31 Days of Horror 2013: Days 26-31

26.  The Devil's Rejects (2005)

27.  The Gorgon (1964)

28.  The Lords of Salem (2013)

29.  The Conjuring (2013)

30.  The Others (2001)

31.  Rob Zombie's Halloween 2 (2009)

We ended the month with three Rob Zombie movies, one more Hammer movie, and two ghost stories.

26.  "The Devil's Rejects" is a sequel to "House of 1,000 Corpses," and it continues the story by showing the murderous Firefly family on the run from the law after their house full of corpses is discovered.  Whereas the original movie is a some times cartoonish, but still effective, mishmash of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and "House by the Cemetery," the sequel is a gritty, brutal film more akin to Wes Craven's movies from the 70's, "The Hills Have Eyes" and "The Last House on the Left."  Rare for a horror movie and even rarer for a sequel, it actually develops its characters.  Because I feel like I know the characters so well and because the story is told mostly from their point of view, I always find myself sympathizing with them a bit and hoping they'll escape even though I also find them despicable and want them to be caught.

27.  The final Hammer movie of the month, "The Gorgon" was also a highlight of this year's 31 Days of Horror.  In Greek mythology, the Gorgons are sisters with snakes for hair whose gaze turns people to stone. One of them features prominently in "The Gorgon," but it takes place in a German village in the early twentieth century rather than in Ancient Greece.  As the dead, Gorgonized bodies start to pile up, a newcomer to the village investigates and learns of a legend that one of the Gorgons, Megera, took refuge in a local castle after fleeing Greece.  Part of what makes this movie so enjoyable is the ridiculousness of its concept.  However, it's played straight and for the most part it succeeds in avoiding unintentional campiness.  It also features some very effective scenes showing the Gorgon's victims turning to stone.  The creature effects are a bit silly, but this doesn't detract from the fun of seeing the Gorgon's head full of writhing snakes.

28.  "Lords of Salem," Rob Zombie's most recent movie, is in many ways his best.  In telling his story about a dying witch's curse being fulfilled on a present day resident of Salem named Heidi, he weaves a tightly controlled narrative that slowly unravels before fraying altogether as Heidi falls victim to the curse.  The last half hour is so bizarre that it's almost incomprehensible as Zombie employs the irrationality of nightmares to illustrate the curse's impact on Heidi.  A highlight is a scene with a zombie-like figure walking a goat on a leash through a cemetery. 

29.  "The Conjuring" is a disappointing example of a good horror movie that's prevented from being a great one by a bad ending.  It merges a haunted house story with a tale of possession that has several moments of true spine-tingling horror.  But it's almost ruined by an ending that resolves the possession far too easily and leaves everyone living happily ever after.  The devil doesn't necessarily have to win for a possession movie to work, but it should at least end in a tie with the demonic spirit relinquishing control of its victim at the cost of taking another life or leaving everyone involved deeply scarred.

30.  "The Others" is an example of why serious filmmakers should avoid twist endings: they don't hold up to repeated viewings.  I thoroughly enjoyed this movie when I saw it upon its initial release in 2001 and liked it well enough during a few subsequent viewings, but although it was mildly entertaining looking out for the clues to the big surprise this time around, for the most part, I was just bored. 

 

31.  Earlier this month, I mentioned that Rob Zombie's "Halloween 2" is one of the best horror movies of the past ten years.  It's populated with well-developed, likable characters who make it much more than a mindless, brutal slasher movie.  The violence is horrifying not simply because it's so intense, but because the movie makes us care about Michael Myers' victims.  Whereas in the "Halloween" remake Zombie floundered with a lame attempt to give Michael a back story while also attempting to follow the basic narrative of John Carpenter's original film, in the sequel, he abandons any pretense of honoring the spirit of the original and makes the story truly his own.  Michael Myers is a bearded, long-haired lumbering brute who hides out in an old barn until the spirit of his mother calls upon him to reunite his family through bloodshed.  Zombie uses this portrayal of the character to explore the often inexplicable bonds that can tie together even the most dysfunctional of families, a theme that has appeared in all of his films to date.  

31 Days of Horror 2013: Day 25: 5 Reasons Why "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" is the Best Horror Movie Ever Made

25. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

I wanted to save this one for Halloween, but Vicki asked if we could watch it earlier, and I couldn't say no.  Here are five reasons why it's the best horror movie ever made:

1.     Leatherface - He's by far the most interesting horror villain, and this has a lot to do with the fact that the movie tells us so little about him.  All it reveals is that he's part of a family of butchers who treat humans like any other livestock, that he wears a mask made of human skin, that he cross-dresses, and that he can't speak.  We learn nothing about his family history, why he wears the mask or where it came from, or why he sometimes wears a wig and make-up, and not once during the dozens of times I've watched this movie have I to stopped to ask.  Sequels and remakes try to explain Leatherface and by doing so they ruin the character.  Psychos are much more horrifying when there is no explanation for their behavior. 

Another important fact to remember about Leatherface is that although he's responsible for the deaths of three people in the movie, he does not harm them until after they enter his house.  In fact, TCM could be viewed as a home invasion movie.  The first time we see Leatherface is when a young man walks into his house looking to borrow gas.  Leatherface, clearly a misanthrope with no semblance of social skills, sees this stranger in his home and then reacts the only way he knows how:  by beating him on the head with a sledge hammer, placing the body on his chopping block, and then cutting off the meat with his chainsaw.  Several minutes later, when Leatherface finds the young man's girlfriend in his living room, he defends his home from this intruder by dragging her into the kitchen and hanging her on a meat hook.  Granted, he didn't have to kill either of these people to defend his home; he could simply have chased them off his property with this chainsaw, but the point is that unlike Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, and Freddy Krueger, the other horror icons of the 70s and 80s, Leatherface does not stalk his victims. 

In fact, he even seems distraught by the fact that he has been compelled to kill the home invaders.  After hanging the  girlfriend on the meathook, he retires to the living room, holds his head in his hands, and seems to ponder why these people keep coming into his home uninvited.  Later in the movie, Leatherface does kill wheel-chair bound Franklin in a field outside his house, but he still can't be accused of stalking his victims.  He was tired of people coming into his house and had decided to be more proactive in keeping them out. 

Of course, the main appeal of Leaterface is the chainsaw.  The scene when he chases Sally through the field with the chainsaw buzzing and smoking makes most other horror-chase scenes seem like playground antics.

2.   The ending -- The difference between a good horror movie and a great one is often the ending.  In too many cases the ending either lamely sets up a sequel, provides a quick, easy, and utterly unsatisfying resolution, or both.  TCM ends with Sally escaping in the back of a pickup truck while Leatherface spins around in the middle of the road swinging his chainsaw in frustration.  Neither will ever be the same.  Sally might have survived, but the final shot of her sitting in the truck bed, covered with blood laughing hysterically makes it clear that she'll be spending the rest of her days in a loony bin.  Leatherface, who seems to have had little or no contact with the outside world before Sally and her friends entered his home, has just endured an experience he is incapable of understanding. Both have been terrified by the experience, and because nothing has been resolved, the ending leaves viewers with nothing to latch onto that might provide some relief from the 80 minutes of horror we've just witnessed.

3. The realism -- Too many movies try to seem realistic by claiming they are based on real events.  In most cases, the connection between the movie and the events are so tenuous that the same claim could be made about almost any movie.  Although it's based loosely on the real-life serially killer Ed Gein, TCM never makes such a claim (although it has probably been marketed in this way at some point in the last 40 years).  Instead, it horrifies by telling such a convincing story that it feels real.  From the opening monologue that gives the movie a documentary quality, to the convincing performances of all the actors, to Sally running through windows to escape the crazy family, to the closing shot of Leatherface swining his chainsaw, every aspect of the movie helps create the impression that the events it depicts could actually have happened.

4.  The beginning --  Building upon the ominous tone of the opening monologue, TCM unsettles further with its opening shots of a sculpture made of parts stolen from graves.  But what makes the beginning so effective is the way the sculpture is revealed.  First we see a black screen and hear sounds of something grinding.  Then a camera starts flashing, gradually revealing different parts of the gruesome sculpture.   When night becomes day, we finally see the full figure made of dug-up limbs and a skull sitting on top of a gravestone, and as it's revealed, we can just barely hear a news report claiming that the graves were robbed for occult rituals.  Images and sounds work together to create an opening that hints at the horrors awaiting Sally and her friends.

5.  The dinner scene -- While she's tied to a chair in a kitchen decorated with human skin and bones, Sally can do nothing but watch and listen while the crazy family debates who will kill her.  When they decide to let Grandpa do it, Sally's head is held over a bucket into which Grandpa keeps dropping the hammer with which he's trying to kill her.  Each time the hammer falls into the bucket, the bang it makes gets louder and so do Sally's screams until she finally pulls free  and jumps through a window.  We observe most of this from Sally's point of view, and the scene is so intense that in addition to the horrifying sights and sounds, we can almost experience what she's smelling and feeling, resulting in a very uncomfortable viewing experience.

31 Days of Horror 2013: Days 20-24

31 Days of Horror 2013: Days 20 - 24

20. Nosferatu (1979)

21. House of 1,000 Corpses (2003)

22. Terror Train (1980)

23. Vampyr (1932)

24. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)

After watching the silent "Nosferatu" last week, we wanted to see Werner Herzog's remake, which is a rare example of a remake that honors the spirit of the original while also taking the story in a slightly new direction and even improving upon some aspects of the original.  Herzog emphasizes the vampire as the embodiment of the plague, an idea touched upon in the original but not fully developed.  He also makes the story more haunting by giving it a pessimistic ending.

 

What I find so appealing about Rob Zombie's movies is that they are clearly made by a horror fan for other horror fans.  "House of 1,000 Corpses" reveals his love for the "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and the Italian horror movie "House by the Cemetery, but rather than simply imitating these movies, he incorporates elements of each into his own vision of a family of psychopaths.  The result is a disturbing but highly entertaining movie about a group of friends on a road trip who end up spending Halloween Eve in the home of the murderous Firefly family, where they're terrorized by a cast of memorable characters, notably Captain Spalding, a clown who runs a horror-themed roadside attraction, and a mad-scientist named Dr. Satan, who attempts to create a master race by performing brain surgery on mental patients.

Set mostly on a train that a fraternity has reserved for a party, "Terror Train" is a dull slasher that fails to take advantage of its setting that seems designed for a high body count.  I had always been curious about this one, so I'm glad I finally saw it, but I won't be suffering through it again.

"Vampyr" is an interesting if somewhat disappointing early horror film that is something between a late silent film and an early talkie.  It features only about a dozen lines of dialogue, and it relies heavily on the kinds of intertitles used to clarify key plot points in silent movies.  It has moments of true horror that it achieves with eerie shadow effects.  It also features a haunting scene in which a man has a vision of his own death, and we see from his point out of as he peers out a window in his coffin.  But it drags with too much nonsense in the middle, so by the end I had lost interest.

"The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" is one of the first horror movies ever made and remains one of the best.  It's a silent movie that even those who refuse to watch anything that's not in color can appreciate.  With its painted sets full of jagged lines and off-kilter buildings, its visuals are so engaging that you have the sense of watching a demented cartoon rather than a classic of the silent era.

31 Days of Horror 2013: Days 14-19

15. Nosferatu (1929)

16. The Reptile (1966)

17. The House that Dripped Blood (1971)

18. Let's Scare Jessica to Death (1971)

19. Kiss of the Vampire (1963)

This week we've watched mostly European horror, starting with F.W. Murnau's silent "Nosferatu."  The

absence of audible dialogue in silent horror movies gives them a kind of other worldly eeriness.  It can also give them an element of authenticity that's often missing in sound movies, making them feel like reel-to-reel footage of actual events that happened in the distant past.  As a result, although I've lost all interest in vampire movies, I'm always up for a viewing of "Nosferatu."

I had no idea what to expect from "The Reptile," another Hammer Production, but it's been one of the most entertaining movies of the month.  It's essentially a re-working of the basic vampire myth that replaces the vampire and its vulnerability to sunlight with a humanoid cobra that must be kept warm throughout the British winters.  The Reptile is the daughter of an anthropologist who intruded in the lives of the secretive snake people of Borneo.  In response, they kidnapped his daughter and then returned her several months later after having transformed her into one of them.  The anthropologist returns to England along with his cobra-daughter and a snake charmer to help control her.  Soon, residents of a British village begin dying mysteriously with two punctures wounds in their necks.  "The Reptile" enthralled me with its sheer bizarreness, but it also does a good job of creating suspense by drawing suspicion on its many oddly behaving characters and keeping viewers guessing until the end about the identity of the the reptile and the involvement other villagers might have in the murders.

An Amicus anthology, "The House that Dripped Blood" contains four stories that supposedly illustrate the evilness of an old house.  The protagonists of all four stories are residents of the house, but the connection between the horrors they experience and the house they live in are mostly unrelated, a fact that doesn't make the movie any less entertaining.  The first segment features a horror writer who keeps having visions of the the killer from his latest novel appearing throughout the house.  This one is a bit dull, but it's saved by a strong ending. The second is an oddity about two aging men who become obsessed with a figure in a wax museum that resembles a woman they both loved when they were younger.  It's hard to go wrong with wax-museum horror, an underrepresented sub genre that I wish more filmmakers would explore.  The third segment is about a man played by Christopher Lee who is terrified by his young daughter who turns out to be a witch.  Seeing Christopher Lee terrified by anything, especially a little girl, is reason enough to watch this one.  The final segment is a deliberately campy tale about a horror actor whose vampire costume turns him into a real vampire.  Jon Pertwee, better known for his role as the Third Doctor in "Doctor Who," plays the vampire, and the scene in which he flies with the assistance of very visible strings adds a nice dose of laugh-out-loud comedy to an otherwise fairly straightforward horror anthology. 

The only American movie of the week so far, "Let's Scare Jessica to Death" felt like a lame attempt to bore Brad to death.  It has a strong ending, but after I had to watch hippies sitting around a farm house playing music for an hour, even Godzilla appearing from nowhere, stomping on the house, and killing everyone inside wouldn't have saved it for me. 

Hammer Production "Kiss of the Vampire" starts strong with a drunk, hard-boiled priest interrupting a funeral by spearing the coffin with a shovel, piercing the heart of the dearly departed, and sending blood spewing out of the coffin.  It then bores with a lot of bullshit about a newlywed couple running out of gas near a chateau and going to lots of parties with the residents who turn out to be vampires.

After a double-feature of snoozers, we're going to have to inject new life into 31 days of horror by watching something more intense.

31 Days of Horror 2013: Days 11-13

12. Frankenstein (1931)

13. Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

14. House of the Damned (1963)

Over the weekend, we watched two classics and one stinker.

 

The best of the classic Universal monster movies are the three directed by James Whale: "Frankenstein," "Bride of Frankenstein," and "The Invisible Man."  "Dracula" is a bore, and Lon Chaney Jr. is too whiney for me to take "The Wolf Man" seriously.  I don't have any complaints about "Creature from the Black Lagoon," but it lacks the wit that makes Whale's monster movies so entertaining.  The other Universal monster movies also lack Colin Clive and Boris Karloff.  I always have trouble deciding who makes the better Dr. Frankenstein, Colin Clive or Peter Cushing (lately, I've been leaning toward Peter Cushing), but I'm always enthralled with Clive's performances, especially when his creatures awaken for the first time.  He delivers the most memorable line of any Frankenstein movie, "He's alive! He's alive! In the name of God, now I know what it feels like to be God!" Of course, when the film was first released the words "to be God" were cut, rendering the line almost incomprehensible.  Karloff's Frankenstein's monster is one of the most famous movie icons of all time, immediately recognizable even to people who have never seen the original movies.

I thought we couldn't go wrong with a movie titled "House of the Damned," especially when I learned it involved couples on vacation being terrorized by circus freaks.  But I was again reminded that it's not uncommon for the contents of a horror movie to have little or nothing to do with its title.  There's a house, but no one's damned.  Instead, it's inhabited by circus freaks who have no where else to go when the owner of the house and the proprietor of their show dies.  They attempt to frighten the couples away, so they won't be discovered.  About halfway in, there's an eerie scene in which a man with no legs walks on his hands into the dark bedroom where one couple is sleeping and steals their keys, but then nothing else interesting happens.  Thankfully, this one runs for only just over an hour because for about fifty-five minutes nothing of interest happens.

31 Days of Horror 2013: Days 7-10

8. The Hands of Orlac (1924)

9. The Fog (1980)

10. ParaNorman (2012)

11. Torture Garden (1968)

This week has featured a varied selection so far.

"The Hands of Orlac" is a silent film starring Conrad Veidt and directed by Robert Weine, both better

known for their work on "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari."  I had high expectations for this one but was a bit disappointed.  Orlac is a concert pianist who loses his hands in a train wreck on the same night a man named Vassuer is executed for murder.  The doctor treating Orlac also happens to be in charge of processing Vassuer's body, so rather than waste a perfectly good pair of hands, he sews them on Orlac's stumps.  Of course, Orlac's new hands are unable to play, and when he learns where they came from, he falls into despair.

I was hoping he would then go on a killing spree illustrated through several murder scenes where his body was at war with itself: his new hands pulling him toward the kill, while the rest of him tried unsuccessfully to resist.  His new hands do attempt to kill the maid, but Orlac spends most of the movie brooding in the shadows and bemoaning the loss of his talent.  Fortunately, "The Hands of Orlac" does feature more weirdness about amputations and transplant surgery.  Near the end of the movie, Orlac meets a man claiming to be Vassuer. He shows Orlac a scar on his neck and tells Orlac that the assistant of the doctor who gave Orlac his new hands transplanted Vassuer's head onto a new body enabling him to escape death.  This new body is also missing hands and has artificial ones, details Vassuer fails to explain.

"The Hands of Orlac" is one of many movies from the 1920's to deal with mutilated bodies and attempts to repair them.  In his excellent book "The Monster Show:  A Cultural History of Horror," David Skal explains this interest in disfigured bodies by drawing attention to the context in which the movies were made:  the period directly after the First World War when advances in medical science had enabled more soldiers than ever before to survive their battlefield wounds, but with badly damaged bodies.

I'm embarrassed to admit that before this week I had never seen John Carpenter's "The Fog," which is a very effective ghost story about a shipwrecked crew seeking revenge on the townspeople responsible for their deaths.  Carpenter exploits the natural eeriness of fog by using it to cloak his water-logged ghosts as they terrorize the town.  "The Fog" made me wish more horror movies would leave the sharks alone and explore the many other horrifying aspects of the sea.

In "ParaNorman," the second animated movie of the month, Norman can see and talk to ghosts, and he uses this ability to save his hometown from a witch's curse.  For a movie directed toward a younger audience, a few scenes are pretty horrifying, particular the one in which zombies rise from their graves and chase Norman.  Watching this one always makes me wish I hadn't been afraid of horror movies as a kid because I could have had a room just like Norman's: it's filled with horror posters, models and toys, and he wakes every morning to the sound of a zombie groaning from his alarm clock, which is in the shape of a grave with a hand bursting out.  In addition to being a very entertaining horror movie, it also presents a positive message about tolerance and acceptance of differences.

"Torture Garden" is another Amicus anthology, but this one was a snoozer.  The torture garden is a carnival

attraction that's on screen for about five minutes before Dr. Diablo, the attraction's proprietor, shows his rubes true horror: a physic wax figure who tells them each a possible future.  Their different futures make up the movie's four segments. The first features a cat (or a witch in cat form, it's never clear) that convinces a man to kill for gold.  Aside from a hilarious moment when the cat motions toward a man it wants killed, this segment makes a quirky premise surprisingly dull.  The next segment, which put me to sleep, is about an aspiring actress who learns that all of Hollywood's big players are actually robots.  In the third segment, which woke me back up, a piano named Euterpe becomes jealous when her owner falls in love with a woman.  Imagine "Christine" with a piano instead of a car.  In a scene that almost makes "Torture Garden" worth sitting through, the piano pushes the woman out a window.  The last segment revolves around a Poe enthusiast who has found a way to resurrect the writer and now keeps him locked in a secret room and forces him to write new stories.  As with the first segment, this one shocks with its ability to make an interesting idea almost unbearably boring.

Vicki's in Florence tonight, so we're taking a brief break from the horror, but we'll be back with a triple-feature Saturday night.  On Sunday, I'll be experiencing a different kind of horror: Danzig performing classic songs from the first three albums, and Danzig and Doyle performing Misfits songs.  

31 Days of Horror 2013: Days 2 - 6

2. From Beyond the Grave (1974)

3. Repulsion (1965)

4. The Mummy (1959)

5.  An American Werewolf in London (1981)

6. Monster House (2006)

7. The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (1960)

Six days into the month, and we've made it through seven movies and consumed one box of Frankenberry, one box of Frute Brute, and half a box of BooBerry.

The most enjoyable movie from the first week was "From Beyond the Grave," an anthology film from the British production company Amicus, which was active throughout the 60s and 70s and known for its horror anthologies.  "From Beyond the Grave" features four stories tied together through their connection with an antique shop.  Each segment begins with a man buying or stealing an item from the shop and then taking it home where it soon begins unleashing horrors.  In my favorite segment, a man pays 5 pounds for a 40 pound snuff box after switching its price tag, and quickly realizes that the box contains an invisible elemental that has latched onto to his shoulder.  After it tries to kill his wife, he has it exorcised in a ceremony that frees him from its control, but it continues to haunt him.  Other segments feature a haunted mirror that demands blood sacrifices from the man who bought it, a door that leads to a castle where an occultist is waiting to steal the souls of those who enter, and a stolen war medal that has a very tenuous connection to a story about a father-daughter killing team that answer the wishes of a child wanting to be free of his parents.

I often think horror movies work best in shorter segments because there's no time for bullshit and they get straight to the horror.  They can sometimes be formulaic because they tend to rely on twist endings, but in the best anthologies this doesn't make them any less enjoyable.  "From Beyond the Grave" was so much fun to watch because each segment is bizarre in its own way, and although I knew to expect twist endings, each one kept me guessing.

"Repulsion" is an early Roman Polanski film about a woman repulsed by men.  Men find her irresistible and pursue her obsessively.  I wasn’t very interested in this one at first because it moves slowly, but when its protagonist begins to crack and tries unsuccessfully to isolate herself from the outside world and the men who won't leave her alone, the psychological horror that unfolds made me glad I stuck with it.

Mummy movies usually bore me, and this is particularly true of the

Universal films featuring Boris Karloff, but Vicki wanted to watch the Hammer Studios version of "The Mummy" featuring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, and I'm glad I gave it another chance.  All mummy movies have the same basic plot--archaeologist finds tomb, an Egyptian warns him not to to disturb it, he doesn't listen, and a mummy later terrorizes him back in the UK--but in this one the mummy's coffin falls in a bog while he's being transported to the UK, so when he rises to seek revenge on those who disturbed his rest, he appears part mummy and part swamp creature.  Moreover, he's also pretty fast for a mummy, and he has an entertaining habit of bursting through locked doors.

 

"An American Werewolf in London" is the best werewolf movie ever made.  Its characters are likable, and viewers even sympathize with the werewolf.  He's more like a person with a contagious terminal disease than a monster.  Its transformation scene has yet to be surpassed, contrary to what some misguided critics have written about "Hemlock Grove.”  It also manages to horrify while having a sense of humor. 

"Monster House" is a great animated horror movie about a haunted house that eats anything that ends up in its yard.  The boy who lives across the street decides to investigate and he and his friends discover the secret of the house.  "Monster House" always reminds me of what it was like to be a boy and find adventures in my own neighborhood.

We ended the week with another Hammer production, "The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll."  Like Amicus, Hammer was a British production company, but it was active for longer and much more prolific. (It was recently revived and has released several good movies in the past few years, the best of which have been "Let Me In" and "The Woman in Black.")  While Amicus is best known for anthologies, Hammer is famous for gothic horror, particularly its Frankenstein and Dracula films, but the studio produced a wide variety of horror movies from the 1950s through the 70s.  "The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll" is less a horror movie than a slightly comedic psychological drama.  It would be entertaining if it ended about 20 minutes sooner.  It has some unique aspects such as making Dr. Jekyll look more horrifying than Mr. Hyde and portraying his neglected wife as an adulteress who refuses to wait around while her husband works in the lab.  Racy for 1960, it features a dance scene in which a mostly naked woman rubs a snake on her crotch and then puts its head in her mouth.  It’s worth viewing once, as long as you stop it after an hour.

The next week of horror begins with the silent film "The Hands of Orlac" (1924).

31 Days of Horror 2013: Day 1: Halloween

Last year, I attempted to watch at least 31 horror movies in October (an average of one a day) and blog about each one.  I succeeded with the first goal, and although I failed with the second, I did manage to blog about 25 days of horror.  I plan to watch at least 31 horror movies this October as well, but I’m not even trying to blog about each movie this year.  I’ll be happy to work in a few posts a week.

Vicki and I kicked off the month of horror with John Carpenter’s Halloween, which might seem a bit like opening all our Christmas presents on December 1, but I disagree.  It helped get us in the spirit.  For us, the big event that the entire month is leading up to is the viewing of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. 

I’ve seen Halloween at least a dozen times, and I always enjoy watching it again.  What makes it so effective is that there is no attempt to give Michael Myers a motive for returning to Haddonfield and killing teenagers on Halloween.  The only explanation is that he is pure evil.  This aspect of the story is lost in the sequels and in Rob Zombie’s terrible remake, all of which offer explanations that have something to do with family relationships, and in doing so they deprive the story of what makes it truly horrifying.  Rob Zombie of all people should know that a killing spree that can’t be explained is much more frightening than one that can.   Having said this, I should also acknowledge that Zombie’s Halloween 2 is one of the best horror movies of the past years (I’ll explain why after a I watch it again later this month).

I’m looking forward to a month of horror movies.  Vicki and I carefully planned our list of movies on Saturday night.  A selection of our favorites makes up half the list, and the other half are movies neither of us have seen.  Most of my choices are Hammer movies from the 60’s and 70’s, but I think Vicki’s are more varied.

We’ll also be celebrating all month by eating several boxes of Monster cereal.  This October, for the first time ever, all five flavors will be available: Count Chocula, Frankenberry, Boo Berry, Frute Brute, and Fruity Yummy Mummy.  We haven’t been able to find the latter two yet, but they’re supposed to be available at Target.

People Food

When buying a 30-pound bag of food for my dog, I sometimes wish I could also buy a bag of people food for myself that would last a month.  I love trying new foods, and I usually enjoy cooking, but every so often, I get tired of having to think about food and wish I could just scoop out two cups of kibble for myself twice a day.  This would save me from having to plan meals, buy groceries, prepare meals, and clean up after them. 

Rob Rhinehart feels the same away about food, so he's created people food that he calls Soylent, after the 1973 film "Soylent Green.” He’s the founder of a failed wireless communications company, not a nutritionist, but after researching nutrition and biochemistry for several months, he compiled a list of ingredients that he hoped would provide all the nutrients he needed to survive, blended them together into a milk-like drink, and has spent several months consuming nothing but Soylent.  Regular blood tests confirm that he’s healthy, he now spends $150 on a food a month compared to the $500+ he spent before creating Soylent, and the U.S. military is now interested in potentially using Soylent to feed soldiers.  Some dietitians and nutrients have criticized Soylent, particularly for its “one-size-fits-all approach” to nutrition, and the spokesman for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics tried it and said, “It tastes terrible.”  Despite these criticisms, Rhinehart is planning to mass produce Soylent and hopes to begin selling it soon.

 

I’ll definitely be trying it, and even if it tastes terrible, so does most toothpaste, and I still brush three times a day, so maybe eating could become like brushing one’s teeth.  I suspect that if it’s ever marketed to a wide audience, ways would be found to improve Soylent’s taste.  I doubt, however, that Soylent would be widely adopted, unless, of course, we ran out of food, which is what happens in “Soylent Green.”  Overpopulation and pollution have wiped out most of Earth’s species, so the remaining humans survive on a cakelike substance known as “Soylent Green.”  Officially, it’s made from algae and plankton, but by the end of the movie, we learn that it’s actually made from human bodies.  From a strictly utilitarian perspective, in a world where food is scarce, it makes sense to use dead bodies as food rather than wasting them by burying them in the ground, but it’s very unlikely that the general public would ever accept this, so the substance’s true ingredients are kept secret.

If we ever reach the point where Earth runs out of food, Rhinehart’s creation might save us, but in the meantime, what would it mean for the future of eating for those of us who are receptive to Soylent?  Would we be richer and more productive?  Would we still want snacks?  Would we be healthier?  Would our social lives suffer from not sharing meals with friends, family, and co-workers?  Would we produce white piss and shit?  Unless the mass-produced version of Soylent has an irresistible flavor, I’ll probably continue my current eating habits, and consume Soylent only when I don’t want to think about food.  It’s also possible that after one sip of Soylent, I’ll pour the rest down the drain, be thankful I don’t have to eat like a dog, and order a pizza.    

Obamacare and Part-Time Employees

If the Internet chatter about Obamacare's requirement that large companies provide health insurance to employees working at least 30 hours a week is representative of how Americans feel about the law, our politics are in an even worse state than I thought. Dozens of news articles document examples of employers cutting their workers' hours to avoid having to provide them with insurance, and the tone of many of these articles gives them an implicit criticism of the healthcare law.  Readers’ comments are much more explicit.  There's been an outpouring of sympathy for the workers, but almost all the blame has been placed on the President with little criticism of the employers who are actually cutting the hours.  Yes, having to provide insurance will hurt their profits, but isn't this a price companies should have to pay when their profits depend on the exploitation of their part-time workers?

This, of course, is an oversimplification of the relationship between large companies and  their part-time employees.  In many instances, the part-time status is mutually beneficial.  Businesses like part-time employees because they are cheaper and easier to let go than full-time ones.  Moreover, part-time positions are easier to find than full-time positions, and plenty of employees in part-time status like the flexibility of their positions and aren't looking for full-time work.  However, it's also true that in too many instances large companies rely so heavily on part-time employees that they end up performing the vast majority of the work.  This is especially true in higher education, and particularly in two-year colleges.

It's fairly routine for adjunct (part-time) instructors to teach well over 50% of the courses at a two-year college.  I have worked as an adjunct at several different colleges and universities, and I vividly remember that during the first adjunct orientation I attended, in her welcome comments, a vice-president for academic affairs stated that the college relied on adjuncts for over 70% of its courses.  She proudly provided this statistic as evidence of how integral adjuncts were to the college, but it had the opposite effect on me:  not only did I feel cheated, but I felt the college was cheating its students as well.

But I'm getting a bit ahead of myself.  In principle, there's nothing wrong with adjunct positions. Many are taught by retired teachers or other professionals who are interested in teaching only a class or two every semester to stay active and supplement their income.  Other adjunct instructors are recent graduates who lack the teaching experience required for full-time positions.  Colleges unwilling to hire them full-time will hire them as adjuncts, and then when full-time positions are available will often hire from their pool of adjuncts.  The low labor costs for adjunct positions also help colleges to offer tuition at affordable rates.

It's not uncommon, however, for adjuncts to teach more classes per semester than full-time instructors.  They still earn less than the full-time instructors and receive no benefits.  They are hired on a course-by-course basis, and their courses can be cancelled due to low enrollment up to a week into the semester, which means that they could teach a class for a week, only to have it cancelled and then receive no compensation for that week of work, not to mention the prep work completed outside of class.  There's little incentive for adjuncts to meet with students outside of class (although I'm sure most of them do) or to spend much time grading assignments or prepping for class.

In the long term, this over reliance on adjuncts benefits no one.  In addition to creating large numbers of second-class instructors who perform most of the teaching, it undermines the quality of education students receive.  Adjuncts simply aren't compensated well enough to spend much time outside of class preparing lessons and grading assignments, so they inevitably take shortcuts.  Moreover, while this model has helped colleges save money, it has enabled them to rely on a business model that is unsustainable.  The implementation of Obamacare next year will force colleges to finally face the problems they have created for themselves by relying too heavily on adjuncts.

Predictably, most schools are planning to cut their adjuncts’ hours to avoid having to provide them insurance.  It's difficult to quantify the amount of work instructors complete, so the formula that applies to adjuncts is that they must receive insurance if they teach at least 75% of the teaching load of full-time faculty.  In two-year colleges, full-time faculty typically teach 5 to 6 classes a semester, so adjuncts teaching at least 5 classes must be provided insurance.  To its credit, Midlands Technical College, where I taught as an adjunct during the last academic year, is offering insurance for its adjuncts, and rather than trying to limit the number of courses individual adjuncts can teach, at least some departments have offered to give adjuncts more classes, so they will be eligible to receive the insurance benefit.  However, Midlands is the exception.  In reading about how colleges will deal with the healthcare requirement, I haven't found any other examples of schools that will offer their adjuncts insurance.

Also predictably, blame for the economic hardship that adjuncts will soon endure from having their courses cut has been placed almost exclusively on President Obama.  Yes, his healthcare law is a reason why colleges are choosing to cut their adjuncts' hours, but it's the colleges, not the President, making the choice.  Criticism should be directed at these colleges, not only for cutting their adjuncts' hours rather than provide them with insurance, but also for relying on a business model that depends on part-time instructors to perform most of their teaching.  I don't pretend to know a better model, but colleges and the lawmakers who make decisions about their budgets should stop pretending that the current one works.

Rather than acting on a gut reaction to criticize everything the President does, I wish more Americans would take a step back and think more about the big picture.  One does not have to support the President or his healthcare law to recognize that rather than hurting part-time workers it is drawing attention to the ways in which they are often exploited by their employers.  Nor does one have to be a crazy liberal to come to the common sense conclusion that when a large company cuts its workers hours to avoid having to provide them with health insurance it is the company hurting the workers and not the President.

Can 3-D Be More Than a Gimmick?

Before buying my ticket for "Pacific Rim" this weekend, I have to make an important decision: 3-D or 2-D?  If I don't see it in 3-D, I'll probably feel like I've missed the full experience, but lately, I've started to think that when I've paid for 3-D in the past, it's because movie studios have convinced me that I wanted something I didn't. It's only a few dollars more, so the easy solution is just to spend the extra money, but I'm a bit of a cheapskate, and I hate paying for special features that aren't particularly special.

Part of the problem is that my response to 3-D is colored by the fact that I want it to be something it's not.  When I see a 3-D movie, I want to duck to avoid being beheaded by a live chainsaw; dodge so the flying severed head misses me and hits the person behind me; and cover my face so I don't swallow a mouthful of blood, but sadly, none of this ever happens.  When I put on the glasses, I often think back to my first experience of a 3-D movie when 3-D made a brief comeback in the mid-80's and the Jaws, Friday the 13th, and Nightmare on Elm Street franchises each had a part three in 3-D.  I was terrified of horror movies as a kid, so I missed all of these, but I did see "Treasure of the Four Crowns."  I remember nothing about the movie except that in several instances my friend and I screamed, jumped, ducked, dodged, and even knocked off our 3-D glasses to escape spiders, snakes, bats, birds, spears, spikes, and probably several other creatures and weapons that were coming out of the screen to get us. (The YouTube clip gives you some idea of what it was like to see this movie in 3-D.)  Now I often find myself wondering whether the movie is actually in 3-D and taking off the glasses to confirm that the screen is blurry without them.

 

To be fair, "My Bloody Valentine" and "Piranha 3-D" had some good 3-D moments.  During the former, there were several instances when I moved to avoid the killer's pick axe and a shot gun that protruded from the screen, and killer fish jumped out at me during the later.  Although I missed "Shark Week" in the theater, when I later watched it on DVD, I could tell that it, too, would have been worth seeing in 3-D.  But these movies are the exception, and although I don't like it, I understand why: for it to become an integral part of the cinema exprience, 3-D has to be more than a gimmick.  Whereas in the past 3-D was used almost exclusively for cheap shocks--which was why it worked best for horror movies--when filmmakers use it now, it's a tool for adding depth and texture and making the entire experience more immersive for the viewers.  This is why I resist it.  I've never needed 3-D to be fully immersed in the experience.  All this requires is a good story conveyed through engaging 2-D images.

I also understand why movie studios and cinemas have embraced 3-D: as large HDTVs have become more affordable, 3-D results in an experience that viewers can enjoy only in a cinema and thus gives them an incentive to pay ever higher ticket prices rather than waiting for the video release. But I wonder about the future of 3-D.  There hasn't been wide scale adoption of 3-D TV's because viewers aren't convinced that they want them, and I wonder if the same will happen with 3-D movies.  When 3-D is used as a gimmick to create cheap shocks in horror movies, it actually adds something unique to the theater experience.  I'm not convinced that 3-D adds anything when I'm just paying extra for depth and texture that I never felt like I was missing in the first place.  It just makes me feel like a rube at a carnival.

I wish that rather than insisting that every big action, adventure be released in 3-D, studios would stop trying to sell us snake oil and use 3-D where it works best.  I imagine there are millions of viewers who, like me, would gladly pay extra for the experience of squirming to avoid the slashes of a black-gloved killer while also knowing that there's no chance of having their throats slit in the process.

Since it's very unlikely that during the 3-D version of "Pacific Rim" the claw of a giant monster will reach through the screen and try to grab me, I've just resolved not to be a sucker.

Ghost's Disappointing Second Album

The appeal of Ghost is that their costumes and satanic lyrics give them a metal sensibility that makes listening to them a form of escapism while their music straddles the line between metal and rock with its heavy riffs and catchy sing-along choruses resulting in a sound that’s much more pleasing to the ear than one would expect from a band dressed in corpse paint singing about the devil.  After buying Opus Eponymous, their first album, I listened to nothing else for almost a month and still play it quite frequently, and their show I attended in D.C. will remain one of the most memorable experiences I’ve had of live music. 

Infestissumam, their second album, was one of the most anticipated metal releases of the year, and overall, it’s good, but I’ve lost interest pretty quickly.  I think the problem is that it sounds too clean and has too many songs that border on soft rock.  The costumes and lyrical content haven’t changed, so the softer sound results in an odd listening experience.  It feels a bit silly listening to satanic songs that wouldn’t be out of place on an easy-listening compilation if only the lyrics were slightly revised to praise one’s lover, child, or Jesus rather than Lucifer.  This, however, is probably the point: the devil is deceptive and can spread his ideas more easily through pleasant-sounding music.  Regardless, when songs about Satan begin sounding heartfelt, the act has gone too far.  The irony is lost and it becomes laughable.

 

Infestissumam does, however, contain several songs that preserve the sound of the first album.  Two stand-outs are “Secular Haze” and “Yero Zero,” both of which have the eeriness I had grown to expect from a Ghost song.  The deluxe version also contains a haunting cover of Abba’s “I’m a Marionette.”  Despite my disappointment in Infestissumam, Ghost remain a very interesting band.  Their identities are still secret, and I’m curious to see how they’ll preserve the mystique as their popularity grows.  In interviews, they claim to want to play stadiums, and they are definitely developing an arena-friendly sound, but I’m having trouble imagining a packed-stadium of fans holding up lighters and singing along to, “Come together, together as one. Come together, for Lucifer’s son.”  If they succeed, they will have realized many-a-parent’s worst fears about the corrupting influence of rock music.

CNN's Hero of the Year: The Oklahoma Atheist

Religion can result in awkward situations for nonbelievers.  If asked, I suspect that most Americans would say religion is a personal choice, but in too many instances, "none" is a choice they wouldn’t accept.  I've never been religious, and in most circumstances, I'm comfortable acknowledging this, but there are instances, around certain family members for example, when I convince myself that it's best just passively to pretend that I'm a Christian because telling the truth wouldn't accomplish anything productive.  Afterwards, of course, I berate myself for not politely stating that I don't share their religious beliefs, consequences be damned.  But religious beliefs are so deeply held by many Americans that it's often perceived as an affront when one professes not to share them.  Two basic reactions result: horror and a desire to save the misguided atheist's soul.  Acceptance that it's just one legitimate choice among many, not a cause for horror or pity, is much rarer.  I wonder, however, how religious Americans responded when an Oklahoma woman who lost her home to a tornado told CNN's Wolf Blitzer that she's an atheist.

 

Most people in her situation, myself included, would probably take the easy way out and just pretend that they had thanked the Lord.  This woman, however, admitted on national television that she did not  because she's an atheist.  I applaud her not only for her courage in owning what is still a very unpopular position in American, but in the way she did it.  When Blitzer asked if she had thanked the Lord for saving her, she giggled nervously and said she's an atheist and then, rather than launching into an anti-religious tirade, which most in her position would have been tempted to do, she added that she didn't blame people for thanking God.  I hope that if there was any horror or pity among religious Americans watching the broadcast these were reactions to what the woman endured from the natural disaster and not to her lack of religious beliefs.

 

What I can say with confidence is that she's a much better ambassador for atheists than most nonbelievers who have publicly expressed their views about religion.  She was non-threatening.  She was not speaking as a polemical academic or an evolutionary biologist trying to convince Christians of the illogic of their beliefs.  She was speaking as a wife, a mother, and an American who had lost her home.  It's normal people like this woman who will make atheism acceptable, not writers like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins with their reasoned critiques of religion.  One reason commonly cited for the rapidly growing acceptance of homosexuality among a majority of Americans is increased exposure to homosexuals in their daily lives:  their friends, neighbors, co-workers, and family members.  I'm not attempting to equate the situation of atheist Americans--who are living with the consequences of a choice--with the civil rights struggle faced by gay Americans--who are persecuted for their biological differences--but I do believe that what has made homosexuality more acceptable for Americans can work in the same way for atheists.

This exposure, however, must be the right kind of exposure.  It must come from people like the Oklahoma atheist--outing myself as an atheist to my extended family would be counterproductive because they already think I'm a bit odd.  I'm hoping that the Oklahoma atheist's courage will inspire other Americans to profess their atheism in non-threatening ways.  She has my vote for CNN's hero of the year.

Prometheus Mapping Balls Soon to be a Reality

I'm always interested to learn about examples of sci-fi technology becoming real.  Remember the balls used in Prometheus to map the cave containing the decapitated Engineer and the alien eggs?  Referred to as "pups," they fly around the cave emitting red light and the data they send to a computer on the Prometheus is used to create a 3-D map.  An inventor named Francisco Aguilar has created something very similar.  Known as the Bounce Imaging Explorer, the device is a baseball-sized throwable probe containing several cameras and other data collecting instruments.  Aguilar designed it for use in disaster zones where rescue workers can throw the high-tech balls, which will take pictures and measure the presence of poison gases and send the data to a synched phone or tablet that will generate a panorama of the area with environmental warnings.  He hopes the device will make the jobs of first responders a bit safer. 

       

Oblivion: Flawed but Enjoyable Near-Future Sci-Fi

 

Although I love most science fiction, my favorite is near-future sci-fi set on a recognizable Earth, so I eagerly anticipated the release of Oblivion.  It has received a lot of attention from science fiction fans because it's a rare instance of an original sci-fi movie that wasn't adapted from a novel, comic, or video game or an entry in a famous franchise. Unfortunately, it wasn't as good as I'd hoped, but I still left the theater happy.

 

It's set in 2077, after a war between humans and a race of aliens.  The aliens first softened up the humans by destroying the moon and letting natural disasters wreck the planet.  Then they invaded. Humans were ultimately able to defeat them, but only by using nuclear weapons, leaving Earth uninhabitable.  Most of the population has moved either to a space station or a colony on Saturn's moon Titan, but small teams have stayed behind to oversee the harvesting of Earth's remaining water. The story revolves around Jack Harper who works as a technician servicing the drones that protect the harvesting machines from the remaining aliens, referred to as "Scavs."  While he's out on a mission to locate missing drones, a space ship crashes, and he's able to save one member of the crew, a woman named Julia, who had been appearing in his recurring dream and who causes him to question everything he knows about Earth's recent history and his own identity.

 

Oblivion tells an engaging story, and the settings alone made the viewing experience worthwhile for me.  Most of the action occurs in post-apocalypse New York, so we get to watch Harper riding his motorcycle over the remains of the Brooklyn Bridge and flying his ship over the ruins of Manhattan. He explores sunken buildings looking for missing drones and wanders through a ruined football stadium. Outside the city, he even finds a fully-furnished lake house surrounded by lush greenery where he goes to relax.

 

Although Harper enjoys his work as a drone tech, his nights are made restless by dreams of meeting Julia at a set of coin-operated binoculars on top of the Empire State Building.  All of his pre-invasion memories have been erased as a matter of national security, and the dreams lead him to wonder about his lost memories.  When he finds Julia amid the wreckage of the space ship, he realizes he has been dreaming of an event that actually occurred.  Predictably, Harper and Julia were romantically involved in the past, and their story is the movie's biggest flaw: it's overplayed.  Director Joseph Kosinski doesn't trust that viewers will remember the coin-operated binoculars, so he shows them what seems like a dozen times. He sends Harper and Julia to the ruins of the Empire State Building to reveal the exact nature of their relationship and then they fly off to the lake house for an overnight getaway.  All of this might have worked in a longer movie where everything was more developed, but it just left me annoyed and wanting Kosinski to get on to the good stuff.  

 

Because he wastes so much time on the love story, more interesting aspects of Oblivion are left underdeveloped.  While searching for a missing drone, Harper and Julia meet a large group of humans who have been living underground since the invasion, but although they end up playing a central role in the film's plot, Kosinski reveals very little about these people or how they have been surviving underground.  Moreover, the plot is also unnecessarily convoluted.  Kosinski reveals the truth about Harper's missing memories in a way that leaves viewers confused for most of the movie's second act.

 

Despite these problems, however, it is worth bearing with the muddled narrative.  When it finally begins to make sense, what initially seems like a fairly pedestrian humans vs. aliens scenario becomes a much more interesting story about humanity's struggle to survive a confrontation with an advanced alien race that uses its superior technology in devious ways. Moreover, despite a final cheesy scene in the lake house, Kosinski does bring Oblivion to a satisfying conclusion. 

 

At times, it had me thinking of Len Wiseman's Total Recall remake, which, despite its many flaws, handles its love story much more effectively by developing it in the brief pauses between action sequences.  Granted, Wiseman is also too busy having his characters being chased to slow down and reveal anything about them, and like, Kosinski, leaves his film's most interestings elements underdeveloped.  Cheesy love stories and endless chase sequences are equally nauseating, but Wiseman left me feeling a bit sicker than Kosinski, who at least tried something original and made an effort to develop his characters.  I'm hoping, however, that this summer's other big sci-fi movies will be much lighter on the chases and romance.  

 

 

 

Rob Zombie's Bizarre Take on the Salem Witches

Responses to Rob Zombie's movies are always polarized.  Not surprisingly, critics revile them, but many horror fans have similar opinions while others love everything he does.  Although I hated his Halloween remake, my opinion of Zombie's movies falls close enough to the latter group that I highly anticipate their releases and have to see them on opening night.  Unfortunately, his latest, Lords of Salem, has such a limited release that it played at only one local theater that is about a thirty minute drive for us, so Vicki and I skipped the opening weekend hoping it would be playing at a closer theater in the coming weeks.  We soon learned, however, that it would be gone the next weekend, so we endured the drive and saw it on a Wednesday night.  We walked away highly satisfied but amazed that it was able to receive an R-rating and that it is having even a limited theatrical release.

 

One of the reasons I like Zombie's movies so much is because they are made by a horror fan for horror fans, and this is especially true of Lords of Salem.  Whereas his earlier movies could find a potential audience in anyone who appreciated The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Halloween, or 70's horror in general, LoS probably won't appeal to many viewers who lack an appreciation for European horror and its tendency to favor intriguing visuals over narrative coherency.  As Zombie himself has acknowledged in interviews, LoS is a bit of a departure for him as it relies on psychological horror and lacks most of the brutality of his other films (although there is a cast-iron skillet to the head murder scene).  

 

It does, however, preserve his interest in familial relationships, which feature prominently in all of his movies.  This time it's the relationship between 17th century witchhunter Reverend Jonathan Hawthorne and his last living descendent in present day Salem, Heidi Hawthorne. Heidi, who hosts a late night radio show, is sent a vinyl recording of a discordant instrumental by a band known as The Lords. After playing the record, Heidi begins experiencing visions and nightmares of naked witches performing black masses and other blasphemies.  The events unfold slowly over the course of a week, and the first hour or so of the movie is a tightly structured linear narrative that could be mistaken for a mainstream psychological horror film.  We learn that modern day witches are in communication with their 17th century sisters in darkness who were burned at the stake by Heidi's ancestor and that the strange recording is part of their plot to drive Heidi mad and implement the curse that the burning witches cast on Reverend Hawthorne.  However, as Heidi descends further into madness, the narrative unravels and the linear structure collapses into the irrationality of a nightmare.

 

LoS is filled with eerie images of witchcraft and devil worship.  Some of the most effective appear as Heidi is walking her dog through a cemetery.  She stops to rest on a bench and sees a zombie-like figure approaching her while walking a goat.  She then enters a chapel where she has visions of a priest forcing her to fellate him while his eyes turn black and black liquid oozes from his mouth as he praises Satan.  Bodies of dead witches appear randomly in the background of scenes in Heidi's apartment, a monstrous baby with tentacles shows up in her bedroom, and in a climactic scene she enters an abandoned apartment where other infernal creatures impregnate her with a demon seed while she looks at a buzzing neon cross on the wall.  The last half hour gets so bizarre that it's difficult even to describe, which might explain how it was able to get by with an R-rating: the MPAA representatives tasked with rating it were probably so shocked and confused that they probably overlooked the multiple shots of topless witches and didn't realize that they were seeing bishops masturbating penises.

 

I often complain that the only horror movies that get funded are sequels, remakes, or imitations of well-known franchises, but as I was walking out of the theater after seeing Lord of Salem, I had to admit to myself that the state of the American horror film is actually in much better shape if a movie like Lords of Salem could get made and have a wide enough theatrical release to play in Columbia, SC, even if it was in only one theater and for only a week.  It won't appeal to casual horror fans, but any fan of 70's European horror who would revel in the opportunity to see a movie made in the same style on the big screen should make every effort to catch Lords of Salem during its limited release.