Wednesday Horror: Lighthouse (Dead of Night (1999))

Film: Lighthouse (Dead of Night (1999))
Format: Internet video on laptop.

When a list of movies—any list—is put together by committee, I imagine there is some negotiation that happens. I give in on a movie you want that I don’t so that you’ll give in on a movie I want that you don’t. With the Fangoria list of under-seen horror movies, I imagine that happened quite a bit. Sure, there are some good movies on this list, some that are really worth seeing and truly are more unknown than they should be, but there are some real stinkers, too. That’s why I’ve put myself in a position to have to watch things like Lighthouse (sometimes known as Dead of Night , a name that is not uncommon for horror films in general).

I’m not going to hedge here: Lighthouse is intensely stupid. For a movie that’s supposed to be one of the best horror films I’ve never seen, it manages to play on every possible trope that exists in the genre. It’s unimaginative, derivative, and clunky, and looks 10-15 years older than it actually is. There’s very little to recommend it. I can imagine what the conversation about putting it on this list went like.

Off Script: Deathdream

Film: Deathdream (Dead of Night)
Format: Turner Classic Movies on rockin’ flatscreen.

I claim to like horror movies, and I do like them. I don’t seem to watch them that often though because of the needs of this blog and my tendency to focus on Oscar films. “Oscar film” and “horror” aren’t words said in the same sentence that often. I’ve decided that I’ve been neglecting my horror movie lists too long, though, so I’m going to try to start putting up a horror movie review every couple of weeks. After all, this is supposed to be fun. And so I watched Deathdream, also known as Dead of Night today. Thank the Buddha for DVRs, right?

Deathdream has an interesting pedigree. First of all, it was directed by Bob Clark, who is better known as the guy who directed A Christmas Story. Less interesting but more relevant is that this is a take on the classic story of the Monkey’s Paw. We begin in Vietnam and Andy Brooks (Richard Backus). In fact, we watch Andy get shot, and as he dies, we hear the voice of his mother Christine (Lynn Carlin) saying that he can’t die; he promised he’d come back.

Ten Days of Terror!: Dead of Night

Film: Dead of Night
Format: Turner Classic Movies on rockin’ flatscreen.

As a horror fan, I’d heard of Dead of Night before today, but had never had an opportunity to see it. Looking at films of this vintage, it’s easy to talk about influence, and Dead of Night certainly has had a great deal of influence on horror movies in general and on horror anthologies in particular that have followed it. For all of its cinematic heft, Dead of Night is probably the only horror movie to ever advance science, however temporarily. The story goes that Fred Hoyle, Thomas Gold, and Hermann Bondi developed the Steady State idea of the universe as an alternative to the Big Bang model after seeing this film, and specifically due to the ultimate nature of the framing story presented here.

Like any anthology, we start with a framing story that pops in regularly between the stories of the film. There are five internal stories put together smartly—rising tension through the first three, a comedic spin on the fourth and then the hammer drop of scares in the fifth, only to wrap up the frame. Anthology films don’t always work because they don’t give their shorter tales enough room to breathe. Dead of Night solves this by putting most of its effort into both the frame and the fifth and scariest story. The first three tales are appetizers; the fourth is a palate cleanser, while the fifth and the frame are the main course.