The Evil Dead

THE EVIL DEAD

(1981)

Dir - Sam Raimi

Overall: GREAT

 

Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead shares company with a handful of other crucial horror debuts, debuts that were made with minimal funds and by largely unprofessional personnel, yet nevertheless elevated the genre to higher plateaus.  George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead is the obvious regional horror template that set the bar and navigated the course for such first-time feature filmmakers to utilize.  Though terrible and insultingly inept, Wes Craven's The Last House on the Left secured an equal amount of notoriety and fandom for a debut, Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre doing the same with much better and commercially viable results.  These three more accepted examples all came within a decade prior to Raimi and his crew of friends shooting their humble little cabin in the woods archetype, setting the stage for the young Michigan-based filmmaker, (as well as producer Robert G. Tapert and star/also producer Bruce Campbell), to mark their own territory in the road that was paved.

 

What Raimi and co. achieved with The Evil Dead was an audacious mishmash of conflicting elements.  The movie was done on the cheap, yet they kept going back to shoot more, overextending and exhausting themselves in the process.  The movie has jarring production values here and there, yet is simultaneously bursting with technical brilliance and buoyant imagination.  The movie is downright frightening at times, yet also knowingly goofy, playing up its cliches with tongue-in-cheek astuteness.  The movie is aggressively atmospheric, yet also stumbles into unintentional comedy due to some horrendous acting and unconvincing special effects.  Through it all though, the relentlessness exuberance of Raimi and his newbie crew comes through, propelling things along in a marriage of the gory, the ridiculous, and the terrifying.  It is as if the film both exists and excels merely due to the will power of the people making it, whatever "faults" it has be damned.

 

Verisimilitude is overrated after all. 

This is one of the things that makes The Evil Dead unique amongst its peers.  Genuinely, tonal problems and noticeable production malfunctions can sink the ship.  Again, just watch The Last House on the Left, (or don't).  Yet here, it all contributes to the uncanny setting.  It may be hackneyed to merely call it a celluloid nightmare since any horror film that basks in the otherworldly, (i.e. the implausible), can be excused as having "nightmare logic".  Just watch any Italian horror film from the period.  Looking in your direction Lucio Fulci.

 

Yet accepting that The Evil Dead exists in some kind of hellish dream state is accurate from a narrative perspective.  The Necronomicon "Book of the Dead" that unleashes the demonic fury is a nod to the cursed tome likewise referenced in various H.P. Lovecraft stories, and it is an ancient book that drives the reader into inescapable madness.  Thus, concocting a story where the tome's unholy forces are given free reign to take over and ultimately destroy the hapless saps who find it allows for Raimi's imagination to be uninhibited.  We can have Ash reaching into a liquid mirror, (as well as the woods coming alive to rape his sister Ellen Sandweiss), just as "logically" as we can have all the noticeable fake Shemps, bad dummies, and stop motion substituting for unavailable actors.  It means that the movie can go off the rails whenever it needs to, which it ends up needing to frequently.

 

Hey that's not Theresa Tilly.

Part of this is because the film was made by amateurs who were in over their heads, yet they also had enough talent, imagination, and determination to put something on the screen to convey their wild ideas.  Part of this is those wild ideas themselves.  There may not seem to be any rhyme or reason to the nefarious tomfoolery that inflicts Ash and his friends, and this is an all-too-common trait amongst supernatural works which arbitrarily dish out the goods in order to keep the story both moving along and not wrapped up too quickly.  In other words, why do evil spirits never just instantly kill whoever they have their sights on instead of gingerly messing with them, sometimes harmlessly but eventually forcefully, especially once the finale is underway?

 

An answer is because we have come to accept and expect such tactics.  Of course the ghosts are not just going to murder the new tenants who move into the haunted house the second they enter the place.  Of course the demons are not just going to possess people and make them instantly kill themselves.  We know this going in and often times do not question it, merely because certain tropes have been upheld so long that they become entangled in the very fabric of the genre.  There is another reason that we accept it though, and that is that every once in awhile we are given some semblance of validity to buy into.  In The Evil Dead, the demons are clearly fucking with their prey, and not just in order to make sure the movie comes close to the ninety-minute mark.  They are doing it because that is the whole point.  All five of our characters are in the middle of nowhere.  It is night time.  Fog is everywhere.  The very foliage outside of the cabin attacks them.  There is no way to reach the outside world.  No help is coming.  No help is available.  So why rush?

 

Yeah, definitely don't wanna go outside.

 

Everyone on screen in The Evil Dead is systematically taken out by the escaped malevolent forces of the Necronomicon, but not before enough torment is inflicted upon them.  This is not limited to the physical, but also the psychological.  Wickedness craves suffering.  When Ellen Sandweiss becomes possessed, everyone watches in befuddled helplessness, leaving them no other option in the immediate situation then to chain her down in the cellar.  She wails away, taunting them and driving them into further hysterics with her unearthly moans, cackles, and screeches.  Then everyone else starts getting taken over, one at a time so that whoever remains endures that much more anguish because...what are they going to do about it?  When provoked and attacked enough, those currently standing have to fight back, and it is eventually revealed that the only way to rid oneself of their now monstrous loved ones is to dismember them.  The dial keeps getting cranked at this point, not just for the people on screen to lose their minds over what they are experiencing, but for Raimi to come up with more outrageous, disgusting, and disturbing things to happen to them.

 

The movie indulges in such excess, just as the demons indulge in inflicting it.  The obvious metaphor here is that Raimi himself is the directorial "demon" who is torturing his actors.  There is actually gravity to this metaphor, since the making of the film was no picnic for anyone involved.  It was shot over several weeks, on location in the isolated Morristown, Tennessee cabin which had no heat or running water.  The hours were long, the setting miserable, and again, everyone was winging this whole "making a movie" thing as they went along.  This meant that safety precautions were non existent, the make-up was crude, uncomfortable, and damaging, plus various injuries occurred on set.  Yet through it all, it was reported that Raimi was enjoying himself, which could be due to the man's overall cheerful demeanor and glee over the fact that he was actually shooting an honest to goodness movie.  That, or it could be that there was a sadistic side to Raimi, since he did go on record stating that if his actors were suffering, he could capture that suffering on screen and use it to the film's advantage.

 

The face of pure sadism.

Bruce Campbell was reported to have undergone the most anguish on set.  He and Raimi had been chums since childhood, (various other crew members likewise went way back with the director), so there was an inherent amount of trust between them, where the closest of friends can often times fuck with each other the most.  Also though, Campbell was as invested in the project as Raimi was, producing it and taking on various roles throughout.  He was responsible for applying the uncomfortable demon contact lenses per example, which allegedly took ten minutes to put on and could only be worn for an additional fifteen minutes, rendering that unfortunate actor blind in the process.  Always a Three Stooges fan, (see the later installments Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness), Raimi had Campbell do take after take of pratfalls, was bashed by various makeshift weaponry, had gallons of bloody goo poured over him, and had to stick around throughout the entirety of the production since he was the star and the only surviving character.

 

The results of Campbell's on-screen suffrage are wacky at times, but they seem quaint in comparison to he and Raimi's aforementioned Evil Dead sequels, both of which kicked up the nyuck nyucks to cartoon levels and went for a purposeful comedic tone.  The comedy in the initial The Evil Dead is still there in fits and starts, but it is balanced by some of the most bone-chilling sound design in the entire genre.  Things are funny when the actors deliver embarrassing line readings, (Campbell's "Why are you TORTURING me?!?" being one of the more infamous), or when the characters behave in stereotypical "dumb people in horror movies" fashion, venturing out into the woods alone, checking on passed-out possessed people, or recklessly releasing malevolent forces because they think that it is all kid's stuff.  The movie also gets funny merely because of how much the mayhem escalates.  As each of his friends goes full-demonic and he has to keep bashing and hacking away at them, Campbell cracks under the pressure, and we as the audience can likewise chuckle at how off-the-rails and hopeless his situation has become.

 

You just try keeping it together when all of your friend's bloody fluids are all over your face.

Throughout the unholy and absurd chaos though, those outrageous and distorted demon voices, the wailing winds, and Joe Loduca's atonal and scattershot music creates unease every step of the way.  Even Tom Sullivan's primitive makeup work has a disturbing effect, characters quickly distorting into rotting corpse-like monstrosities when the demons get all up in them.  The entire tone is heightened and ridiculous, yet it maintains a level of unease as it rides that razor-thin tonal line.  This is impressive for first time filmmakers let alone veterans, and the rudimentary concept where all hell gets loose with reckless abandon is shown to work when the Looney Tunes logic is dialed back just enough to allow for the inherent creepiness to permeate.  Evil Dead II would crank that Looney Tunes logic up to eleven, making for a film that was never remotely scary by design, but here, it somehow manages to dip its toes into both pools.

Raimi, Campbell, and several other people who worked on the film were all young at the time, (most if not all under the age of twenty-five), and they had cut their teeth on earlier home movies.  In order to garnish funding for The Evil Dead, (aside from Raimi literally begging anyone that he knew who had money), they shot a proof-of-concept short two years earlier called Within the Woods.  Primitive of course, said short still showcased some of the strengths that Raimi and crew already had this early in the game.  The camera angles are still elaborate, the sound design still pummeling, and the exuberance still evident on screen.

 

Just wait to see what they would do when they get more than $5 to work with.

This is to say that though The Evil Dead came out of nowhere to the general public, its makers had already honed their chops beforehand.  Raimi had made roughly fourteen short films going back to when he was a wee lad, hardly any with any finances, actual actors, or actual production values.  Yet it all seemingly prepared him for what he would do with his first proper feature.  That and his previous admiration for the wacky hijinks of The Three Stooges and cartoons, influences that would show up more abundantly in his later and more mainstream work.  One could make the argument that budgetary limitations helped wield some of the results here, something that is often the case when aspiring filmmakers have to make do with what they have.  So maybe The Evil Dead is less outrageous than Evil Dead II merely because Raimi only had a sixth of the finances to work with.  Would he have made a more deliberate horror comedy the first time around then if the budget allowed for such things?

 

We can only speculate based on what Raimi would accomplish throughout the rest of his career.  He would make several more horror films of course, but The Evil Dead remains his only one that could potentially still rattle viewers, and that is because it does not go full-tilt to the degree that his later works would.  Many of the director's hallmarks are still there, (embellished camera set ups, bombast, gross-out gore), and like Dario Argento's Suspiria or Nobuhiko Obayashi's Housu, the movie is purely cinematic and void of thematic analysis, unless one is prone to grasp at straws.  It hardly conveys a sense of existing in the palpable world, but the world that it does present is just disturbing enough to freak out, and just ridiculous enough to chuckle at.  Some may prefer Raimi when he indulges in his wackiness more, and could merely see The Evil Dead as a solid starting point to later grandiosity.  It is technically that yes, but it also hits the spot when one wants to turn off the lights, crank up the sound, and bask in the greatest cabin in the woods horror film ever made.

 

Camera on a bike = dynamite ending.

Frankenstein

FRANKENSTEIN

(1931)

Dir - James Whale

Overall: GREAT

Once producer Carl Laemmle Jr. and Universal Pictures hit surprising pay dirt in February of 1931 with Dracula, they followed suit eight months later with their next Gothic cinematic adaptation Frankenstein.  The films are routinely linked together on account of their lingering influence, immediate commercial success, and the fact that each launched the careers of their runaway stars Béla Lugosi and Boris Karloff, respectively.  There are other similarities between the two; Edward Van Sloan and Dwight Fry appear in each, neither film has a musical score, Garrett Fort was a credited screenwriter on both, they were each based on contemporary plays as much as on the original novels which informed those plays, and they both take significant liberties with their source material, streamlining it in the process for a roughly seventy-minute running time.

 

Yet Frankenstein is a unique beast from its predecessor.  Technically superior in many respects, its director James Whale exerts a more focused vision than that which Dracula's Tod Browning had.  There are less lulls in the pacing, more of a steady trajectory that does not resort to chamber drama in the manner in which Dracula did after its first act.  The most significant difference though is the story itself.  Dracula was a tale of the supernatural, featuring a remorseless and undead fiend who feasts on blood in order to prologue its vampiric lifespan.  Frankenstein is about a man playing god, creating a creature that is more pitiful than terrifying.  Dracula is sexy and spooky.  Frankenstein is cautionary and tragic.  While some of these attributes overlap between the two, they are singular films at their core.  Bram Stoker and Mary Shelley were telling different tales after all, and so Universal was making different movies.

 

Shelley left the vampires to her buddy Lord Byron.

Enough about comparing two Universal films that each did mad business, made careers, and defined the horror genre for decades to come.  The focus here is on Frankenstein, one of the most lauded and cherished works that the Golden Era of Hollywood ever produced, horror or otherwise.  Accounts vary as to the specifics of its infancy.  Originally, director Robert Florey and Universal's new big name Lugosi were attached, but Florey's vision for the Monster was worlds removed from what ended up on the screen.  He wanted it to be a mindless killing brute, one that Lugosi allegedly had reservations about playing.  Some say that the Hungarian thespian walked off the project, refusing the part because it had no dialog.  Yet others have pointed out that it is unlikely that Lugosi, (a fresh star from Dracula yes, but hardly an actor who could make any demands or hold any clout in his profession in so short a time and without any follow-up hits under his belt), would have refused any work at this point in his career.  Also, Florey was eventually let go from the project, and when Whale came on board, his vision was to not only make the Monster sympathetic, but also to cast Karloff in the lead, another unknown who like Lugosi got such a iconic part mostly from being in the right place at the right time.

 

Lugosi was hot off his success in the Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston theater production of Dracula when he lobbied for the part after Universal executives were able to catch him on stage during the casting phase.  Karloff was taking a tea break in Universal's commissary when Whale happened to spot him, correctly deducing that the unknown bit player's unusual looks and gaunt features would make an ideal reanimated corpse.  Not only a reanimated corpse, but a reanimated corpse that would evoke affinity amongst the audience.  Though Karloff was just shy of six feet tall, some thick boots and heavy padding would bulk him up considerably for the screen, not to mention Jack Pierce's striking make-up job which would add several inches to the actor's cranium.  The effect was a towering creature that both served as an abomination against god, yet also pathetic and infantile.  This latter aspect was in large part due to Karloff's portrayal, the actor having a gentle demeanor in real life that he was able to channel even underneath all that greasepaint, cotton, collodion, and gum which Pierce applied to his face.

 

A guy in deep concentration and another guy probably trying not to fall asleep while holding in his pee.

Both Pierce's make-up design and Karloff's performance are fantastic, arguably representing the best work that either man ever did.  The flat-topped, bolts-in-the-neck look of the Monster was birthed here, a look that has endured ever since, just as much as Lugosi's pale face and slicked back Dracula widow's peak has.  In fact the make-up design was so specific that when Hammer decided to do their own version in Eastmancolor over two and a half decades later with The Curse of Frankenstein, they deliberately went in as different a direction as possible as to not draw further comparison to the seminal film that they were updating.  Christopher Lee looks great as the Creature and certainly more grotesque, (which is fitting for Hammer's more nasty take on the material), but since Karloff had an eye-catching facial structure already, Pierce wisely retained as much of it as possible.  This allowed for the actor to emote to the full extent of his ability, doing everything from growling, to yelping, to smiling, and all while acting terrified, confused, threatened, or void of any emotions depending on what the scene called for.

 

Any actor in a speechless role has that much harder of a time conveying what is meant to be conveyed, depending on that role of course.  In Shelley's novel, the Monster eventually becomes self-educated and well-spoken on his route to understand his existence and eventually confront his maker in Frankenstein once more.  In Universal's interpretation on the other hand, (which is considerably reduced in plot points to what happens in the book), there is no time for the Monster to receive such a full arch.  Yet never does the film feel rushed.  The full theme is still explored where Colin Clive's Henry Frankenstein experiences the horrific consequences of his prideful ambition, in effect creating a force of nature that he cannot discard so easily.  He comes to the conclusion that he has made a terrible mistake even quicker in Shelley's source material, running out of the room as soon as the Monster animates.  Here, Frankenstein boats in blasphemous glory that now he "Knows what it feels like to BE god!", delivering the movie's most famous line "It's alive, it's alive!" which he repeats in victorious triumph once his creation starts to move.

 

The original line "Suck it Jesus!" was omitted, probably for the best.

In this way, the movie does something more radical than the book did, showcasing that its title character was going to bask in his glory for a bit before seeing the folly of his ways.  Frankenstein only comes to the conclusion that he made a boo-boo once it becomes apparent that his creation is dangerous.  There is a scene added, (one of many that Mel Brooks would wonderfully lampoon in Young Frankenstein forty years later), where Dwight Frye's Fritz clumsily drops the brain of a dead intellect and instead grabs that of a dead criminal, something that his boss Frankenstein remains unaware of.  This is an important detail, since it signifies that Henry abandons his creation thinking that he did everything in his power and egotistical genius to make the experiment work.  If he knew that the Monster had a rotten brain, he may have simply tried it again with a "good" one.  Instead, he agrees with those around him that the Monster cannot be controlled and should in effect be put down, a decision that he also comes to due to the severe exhaustion that he has just underwent in undergoing such an experiment.

 

The extent of training which would be required to make the Monster something that he could parade around in high society is something that Henry is neither capable of nor interested in.  Furthermore, we never get the sense that he had the foresight to do such training to begin with.  This is another crucial aspect to the story and one that Shelley's novel shares.  It is Frankenstein's short-sighted pride that condemns him, his arrogance to control nature.  So hyper-focused on the mere concept of revitalizing extinct human tissue, (possibly just to prove that he could do it), he never thought of what would then happen if he actually did do it.  Though he does not flee in terror the second that the Monster wakes up, the movie Frankenstein still comes face to face with him and catches on quickly that he is in over his head.

 

"I already told you twice to sit down!  Ah the hell with this, let's just kill him." - Henry Frankenstein.

Those around Henry care about him enough as to not make him feel humiliated over his lack of prudence, and this allows him to return to his home, proceed with his wedding, and even lead the angry mob at the end against the very problem that he has unleashed, as opposed to that angry mob holding him responsible and demanding that he pay for his crime.  In a sense then, Frankenstein gets away with his deed.  He survives at the end, Fritz, Van Sloan's Dr. Waldman, and the drowned girl are the only deaths that the Monster causes which are given any significance, and Henry gets back to his privileged existence as the son of a Barron until Dr. Pretorius shows up and the events of The Bride of Frankenstein unfold.  As always though, context is important, and there were no plans for a sequel when this film was made.  Therefor we can look at its ending as definitive; a "happy" one more or less where Frankenstein has learned his lesson and everyone will sweep all of this nasty "He made a thing out of dead body parts and that thing went around murdering people" business under the rug.

 

While the religious allegories are in place both here and in the book, (Frankenstein going against the law of his own creator and in effect making his own creation that punishes him for such heresy), you can remove or ignore such a concept and strip it down to still make its point.  The dead stay dead, the dead NEED to stay dead, and immortality cannot be attained no matter what noble intentions we delude ourselves into having.  Science has its limits, and that is because there is a balance to things which cannot be recklessly tampered with.  Frankenstein presents the outcome of such tampering, whether you have a spiritual belief in a "creator" or not.  This helps the film endure as something that is not just a warning against defying Christian dogma, but also a warning against defying the practical merits of nature's confines.  The world would get pretty overcrowded pretty fast if nobody died, and this does not even bring up the conundrum that if the only way to extend one's life was to revitalize the corpses of others with ideal body parts, then who makes the call as to what lives are expendable and which deserve reanimation?

 

How dare only some of us get to stand and walk around like a regular Rory Calhoun after death.

As far as Whale's handling of the material is concerned, he would indulge more in his campy sense of humor with the proceeding The Bride of Frankenstein four years later, here delivering something more somber and menacing.  The only lighthearted moments stem from Frederick Kerr's performances as Baron Papa Frankenstein, a type of "Now now, we will have none of that tomfoolery" curmudgeon who walks around everywhere like he runs the place and refuses to allow his maid staff the luxury of drinking the good booze during a toast since its quality would be "lost on them".  There are few of these comedic moments though, (even fewer than in Browning's Dracula), Whale instead keeping things rooted to a forward trajectory plot wise as the lumbering presence of Karloff's Monster is always a scene or two away at most.

 

There are some deliberately jarring shots that Whale and cinematographer Arthur Edeson concoct, the latter having also been the director of photography on All Quiet on the Western Front, Casablanca, and The Maltese Falcon, to name but three more of the all time greatest films ever made.  Our first glimpse of Karloff is done so as a tease, the actor walking backwards and slowly turning around, at which point the camera snaps into two close-ups which were likely designed to get some audible gasps from the audience.  The laboratory equipment designed by Kenneth Strickfaden sparks with kinetic life before the camera during the creation scene, laboratory equipment that would also be utilized in every subsequent Frankenstein film for Universal, not to mention being replicated ad nauseam in gallons of movies since that have any sort of mad scientist angle.  Our introduction to the secondary characters of Elizabeth, (Mae Clarke), and Victor, (John Boles), are likewise peculiar, Edeson beginning with a close-up of Clive's framed photo, then one of the maid, then one of Boles, then of Clarke, and all in rapid succession of each other before the scene opens up to an elaborate bedroom with a ceiling that looks as it if is twenty feet off the ground.

 

A bedroom that Henry would foolishly lock his fiance in during the Monster's rampage, while also foolishly leaving the windows wide open with no guards positioned.

 

There are also several disorienting and artificial visuals in the finale.  We have Clive and Karloff staring each other down in the windmill, the turning spokes framing them as if they are prisoner's to their fate.  We have obvious matte paintings behind the mountains as the torch-bearing villagers hunt down the Monster, another motif that Universal and others would recycle to unintentional parody levels as the years went on.  We have the frames sped up when the Monster collapses screaming under a wood pillar, and a lousy dummy being used as Clive's body is tossed from the soon-to-be-inflamed windmill.  These shots are not flaws by any means, they instead enhance the film's unnatural nature.  On that note, they provide a contrast to more soberly handled moments like the Monster awakening on the table just as Waldman is about to lethal inject him, the Monster experiencing a lone moment of tenderness while playing with Marilyn Harris before innocently throwing her into the lake, and Harris' father Michael Mark carrying his limp daughter's body through the square with a look of disbelieving shock on his face.

 

As an early talkie, the style was still melodrama, (as the performances alone easily exemplify), so curious shots that break verisimilitude, (juxtaposed with some of the film's more alarming or emotionally impactful moments presented matter-of-factly), are a welcomed addition to a story that deals with impossible things.  This shows an understanding of the assignment on Whale's part, an assignment that he crafts with a combination of quirkiness and eeriness, just as the Monster itself is a conglomerate of horrifying and child-like.  These contradictions render the movie just artificial enough to put us at a distance from, but also intimate enough to bring us in close.  Like Dracula, the lack of a musical soundtrack is crucial to this.  By contemporary cinematic standards, (standards which would be established only a few short years later), Frankenstein playing out sans a score makes it a more curious and in effect haunting work.  It is no wonder then that Whale took a more comedic approach to its sequel The Bride of Frankenstein, which had near consistent music throughout.  That film needed more over-the-top moments to complement its already exaggerated aesthetic, and in effect it is bizarre in its own right, just not chilling in the way that its predecessor was.  Both films are masterpieces, but Universal's initial Frankenstein was the trailblazer.

 

A smoke break well-earned gentlemen.

The Wicker Man

THE WICKER MAN

(1973)

Dir - Robin Hardy

Overall: GREAT

 

When something is dubbed "The Citizen Kane of horror movies", one's eyebrows are likely to raise.  Such a bestowing from Cinefantastique magazine may seem highfalutin, but consider that in the five plus decades since Robin Hardy and Anthony Shaffer's The Wicker Man was released, its reputation has steadily increased from a forgotten genre film made by a financially fledgling company to one of the finest works in British cinema, horror or otherwise.  It has also been lost and found in a plethora of versions, the complete film negatives possibly gone for good.  One should never say "never" though as episodes of classic Doctor Who seem to sporadically show up in random vaults over a half a century after being wiped by the BBC.  Amongst all the "Final Cuts" and "Director's Cuts" of The Wicker Man, the version that most of the people involved in its filming have long claimed to be the superior, (and ergo complete), one may yet be unearthed in our lifetime.

 

The movie's troubled production and even more troubled post-production has become interwoven with its legacy, and it should be lamented that it existed under the radar for as long as it did.  Genre buffs and overall cinefiles have long been hip to its brilliance, the film was theatrically released and in print after all, be it in mangled versions.  Plus, its cast and crew have long sang its praises, Christopher Lee going as far as to say that it was the finest film he was ever in, as well as how much of a travesty it is that it remained, (and still remains), technically incomplete at the time of the actor's death in 2015.  Yet when it comes to discussing the genre's crème de la crème, The Wicker Man has seldom been mentioned in the same breath or with as much frequency as say The Exorcist or The Shining.  There may be another reason for this though besides the movie being disregarded due to its production company British Lion Films going belly-up when it was made, and fellow distributors either treating it with disinterest or demanding various cuts that forever tarnished it, depending on who you ask.  This other reason is that The Wicker Man itself does not behave in a manner befitting to conventional horror films.  As would could guess though, (and like a handful of other seminal works in the genre), this is largely what makes it so impressive.

 

Men who were on a mission to keep the camp level nonexistent, per example.

Screenwriter Anthony Shaffer initially devised the script as a straight adaptation of David Pinner's 1967 novel Ritual, itself originally envisioned as a screenplay before it was rejected as such and turned into a book.  Shaffer, director Robin Hardy, producer Peter Snell, and attached star Christopher Lee, (himself wanting to get into more serious projects and desperate to step away from the lousy horror vehicles that he was almost exclusively offered), all found Pinner's source material to be incompatible with the film medium, thus they only took the basic premise and plot outline while changing many of the details.  These were heavily researched by Shaffer, who consulted various texts on Celtic paganism to give the project a much-needed aura of authenticity.

 

Folklore and ancient religion scholars will be able to pick up on the barrage of influences scattered all over the place, many of which stem from different centuries and alleged practices, several of which may or may not have been actually partaken of all those centuries ago.  Considering that the film is set in modern day and that the intended theme was to clash conventional Christianity with abandoned paganism, the fact that the latter is presented from a hodgepodge of sources is something that works narratively.  When the story transpires, the inhabitants of the fictitious and remote Summerisle, (located in the Hebrides island cluster off the west coast of Scotland), have reintegrated such ancient rituals into their community over the last century, so it makes sense that they would be made up of various pagan tidbits.  May Day celebrations, the Green Man Inn, the long sword dance, the maypole, our doomed protagonist Sgt. Neil Howie, (Edward Woodward), disguising himself as the Fool in a Mr. Punch costume, naked fertility dancing over an open fire, and of course the title sacrifice at the end are all cobbled together from a variety of texts, and Shaffer cherry picked the best of them to create a steady stream of images for Woodward's devout Christian Sgt. Howie to be alarmed at.

 

Nothing at all to be alarmed at.

When Woodward's police Sergent arrives at Summerisle, the tomfoolery begins in earnest.  Most of the villagers refuse to hide their smirks as they endlessly mislead him, denying the existence of the missing child that he is investigating, or faking confusion over his inquiries into her alleged disappearance.  Lee's horribly-wigged Lord Summerisle is cooperative and eagerly tells the tale of his ancestors settling the village and setting up its chief export of apples, proudly trying to sell Woodward on their vibrant pagan community while seeming unphased by the Sergent's concerns.  The structure is that of a mystery, a police procedural actually where Woodward knows something curious is going on and spends the majority of the movie trying to piece together each desperate clue that he finds.  One of the film's most interesting aspects is the unorthodox way in which it unsettles.  The story catches our interest from the get go, (a missing girl amongst a town of oddly indifferent or clearly lying people is something that we want to get to the bottom of as much as Woodward's protagonist does), but the Summerisle location is one that deliberately does not seem diabolical.

 

There are no cobweb ridden catacombs, no dark and stormy nights, no superstitious and forlorn villagers spouting ominous warnings, no conventional scary music cues, no nightmarish visuals that may or may not be psychologically induced.  Instead, Summerisle is full of people smiling, dancing, singing rambunctious songs, and slyly avoiding questions with nod and wink politeness, all while the Spring setting wields aesthetically fetching results.  The island community looks like a downright pleasant place to vacation, let alone live.  Everyone seems be on the same jovial page, the scenery is lovely, the women are lovely, the children are happy, and it all appears to be the last place in the world where a young girl would go missing under nefarious circumstances.  Of course this contributes directly to how intriguing the mystery is.  Something is...not right on Summerisle.  Even for viewers who go in blind and with minimal expectations, (which is always ideal), one can gather that sinister forces may be at work.  Either that or everyone is playing a lighthearted gag on Woodward, conning him as part of their May Day festivities, merely fucking with an out of towner who takes his job and his religion too seriously and ergo is ample fodder for pranking.  The hilarious part is that, technically, this is in fact exactly what everyone on Summerisle is doing to him.

 

Sgt. Howie, you ole dope you.

The film skews expectations further by making Sgt. Howie a borderline unsympathetic lead character.  He is pompous and lacks a sense of humor, ergo making him the perfect stick-up-his-ass law enforcement stereotype.  He is also an over-zealous Christian stereotype.  This brings the budding heads of two different cultures to the forefront.  The Summerisle folk behave in a manner that seems wacky and carefree to viewers who do not share Howie's self righteous outrage, their pagan hippy ways serving as a sort of counter culture alternative to the type of strict and stodgy dogma that Howie and conservative ole England follows.  Woodward acts appalled at the things he sees on Summerisle, never censoring himself and spouting his concern as if it is common sense and not merely a surrogate viewpoint to all of the animal masks, phallic symbols, liberal sexual education, weird cakes, naked dancing, and frogs in the mouth that he witnesses.  Howie can not only NOT accept this lifestyle, he has to instinctively condone it to the faces of the people practicing it.  This makes him a self righteous Debbie Downer, a guy who could not loosen up and enjoy himself in such a setting if his life depended on it.  As it turns out of course, it is all part of the scheme against him, the Summerisle townsfolk systematically testing him to make sure that they have the right do-gooder, virgin, authority figure doofus to utilize in their final ritual to usher forth a rich and profitable harvest come Summer.

 

Along the way, the score by Paul Giovanni, (the only such film soundtrack that he ever composed), was just as researched as Shaffer's script.  It is a combination of traditional folk songs and originals, all preformed by the characters in the movie, thus technically making this a musical, (yet another aspect that contradicts it to horror conventions).  The collected works of folk scholar Cecil Sharp served as a basis for the lyrics, Giovanni, Shaffer, and Hardy working closely together to authenticate them.  When various Summerisle residents burst into song, it appropriately jars the viewer and provides another element that seems buoyant on the surface, yet concerning considering the serious mystery of the missing child that is still underway.  When Woodward arrives from the mainland saying that he received a complaint about a possibly kidnapped or murdered kid that no one seems to fess up much information about, (and they just sing songs about the landlord's daughter or said landlord's daughter dances seductively naked while beckoning the Sergent to come roll in ze hay with her), something is again...not right.

Thy maiden's horny nakedness knows no bounds.

The film's disconcerting nature is steadily maintained by Hardy.  The tone never becomes too ridiculous to break verisimilitude, though it does teeter on this edge.  Of course anyone viewing it for the first time who is expecting either a viscerally frighting or tongue-in-cheek Gothic romp will be confused to say the least by all of the happy naked pagans singing and gyrating around in settings that purposely avoid horror window dressing.  One can chuckle at the absurdity of it all while still being on board to find out what indeed is going on.  The creepiness, well, creeps up on you.  More to the point, it comes from a singular form, where things that should not be worrisome on paper become worrisome as we progress.

 

For awhile, it appears that the clues which Woodward unlocks could merely lead to playful shenanigans on the part of the Summerisle villagers, but again, that is both accurate and not accurate.  Everyone smiles and seems pleased with themselves as they enjoy their May Day, pleased with themselves as they lead Woodward on, pleased with themselves as they tease and tempt him, making him the butt of one joke that has an all too serious payoff.  Yet even during the triumphant finale, the people of Summerisle are in joyous harmony with each other.  It is their jolly nature which becomes terrifying, their end game one of the most harrowing in any film.

Christopher Lee wearing...whatever the hell this is = clearly unwholesome.

Much has been said about the ending to The Wicker Man, and it is an ending that is so impactful that it would otherwise deflate the movie on repeated views if not for several factors.  One, (and this is the case with many twist finales), audience members can revisit the film after knowing where it all leads by looking out for the clues.  We can see all the places where Woodward's Sgt. Howie went wrong, all the places where everyone was pulling his strings and challenging him to find out if he would slip up in his favor or theirs.  Shaffer's script is so well-structured and Hardy's direction so meticulous, that we can bask in how many subtle hints are there from the onset, not to mention all of the blatant hints now that we know what we know.  It makes for a different viewing experience of course, but after all, we can only experience a story for the first time once.  All of the detailed research here wields something that authenticates the paganism of yesteryear while simultaneously making it both appealing and then terrifying by film's end.

 

Another factor to consider is that Woodward's performance during the closing moments is nothing short of outstanding.  This may be a hyperbolic statement sure, but no matter how many times one views the movie and no matter that we know what is coming, when the Wicker Man is finally revealed, (in a handheld shot from Woodward's POV no less), the actor's aghast horror still hits the audience like a freight train.  Woodward screaming "Oh god...oh Jesus Christ!" while the camera quickly zooms onto his terrifying face is downright chilling, as is the rest of his procession towards his doom, as well as his endless pleas that fall on deaf ears.

 

Dude, the look on your face was priceless!

For roughly eighty to ninety minutes, (again, depending on what cut of the movie you are watching), The Wicker Man has been playing a quirky mystery game, one that we only gradually get the sense may lead somewhere malevolent.  Up until it does though, there is still hope that Woodward may be spared his horrible fate, or that the Summerisle resident's persistently festive nature is after all merely in jest.  Yet as the film inches its way to the closing credits and Woodward protests in vain, we realize just as he does that this is indeed what the whole con has come to.  It is at this moment that the movie's central theme of paganism vs Christianity comes full circle, and we are disturbed at the implication.  An entire people cut off from the societal norms of the modern day live an animated and communal existence, one that is idealistic in the sense that everyone is happy, everyone is on the same page.  It is a bona fide utopia of sorts, but it is one that works on a certain principal to keep it going that spits in the face of love and harmony.

 

Well, or so it would seem to us and so it would seem to Woodard's devout Christian, but not how it seems to the Summerisle folks.  They sing "Sumer Is Icumen In" while the Wicker Man is set ablaze, swaying in full unison with each other as Woodward screams and then excepts his awful fate.  Rarely in cinema has such a juxtaposition sent us home, the unbelievable and terrifying commingling with the buoyant.  Summerisle is wholly confident that their efforts will bare literal fruit, they embrace their religion with the same unwavering glee that they have exhibited throughout.  At the same token, Sgt. Howie's own zealous beliefs have doomed him, and they are just as steadfast while he prays to his god as the flames engulf him.  Neither he nor the Summerisle folks can cohabitate in such a setting, neither can hear the other side out.  In effect, an atrocity has been committed, one that one side celebrates while the other suffers.  It is a powerful final image of intolerance, of assured dogmatic alliance, of humanity's inability to coexist.  What can be more disturbing than that?  Speaking of it as a horror film, what can be more horrific than that?

 

Oh "happy" day!

Psycho

PSYCHO

(1960)
Dir - Alfred Hitchcock
Overall: GREAT

Likely the most analyzed and lauded film to ever fall under the horror umbrella, Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho begat so much that it is interesting to remember that at the time, it was a gamble.  Hitchcock was already a household name and probably the most famous filmmaker on the planet, (a title that he largely still holds), decades into his career and hot off the success of North by Northwest and his hit television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents which was already five years running.  So adapting Robert Bloch's down and dirty voyeur murderer novel of the same name and pushing the boundaries of what kind of taboo subject matter he could get away with while the Hays Code was in full swing was a risky maneuver.  Paramount executives wanted nothing to do with the project, (considering it "too repulsive" and "impossible to film"), refusing Hitchcock's proposals which grew more and more small-scale until they approved of it only after the director gave up his usual salary for a stake in the film negative, and agreed to shoot it in black and white, within three months, and with his television crew.

 

The project was a deliberate left turn from the type of film that Hitchcock had by then positioned himself to make.  Inspired in part by low budget B-pictures that were turning a profit, he thought of what one might be like if it was done by someone who was actually good.  No need for Hitchcock to be humble as he had the clout to get any available A-list actor to work with him and virtually any project that he wanted off the ground.  Psycho was further an anomaly for him though since most of his movies were in color and his subjects were usually upper-class people caught up in murder, crime, or a combination of both.  While Psycho certainly had its fair share of murder, and Janet Leigh was certainly an A-lister, (Anthony Perkins within the A-lister realm as well), it hardly featured characters who were in the upper echelon of society.  Leigh's Marion Crane is a secretary who runs off with $40,000, (nothing to sneeze at, but a far cry from the kind of high-end jewels that Cary Grant made an illegal career out of snatching in To Catch a Thief), and Perkins' Norman Bates runs a secluded and perpetually vacant motel that hardly seems to have enough clients even to cover the monthly electric bill for the place.  These are average Joe protagonists and antagonists, living far outside the sophisticated circles that Hitchcock himself frequented.

 

Because of course, only such average Joe's would willfully eat candy corn.

Though the director had previously made movies featuring characters who the modest-income viewer could more easily relate to, (Shadow of a Doubt, Lifeboat, The Trouble with Harry), he was still more accustomed to cinematically portraying aristocrats, people with exciting professions, or just plain old wealthy folk.  The one rich guy that we meet in Psycho does flaunt his wealth around, (proclaiming that he is buying his daughter a house as a wedding present), but he is in a single scene and merely provides the film with its MacGuffin, meaning the money that Janet Leigh runs off with on a whim.  He is hardly a central player.  The film instead focuses on Leigh's character, famously doing away with her before we even hit the thirty minute mark.  At that point, things switch to Perkins who is someone that the audience roots for until the equally famous twist in the finale.

 

One of the often talked about aspects of Psycho is how it not only shifts its main player focus, but also how it sets us up for that twist where the awkward, lonely, covering-up-for-his-mother's-kills fellow running the hotel winds up being the violently deranged one.  Putting the audience on the side of the villain was nothing new during the Golden Era of Hollywood, and Hitchcock himself had done it a handful of times already, (Rope, Strangers on a Train, Shadow of a Doubt again), but it was rare to not reveal that said villain WAS the villain until the closing moments.  Though an expert manipulator of course, never had Hitchcock lead the audience in one direction only to gobsmack them to such a degree.

 

After all, he wouldn't even hurt a fly.

The movie in effect establishes two sought after motifs then, to eventually make the sympathetic main character the bad guy and to kill off the other main character early on, letting everyone know that unspoken narrative "rules" were not to be obeyed and in effect, anything could happen.  This aspect of killing likeable characters was present in Bloch's novel, but Hitchcock and screenwriter Joseph Stefano's decision to keep the focus away from Bates for so long while propping up Crane's ultimately unimportant arc was an even more extreme rug pull.  For the Master of Suspense that he was, such a shock tactic was tailor made for Hitchcock to exploit since it puts the viewer on the edge of their seats from that shower scene until the film is wrapped up.

Psycho is all about such manipulation, leading the viewer in one direction and then throwing them a curve-ball in as hair-raising a manner as possible.  Only two people are murdered on screen, but each kill scene, (or would-be kill scene including the finale when Vera Miles discovers what has been going on the entire time and John Gavin emerges in the nick of time to apprehend Bates), hits us out of nowhere, everything being meticulously choreographed by Hitchcock along the way.  Generally in horror, if there is a persistent musical score, it drops out when a jump scare is about to happen.  While Hitchcock technically does the same thing here for Leigh's murder, he deploys misdirection in a different manner for that of Martin Balsam's private investigator.

 

Dude never knew what hit him.  Didn't even notice the rear projection behind him.

When Balsam returns to the Bates Motel and house to snoop around, Hitchcock knew that extinguishing the music once again as he did with Leigh could likely signify to the viewer that this character was now also doomed.  So wisely, he lets Balsam roam around while Bernard Herman's score continues its unsettling business, be it in a low-key and mood-setting manner.  We see Balsam enter the Bates mansion and slowly ascend the staircase, and even cut away somewhere to a door opening up a crack which heightens the tension, but the killer gets him so suddenly with those shrieking strings interrupting the soundtrack that it still provides a jolt.

 

For Leigh's murder, the bamboozlement is more of a psychological nature.  When she decides to shower, it represents a cleansing of not just her body, but her moral compass.  It is clear that she intends to return to her job and face the music as far as her crime is concerned, her sudden stealing of the $40,000 being something that she has been emotionally struggling with the entire time.  Her casual chat with Perkins in his office over a humble dinner of milk and sandwiches leads to the discussion of people being "trapped" by certain circumstances in their lives, and this seems to reaffirm her inkling that taking the money was wrong and that she will forever be hounded by that rash decision.  She seems happy for the first time when she undresses and begins to wash herself.  It seems an ideal moment to murder her for maximum impact, but considering the more innocent time that this was made, (and again, because this is our main character Janet Leigh that we are talking about), audience members would trust that the film would not do that to them.

 

"Wait, Janet Leigh is dead and this movie still has HOW many minutes left?"

Hitchcock coming up through the silent era, having directed several episodes of his own television series, and so well-versed in his craft that he could work around any budgetary or censor constraint all proved to be advantages within the more minuscule production aspects that he was working with here.  Shooting it in black and white allowed for him to show flowing blood during the shower scene since he could experiment with different substances that appeared good on camera, ultimately going with chocolate syrup which obviously would have looked like a different bodily fluid pouring out of Marion Crane's corpse if it was shot in color.  Also if if was shot in color, Paramount would have balked at the the idea of any overt "gore", as comparatively tame as it is.  After all, Herschell Gordon Lewis' Blood Feast was still three years away, and that guy was hardly working within the confines of a major studio that would disapprove of such tactics.  Hitchcock was working within such confines, but he knew how to position his camera to not only get the blood flowing correctly, but also to obscure the nudity during Leigh's shower murder.

 

In Bloch's novel, Crane was decapitated instead of merely stabbed.  This detail also had to be reworked for the screen, another and more prominent being Norman Bates' entire personality.  Middle aged, overweight, and unlikable in the book, Hitchcock suggested to screenwriter Joseph Stefano that they cast Perkins in the role, something that changed the character's entire persona.  Good looking and charismatic, Perkins' Bates was the type of guy that an audience could get behind.  This was further made possible by eliminating most clear indications on how disturbed Bates was.  In the book, he is an alcoholic who goes into murderous rages as his mother when drunk, and he is also shown to be a fan of the occult and pornography.  Alcohol does not play into the screen version of Bates at all, and when Crane's sister Lila, (played by Miles, who was originally groomed to be the leading lady in Hitchcock's Vertigo), is snooping around the Bates residence, she comes across some literature that is never shown to the audience.  Instead, we only see her making a concerned face at her discoveries.

 

As it turns out, she would find something much more concerning in the basement.

Bernard Herman's score likewise makes ideal use out of him taking a smaller fee for his work.  Utilizing only strings instead of a full orchestra, it created a less lush and in effect more permeating soundtrack.  Coming right out of the gate during Saul Bass' opening titles and all through the first act where the only white-knuckled moments are whether or not Leigh is going to get busted for stealing the money, (in other words, no signs of murder anywhere to be found), Herman goes big.  Working within a menacing melody, the strings are sharp and ergo "stabby", which is helped by Bass' titles flashing strict lines, (or "slashes"), across the screen.  It sets the movie up to be a high-tension thriller even though it does not deliver on that set up until Crane's murder.  Herman's score continues to be heavily utilized throughout, never delivering anything tender or lovely, only creating steady unease or outright panic when those instantly recognizable stings bombard the audio during the kill sequences.

 

Of course one cannot discuss Psycho without also discussing its more boundary pushing aspects.  A toilet being flushed on screen, the film's opening depicting two unmarried people having just finished some lunch hour/hotel room hanky panky, Leigh being shown in lingerie two different scenes, (not to mention being naked of course for her fatal shower), and the reveal of Bates being a murderous "transvestite", these were the types of taboos that made Paramount hesitant from the beginning.  They were also the taboos that Hitchcock was interesting in putting on the screen, again going for a more down-and-dirty film than the ones which he had previously done.  Psycho is still slick in its construction since its director was too detail oriented and skilled to do anything otherwise, but it deliberately has a more dingy and unsettling tone than any of his prior works.  It is not slick in the sense of portraying such freakishly attractive actors like Grace Kelly or Cary Grant in flattering and romantic manners, making sure that their wardrobes are impeccable and that they shine on the screen.  No, here we have Janet Leigh in her undergarments and Anthony Perkins in drag while wielding a knife.

 

How scandalous!

This brings us to the fact that Psycho is one of the rare Alfred Hitchcock films that can be considered horror.  From across the Atlantic in England, Michael Powell's Peeping Tom was released several months before and coincidentally dealt with a similar premise of a disturbed young man with parental trauma who murders women and is also a voyeur.  Both movies can be seen as precursors to the slasher film, along with various Edgar Wallace adaptations that had been made since the silent era and would then get a boom starting the same year with Anglo-Amalgamated's series of forty-seven of them.  These would lead directly into Italian giallos and a handful of American and Canadian serial killer movies from the 1970s, John Carpenter's Halloween having the most immediate impact on the unfolding sub-genre.  Though Powell's film, a handful of those giallos, (particularly Dario Argento's), and of course Carpenter's are all expertly done, none are as influential as Hitchcock's.

 

Due to the movie's enormous popularity from the moment that it was released until today, (assisted by Hitchcock maintaining complete control over its marketing, keeping it away from critics and preview audiences in order to make sure that none of the plot twists would be leaked), likely every future filmmaker has seen it.  As far as swiping any of its ingredients, it is almost impossible NOT to be influenced by it.  Like other directors who dabbled in horror sparingly yet knocked it out of the park when they did, (Stanley Kubrick, William Friedkin, Werner Herzog, Andrzej Żuławski, Henri-Georges Clouzot, Adrian Lyne, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Masaki Kobayashi), Psycho represents the work of someone proficient yet also someone challenging themselves within the confines of a genre.  In his intention to make one of those low budget movies except actually good, Hitchcock also made one of those horror movies except actually great.

 

A man who was gonna show us how it's done.