In this episode, horror and pornography become not so strange bedfellows in Ti West’s “X”. A love letter to 1970s low budget filmmaking, the movie blends humor, heart and lots of boobs to create a shockingly effective meditation on the complexities of aging. We’re going to spoil the hell out of this film today so stay tuned.
And if you enjoyed this episode, you may also want to check out these resources that dive into the specter of aging in horror films!
Recommended Reading: Read more
Director Guillermo del Toro’s 2017 film The Shape of Water was born from a desire to retell the story of The Creature from the Black Lagoon films from the 1950s. Del Toro had always wanted the Gill-man and the human woman he falls for to be romantically together in the end[1]. Getting to such a wishful happy ending required more than just a change to the final outcome. Del Toro’s updated, aquatic “beauty and the beast” inverts much in the Creature narrative, expressing changes in the cultural values and entertainment needs of audiences today. We are no longer expected to fear the monster but to sympathize with him and to desire him. It is the institutions of government and science that are now monstrous. Read more
The scene opens on a dark lake outside of Atlanta where two fishermen, one white and one black, are finishing up midnight fishing. The black fisherman comments that this area always gave him the creeps, ever since he almost drowned in the lake when he was a kid. “It’s shit water” the white fisherman comments. He goes on to explain that the lake was once a successful, self-governed black town. He clarifies, “A town full of black folk that were almost white.” He goes on to explain that whiteness is just a social construct and that the black town had gotten too close to being white. No matter how successful someone becomes, those in power will never let those deemed inferior to become truly white. The scene crescendos when the white fisherman turns to the black fisherman, revealing that he has no eyes exclaiming, “we’re cursed too.” The black fisherman is then grabbed by dozens of black hands reaching up from the water. The scene ends as he is pulled into the depths below.
The opening scene to season 3 of FX’s Atlanta acts as a thesis statement. Specifically, the scene of two fishermen, one white and one black, sitting on a seemingly peaceful lake hundreds of feet above a forgotten massacre, sets the tone for the entire season. It does not matter how much we try to hide, the specters of racism haunt us. While the entire season is worth commenting on, I will focus on three episodes in particular: S03E1 “Three Slaps,” S03E4 “The Big Payback,” and S03E7 “Trini 2 De Bone.” These three episodes utilize horror to portray white neo-liberals haunted by their own racism. Read more
Horror movie makers sometimes consider religion as a cheap add-on to a plot. Little do they realize that a carefully constructed religion can convey very real fear. The Wicker Tree (2011), spiritual successor to The Wicker Man (1973), demonstrates this distinction clearly.
The Wicker Man, released the same year as The Exorcist, had something in common with that vastly more successful movie. The main theme of both is based on religion out of time. Father Karras doesn’t believe in demons, not in the modern 1970s! Meanwhile, on the island of Summerisle, Sergeant Neil Howie is confronting revivalist pagans who will eventually kill him as a sacrifice to their old gods. Such people hadn’t existed, he assumed, since the days of the Venerable Bede. The seventies were part of the pivot period for religion in horror. Certainly, religion has been part of horror from the very beginning (Dracula and his crucifix, Henry Frankenstein knowing what it feels like to be God), but it was brought to the foreground beginning in 1968 with Rosemary’s Baby. Then The Wicker Man showed that religious plots could be transatlantic. The movie, however, had greater success in the United States than in the United Kingdom.
There are those who, growing up in the seventies, didn’t realize that Michael Jackson’s chart-topping single “Ben” was about a rat. In 1971 one of the most successful films at the box office was Willard. Apart from a remake in 2003, the movie fell from public consciousness despite its box-office success. Ben (1972) was, of course, the sequel to Willard, named after the main rat in the initial film.
The lack of awareness of this connection suggests that in wider culture the influence of Willard is under-appreciated. Consider Disney’s 2007 smash hit, Ratatouille. Both the original Willard and Ratatouille have similar layouts and, upon close reflection, some very similar scenes. Let’s begin with the socially awkward young man. In Willard, it’s well, Willard. His father started a successful steel mill that has been taken over by his shady second-in-command, Al Martin. In Ratatouille Alfredo Linguini, a socially awkward young man, gets a job in the restaurant his father (whom he didn’t know) started. Not only that, but the sous chef, Skinner, has taken the business over from the departed Gusteau. Two young men are both working in their fathers’ businesses, which were unjustly taken from them.
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