weekend in a haunted house. Scooby Doo 101 guys.
Interestingly, the house itself in this British movie is now a hotel: Ettington Park Hotel to be exact in Stratford Upon Avon. Here’s the website if you really want to spoil a fantastic movie. Life looks so much better in black and white - don’t you agree?
If you’ve never seen it, skip the remake but the Netflix series was OK I suppose. They both kind of missed the point.
A bonus clip here from the best house-keeper in the world who only has a few lines but repeats the same thing whenever she gets a chance:
‘Regular’ old folk in an apartment block:
Cue Rosemary’s Baby where things are just about as evil as you can get.
New couple starting out… taken in as friends by the other residents… find out you’re having a baby… yeah, it’s a great plot for a movie when those residents aren’t all they seem to be.
Based on Ira Levin’s novel of the same name (which I haven’t read - I must remedy that) Roman Polanski did his best work here… and then did himself no favours at all with his subsequent behaviour - which did have an effect on how people saw the movie I think. Screening it is akin to playing a Gary Glitter song at a party so… make of that what you will - though I do feel for the guy a bit as it was his wife, Sharon Tate, that was murdered by the Manson family. What tangled webs we weave, huh?
Regardless: this is one of the classic horror films and one of the very few that deserve that ‘classic’ title. Best line of the film? (Spoiler - perhaps): “He has his fathers eyes.”
They don’t make them like this anymore.
(See that book in the trailer ‘All of Them Witches’? Go seek out the band All Them Witches who are one of my favourite bands of the last few years. I love it when a band is well educated.)
Bathsheba Sherman:
Horror movies came of age around 2013/4 and before we all got used to this new way of making them, we all danced in the street because horror was now being made just as well as any other movie and turning up at the cinema - proper cameras, proper locations, great actors - and it put all the days gone by into a sharp perspective. No matter how many fond memories you have, this was how it should be and never again would we see the likes of Phantasm and Puppet Master (although for the second time in writing this, I must admit I am probably the only one who wishes people who made movies like that were still around).
The Conjuring is the movie where the jump scare truly came to life. No matter how many times I see this film, it gets me every time - not just once, but multiple possessions. No matter what anybody says about modern horror, there are at least eight movies right at the top of the ladder that will scare the pants off you - and at least half of them must have been directed by James Wan. Boy, was I glad he turned up. The world didn’t know it needed a saviour for this kind of thing before he actually put in a shift.
It opened up a whole new universe known as The Conjuring Universe and much like Hellraiser, its sequels get progressively ‘not so good’, though for the most part they’re watchable - just not as good by quite some margin. That said, a year after The Conjuring the closely related movie, Annabelle came out which is every bit as good as this one - it may even be better - but I had to choose and this is my favourite.
That trailer will tell you all you need to know.
Matthew Hopkins:
Does the name elude you? You’re probably one of the lucky ones. For it is the character of the immortal Vincent Price in Witchfinder General. Horror movie villains come and go but Matthew Hopkins is forever.
With not a shred of compassion for anything ever - even less than Satan himself - Price rules this movie like the king that he is and if you ever thought you had a bad landlord, think again. If you moved, you were suspected of being a witch and your punishment will be… let’s say ‘imaginative’.
This movie, along with The Wicker Man and Blood On Satan’s Claw (or Stan’s Claw as autocorrect wants me to type), set-up the unholy trinity of folk horror for decades to come. It also had a great poster to lure us in… but then I found this version that I must find out more about at an auction house which I desperately want but it sold years ago:
As luck would have it, the movie is up on YouTube to watch for some reason and you can get that right here. Opening scene of a man hammering a gallows together? Count me in…
So there you have it, my top ten scariest horror movie villains - and not one instance of a man in a mask who won’t ever die. Supernatural is the way to go for me - and the closer you can get to a wood or some kind of barren land where nature doesn’t play by the rules, the better. The less people in the movie, the better to connect with them - and the more silence there will be because of it for things to go bump in the night. It’s all about things that shouldn’t happen but do happen, mixed in with a heightened sense of belief… a skill I have in abundance.
There’s no point in liking horror if you don’t believe what’s going on. You just find yourself being the only one in the room not enjoying the play that’s been put in front of your eyes. That being said, I’ve watched good horror movies with people who have scoffed at them for being ridiculous and yet, every single time, the scoffing has been a defensive mechanism.
It’s something that Universal Pictures have forgotten. How do you ruin remaking movies of the Big Five (Dracula, Frankenstein, Wolfman, The Mummy and Creature from the Black Lagoon). Well, you start by putting big stars in them and you finish the job by treating your audience like children. In between those two things is some idiot in a suit with a calculator with an eye on the box office.
All of the movies in my list have been created without any of those things in mind by people with a story to tell - and sometimes by people who didn’t have a clue what they were doing (most notably, Clive Barker directing Hellraiser). The most famous cast members are probably in The Exorcist but they weren’t really famous before it. I could talk about this stuff forever, but that’s my list!
Horror movies are not for Halloween. They’re for every night of the week.