October 16:
The Legend of Hell House (1973) This is a classic from my childhood coming out when I was about ten years old. I am sure I saw it many times on television in my teen years. Younger people may not know there was a giant boom of paranormal interest in the 1970's, everything from Bigfoot, and the Loch Ness Monster to the Bermuda Triangle to possessions by demons to ghost and goblins, American society was ripe with stories and films and books. Being a young person in that time I could not get enough of this material. At least a few times in elementary and middle school I wrote essays on these subjects thinking all the time that they were real and the world was full of unexplained things that must be either undiscovered or supernatural. It was also a time of advancing science, well what time isn't? The need to try to explain some of the beliefs running rampart during the time took on a scientific bent. In this film by John Hough from a story and screenplay by Richard Matheson we get both the supernatural and the scientific (ish) explanations to a haunted house. This film holds a place in my heart as an early influence on me and my love of horror. So I may give this film more credit than it deserves. With a small cast of very establish actors it is a ghost story about the most haunted house in the world. A place so vile that eight people died trying to solve its mysteries. Now and old man Mr. Deutsch (Roland Culver)is willing to pay a physicist Dr. Lionel Barrett (Clive Revill), a psychic medium Florence Tanner (Pamela Franklin) and the last survivor of "Hell House" a physical medium Ben Fischer (Roddy McDowall) a lot of money to have a go at the house. He wants to know if there is life after death and so a haunted house makes sense to him to find the answer. He is paying them a lot of money and they only have four days to accomplish the task.
That sets the clock running and the group into motion. We get the exposition about the house and former owner and possibly current ghost. We get the story from Fischer of the injuries to the group he participated in in 1953 and how he shut down his abilities as a medium to survive. The film takes the approach that ghosts and psychics are real and that they are really trying to figure out what energy (entity) is so angry in the house and how to clear it. Now there are some good and bad parts to the plot. Pitting the skeptic Barrett against the true believer Tanner works in keeping the viewer from totally falling on the side of real ghosts. Of course that come at a cost. Tanner and Ann Barrett (Gayle Hunnicutt) are the only two woman in the cast and the majority of the ghostly incidents take place with them. The men thinking that maybe the women are a bit loony and imagining the occurrences is a tired patriarchal trope that really has not place in today's world but was as we see here still being exercised in film making in the seventies. In fact it would probably be infuriating to today's society to base a theme of a film in maybe the women are being hysterical. Problematic depictions aside when the plot is fully exercise it might be satisfying for woman to realized that all the haunting has more to do with an undying male ego more than any other reason.
The science in this film is as fanciful as the ghostly incidents and is really there as a device to pull off a sleight of hand in the plot. So did the anti ghost device clear the energy from the house? It sure looked that way at first but then after barely registering as a character of any use Fischer gets his big awakening scene where he confronts the massive ghostly ego of Belasco and apparently that confrontation is enough to end the haunting. What can we call this? A Napoleon complex haunting? The ending fell really flat with this viewer, leaving me laughing at the share simplicity of the haunting. I am not sure this film holds up well over the decades but even so it was one of the first horror movies I think I saw as a child so it still holds a place in my heart.
October 17:
The Lords of Salem (2012) I have owned but not watched this film for a quite a few years now, I just don't seem to connect well to Rob Zombie films. It is not that they are particularly awful, but more that often I find the blackness of his ideas not very interesting. Often cruel and unforgiving with little hope of a character redeeming himself / herself his films are always a bit to bleak for this reviewer. Lords of Salem can probably be said to be the most complete plot of any of his films. It is the story of a curse put on the descendants of the original occupants of Salem MA by a coven of witches burned at the stake in the witch trials. The main character Heidi Hawethorne (Sheri Moon Zombie) is the pivotal descendant and bring the reckoning of the curse in modern Salem. The character a reformed druggie local radio personality is enticed to bring about the revenge on her kind through a vinyl record she receives at the station by "The Lords". Playing said record over the airwaves initiates a change in the descendants where they are then compelled to attend a show featuring the Lords? The witches seem to possess some of the older women in Heidi's life moving her to the inevitable even where the curse can be fulfilled with the deaths of the founder's heirs. Crass, vulgar and oddly ugly this is yet another Rob Zombie film I had trouble connecting to. Although it tells a story that at least clear in its intent, how it gets to its conclusion becomes muddles in operatic flamboyance. Filmed in Salem it was cool to see the streets I recently walked but Zombie has a way of making everything look dirty. His aesthetic is grimy, his characters often unlikable and his outlook nihilistic.
That sets the clock running and the group into motion. We get the exposition about the house and former owner and possibly current ghost. We get the story from Fischer of the injuries to the group he participated in in 1953 and how he shut down his abilities as a medium to survive. The film takes the approach that ghosts and psychics are real and that they are really trying to figure out what energy (entity) is so angry in the house and how to clear it. Now there are some good and bad parts to the plot. Pitting the skeptic Barrett against the true believer Tanner works in keeping the viewer from totally falling on the side of real ghosts. Of course that come at a cost. Tanner and Ann Barrett (Gayle Hunnicutt) are the only two woman in the cast and the majority of the ghostly incidents take place with them. The men thinking that maybe the women are a bit loony and imagining the occurrences is a tired patriarchal trope that really has not place in today's world but was as we see here still being exercised in film making in the seventies. In fact it would probably be infuriating to today's society to base a theme of a film in maybe the women are being hysterical. Problematic depictions aside when the plot is fully exercise it might be satisfying for woman to realized that all the haunting has more to do with an undying male ego more than any other reason.
The science in this film is as fanciful as the ghostly incidents and is really there as a device to pull off a sleight of hand in the plot. So did the anti ghost device clear the energy from the house? It sure looked that way at first but then after barely registering as a character of any use Fischer gets his big awakening scene where he confronts the massive ghostly ego of Belasco and apparently that confrontation is enough to end the haunting. What can we call this? A Napoleon complex haunting? The ending fell really flat with this viewer, leaving me laughing at the share simplicity of the haunting. I am not sure this film holds up well over the decades but even so it was one of the first horror movies I think I saw as a child so it still holds a place in my heart.
October 17:
The Lords of Salem (2012) I have owned but not watched this film for a quite a few years now, I just don't seem to connect well to Rob Zombie films. It is not that they are particularly awful, but more that often I find the blackness of his ideas not very interesting. Often cruel and unforgiving with little hope of a character redeeming himself / herself his films are always a bit to bleak for this reviewer. Lords of Salem can probably be said to be the most complete plot of any of his films. It is the story of a curse put on the descendants of the original occupants of Salem MA by a coven of witches burned at the stake in the witch trials. The main character Heidi Hawethorne (Sheri Moon Zombie) is the pivotal descendant and bring the reckoning of the curse in modern Salem. The character a reformed druggie local radio personality is enticed to bring about the revenge on her kind through a vinyl record she receives at the station by "The Lords". Playing said record over the airwaves initiates a change in the descendants where they are then compelled to attend a show featuring the Lords? The witches seem to possess some of the older women in Heidi's life moving her to the inevitable even where the curse can be fulfilled with the deaths of the founder's heirs. Crass, vulgar and oddly ugly this is yet another Rob Zombie film I had trouble connecting to. Although it tells a story that at least clear in its intent, how it gets to its conclusion becomes muddles in operatic flamboyance. Filmed in Salem it was cool to see the streets I recently walked but Zombie has a way of making everything look dirty. His aesthetic is grimy, his characters often unlikable and his outlook nihilistic. 
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