KINDER TRAUMA: THE EXORCIST

You know, being a Monster Kid born in the 1960's, the fact that I have a Kinder Trauma involving The Exorcist might not be so unusual. I was 9 at the time the movie was released, and the fact is however, that I consider my initial Exorcist experience a life-changing tale akin to losing my virginity.

As far back as I can remember, I'd loved monsters, and my earliest movie memories all involve a horror movie trauma of one form or another: forcing my folks to leave my very first movie screening - Tom Thumb – because I was convinced the giant’s feet were going to crush me; having to sit up on the back of our sofa during a solo TV viewing of The Deadly Mantis because I was certain an oversized mantis (though smaller than the one featured in the flick I was watching) would grab my leg from its hiding place under the sofa. I went through the era-typical stages of burgeoning horror fandom too: Aurora model kits (up to and including the infamous Aurora Horror Scenes), Famous Monsters of Filmland, Creepy, Eerie, Vampirella, The Monster Times, Universal classics, etc. But nothing had prepared me for the sights and sounds of The Exorcist.

I can’t remember where I first heard about this movie, but it must have been via press stories about the effect it was having on audiences. This was no normal horror movie; people were fainting, throwing up, calling clergy and mental health professionals after seeing it. In those days, pre-Star Wars, it took a while for movies to make their way around the country, and by the time The Exorcist hit my small town, I’d read the Exorcist parodies in Mad, Cracked and Crazy magazines, I’d somehow managed to get my hands on the novel (which I didn’t read until years later) as well as William Peter Blatty on The Exorcist from Novel to Screen, complete with a nerve-wracking centre spread of movie stills. I had the issue of Famous Monsters with its garish Exorcist cover story. I clipped and collected articles and ads for the movie. I somehow ended up with a knock-off album of “contemporary” movie themes on the Pickwick label that included Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells, all NOT performed by the original artists. I tell you all this to give you an idea of the Exorcist frenzy that was building within me. Somehow, it needed release.

Finally, The Exorcist showed up at my local theatre. I begged my father to take me, but being sane, he refused. Instead, he went to a matinee screening of the movie by himself. As my mother and I picked him up at the theatre afterwards, I asked him how it was. Clearly, my father had just sat through something completely different. And NO WAY was he going to take me. The frenzy continued to build.

Three years later, The Exorcist showed up at the drive-in, playing a double bill with John Wayne’s Cahill. After much begging, unbelievably, my father finally agreed to take me!

Despite my eagerness for the main event to get started, we had to make it through the Oater first. Whatever Cahill is about, I can’t tell you; I’m sure the Duke must’ve cleaned up some mess or other in some little two-horse town, but I can’t recall.

Intermission. Then:

The prologue in Iraq was unnerving. I wasn’t sure what some of it was about, but the images and sounds were making me uneasy. Back in the USA, we meet Chris MacNeil, an actress; her director; her staff; her daughter Regan; a troubled priest. I did okay despite the ominous feeling the movie was giving me, until Regan takes a leak on the carpet during her mom’s cocktail party. Oh-oh. The Frankenstein Monster never did that. A little while later, little Reagan, who is just a hair older than me, is suffering from a banging bed, a swelling throat, eyeballs rolling back into her head, and she’s making lewd suggestions to her doctors. By this time, I’m starting to realize that this movie is over my head. In other words: NOT INTENDED FOR CHILDREN. Though I couldn’t formulate the thought in these words, this was my introduction to adult horror, and it was blowing my mind! What was happening on-screen was literally beyond my comprehension. What I did know, however, was that there was a very good chance that I was never going to sleep again, even if we left AT THIS VERY MOMENT! Despite that, I had to make an attempt to save what was left of my sanity. I found my voice and asked my father if we could please go? He asked me if I was sure I wanted to leave. Yes. I was.

My dad starts the car, and we begin to drive away. As we turn from the screen and down the lane that will take us out of this evil place, my father says, “Look at the screen.” Knowing I shouldn’t, but unable to NOT do it, I turn just as this happens:

I was hooked/deflowered/twisted for all time. I can pinpoint the very moment.

Years later, The Exorcist remains one of my favourite movies. Whatever that first half-viewing may have contributed to my development, devolution, or psyche scarring, I’m not absolutely sure. What I do know is that The Exorcist popped my adult horror cherry, and for that, it will always hold a special place in my little black heart. I just wish it would call now and then.

I SAW THE PIXIES AND YOU CAN SEE SOME CLIPS

I saw the Pixies Saturday night. Love them! So much. Folks have been posting clips from the concert, and here they are. Enjoy this mini-virtual Pixies show.

MY FAVOURITE GIALLI

Italian thrillers known singularly as giallo (pronounced as “jah-lo”, and meaning “yellow” as per the primary colour used on the lurid book covers that these flicks are named for) and plurally as gialli, have long been an obsession of mine. Starting back in the early 1980's with my first exposure to whited-out, censored VHS copies of Dario Argento’s classics like Deep Red and The Bird With the Crystal Plumage, I developed a taste for these highly stylized and often nonsensical mysteries highlighted by violent and indelible set pieces.

A problem some people have in engaging with these films is that, unlike a typical blockbuster, they ask something from the viewer. As a burgeoning fan of odd films from around the world, I learned to let go of my preconceived notions of what constitutes story, I learned to look past horrible dubbing, butchered framing and cut prints, and I learned to enjoy the impressionist response that these film elicited from me. Through my eyes, watching a giallo is all about the experience, the feeling. It’s Hitchcock’s theory of “pure cinema” at its most basic. For me, this is extremely rewarding.

Defining giallo is somewhat difficult, but here are some of their prevalent characteristics: Their heyday was from the mid-1960’s to early 80’s. The majority of gialli are from Italy, though Spain and other countries also contributed to the canon. These murder mysteries frequently feature killers clothed in black leather gloves, a raincoat and a fedora, obscuring their identities and sometimes genders; they are highly fetishized. As mentioned previously, the attack scenes are the highlights of each film, giving the director an opportunity to use all of cinema's resources: composition, sound, editing, movement, intense colour or stark black and white. These films are lurid, dealing with drug addiction, backstreet abortions, extreme sexuality, child murder, greed, blackmail, and insanity. Conversation and threats are whispered through closed doors, over the phone, or left playing on reel-to-reel tape recorders. Their musical scores are memorable, created by maestros like Ennio Morricone, Bruno Nicolai, Riz Ortolani, and in the case of Argento’s Deep Red, Goblin provides an appropriately pounding rock score. In almost every gialli, someone will swig from a bottle of J&B and in many cases, someone will shout “Pronto. Pronto? PRONTO!” into an oversized telephone receiver. The titles of these films are almost poetic, making obscure and evocative use of words; the films themselves are also very much like this, but in a filmic sense. Look for directors with names like Argento, Bava, Martino, Fulci, Dallamano, Margheriti and Lado; actresses Edwige Fenech, Susan Scott, Erica Blanc, Florinda Bolkan, Anita Strindberg, Mimsy Farmer and Daria Nicolodi; actors George Hilton, Fabio Testi, Ray Lovelock, Ivan Rassimov, Franco Nero and Jean Sorel. Don't forget, the revelation of the killer or killers is frequently secondary to the path we take getting there. You've been warned.

Put your understanding of conventional storytelling on hold, pour yourself a Scotch on the rocks, and begin your fall into the underbelly of cinema. There’s just so much out there to discover in this uncharted territory. Here is a list of my most highly recommended gialli:

ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK



AUTOPSY



BAY OF BLOOD



BLOOD AND BLACK LACE



DEATH LAID AN EGG



DEEP RED



DELIRIUM



DON'T TORTURE A DUCKLING



EYEBALL



THE FIFTH CORD



THE FORBIDDEN PHOTOS OF A LADY ABOVE SUSPICION



THE GIRL WHO KNEW TOO MUCH



THE HOUSE WITH LAUGHING WINDOWS



THE KILLER MUST KILL AGAIN



A LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKIN



MY DEAR KILLER



PERFUME OF THE LADY IN BLACK



PERVERSION STORY



THE PSYCHIC



SHORT NIGHT OF GLASS DOLLS



THE STRANGE VICE OF MRS. WARDH



THE STENDHAL SYNDROME



STRIP NUDE FOR YOUR KILLER



TORSO



WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO SOLANGE?



WHO SAW HER DIE?



YOUR VICE IS A LOCKED ROOM AND ONLY I HAVE THE KEY

HOW DELIVERANCE TAUGHT ME NOT TO BE GAY

I've come to terms with the fact that my sexuality was sent down the rapids by director John Boorman's "Deliverance" (1972).

I was ten years old when I caught a showing of the movie on the late show. I grew up in a relatively liberal (i.e. out of control) household, and my father always allowed me to stay up with him far too late on a school night in order to watch the classic Universal monster movies -- the Frankenstein, Dracula, Werewolf and Mummy series -- and others of that type. The screening of Deliverance, however, introduced me to a new species of monster: the hillbilly rapist.

This was the mid-Seventies; the days before videotape, meaning you could catch a movie after its theatrical run only when the networks had scheduled it. In Canada, our main channel is/was the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), a network that rarely censored its broadcasts if the program had "artistic merit", and Deliverance clearly fit that bill.

My father, an artist who was against censorship and who believed in letting people experience things for themselves in order to form their own opinions, had heard that Deliverance was a terrific movie and something about a canoe trip gone wrong. He understood my love of movies and encouraged it, as long it didn't become an obsession; I was the type of kid who easily became preoccupied with things. We settled in to watch this adult action movie, and unbeknownst to my father, my view of gay men started to take shape.

Four friends -- Jon Voight, Ned Beatty, Ronny Cox and Burt Reynolds -- leave urban Atlanta for a canoe trip downriver through Georgia hillbilly country. They are out of place here. Cox takes part in a banjo duel with a young in-bred banjo-picker in one of the film's two most oft-mentioned scenes. The men continue downriver, where they become the target of two horny male hillbillies. Telling Voight that he's got a "pretty mouth" and forcing Beatty to "squeal like a pig" in the film's other most-quoted scene, the hillbillies attempt to force a little oral action from Voight and a little butt-play from Beatty.

This scene was both intriguing and shocking to me. The emotive result of this concoction: confusion. Just what was it that this hillbilly was attempting to do with Beatty?! Was it possible that people actually did this? Or was it just something that “river folk” indulged in? Whatever it was, it must be wrong and Deliverance was just about to show me that there was a price to pay for being gay beyond being a toothless hayseed.

As things are about to reach the point of no return between our urbanites and river men, Reynolds, around the time that he did his famous and relatively discreet Cosmopolitan centerfold spread, arrives decked out in leather river gear, a saviour in S&M drag. He and his crossbow put a swift end to the attempted rape.

Though I remained engrossed by the rest of the film, and terrified by the nightmare dream sequence wherein a pale hand emerges from beneath the surface of the river, the rape scene stayed with me even more so. A mishmash of “erotic” imagery and conflicting emotions. Gay sex was bad, punishable by death, the sentence served by the swift bow of a leather man.

A ten-year-old can't make sense of these images and thoughts, but they can lay dormant in the back of his mind until they reach the surface like that pale hand rising out of the Cahulawassee River. Deliverance remains a great film; its iconic moments a part of pop culture history. As an adult, I have a more comprehensive understanding of sexuality and its complexity, of what the film is saying (and not saying), and, I hope, of myself. I've come to a place where I appreciate the journey I took downriver with it, stopped shockingly and unexpectedly like the film's leads by a couple of horny hillbillies that I was also forced to confront without so much as a crossbow to protect me.

MY HAMMER HORROR DILEMMA

I love Hammer movies. I grew up with them. I saw so many Hammer Horror double bills when I was a kid in the 70's that they're as much a part of my childhood as Pet Rocks and flared jeans.

Hammer made movies that literally thrilled me as a kid, goofy as that sounds. I would watch the screen crouched down in my seat, anticipating the next vampire's hiss or Frankenstein Monster's stumble. Today, I appreciate them, partly for their nostalgia value, but mostly because they are terrific movies.

The studio was so successful at being distinctive in what it did, at creating its own world, that it also created a dilemma for me. You see, it's almost impossible for me to differentiate one Hammer movie from the other. Not that they're all the same; far from it. Some are Black & White, some are colour; some are gothic, some are contemporary; some are graced by the presence of Lee and Cushing, some aren't; and some are just better than others. But all share that Hammer stamp, unlike almost anything else I can think of other than the Val Lewton-produced cycle of suggestive horror flicks from the 40's, and there were only nine of those. Different than a world that a single filmmaker creates through an entire filmography, say Alfred Hitchcock or Jean-Luc Godard, Hammer movies feature different directors, writers, cinematographers, composers, and casts, but each Hammer Horror makes up a part of the "world of Hammer" in my mind, and to me "The World of Hammer" is one utterly fantastic, continuous movie.


As a blogger, the opportunity to take part in numerous Favourite Film lists arises with some regularity. My Hammer dilemma means that I rarely include a selection from the Hammer studio... There's just too many to choose from and I want to include them all! It's as if one Hammer film comments on or relates to another in the Hammer cannon; like one is somehow connected to the others. This leads me to attempt to pick a representative movie, but that's just foolhardy and it's just not fair to the individual films. The fact is that Hammer produced a large number of not just good films, but several that can easily be considered classics.

So in recognition of all the times that I've left a Hammer film out of the creation of whatever list I may have been taking part in, and because I'm so fond of each of these films, here are my favourite Hammer Horrors, each one a unique part of "The World of Hammer":

The Curse of Frankenstein, Horror of Dracula, The Revenge of Frankenstein, The Brides of Dracula, Never Take Candy from a Stranger, The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll, Taste of Fear, The Curse of the Werewolf, These are the Damned, Paranoiac, The Plague of the Zombies, The Reptile, Frankenstein Created Woman, Quatermass and the Pit, Dracula Has Risen from the Grave, The Devil Rides Out, Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed, Taste the Blood of Dracula, Scars of Dracula, The Vampire Lovers, Countess Dracula, Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde, Hands of the Ripper, Twins of Evil, Straight on Till Morning, Vampire Circus, Captain Kronos - Vampire Hunter, Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell, and The Satanic Rites of Dracula.

There is, however, one Hammer Horror that I'm incredibly partial towards. And having said that, I feel like I'm being oddly dismissive of all the others. That film is Hands of the Ripper. I first saw it when I was 12 years old, on TV during a trip to England with my parents. There in the St. James Hotel, I watched fascinated and terrified as Jack the Ripper's daughter gorily (for its time) slashed her way through victims both deserving and shockingly undeserving. Later during this trip, we visited the Whispering Gallery at St. Paul's Cathedral. The fact that the climax of Hands of the Ripper occurs there added an extra frisson for me as we sent our whispered messages around its circumference. I've watched this film several times since this initial and impressionable viewing, and it's still one of my favourite films. The attack scenes still pack a jolt, the story is still involving and fresh, and Anna, the Ripper's daughter played by Angharad Rees, is one of the most tragic heroines in all of Hammer's films. I love it.


Hammer Studios closed in the late 70's after changing public taste resulted in declining box office. With the old studio recently reanimated anew and producing films like the remakes (sigh) of Let Me In and The Woman in Black, there's the potential that it may yet recapture some of its old glory. Whatever the future of the new Hammer, there are plenty of Golden Era Hammer films out there; go get you some!

MY HORROR AUTOGRAPH COLLECTION

Clive Barker (Author)


Dario Argento (Dir, The Bird With the Crystal Plumage, Suspiria, Deep Red)


Herschell Gordon Lewis (The Godfather of Gore)


Herk Harvey (Dir, Carnival of Souls)


Linnea Quigley (Return of the Living Dead; Savage Streets; Silent Night, Deadly Night; Night of the Demons)


Autographs M.I.A.: David Cronenberg, Tom Savini.

My Top 10 Willy Inducing Moments

As per The Horror Digest, here are My Top 10 Willy Inducing Moments in random order:

1. "PSYCHO" (1960, Dir: Alfred Hitchcock)


The look Norman gives the audience... that's right, he looks at the audience, breaking the 4th Wall in such a way that we don't even realize it at the time... at the end of "Psycho". This, mixed with his "I wouldn't even hurt a fly" speech, is shiver time... even before Mother's skull appears in a double exposure.

2. "SESSION 9" (2001, Dir: Brad Anderson)



The final voice over from the reel-to-reel recording of the final session... when we finally hear from the personality known as Simon and discover exactly where he lives... Goose bumps.

3. "DEEP RED" (aka "Profondo Rosso", 1975, Dir: Dario Argento)



Dario Argento's laughing mechanical puppet from one of the essential gialli (that significantly predates that talking, mechanical puppet in "Saw").

4. "SCREAM OF FEAR" (aka "Taste of Fear", 1961, Dir: Seth Holt)



Susan Strasberg discovers her father's corpse (for the first time) in Hammer's excellent "mini-Hitchcock".

5. "INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS" (1956, Dir: Don Siegel)



The pay-off (later) to this innocuous dialogue:

Becky: [laughs] I'm not the high school kid you use to romance, so how can you tell?

Miles: You really want to know?

Becky: Mmm-hmm.

Miles: [after kissing her] Mmmm, you're Becky Driscoll, all right!

6. "PRINCE OF DARKNESS" (1987, dir: John Carpenter)



Those video transmissions; unclear images of something... bad.

7. "LOST HIGHWAY" (1997, dir: David Lynch)



Robert Blake makes a phone call to himself... and answers at the other end.

8. "THE HAUNTING" (1963, Dir: Robert Wise)



The "Whose hand was I holding?" scene.

9. "BLACK CHRISTMAS" (1974, Dir: Bob Clark)



Many moments to choose from in this one, but the eye through the crack in the door has it!

10. "HALLOWEEN" (1978, dir: John Carpenter)



Michael emerges from the darkness behind the world's most famous Final Girl. A semi-slow burn.