100 Scariest Movie Moments: #83 The Others

It often seems as if the only way to get A-list actors to be in a horror film is to disguise the film as something else. This is a sentiment I can't relate to at all. If I was a star, I can assure you I would tell my agents “Yes, I'll do your blockbuster this summer. Yes, I'll do your Oscar winner this Christmas. But dammit, sometime this year I'm being decapitated by a machete-wielding psychopath!” Then again, that's just me.

The word “thriller” is frequently applied to Silence of the Lambs, as it can't possibly be a horror film about serial killers that swept the Oscars. In the same way, the period piece seems to be a popular method of making a horror film seem like a not-horror film. I certainly don't mean to bash period horror. Indeed, one of my favorite horror films of all time is The Woman in Black, starring Daniel Radcliffe as a 19th-century lawyer (and a single parent, for even more “I'm a serious actor!” cred).

That said, The Others is the latter: a horror film set as a period piece so that Nicole Kidman could dare to show her face in it. I can't help but think that she resented the project a bit. It's rare for me to be truly uncertain whether the contempt I feel is for a character or the actor playing the character. Personally, I feel that Kidman's character was written to be fanatical, but sympathetic, and she really didn't care enough to draw sympathy from her performance. Instead, we end up with the children being “protected” by an insanely controlling, religious lunatic.

The basic setup of the movie is that it's World War II. The father of a large house (Christopher Eccleston) is away at war, and the mother (Kidman) is trying to keep her light-allergic children (Alakina Mann and James Bentley) safe. The servants have all left, but new ones arrive (Fionnula Flanagan, Eric Sykes, and Elaine Cassidy), who seem very strange, and claim to have previously worked in that very house. Meanwhile, she and the children begin seeing strange apparitions. The house is surrounded by fog, and the husband mysteriously returns to the house.

Do I hate the movie? No, certainly not. There are far worse films out there, staring far worse actors. But, since I missed the movie's attempt to emotionally hook me, I found myself fairly uninterested in what was to follow.

Since I make no secret of my willingness to spoil, I enjoy the privilege of addressing the twist directly. That twist being that Grace lost her husband at war, killed her children and committed suicide. They're living eternally as ghosts. The things they thought were ghosts were actually the new residents, attempting to contact them. The servants are also ghosts, and are trying to help them find peace. Looking at the movie in that light, it becomes about the acceptance of their deaths.

To me, the real horror of this film is the idea that a person like Grace can be healed and become a loving parent. To me, the film should have ended with a rejection by her children, who should have left her alone in the house. Why? Because abusers don't change! The belief that they do is what drives the cycle of abuse in the first place.

Is this a terrible film? No, certainly not. It's a story not worth telling, that's told moderately well. The visuals are just as black and unpleasant as the film itself, and I find myself completely unable to locate a single experience in this movie that I have any real desire to experience again.

100 Scariest Movie Moments: #84 Blue Velvet

David Lynch has said that critics of his movies should not view them as stories. Instead, he says they should be interpreted as works of art. I've currently seen three of Lynch's films: Dune, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, and now Blue Velvet. Of those three, the “work of art” label clearly applies to both Twin Peaks, and Blue Velvet. (Dune was so awful, I suspect it to have been simply an attempt to sabotage his own career so that he wouldn't have to direct any more blockbusters).

I was actually a bit surprised however that Blue Velvet did have a story I could follow. Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan), while visiting his hospitalized father, finds an ear in a vacant lot, and takes it to the police. He encounters an old flame (Laura Dern), the daughter of a detective (George Dickerson), who tells him that a local singer, Dorothy (Isabella Rosellini) may be somehow involved in the case. It's eventually revealed that her son and husband (from whom the ear was taken) are being held hostage by a man named Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper), who uses them to extort sexual favors from Dorothy.

Frank is an utter sociopath. Sexually, I'm not sure what to call him. He's clearly a sadist, but he also engages in age-play as a child at times. Dorothy is suicidal, but can't kill herself because Frank would retaliate by killing her husband and son. Meanwhile, Jeffrey clearly has kinky urges towards Dorothy, but doesn't understand how to separate them from the kind of sociopathy Frank displays, and Dorothy's self-destructive nature makes her of no help in this endeavor. He wants to bring Dorothy under control, and destroy Frank.

I think an argument can be made that Dennis Hopper's performance as Frank is genuinely more terrifying than Heath Ledger as the Joker. For all of his talk of chaos, Ledger's Joker always clearly had some intent behind his actions. Frank, on the other hand, genuinely seems to be making it up moment-to-moment. While listening to the song “In Dreams” he speaks the lyrics. I'm sure Lynch had some deeper meaning intended for that particular song, but to me it simply emphasized how Frank was practically in another world, even while he was doing truly horrifying things.

Isabella Rosellini's role has been controversial, due to the graphic nature of the violence portrayed against her. Certainly, we could break out the old “this is not an accurate portrayal of BDSM!” argument against this film. But unlike 50 Shades of Grey, this movie has no delusions of what it's showing us. It isn't trying to portray BDSM, it's trying to portray a monster preying on an emotionally unstable woman. Above all, Rosellini succeeds in convincing us that she's the kind of person who would have resulted from the manipulations of a predator like Frank.

I have surprisingly little to say about Jeffrey, but I think that's intentional. He's our white bread, All-American hero, come to save the girl. I'd argue that he's a repressed Dominant, seeking to “fix” Dorothy. He wants power over her so that he can do good with it. But, he's repressed enough in this manner that he still serves as an audience surrogate.

I'd discourage anyone who has a problem with sexual violence from seeing this film. That said, it is indeed good at what it is. So if you want to see something horrifying, yet sexy, then see this.

100 Scariest Movie Moments: #85 Blood and Black Lace

I'm honestly not sure how much I have to say about Blood and Black Lace. I watched it twice, once in Italian with subtitles, and once in English. For the former viewing, the subtitles were poorly done and blended in with the background. For the latter viewing, everyone seemed to be whispering due to the disk being too scratched up for my PS2, forcing me to watch it on my computer. Finally, I just pulled up Wikipedia, and read the entry to make sure I was able to understand the plot.

The basic premise of this movie is that a model at a fashion house (Francesca Ungaro) is murdered, and the police want her diary as evidence. The other models find out that the diary reveals numerous dark secrets of the house. So the diary changes hands among people who don't want their dirty laundry coming out, and the masked killer returns to try to find it by killing and torturing whoever currently has it.

Meanwhile, we also see an Inspector (Thomas Reiner) uselessly investigating the murder. I don't think the Inspector was intended to be incompetent. Rather, I think he was supposed to believe that he was in a traditional police story, rather than a slasher film, and be rendered ineffective by that. I would compare him to the wife from Citizen Kane: not actually “bad” per say, but out of his element and his normal range of talents.

The murders themselves are effective. The director does a good job of showing the human suffering of those who are dying. This is constantly offset, however, by the fact that even having read Wikipedia, I found it very difficult to care what was going on, or who any of these people were. I never found the story of “if this diary gets out, it will create a scandal!” to be all that pressing. I'm sure that if I were in the situation, it would seem urgent to me, but obviously I'm not.

It's hard for me to say why this bothered me. Many horror films have shoe-string plots that exist only to justify the murder. But, somehow this film gave me the feeling that director Mario Bava actually expected me to care. So, on that basis, I have to say that, no, I really don't care about this particular storyline at all.

So, aside from the actual killings, I see little to recommend about this movie. If you like Italian horror, then maybe the style will be more enjoyable, and maybe you'll find the plot more interesting. Stylistically, the movie definitely reminded me of Suspiria, but without the level of style that makes the plot completely irrelevant to a viewing of Suspiria. To me though, this is just kind of a movie that exists, and that I saw.