There isn’t much of a chance that I’ll forget about this book, since one of my favorite films follows it so closely. I was surprised at how little artistic liberties Polanski took with his horror masterpiece. It was interesting to note the differences that literary form and film form can create in tone and theme. The claustrophobia doesn’t come across as well in the novel that doesn’t have the convenient tool that framing can provide. Likewise, the maternal desperation of a bored housewife can be more thoroughly articulated through Rosemary’s inner dialogue in the novel.

In both versions of the narrative I get so frustrated with Guy. Obviously. The dude is an insane sexist, whose patriarchal views of male responsibility drive him to sacrifice the family he wishes to support. When Rosemary starts suspecting that her pregnancy is abnormal, she’s surrounded by men like Guy and Dr. Saperstein who pat her on the head and tell her to stop worrying as though she were the child. What can they possibly know about pregnancy? Ira Levin carefully presents a fairly generic horror plot through the eyes of the emerging feminist movement in 1967.

I’m still working out the implications of Rosemary’s maternal instincts at the end of the novel. Is this merely a way of saying that biology supersedes any feminist desire? Or, more likely, is it a way for Rosemary to take control in a closed society where she is consistently preyed upon and used for her body?

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Director and writer Roman Polanski has been a controversial figure since his conviction of having sex with a 13-year-old girl in California, 1977.  When Polanski was released on bail for this conviction, he fled to Europe.  He eventually ended up in Gstaad, Switzerland, a gorgeous and affluent area.  I know this because I visited there in the 60’s.  I remember it well.  Here and in other places in Europe, Polanski, lived in the lap of luxury.  In the States and Europe he made films such as  Chinatown,  Knife in the Water, Repulsion, and Rosemary’s Baby, among many others.  Many famous actors took part in his films.  He is by all accounts a fabulous director and writer.

Having sex with a 13-year-old is considered statutory rape in California and the United States.  Doesn’t this mean he should be held accountable for his crime?    The United States and California have been trying to have him extradited for eons.  Recently they came closer to this prospect when Switzerland had him imprisoned.  Polanski has now been placed under house arrest.  He must pay off his 4.5 million dollar bail to be released from house arrest.

All these years Polanski has thwarted his responsibility.   He has lived the good life.  He in essence lived above the law.  Isn’t time he faced his accusers?  Being an excellent director and writer does not excuse them from having to obey the law.

The fact that Polanski ran away from being prosecuted says to me that he is guilty.  Why else would he have jumped ship?  He had powerful people in powerful places behind him; shouldn’t he have utilized those resources before he decided to run?

Just a little note from imdb.com about Polanski:

In 1969, while he was on out-of-town business, his wife, actress Sharon Tate was brutally murdered by members of Charles Manson’s cult family; though Manson only ordered the killing and was not present during the murders. She was eight-months pregnant with their first child at the time. He has said that his life’s biggest regret was not being present at the house on Cielo Drive, Beverly Hills the night his wife Sharon Tate and four others were brutally murdered.

Some people think it was this event in his life that altered him and ultimately made him take advantage of the 13-year-old.  Not that this makes it right either but,  the 13-year-old girl’s mother dressed her daughter up in a promiscuous manner and dropped her off at Polanski’s house.  I certainly would have chaperoned my daughter at that age.

Al K Hall ('s body double) Learns About Reiki

From the juiced-box:

[Press 'Play' to feel it]

Basically

A ‘gathering’ is a party without alcohol. Miss Demeanor took me to a gathering the other day…

A group of people got together to ‘hand’ out free samples of Reiki (pronounced ray-key, as in ‘Ray-key up before you go-go”.) This is the practice of healing people spiritually, mentally/psychologically, and physically through touch.

History

It started in India a long time ago.

Later, it was rediscovered in Japan.

That’s enough history for now.

Alcohol vs Reiki

Miss D and i get to the place and this sober drummer (which, apparently, is not oxymoronic) showed us into a small room where we were shown a video.

If it had been a real party, there would’ve been a drink in my hand before i sat down and instead of YouTube, we would’ve had Disturbed.

Then, the guy led me to a dimly lit room where a crowd of people stood around a massage table. Have you ever seen Rosemary’s Baby? You know the scene where Satan rapes Mia Farrow? It was kinda like that without the nudity.

I had to lie down on the table and everyone put their hands all over my body except for the fun parts. New Age Yanni-type music played and whenever a bell chimed, they moved their hands to a different place but still avoiding the good bits. Basically, it was a Thai massage with no massage and no happy ending.

Had it been a real party, there would’ve been less clothing, nicer touching and some kissing if you’re lucky. And either Sick Puppies or Tom Waits after Disturbed—New Age is the new Old Age.

i’m Just Sayin’

i had a bad case of blue balls when i got there and i must admit they were less blue (redder?) when i left even if, as i said, no one came even remotely close to polishing my family jewels off. Still, i can’t see Reiki ever replacing the good ole 6-pack and a handjob.

In a nightmare with several obvious cinematic inspirations, last night I dreamt that the devil, played by Jack Nicholson, invited me over and, by feeding me food, impregnated me, despite the fact that I have no uterus.  I think he explained to me why this was.  The next day, I wanted to go swimming, but my brother wouldn’t let me; he seemed to think I ought to return to the devil’s house, for reasons I couldn’t discern.

My stay at the artists colony resumes, after a necessary interruption.  I drove back through Virginia on US-60, a road that winds enough to be scary, at night.

So this the spot where I apologize for not doing anything blog-worthy in a few weeks. And throw in some vague nods to projects which refuse closure and we’re on course!

And The Trailer Park Six is on hiatus until after the holidays. Like you care! Like I care!

Editor’s Note: This is part III in a series  of posts on The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby.  For part I of the series, scroll down or click here.  For part II, scroll down or click here.  As mentioned before the first post: I reveal many plot points from these films, so please watch them before reading.

In my previous posts on Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist, I touched upon some of the ways in which these films exploit the uncanny feelings we experience in relation to our own bodies, as well as how these films may have a comment on the ways in which contemporary power structures terrorize and appropriate the female body.   In this continuation of the larger discussion on Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist, I am interested in investigating how these films might also be mining some horror from the inherently uncomfortable disconnect we all have between our minds and our bodies.

In support of this notion, I will posit that the eeriest things in life are not often the things prowling around outside your home at night, nor are they the things coming down from outer space to apprehend unsuspecting sleepers, and certainly they are not pitchfork-wielding goblins reveling in a fiery orgy of sin below the earth.  On the contrary, the eeriest things in life often originate within the confines of our own skulls.  Throughout our history, we humans have made a habit of projecting the weird things going on in our own psyches outwardly, thereby attributing anomalous or unsavory behavior or phenomena to demons, witches and the like.  For instance, Mary Beth Norton makes a compelling argument in her 2002 book In the Devil’s Snare, that the Salem Witch Trials toward the end of the 17^th Century can be largely attributed to the anxieties and other psychological ramifications of frontier life, and specifically the fear of Native American attacks on European settlements.  The dark-skinned men lurking in the unfamiliar forests, along with the constant bloodshed that was inherent to that time and place, created a fear that was coupled with an already-present collective belief in witches, demons and unknown evils lurking in the shadows.  While these settlers did have actual danger prowling outside their homes, they were not aware that the reach of Native American influence reached through the walls of their homes into their minds, leading to irrational behavior and decision-making.  Those weren’t demons in the woods, those were people tired of being slaughtered and otherwise molested by strangely-dressed white people.

The point is that our own minds are the source of our greatest terrors.  And historically, as with the Salem Witch Trials example above, it has been  much easier to explain away the most uncomfortable or undesirable aspects of our lives with a little bit of supernatural belief and magical thinking.  The most powerful of these supernatural belief systems are the monotheistic religions which, although they are very much thriving to this day, are much more difficult to accept absolutely than they were, say, 500 years ago.  Magical thinking was a pat way to explain away events and circumstances that otherwise were baffling or anxiety-provoking.  With scientific knowledge skyrocketing in the latter half of the 19^th Century and through the 20^th Century, it became much more difficult to blame everything on witches, angels, demons and god(s).  In this vein, both Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist share a subtheme of religious faith and the loss thereof.  Father Karras, the central priest character in The Exorcist (although not the “Exorcist” referred to in the title), is wrestling with his own loss of faith.  Father Karras resides in a slummy area of Washington DC, with poverty and squalor constituting his day-to-day world and, along with this, he shares his small apartment with this ailing mother, who eventually is forced to move into a mental institution brimming with the psychologically anomalous.  Karras finds it difficult to rectify these realities with his Catholic beliefs and the demon possessing Regan exploits this fact.  In Rosemary’s Baby, one scene has the camera conspicuously linger on the April 8^th, 1966 cover of Time magazine.  The cover simply features the question “Is God Dead?” in bold red letters over a black background.  This was an actual cover of Time that was attached to an article that stated that the age of religion was essentially out the door.  Rosemary herself, when asked by Roman if she is religious, states, “I was brought up Catholic, but now I don’t know”.

Both films take as their setting a 20^th Century backdrop that is turning more toward medical, scientific and psychological knowledge to assist with problems of the body and mind instead of relying upon supernatural paradigms.  Until recent modern history, many of us have told ourselves stories about the ethereal soul and its dominion over the base, corrupted body.  The soul is said to be made of otherworldly material that is unfortunately tainted by the fleshy, gooey spaceship that it must possess in order to traverse through our inherently dirty world.  If one begins to accept the idea that we – every part of us – are of this world and then supplants the soul idea with this way of thinking, then the means by which one thinks of oneself and the world becomes dramatically altered.  This paradigmatic shift would be seismically uncomfortable, and it is my contention that Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist place themselves firmly in the fault line created from just such a shift.

In his wonderfully entertaining 2007 film The Pervert’s Guide to the Cinema, Slavoj Zizek shares some of his thoughts on modern cinema from a philosophical perspective that is rooted in the ideas of famed French psychoanalytic thinker Jacques Lacan.  In his film, Zizek pontificates on Ridley Scott’s Alien and claims that this film derives its power, particularly regarding the iconic scene in which an alien baby hatches from the stomach of its human host, from the idea that humans are essentially alien intelligences with a human body as a host.  We humans are uncomfortable in our own skins because of a fundamental disconnect; we tolerate our bodies, but we must also misrecognize our bodies as something different from ourselves in order to get by.  This disconnect is much easier to handle when one has, for instance, the Christian notion of the soul which advises comfortingly that there is no need to worry, that it’s right to fear your body, and that it’s really okay that you will die someday, for everything will be taken care of because your personality is actually not of this world to begin with.  For psychoanalysis as well as for Christianity, we are essentially ghosts inside a machine, or aliens inside of spaceships.  Christianity tells us that our alien souls will someday rejoin the Mothership (Fathership?)  in the sky, whereas psychoanalysis offers no such happy ending.  For psychoanalysis, life is weird and then you die.

Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist generate some wonderful creepiness by interjecting antiquated notions of Soul/Body and Good/Evil into a modern, scientifically-advanced setting.  One can have every priest and psychologist on call, but life will never cease to be strange.  It’s unfortunate that this basic concept is lost on many contemporary horror filmmakers.  These filmmakers spend too much time on computer graphics and convoluted story lines and not enough time looking into the mirror and contemplating the stranger staring back.

Note: I’m thinking there’s one more post on these two films on the way.  I’m thinking the next post will be about domestic spaces and antagonistic furniture in Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist.

Why cant parents control their kids in public?
Why is it that I ALWAYS have to tell some lil snot nosed, dirty ass kid to stop running in my store, while the parents just stand there and do nothing? They wont tell them to stop running around like crack induced maniacs, but they will get offended when I tell the little terrorist to “take that shit outside”….. In those exact words.
I feel like I should stand at the doorway and hand out leashes for some of these kids. Or maybe I could come up with a “kid check”….you know, kinda like a coat check, but for ankle biters.
Nah, that probably wouldn’t work. Knowing some of these parents around here, they would leave and “forget” to pick up their kids on the way out.
I don’t think I ever ran around a Supermarket when I was young. I was too scared of my mother. She would go in with the belt if we even dared to walk faster than 1.5 mph.
I think that’s what it is. These whippersnappers lack the proper discipline. Parents don’t whoop that ass anymore, so these kids get away with murder.

By no means am I condoning child abuse ,btw (although it seems warranted in certain situations! I kid, I kid……maybe)
Morale of the story, folks? Don’t be Mr.Softee with your kids, specifically when the situation calls for some sort of action. Don’t be that parent with the kid screaming bloody murder in the middle of the store, and you’re solution to the problem is trying to put them on “time out”.
Do what my mom used to do……give “Rosemary’s Baby” the evil eye, a pinch on the leg and say (in Spanish if you can): “Espera hasta que llegamos a la casa, hijo de la Gran puta, cono!”
Translation: Wait until we get home, you son of a b*!ch!

Worked everytime………

Its getting good and cold, even in London, and I think that I might have to break out my log tweed coat, after its had a dry clean, to provide some much needed snug warmth. If I do start wearing it I have to bear in mind that its a nightmare to lug about on the tube – if you wear it you lose 3 pounds in sweat each journey (might not be such a bad move seeing as I’m overweight but…) or I carry it which is not easy cus its heavy, bulky and things fall out the pockets. Of course, if I get a seat then all’s good but I can’t bet heavily on this rank outsider.

The office is very cold as well, it is double glazed but there’s no heating and the building is fairly old and drafty. And seeing as all I do all day is sit and type there’s not much blood circulation help there – more trips to the kitchen for tea will sort this out – always a good idea. Wonder how cold it will get in a few months time. brrr….

Just finished a great lunch of pasty, chicken something and lettuce sandwhich and a Sainsbury’s little pot of gooseberry fool – the best pudding you can buy for 35p, absolutley stunning – better with some kind of choclate to dunk in it – where’s my twirl bar?… aha.

Off to watch the Departeded later, can’t imagine it’ll be anywhere near as good as Goodfellas or Casino but expect that it’ll be much more enjoyable than Gangs of New York, which I liked but didn’t love.

Saw a few Halloween films last few days;

Halloween – ace, jumpy, smart and kept imagining that Donald Pleasence was about to speak to camera and say; “and thats why you shouldn’t have sex”.
The Omen – daddy of the genre turns out to be not much cop all in all – satan goes to the zoo is fun but not as good as End Of Days
Rosemary Baby – now we’re talking – very creepy – very good – playing on the fears of women everywhere in a really nasty way and yet it manages to be a really good guessing game right up until the last few minutes – well, unless you know the plot – I thought that it would be left ambigous and felt a wee bit cheated but still, I really enjoyed it.

Comments:
pietscully
the twirl bar…wasn’t sure people still ate them. i remember when i was a kid, went to ireland, before twirls were available in the uk they had them there, and my aunt worked at the cadbury’s factory in coolock. well. you can imagine, to a 12 year old it was like being given the secret key to the pyramids or something. i miss cadbury’s.

thisisalloneword
American chocolate’s not up to much then?
Do they do bars?

I suggest trying to get a cadbury’s hamper sent across in time for thanksgiving – maybe with a tub of bovril and some sausages thrown in. I say this but I have no idea what food Americans have and what they dont…

pietscully
they do, but they call them chocolate pubs

thisisalloneword
took me a few seconds to register, ho ho, its a slow day and my brain is tired…

Switching gears from the horror/noir/gothic kick I’ve been on lately, I would like to devote this post to Lone Scherfig’s new film An Education.  While this movie is not a horror film per se, it does touch upon one of the themes that has come up recently in discussing such previously blogged-about  films as Rosemary’s Baby, The Others, The Exorcist and even Sunset Boulevard.  Namely, this movie shares with these other films the major thematic touchstone of the “trapped woman”.  The idea of a 1960’s British teenager who falls in love with an older man might not readily conjure up the images of, respectively, a woman raped by the devil, a woman trapped inside a haunted mansion, a girl possessed by the devil, or a delusional elderly woman secluded from the outside world due to her own warped convictions, An Education puts its heroine, Jenny, in a position that is just as helpless and harrowing as that of Rosemary’s, Graces’, Regan/Chris’ and Norma’s.  The one thing that keeps An Education, fine film that it is, from reaching the artistic heights of these others is the ending.  But, we’ll get into that later.

First off, you should absolutely eat up all of the superlative praise out there on the interwebs for Education’s lead actress Carey Mulligan.  This girl has chops.  She carries almost all of the emotional weight of a very emotional narrative, and does so without once ringing a false note.  She will win many awards for her work in this film and she will deserve all of them.  Playing alongside Ms. Mulligan is Peter Sarsgaard, who does what Peter Sarsgaard does best: play a creep.  I do not mean this in a pejorative sense; this film is reliant upon an actor in the David role who is able to come across as both creepy and charismatic simultaneously.   David seduces half-his-age Jenny and quickly reveals himself as a morally fuzzy suitor; yet despite Dave’s rough spots, the audience must never doubt that Jenny can be wildly attracted to this man.  Sarsgaard skates this line with aplomb.  Alfred Molina is his usual excellent self in the role of Jenny’s strict but vulnerable father.  Other notable cast members are Emma Thompson as the headmaster of a private school and Olivia Williams as a private school English teacher, a role that has interesting parallels to her role in one of my favorite films of the 1990s: Rushmore.  In Rushmore, Williams plays a private school teacher seduced by a much younger boy, whereas in Education she plays a teacher advising a young girl who is seduced by a much older man.  Her facial expression is very similar in both films — she plays both roles so well that I think she should slap a trademark on the “I’m upset at this romance involving incongruently-aged people” face.

An Education is Nick Hornby’s first foray into scriptwriting since 1997’s Fever Pitch (not the 2005 Jimmy Fallon Red Sox film, although this was also based on Hornby’s novel of the same name).  Education’s script is very well-written, with a slowly building sense of dread punctuated with moments of deep despair along with a sprinkling of humor.  Much of the light-hearted moments are piled on in the beginning of the film, and I noticed that many people in the audience at the Fifth Avenue Cinemas in Vancouver, BC really wanted to keep the good times rolling long after the initial Jenny/Dave meet-cute stops being cute and one realizes that Jenny has painted herself in a corner that she may never get out of.  Gleeful guffaws became nervous laughter which tapered off into pointed silence as the situation worsened and a story that could have veered into RomCom treacle instead carried through with the sometimes uncomfortable implications of its setup and its characters.  Imagine that.

However, as I brought up earlier, the ending left me feeling like a double-crossed Bubble-Lub.  The film earned my trust and then squandered it with the employment of a voiceover and a syrupy pan out in the final scene of the film.  I’m not entirely anti-voiceover, but there had not been a voiceover up to this point in the movie, so why introduce one  in the very last scene?  Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist, The Others and Sunset Boulevard all have very effective endings.  The endings of all of these films ensure that the feeling that had been cultivated throughout will linger in the filmgoer’s mind long after the theatre has been deserted.  Sunset Boulevard, which employs heavy voiceover from the beginning (granted, the acerbic voiceover of a dead man), is witty enough to eschew voiceover in its final scene in favor of a Norma Desmond monologue that is, in the final shot of the film, drowned in black like the overpowering delusions within Norma Desmond’s mind.  Boulevard features one of the best endings in the history of popular film.  An Education, however, fizzles.   I realize that it isn’t fair to require that every film hold up to the standard of Sunset Boulevard, but still you get my point.  The narrative ending of Education didn’t bother me necessarily, but the spell invoked by the film prior to the final scene was broken by an uninteresting and too-neat visual and auditory wrap-up that comes across as lazy.  It just doesn’t do justice to a very well-paced, well-acted and otherwise well-made movie.  Regardless, I still recommend it — I simply suggest that you ignore the ending in the way that a teenager might look past the glaring faults of an otherwise sophisticated lover.

Faith films have had a long history on the big screen. It has had its share of The Good , The Bad and the despicable. The golden age of cinema had a foray of Bible inspired movies, one of the most historical being 1956’s “Ten Commandments” by Cecil B Demile , it was a mammoth production that became a VHS favorite ,with 3 Oscar wins and 7 nominations. Other films such as Quo Vadis(1952) had preceded it with similar success and, Ben Hur(1959) set records with an impressive 11 Oscar wins, things seem to be on a roll for faith films . As the years went by things took a turn in a slightly different direction . The 70’s and 80’s diverted from telling Biblical stories and history and went for darker themes. These movies delved into spiritual arenas mostly surrounding the devil and the end of the world, Polanski in 1968 released the award-winning spine chilling “Rosemary’s Baby” , and other’s followed The Exorcist (1973) , The Entity(1981) and others.most notably the series of “Omen” movies. Inspired by the Bible’s last book of Revelations ,if explored the prophecy of the devil coming as a human, known as the Anti Christ, The recent “Anti Christ(2009)” was another film that took advantage of this trend, with its explicit sex scenes, it’s clear those were not aimed at the evangelicals but whether any of these could classified as faith films,or just horror variations of Bible themes is something else for determination.

Things seemed to go down hill in the late 80’s , gone were the Biblical stories and themes. The table was flipped and It seemed to be open season on Christianity. Some movies had outright blasphemous themes like “The Last Temptation of Christ(1988)” by Goodfellas Director , Martin Scorcese, caused an outrage in the faith community, and years later Kevin “Clerks” Smith managed not an equal, but similar outrage with his 1999 comedy “Dogma”, which had his trademark lewd humor approach , this time to tenets of the Catholic and the Christian faith as a whole.2004’s “Saved”, starring Macaulay Culkin(Home Alone) , was a two fingers up to the Christian community, a Mean Girls/Heathers with the Christians playing the antagonists.

The later part of the 20th century varies from the earlier seeing many films that address issues of Christian themes end up being more of a thorn in the flesh than a blessing.  A lot of movies over the years which have been embraced by the Christian community, though they were not Christian in theme, some of the allusion people read into, and supposed allegories examples being “The Shawshank Redemption”, and The Matrix. In the last 6 years ,things seem to turning around for the better. Between Mel Gibson’s ,“The Passion of the Christ” , TD Jakes’s “Woman Thou Arth Loosed” , the Sherwood Pictures releases (Facing the Giants,Fireproof) and the torrent of Tyler Perry movies,faith films are coming back to the mainstream with well toned physique. No longer are they straight to video and low-budget but they made well and are doing very well in the box office. With the evangelicals and the neutral crowds patronizing these releases, things are gaining momentum. What specifies as a Faith Film still varies, but as long as people are being impacted ,ticket sales show that it really hasn’t mattered.

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Last week I saw the newly wide-released Paranormal Activity at Scotia Bank Theatre in Vancouver, BC.  After the last scene of the film (a corker), some dumbshit in the back of the theatre called out, so that everyone could appreciate his well-rounded, thoughtful opinion: “That’s it?  One scary scene?!”  I’m not sure what movie he was watching, but Paranormal Activity is an expertly-crafted nerve-rattling film involving many scary scenes.  As long as you haven’t been lobotomized by Saw and its phalanx of sequels, you will find this film pulse-quickening at the very least.  At most, you will not want to go home afterward.  You will walk around aimlessly searching for others to be with, anybody really, so that you do not have to return to the confines of your own, private, secluded, tucked-away-from-society home.  You know: that place where nobody would hear you screaming and nobody would believe your stories later because you are being terrorized by something that only comes out when you and/or your loved one are alone – and most often when you’re sleeping.

The concept behind Paranormal Activity is very simple: a couple begins experiencing bizarre phenomena at their home and so decides to attempt to record said phenomena with a digital video camera.  Each night, the couple falls asleep with the camera aimed at their sleeping selves: on the right side of the frame is their bed and on the left side is their bedroom door, wide open, almost as if inviting anything creeping around in their dark house to come on in and do what it may.  Not really a spoiler to say “Boy, does it ever.”  The film returns to this setup many times; each time, the anxiety of the moviegoer is ratcheted up another notch, for you know something terrifying is about to happen, and the ante will be upped from the previous go-around.  I won’t tell you what the camera captures, for finding out for yourself is wherein the fun lies.

The phenomena are not isolated to the bedroom however.  The entire house is under siege by a malevolent presence, hell-bent on terrorizing this young couple.  As I mentioned in two previous posts on The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby, the home itself becomes a major participant in the terrifying substance of many successful horror films [There will be an upcoming post later this week in which the role of the domestic spaces in The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby are discussed in more detail – ed.].  As evidenced in many gothic novels and thrillers – not to mention Lifetime movies –  when your own home has becomes a menacing place, there are not many safe outlets for a body to pursue.

One Scary Scene Man (OSSM) in Scotiabank Theatre cannot fire the proper synapses to gather this concept, but luckily the man behind this film, Orin Peli, has the wherewithal.  Mr. Peli had this to say in an interview with Shocktillyoudrop.com:

I think a lot of people can relate to the question of what happens at night when you’re most vulnerable. You have no idea what’s going on. This taps into the most primal fear, if something is lurking in your home there’s not much you can do about it.

“There’s not much you can do about it” is a nice way of thinking about scary situations.  When there’s some unknown and unseen entity in your home, there is not much you can do about it.  The same can be said about the motivations of strangers.  The same can also be said about the mental activity of other people in general.  For instance, if the person you have trusted, entered a relationship with, and/or moved in with, turns out to have terrifying things going on behind their eyeballs, there is not much you can do about it.  There are not necessarily any psychotics in Paranormal Activity, but the movie does tap into another “primal fear”: that of the utter impenetrability of other people.  No matter how well you think you know somebody, how much you are related to somebody, or how comfortable you feel in somebody else’s presence, you will never truly know what it is like to be that person.  You will never know another person’s true motivations, wishes, desires or thoughts.  It’s hard enough to pinpoint how one’s self feels about things, let alone how another person does.  No matter how much you feel that you know some other person, he or she will still remain other; i.e. different, alternate, opposite.  While that concept is scary, watching victims get tortured for 2 hours is not.  Torture vignettes, as found in the Saw films or movies like Hostel, may be titillating, engaging or setup cleverly, but they are not “scary”.

What OSSM misunderstands is that scary does not equal CGI.  Scary does not equal excessive gore.  Scary cannot happen via repeated visual and sonic bludgeoning.  Scary is found within concept as much as it is found within execution.  Scary is subtle.  Scary must sneak up on you.  Scary is your home, scary is another person and scary is yourself.

On a final note, I was struck by the previews that ran before the screening.  Included in the bunch were a couple for post-apocalyptic CGI-fests: 2012 and The Road.  While I’m holding out hope for The Road based on the excellence of the source material, not-to-mention its wonderful cast (shout out to Omar from The Wire!), 2012 is fairly easy to identify as a waste of time.  After bestowing the Activity audience with visuals of historical landmark after historical landmark falling to the Mayan-predicted apocalyptic forces, the preview ends with John Cusack (has he contributed to a worthwhile film since 2000’s High Fidelity?) hugging his two children and saying something ridiculous to the likes of “We’ll get through this if we just stick together”.  Ouch.  This movie cost $200 million to make, and yet a decent screenwriter couldn’t be found to put worthwhile words in the mouths of characters facing down the end of the world.  The filmmakers are apparently banking on the fact that OSSM and his ilk are solely interested in blow-ups and the pixelated destruction of tourist destinations.

Regardless of 2012’s cynical success at the box office, there is hope my friends. Paranormal Activity cost its maker $.015 million.  That’s right – $15,000.  Saw VI, a direct competitor of Paranormal Activity and a film with a budget about 733 times more than that of Activity, has made $27,000,000 as of November 15^th.  Activity, on the other hand, has made $103,847,000 as of the same date, making it the most profitable independent film ever.  This is a nice tidbit, for it suggests that proud philistines like OSSM are perhaps not as influential as one might think.  But don’t fret young OSSM: you’ll always have the Saw series on DVD and you can spend the remainder your days in the comforts of your own home despising thoughtfulness and subtlety with your tub of Cheetos and with your gray matter switch firmly in the off-position.  I know you and I have a conflicting idea of what scary is, so excuse me when I say that, for me at least, the overwhelming success of Activity is perhaps the least scary aspect of the film.  The thought of you procreating and raising a brood of glazy-eyed mouth-breathers: now that’s scary.

Les Voyeurs #87 – Les films maudits

Diffusion le : jeudi 12 novembre 2009 à 18h sur Radio Grille Ouverte
vendredi 13 novembre 2009 à 18h sur Radio 16.
Rediffusion le samedi 14 novembre 2009 à 10h sur RGO.
En téléchargement pendant une semaine ici.
Et en écoute permanente là.

Actualité

Aux Arcades d’Alès :  A l’origine de Xavier Giannoli, Panique au Village Vincent Patar et Stéphane Aubier.
Sortie en DVD : Antichrist de Lars Von Trier, La haut de Pete Docter et Bob Peterson, Public Enemies de Michael Mann, Coffret Lautner/Audiard : Les Tontons flingueurs, Les Barbouzes, Ne nous fâchons pas
Ressortie : L’Étranger de Luchino Visconti, Les Ailes du Désir de Wim Wenders.
Projets : De Force de Franck Henry, nouvelle trilogie Jurassic Park.
Les essais de Kurt Russel pour jouer Han Solo dans Star Wars ici.

Dossier de la semaine : Les film maudits

Les films inachevés

L’Enfer d’Henri Georges Clouzot de Serge Bromberg et Ruxanda Medrea sortie mercredi 11 novembre
Une partie de Campagne de Jean Renoir
Napoléon de Stanley Kubrick
Don Quixotte d’Orson Welles
L’Homme qui tua Don Quichotte de Terry Gilliam
Lost in la Mancha de Keith Fulton et Louis Pepe

Les comédiens morts pendant les tournages

Les Rumeurs de malédiction

Superman : les comédiens ayant joué Superman ou Lois Lane sont victimes d’accidents, de suicide, de folie…
L’exorciste de William Friedkin : 9 morts pendant le tournage, un incendie inexpliqué…
Poltergeist : plusieurs morts après le tournage…
Rosemary’s baby de Roman Polanski
Le Conquérant de Dirk Powell : tournage sur un lieu d’essais atomique. 96 cancers, 46 morts dont John Wayne

La bande originale de la semaine :

Thème de Mon nom est Personne par Ennio Moriconne.
Extrait de la bande originale du film Mon nom est Personne (1973) de Tonino Valerii et Sergio Leone

Chronique : La Carte Postale Sétoise

Neo publishing le site

Musique :
Cursed par Kiki Bohemia

Extraits :
L’Enfer
L’Homme qui tua Don Quichotte
L’Imaginarium du docteur Parnassus
Le jeu de la mort
Superman

Présentation : Erik Antolin, Jérôme Bauzon, Cédric Cance
Carte Postale : Jan Jouvert
Réalisation : Jérémie Adrian

I love horror films, and I’d been meaning to watch this classic for quite some time.  Netflix is so good for making you finally get around to seeing movies you’ve always meant to see.

Summary:
Rosemary and her actor husband move into a new apartment despite protestations from a friend that the building has a bit of a history of odd things happening.  Their new neighbors are a friendly, elderly couple.  In fact, Rosemary finds them to be a bit too friendly, but her husband likes them and insists the friendship be kept up.  Soon Rosemary is pregnant, but there is something odd about her pregnancy she can’t quite put her finger on until it is too late.

Review:
This is the type of horror story I love.  Something sinister lurking in the background of the main character’s life.  Everyone around her telling her she’s the crazy one or that she’s paranoid with only the main character and the viewer seeing what’s really going on.  This gives such a different scared vibe than the more typical, oh we’re in a scary hotel room for one night ahhh.

The cinematography has that classic 1960s feel that I personally love.  Maybe there’s a technical term for it, I don’t know, but it’s that awkward shot.  Instead of every shot being perfectly clean cut like in modern films, the actors aren’t always in center and focused.  People are off to the side.  It gives almost a mockumentary film feeling without any of those staged interviews.

Mia Farrow’s acting is truly excellent.  Her facial expressions show the wheels turning in her head even when other characters are in the room with Rosemary.  You can see how Rosemary senses something is wrong, yet she isn’t sure what exactly.

Ruth Gordon, playing the elderly neighbor woman, also offers up an excellent acting job.  She plays to perfection that horribly annoying elderly woman who everyone else finds delightful but you just want to stop touching your throw pillows.  It may seem like an easy part to play, but it is a fine line to walk, and she executes it perfectly.

I think what kept me from loving the movie as opposed to just really liking it were the odd dream sequences.  These too have a classic 1960s feel, but not in a good way.   They feel fake, and jerked me out of the world I had been sucked into.  I think most of the dream sequences could have been done without.

There is no way to discuss the social commentary this movie makes without giving away a massive spoiler, so let me just say that women’s agency is central to the plot of this film and is one of the main reasons I liked it.

If you enjoy horror, 1960s cinematography, or subtle social commentary, you will enjoy this film.

4 out of 5 stars

Source: Netflix

Editor’s Note: This is part II in a series  of posts on The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby.  For part I of the series, scroll down or click here.  As mentioned before the first post: I reveal many plot points from these films, so please watch them before reading.

Regan MacNeil’s bodyin The Exorcist and Rosemary Woodhouse’s body in Rosemary’s Baby are commandeered by male entities who exploit these female bodies for their own self-benefit. (If nothing else, these films prove that the devil is indeed a Republican. As if this were in question.) Regan and her mother find themselves abandoned by the male-dominated team of doctors who further abuse Regan’s body through a serious of invasive testing. Chris MacNeil must then turn to the Catholic Church, which although having a history and a present of oppressing women, sends priests to their home: men who are removed from the traditional male-as-sexual-predator-toward-women role. These men are supposed to exist asexually, and therefore are perhaps the only ones who can save Regan from her plight. Yes, I understand that Catholic priests have a habit of sexually preying upon young non-women, but we’ll leave that aside for now.

In Rosemary’s Baby, young, early-20s Rosemary Woodhouse realizes that her husband and the neighbors around her are conspiring to exploit her fertile body and maternal drives for their own ends. When she begins to piece together the puzzle, she runs to her original obstetrician, Dr. Hill, for safety. She does this at the behest of her girlfriends, who console her in the kitchen during a party. Rosemary’s doctor, Dr. Sapirstein, who comes recommended by her nosy and invasive elderly neighbors, has advised Rosemary to ignore the intense abdominal pain that she has been experiencing for weeks. When one of her girlfriends pleads with Rosemary to see a new doctor, another friend chimes in: “Yeah, some doctor besides that… that… nut!”

This kitchen scene comes as a welcome reprieve to the creepiness that completely saturates most of the film. Rosemary’s girlfriends are concerned for their friend’s well-being, are not dismissive of Rosemary’s complaints and ultimately are among the few benevolent figures in Rosemary’s life. But alas, the kitchen scene is a set-up. After this scene, Rosemary begins to exert some agency within her situation, and runs away from her husband, the neighbors and Dr. Sapirstein. She makes it to Dr. Hill, and in maybe the most harrowing scene in the film, Dr. Hill reveals himself to be more aligned with the male-dominated power structure than with the needs and concerns of his female patient. Once again, the creepiness of this film comes from the focus upon already existent aspects of our day-to-day lives.

Rosemary’s husband’s name is Guy, a name which points to the fact that this man is not an anomalous and horrible person. He is just your average “guy”, an unthinking man who, if given the chance, would sign away his wife’s body for his own selfish gains. At the end of the film, Guy offers these words in the form of an apology after it has been revealed that Guy allowed his Satan-worshipping neighbors access to Rosemary’s body so that Satan could impregnate Rosemary with the anti-Christ fetus (you know, your average marriage snafus): “They promised me you wouldn’t be hurt and you haven’t been…really. I mean, supposing you had the baby and you lost it? Wouldn’t that be the same? And we’re getting so much in return, Ro.” Guy’s flippancy toward his wife is truly terrifying and the viewer, at this point, has seen many signs of it. Even before we begin to piece-together the scenario along with Rosemary, we see Guy give his wife dismissive pats on the ass, pooh-pooh her suspicions as resulting from the “pre-partum crazies”, and most scarily, admit to fornicating with Rosemary’s unconscious body — an admission that we discover is a cover-up for what really happened.  After the otherwise lovely night when Rosemary is raped by the devil (something Rosemary doesn’t realize until much later in the film), Rosemary wakes up and this back-and-forth with her husband ensues:

Rosemary: I dreamed someone was raping me, I think it was someone inhuman.
Guy: Thanks a lot. Whatsa matter?
Rosemary: Nothing.
Guy: I didn’t want to miss the night.
Rosemary: We could have done it this morning or tonight. Last night wasn’t the only split-second.
Guy: I was a little bit loaded myself, you know.
Rosemary: You… you had me while I was out?
Guy: It was kinda fun in a necrophile sort of way.

Rosemary shrugs off Guy’s excuse for allegedly having sex with her lifeless body, which is a very scary thought in itself — even without the devil business.  This is to me is the scariest aspect of Rosemary’s Baby — the utter helplessness that Rosemary experiences in relation to the whims of men.

When Dr. Hill opens the door and lets in Guy and Dr. Sapirstein, Dr. Sapirstein has this to say, with Guy standing sheepishly at his side: “Come with us quietly, Rosemary. Don’t argue or make a scene. Because if you say anything more about witches or witchcraft, we’re gonna be forced to take you to a mental hospital. You don’t want that, do you?”  In many modern works of fiction, the mental hospital becomes the last viable option for men in dealing with women who are for whatever reason not fitting into their system.  In Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, Esther Greenwood is given shock treatment and forced to spend much of her time in mental facilities because of her inability to behave “appropriately” for a young woman in her time and place.  Lisbeth Salander in the Steig Larsson’s Millenium series is institutionalized because of the threat she poses to the patriarchal powers that be (indeed, the Swedish title of Larsson’s first book translates as Men Who Hate Women).

In The Exorcist as well, the team of doctors strongly encourage Chris MacNeil to have their daughter institulationalized because of her strange disorder and their inability to properly label and deal with her problem.  While The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby utilize demonic possession in their films as a means of eliciting terror, it is through showcasing the status of women in society outside of the movie theatre that really makes these chills hit home.

Stay tuned for more on The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby! In the meantime, don’t forget to say your prayers.

***SPOILER ALERT – I DISCUSS HOW PARANORMAL ACTIVITY ENDS, SO DO NOT READ IF YOU WANT TO SEE THE MOVIE FRESH***

The recent ubersuccessful Paranormal Activity may call to mind The Blair Witch Project, a similar film in form and conceit, but Paranormal Activity also owes much to the supernatural films of the past: in Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist, and a slew of other films, women find their bodies inhabited by spirits, demons, and devil babies.

Paranormal Activity begins with Micah, a young day trader, introducing his live-in girlfriend, Katie, to a brand-new camera purchased for documenting the mysterious goings-on that she feels have plagued her since childhood but have recently worsened. Katie describes seeing a ghostly figure in her room at night and feeling an eerie presence next to her. These occurrences only increase in frequency as the film progresses, with Micah’s efforts to understand the spirit seemingly provoking it into more alarming actions (a Ouija board, for instance, spontaneously bursts into flames). As an audience member, the couple’s descent into the clutches of the demon feels inevitable and it comes as no surprise when the possessed Katie hurls a lifeless Micah into the camera and leans out of the frame to consume him. (See the very bootleggy version below)

Katie’s possession correlates with those of other unfortunate anti-heroins: Rosemary, Regan, and Linda of Witchboard, all find their bodies subsumed by otherworldly spirits. As this list suggests, “women in general are figured as more open to the supernatural,” according to Carol Clover. Regarding Rosemary’s Baby in particular, Clover writes that “possession comes about because, as a female, [Rosemary] is naturally enterable,” making her more vulnerable to the forces without to come within. It’s this openness to possession that enables the feminine transformation into abject monstrosity, Barbara Creed suggests in her own work. These dynamics clearly come into play in Paranormal Activity, reminding us that in spite of its postmodern aesthetics, it remains very much tied to generic constructions of gender that predate pseudodocumentary horror.

Still, Paranormal Activity is as much about the trappings of masculinity in post-9/11 pre-recession America as it is about feminine vulnerability. We learn through exposition that Katie’s haunting began as a child and only recently became a major problem after moving in with Micah. It seems that Micah’s insistence upon solving the problem himself only exacerbates the situation. Throughout the film, you get the sense that Micah derives a peculiar pleasure from the situation. He comments positively about the footage obtained and relishes the opportunity to confront the spirit when it rears its ugly head. Katie regularly reminds him that the situation is not to be made light of, yet she humors Micah and is complacent as a result.

While similar dynamics occur in Rosemary’s Baby, it seems that narratives such as these generally involve the lone or compromised woman being possessed. The Witchboard trailer below emphasizes the necessity of isolation with the narrator declaring “Don’t play it alone”:

Carnival of Souls, a b-horror film from the sixties, similarly plays upon the single, isolated woman as a target for haunting by ghosts, paralleled by the noisome presence of a single man pestering her for dates. Even Regan, the young girl haunted in The Exorcist, lacks a fatherly presence that must be corrected through the intervention of priests.

While all of these films are problematic in their emphasis on the feminine as vulnerable, I admire the approach of Paranormal Activity and Rosemary’s Baby. Both films suggest that the woman who relies too heavily upon her male partner may be more vulnerable than her single counterpart. As a result, both masculinity and ideals of romantic love and coupledom become sites for critique. The “possessed” woman, then, is not only haunted by the demons that antagonize her but by the man who enables the demon’s entry into her life.

Rosemary’s Baby (Roman Polanski, 1968)

Hello all.

Watching this marked the first time that I have ever watched Repulsion and Rosemary’s Baby fairly close to one another. They are strikingly similar (to be honest I enjoyed Repulsion a bit more) both featuring distressed women and both films deal with issues of sanity. It was also the first time I had watched this movie in over ten years, which allowed me to go into it without much memory of what actually happens.

The film opens with a panning shot across the city, with a woman singing in the background, and then it transitions into the new apartment. Everything moves along smoothly until the superintendent notices the dresser in front of the closet door. The camera itself stops from moving across the apartment to backtrack and refocus on the dresser signifying the closet (or more importantly, the fact that the closet was blocked) as important. One thing I have noticed after years of watching Polanski’s films is that there are all of these seemingly pointless signifiers throughout each of his films that, once the film has ended, their importance comes to light. Rosemary’s Baby is certainly no exception. The main example of this is the first real conversation the young couple has with the Castevets where religion is discussed. The viewer has already learned that Roman Castevet is a cultured individual having traveled all around the globe for most of his life. This allows the viewer to assume that his dismissal of Christianity is based on his exposure to other things. It is later revealed that his feelings are at the core of his satanic beliefs.

The strangest part of the movie is the “dream-rape” sequence. Given it’s a dream, I understand that it is not supposed to fit within the realm of the entire film and that is what makes the scene brilliant. It is brilliant insofar as the viewer (at least I did) dismisses this as a dream because of the way it is shot and also due to the way her husband acts as she wakes up. This is a great film, I love its structure and the closing ten minutes end the film on as high a note as the film opened with.

Thank you for reading!

Plenty! In today’s addendum to yesterday’s post, I present to you the title frames from Rosemary’s Baby and Night of the Living Dead, the two heaviest horror hitters of 1968. See why the makers of the zombie opus never got a chance to reap the rewards?

A place for everything, and everything in its place.

Hmm. Something seems to be missing ...

Editor’s Note: this blog post assumes that you have seen the films The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby and therefore we reveal central elements of their plots. If you haven’t seen them, please:  1) Netflix them, 2) watch them, 3) make me a pulled-pork sandwich and then, 4) return to this post.

A woman becomes pregnant.  A human stranger grows inside of her.  This creature exists in darkness, feeding off of its host, affecting her diet, her mood and many of her bodily functions.

A young woman goes through puberty: an unfamiliar body develops, a strange voice emerges and a new personality is born.  Her desires, thoughts and behavior become very different than those of her prepubescent self.

When viewed from such vantage points, natural human events and processes can appear very odd.  Uncanny, as Freud would have it.  For Freud, the uncanny feeling results when concepts or things feel familiar yet strange; what was once comforting and affirming is now hostile and threatening.  Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher is perhaps the quintessential piece of uncanny fiction.  In the beginning of Usher, the unnamed narrator confronts the house of his former friend Roderick Usher.  Poe’s narrator compares the feeling of looking upon this house as the same feeling he gets when coming down from opium – “the hideous dropping off of the veil” as he describes it.

It is by utilizing the uncanny and a “hideous dropping of the veil” that two of the 20^th century’s greatest American horror films gain their respective effects of terror.  Rosemary’s Baby (1968) and The Exorcist (1973) deftly craft feelings of the uncanny by using young women as their respective focal points.

Both of these films involve demonic invasions as experienced by two young women during points of biological unrest: puberty and pregnancy, respectively.   Both of these women experience bodily invasion by male demonic entities who take control of their bodies as a means of furthering their own, literally devilish, schemes.  Both of these films utilize bodily orifices and bodily fluid in order to play upon our fears regarding our own bodies.  They also play upon the natural helplessness of women in a patriarchal society in order to cultivate terror, but more on this later.  The point is that although both films involve major aspects of the supernatural, the real terror is cultivated through enhancing and riffing upon elements of terror already found in our lives.

In the first third of Rosemary’s Baby, the viewer witnesses the intimate moments of a young couple checking out and then moving into a NYC apartment.  The actors, Mia Farrow and John Cassavetes, deftly portray young lovers who, although clearly not in the most loving and supportive relationship, are in a relationship that one can relate to.  It’s a relationship that rings true: we can imagine being friends with the Woodhouses.  This verisimilitude is very important, for the feelings conjured by this seemingly real and run-of-the-mill relationship will compose the veil which the remainder of the film works to drop – inch by painstaking inch.

In the first third of The Exorcist, the viewer witnesses the intimate moments of a mother and a daughter as they settle into their new Georgetown home.  Once again, the actors portraying this duo, Ellen Burstyn and Linda Blair, bring a certain aura of realness to their roles that will come in handy later in the film when we are meant to empathize with them completely as their lives fall apart via demonic invasion.  Ellen Burstyn’s Chris MacNeil is a woman who is flawed and vulnerable, just like us.  Her life is messy, but the viewer gets the sense that, even when we can judge her for how she treats her servants, this woman works hard for herself and her family and fights for what she believes is hers.  Just like us.  Except for the servants part.

In both films, and this is the crucial element that many horror and thriller filmmakers don’t seem to understand, the veil is gradually and surreptitiously placed before our eyes.  Lesser modern horror films will dance bloody corpses and fantastical monsters before our eyes as if that were all it took.  Such films amount to B-grade horror porn (horrporn?).  The better modern horror films will put as much craft into the non-scary aspects of their film as the payoff fright scenes.  You have to work just as hard weaving the rug as you do pulling it out from underneath our feet.

What the Exorcist team of director William Friedkin and writer William Peter Blatty and the writer/director of Rosemary’s Baby, Roman Polanski, understand is that very basic aspects of life are frightening, fundamentally, to the human consciousness.  What they realize is that in order to scare the shit out of people, one only needs to zero in on aspects of life that are already scary and then embellish.  Puberty and pregnancy are scary.  Puberty, with its unseen chemical surges and transactions and its utterly transformative effects on the human personality and body, is at the very least creepy for the child as well as his or her parents and siblings.  Pregnancy, with its parasitic invasion of the female body featuring an unseen life form growing and feeding within another human, along with its bloody and screeching arrival, is enough to put anybody on edge – including the baby.

Stay tuned for part II of this post, where I will further explore the sources of terror in these two films, including men in power, the soul/body binary and antagonistic furniture.