SR: Night of the Living Deadhad a docu-horror feel. It took place in our real world.
JL: Exactly. George A. Romero’s zombies weren’t big black guys with staring white eyes. They were ordinary folks. George calls them “Blue Collar Zombies.” He had real people eating human flesh!
SR: Oh that bit is awful—the cannibalism.
JL: Politically, the movie was so smart.
SR: And the protagonist was expendable. When that first zombie attacks the girl, it was like, “No, wait! I’m following that girl! Anything can happen here! What’s with this filmmaker?” You’re in unstable hands once that’s happened.
JL: Hitchcock did exactly that in Psycho. The movie is about Marion Crane, who is played by a movie star, Janet Leigh. We’re in her story for 30 minutes and then she’s brutally murdered and suddenly it’s about Norman Bates! At the time it was very shocking for the audience.
SR: Plus in Night of the Living Dead, I had never seen a movie with a black male lead alone in a cabin with a white woman before. That probably created a bit of extra tension in the audience, whether they knew it or not. Social tension.
JL: I think the gore had a bigger impact on the audience than the subtleties of the politics. Although the irony of the ending is hard to miss. Anyway, Sam, you’re associated with monsters and fantasy, but I get the feeling you’re not that big a fan of the genre!
SR: Well, I made Evil Deadjust to break into the business, not because I was a horror movie fan. I had not liked horror movies up until that point because they scared me so badly! My friend Rob Tapert [producer of Evil Dead] told me: “We can probably only raise about $100,000, and the only kind of movies that are made for that little are these cheap Italian horror movies for the drive-in. Can you make a horror movie?’
JL: We all started in exploitation—me, you, Francis Ford Coppola, Joe Dante—there is a long list. You knew that it didn’t matter how bad the movie was, if there’s a monster in it you could get it distributed.
The Devil’s Backbone[Guillermo Del Toro, 2001] An orphanage during the time of the Spanish Civil War is haunted in Del Toro’s wonderful ghost story.
GHOSTS
The easiest Halloween costume to make is that of a ghost—all you need is a white bed sheet over your head. I suppose this comes from the custom of wrapping a corpse in a winding sheet. Certainly, pulling a sheet over a patient’s face is a clear signal that the doctors have given up!
People who have lost loved ones are easy prey for “mediums” that claim they can communicate with those who, as Hamlet said, “shuffle off this mortal coil.” The great magician Harry Houdini, devastated by the death of his mother, attended enough séances to be appalled by the blatant tricks and scams mediums used to convince people of their special skills in contacting the “dear departed.”
The outrageous medium, Madame Arcati (Margaret Rutherford) in David Lean’s movie of Noel Coward’s comedy Blithe Spirit[1945] is not so far away from the medium depicted in Sam Raimi’s Drag Me To Hell[2009]. Both summon up the spirits of the deceased and both are unable to control the spirits they summon.
Ghosts are literally the spirits of the dead. They can manifest themselves in many ways. And every way you can imagine a ghost to manifest itself has been exploited in the movies. The Uninvited[Lewis Allen, 1944] begins with Ray Milland’s narration, “They call them the haunted shores, these stretches of Devonshire and Cornwall and Ireland which rear up against the westward ocean. Mists gather here, and sea fog, and eerie stories. That’s not because there are more ghosts here than in other places, mind you. It’s just that people who live hereabouts are strangely aware of them.” Disregarding his own voice-over, Ray and his sister, played by Ruth Hussey, buy an empty house on a cliff overlooking the sea. While they wander around looking into the rooms, their terrier Bobby refuses to go up the stairs to the second floor. One room smells “like mimosa” and Ruth casually puts down the bunch of flowers she has just picked. Ray and Ruth do not notice, but we are shown the flowers quickly wilt and die. Suffice to say, the house is haunted. The Uninvitedis romantic and frightening. It’s also one of the few pictures to clearly show the ghost that still manages to keep us in suspense. I recommend that you see it.
Poltergeists are spirits that cause a physical disturbance, either by making loud noises, tossing objects around, or actually attacking people. In Poltergeist[Tobe Hooper, 1982], the spirits of long-dead Native Americans, whose burial ground has been built over by a housing development, make it very clear that they are unhappy with the situation. In The Entity[Sidney J. Furie, 1982] Barbara Hershey is repeatedly raped by an unseen force.
In The Shining[Stanley Kubrick, 1980], an isolated hotel with a murderous past slowly drives its winter caretaker, a writer named Jack Torrance, mad. Jack Nicholson’s intense performance as Torrance is scarier than the ghosts Kubrick shows us. The most frightening moment in the film is when Jack’s wife Wendy, played by Shelley Duvall, looks at the pages he has been working on in the typewriter. All she sees are the words “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,” neatly typed, over and over and over again.
Many films center around a team of researchers investigating a supposed haunted house, with unpredictable, but always spooky, results. The Haunting[1963], Robert Wise’s movie version of Shirley Jackson’s classic ghost story “The Haunting of Hill House” creates unbelievable tension by showing us nothing. Jan de Bont’s terrible remake [ The Haunting, 1999] does not scare us because it shows us way too much. Another team of paranormal investigators attempt to unravel The Legend of Hell House[John Hough, 1973], which Richard Matheson adapted from his own novel. Matheson and Hough craft a rip-roaring shocker with an unexpected ending.
Perhaps the best known haunted house franchise in movie history began with The Amityville Horror[Stuart Rosenberg, 1979], a supposedly true story about a house on Long Island. The poster declared, “FOR GOD’S SAKE, GET OUT!” So far the movie has spawned eight sequels and a remake, so clearly no one has taken this warning seriously.
Movie ghosts aren’t always out to terrify or destroy. Phantoms of a far gentler disposition feature in Casper[Brad Silberling, 1995], a live-action movie (albeit with computer-animated ghosts) based on the Casper the Friendly Ghostcomic books and cartoons. In the comedy Topper[Norman Z. McLeod, 1937] the ghosts are not only friendly but, as played by Constance Bennett and Cary Grant, handsome, glamorous, and fun.
The Innocents[1961], Jack Clayton’s elegant adaptation of Henry James’ novella The Turn of the Screw, features a very fine performance from Deborah Kerr as the governess who fears for her sanity, and superb use of deep focus in gleaming black and white CinemaScope by director of photography Freddie Francis. When Deborah Kerr is kissed on the lips by Miles (Martin Stephens), the little boy she is supposed to be looking after, I defy you not to get the creeps.
Set during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s, The Devil’s Backbone[Guillermo Del Toro, 2001] is the tale of a haunted orphanage. This is the first in Del Toro’s trilogy of fantastic tales set during that period (the second is Pan’s Labyrinth, 2006; the third is yet to come). The Devil’s Backboneis a straightforward ghost story. The surprise discovery at the end of the film is who is telling the tale!
We have had sad ghosts, vengeful ghosts, mischievous ghosts, evil ghosts, and loving ghosts, but my favorite ghosts appear in the beautiful Japanese film Kwaidan[Masaki Kobayashi, 1964]. The title translates literally as “Ghost Story.” Based on Japanese folk tales collected by Lafcadio Hearn, the film comprises four, unrelated stories. With magnificent production and costume design, the film is a visual delight with moments of real terror. My two favorite stories are “Hoichi, the Earless” and “In a Cup of Tea.” A magnificent and (I’ve got to say it), hauntingfilm.