- Horror Movie - Horror Homeroom

Posted on February 6, 2021

Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde and White Monstrosity

Dawn Keetley

Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde (1976, aka The Watts Monster), directed by William Crain (who also directed 1972’s Blacula) is a brilliant example of the power of Blaxploitation horror. It features Dr. Henry Pride (Bernie Casey), a successful physician and medical researcher. The son of a maid, Pride has managed to work his way into the affluent white enclave around UCLA, but he travels to Watts to see patients at the free clinics populated by the neighborhood’s poor, Black residents. In a more psychological form of return, Pride’s research efforts are directed toward a cure for cirrhosis of the liver, the disease that killed his mother. Pride’s mother worked in a high-class (presumably white) brothel[i] and drank to dull the despair at spending her days “cleaning up the filth.” Desperate to find human subjects on which to test his cure, Pride injects himself with his own drug and turns into a violent white monster, one who returns to Watts not to cure but to kill.

Posted on January 20, 2021

On the psychology of self-directed fear at the movies; or, Can you fear your own fear?

Guest Post

I’ve read a good number of horror novels, mostly modern classics like Rosemary’s Baby, The Shining, The Exorcist, and The Haunting of Hill House. They are all frightening works of fiction, but I haven’t lost much sleep over them. It’s different with horror films. They really freak me out. But I like much of what they have to offer, so I’ll come up with any number of excuses to get my wife to watch them with me. That way I won’t have to stick it out alone.

At least I’m not alone in feeling like this. Most people find horror films more frightening than horror literature. This is presumably because horror films can audiovisually represent cues to danger, such as needly fangs, rotting flesh, and loud noises—and humans have evolved to be sensitive to such cues (Clasen, 2017). By contrast, horror literature has to rely on the reader’s readiness and ability to picture the monster and imagine what it sounds like. To be sure, some readers’ imaginations are plenty scary, but even the words of a great horror novel don’t literally seem to be jumping out at you, whereas the cinematic horror monster often does. For this reason, I don’t know of anyone who can imagine themselves into a startle. (Of course, the reader’s imagination might potentiate a startle, making you jump at shadows, but that’s different.) Read more

Posted on December 23, 2020

Resurrecting Pet Sematary

Guest Post

Pet Sematary, at least at the time Stephen King wrote his 2001 introduction, was the most frightening book he’d written, according to the author. He explains that for any parent the death of a child is perhaps the most traumatic event they might ever face. The only thing worse would be if s/he came back to life, not him- or herself. Two major films were made based on this novel, one in 1989, directed by Mary Lambert and a second in 2019 by Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer. Resurrection is a frightening idea. It claws out of the ground of religion.

The entire premise of resurrection, to those in the western hemisphere, derives from Christian teaching. Among the many movie monsters, two revenants in particular—the resurrected and the zombie—inspire a special fear. Is it because religion tells us that at least the former is actually possible? Horror derives much of its energy from the fear of death, and the living dead of either stripe have religious origins and cross boundaries that are carefully guarded.

Posted on December 10, 2020

Freaky: His Body, Herself

Dawn Keetley

Directed by Christopher Landon and written by Landon and Michael Kennedy, Freaky (2020) is a thought-provoking and fresh incarnation of the slasher formula. It’s bloody, wonderfully directed, serves up great performances by its leads, and is chock full of references to other slashers. In short, Freaky is a fantastic experience.

As is evident from the title, Freaky offers an R-rated take on Mary Rodgers’ classic children’s novel, published in 1972, Freaky Friday, in which a mother and her 13-year-old daughter wake up one morning to find they have switched bodies. In Freaky, an escaped psychopath on a killing spree, the Blissfield Butcher (Vince Vaughn), stabs heroine Millie Kessler (Kathryn Newton) with an ancient Aztec knife called “La Dola.” They wake up the next morning to discover they have swapped bodies. The plot follows Millie’s attempts to persuade her best friends Nyla (Celeste O’Connor) and Josh (Misha Osherovich) along with crush Booker (Uriah Shelton) that, even though she looks like Vince Vaughn, she is in fact a teenage girl. Once she’s accomplished that, the friends set out to reverse the ritual and restore Millie to her body before it’s too late. Meanwhile, having quickly adjusted to Millie’s body, the Butcher continues on his killing rampage—targeting, in particular, all of Millie’s many high-school nemeses.

Posted on December 5, 2020

Repressed Sexuality and Guilt in Bly Manor

Guest Post

The Haunting of Bly Manor proves itself to be a true masterpiece in its complexity of characterization. A young American woman named Dani (Victoria Pedretti) takes on the position of an au pair for two young orphaned children at a rural English manor. In a previous piece, I explored how the creators of the show used supernatural possession as a metaphor for the “possession” that happens in relationships. There is, however, an underlying theme that runs parallel to Dani’s discovering her own identity outside of her lifelong romance: her embracing of her own sexuality.