One of the films I am most excited about screening at the upcoming Brooklyn Horror Festival (October 14-16) is the 2016 French documentary directed by Fabien Delage called Fury of the Demon (La Rage du Démon). This is how IMDb describes the film:
“A documentary investigation on the rarest and most controversial French movie in the history of early cinema: a fascinating, lost and dangerous short film which causes violent reactions to those who watch it.” Read more
In Murray Leeder’s provocative short book Halloween, published in 2014 as part of the Devil’s Advocates series, he points out that for “a film called Halloween, there is remarkably little trick or treating depicted in it” (57). Leeder mentions two moments relatively early in the film in which Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis) does see trick-or-treaters—as she is walking to her house after school and then after she has left her house to wait for Annie (Nancy Kyes) on a street corner. As Leeder points out, the first instance, in which Laurie stands poised to go into her house, evokes a kind of nostalgia for childhood (57). Laurie says, wistfully, “Well, kiddo, I thought you outgrew superstition,” looking at the costumed children, who are laughing, clearly identifiable as children and walking with an unmasked adult.
The second instance is slightly more tense; to quote Leeder, “the anxious cutting introduces an element of menace that is echoed in the uneasy look on Laurie’s face, since she is now becoming more attentive to Michael’s presence in Haddonfield” (57). Read more
Guest Author: Cayla McNally
Please forgive my lateness with this post, dear Reader; I was blindsided to discover that Penny Dreadful’s season 3 finale was, in fact, its series finale, and have been spinning my wheels trying to write a proper send-off ever since. In my last post, I said that wherever this show goes, I will follow. I didn’t realize that it would fade into the black, where there is no following. So, even though it hurts, let’s dive in, one last time.
While the previous two seasons focused on creation, this season explored the idea of unmaking. The core group of characters- Ethan (Josh Hartnett), Vanessa (Eva Green), Malcolm (Timothy Dalton), and Victor (Harry Treadaway)- are far flung and left to their own devices. Forced to forge friendships of convenience, each of them makes a series of choices that hurtles the plot towards its ultimate tragic end.
Ethan is brought back to the New Mexico territory by Inspector Rusk to be tried for his crimes. He manages multiple bloody escapes, aided by his father’s goons and Hecate the witch (Sarah Greene). Hecate is hoping to sway Ethan to the dark side, and convinces him that killing his father (Brian Cox) and damning himself is the best option. Meanwhile, Sir Malcolm is followed to Africa by Kaetenay (Wes Studi), an Apache man who is determined to bring Ethan back around to the light side. Making their way to New Mexico, they follow Ethan to his father’s house. It is revealed that Ethan- somewhat unwittingly- previously led Kaetenay to his father’s house, where the Apaches killed most of his family. A shootout erupts, Rusk and Hecate are killed, and Sir Malcolm kills Ethan’s father in order to save Ethan from eternal damnation. Read more
The third feature film of South Korean director Na Hong-jin, The Wailing (Goksung) is his first foray into the horror genre. His first two films, for which he also wrote the screenplay, are thriller / action films, The Chaser (2008) and The Yellow Sea (2010).
The Wailing is a beautiful, lush, and thoroughly provocative film, featuring great performances by its four stars: Kwak Do Won as local police officer, Jong-goo, besieged by sudden vicious murders in his peaceful mountain community; Kim Hwan-hee as his daughter, Hyo-jin; Chun Woo-hee as a mysterious (unnamed) woman who seems to have some knowledge of what is behind the violence; and Jun Kunimura as an (also unnamed) Japanese “stranger” to the village, who becomes the target of the villagers’ suspicions.
Hands play a huge role in the horror film: there is the shot of the hand (alive or dead) grasping for its victim, the severed hand lying inertly on the ground, the detached hand crawling across the floor, with a life of its own—and the hand that has a life of its own even though it’s still attached.
So why is the hand so crucial to the horror film tradition?
Noël Carroll has argued that the notion of “impurity” is a defining characteristic of horror’s “monster”—and that one particular kind of impurity is “categorical incompleteness”: the monster doesn’t have all its parts, or is made up of parts, or is only one part: “detached body parts are serviceable monsters,” Carroll writes, “severed heads and especially hands.”[i]
But why does Carroll write “especially hands”? He explains why body parts recur in horror, but not hands specifically—and it does seem to me that hands (followed closely, perhaps, by brains) play a special role in horror films. Read more
taking horror seriously so you don't have to
