Glamour, Gore, & Goblin Too

It's almost Halloween season, and this week we're chasing visions in Venice, excavating nostalgic memories, and peering into the horror core of a classic fairy tale . . .

From the Grave.

Three ideas from horror cinema's past.

I first saw Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now at the Ken Cinema (RIP) in San Diego as a teen—a shocking and destabilizing experience. It’s a film I appreciate more every time I see it (including on a rewatch this last weekend), and a film that’s slowly become an all-time favorite. Spoilers below.

1. Neither flat nor a circle. Don’t Look Now is a film about ESP (or “second sight”), but it plays with time in a way not demanded by the subject matter.  Donald Sutherland’s John can see the future, but he doesn’t see it as the future. When a figure in a red jacket (from afar on Venice's streets or on a photographic slide) strikes a strange cord, it's a premonition of his own murder, but he’s also seeing his daughter in the red rain coat she was wearing when she drowned. He's seeing the past too. When he catches sight of Julie Christie’s Laura, his wife, on a boat on the Grand Canal, even though she’s just left for England that morning, he believes he’s seeing the confusing, dangerous present—when in fact he’s seeing a vision of his own funeral procession. In Don’t Look Now, we don’t just get visions of the past or the future, we see the past, and the future, and the present all at the same time. John is in Venice to restore a church, and restoration is the perfect job for him. He’s working toward a future where the past is visible again.
2. Spacetime. A distinct facet of Don’t Look Now’s relationship with time is its strange geography. John believes Laura’s in Venice and, when he calls his son’s school in England and Laura’s put on the phone, he asks her, “Where are you?” This is an unusual question coming from the man who made the phone call. Another geographic incongruity slips from his mouth when he goes to the police about his "missing" wife. He’d tried to find a pension that Laura (and he) had visited previously but, as he tells a police official, “It’s vanished.” Geography here is as unreliable as time. Venice’s narrow streets have their labyrinthine character—John and Laura get lost here and they lose each other—and this effects our sense of time. We’ve all experienced the elasticity of time when we’re lost. Geographic order affects temporal clarity. In Don’t Look Now the geography and the timeline both defy coherence, neither independent of the other—both aspects of the same bent, distorted world.
3. Fit check. Don’t Look Now’s red raincoat is its famous costume piece, but the sartorial choices for Sutherland and Christie are never not showstopping. I don’t think I’d mind chasing a ghost and a serial killer around Venice if I looked this damn good. It’s all about patterns, textures, grays, and browns (and one royal blue coat). A cursory web search found studies of the Don’t Look Now style choices for Sutherland and Christie both. Impeccable 70s style is a pleasure in its own right, but the looks, and the films beauty more generally, lend it an allure that, in retrospect, feels necessary. This is a dark script about the loss of a child, grief, and violent murder. Its visual beauty gives it parallel emotional registers—induces a desire to look and not look. Glamour and gloom together generate Don’t Look Now’s intoxicating aura. It’s the push and the pull together that ensnares us.

Right Behind You.

A thought on horror's present.

4. Longing For Late Fees. This weekend I went to Slasher World, a horror-themed space on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles. Its layout offers a diagram of horror fandom. The big franchises dominate the front room: Halloween, Texas Chainsaw, A Nightmare On Elm Street, Candyman, Evil Dead, and Scream. It’s a combination gift shop and Instagram installation. The second space—ticketed, past a velvet rope—is the “horror VHS immersive exhibit” Slashback Video (previously in Burbank). It’s set up like a classic video store, shelves lined with horror VHS boxes—House II, Basket Case, the lenticular box of Jack Frost, etc. There are also VHS art objects—some bizarre, some upsetting, some delightful. There’s a sculptural Evil Dead 2 case and the 80s mashup Beverly Hills Christine. A lot of what’s going on here is restoration (like John’s work on the church in Don’t Look Now). But the density of the exhibit, the profusion of international posters, the single genre, and the art objects contribute to an experience that isn’t actually quite like being in a video store in 1989. It’s a nostalgic place—better in some ways than the real thing. It’s also a celebration of the lo-fi and the handmade, which adds, for all the energy in nostalgic recreation, an authenticity too. Horror’s a genre that has run so often on small budgets and practical effects, and this same ethic can be felt in the detailed exhibit creation here. Beyond the big franchises, there’s an under-resourced, fringe horror culture with its own kind of creative tradition—a cultural project that still lives, even if its lurking in a back room on Melrose.

Living Deliciously.

A recommendation.

5. Bird Beast. We’ve been discussing things beautiful and handmade, and a film that exemplifies both qualities and delivers a good dose of spooky mood without being too squarely Halloweeny—perfect for the cusp of October—is Czech horror fairy tale Panna a netvor—“Beauty and the Beast“ or, in direct translation, “The Virgin and the Monster.” (I explored this film in essay form a couple years ago.) Juraj Herz’s film tells a recognizable Beauty and the Beast story in a world both magical and sinister. Its forest and crumbling mansion are the stuff of goth fantasy. Its “Beast” is a hybrid creature with a bird’s head and sharp claws—a character surging with carnal and violent energy. Panna a netvor is gorgeous, haunting, and more horror than you’re expecting. Oh—and there’s a malevolent goblin too. Streaming on Eternal Family.

Dead of Night publishes every Tuesday. Today we saw an important federal court victory against our administration's outrageous wielding of deportations as a tool to silence dissent. It's an important moment to remember that the courts alone will not save us. Only organized people, only democratic power, will defeat fascism. The moment to resist is now.