Crazy Scary

Films: Sien Nui Yau Wan (A Chinese Ghost Story), Repulsion
Format: DVD from DeKalb Public Library projected on big screen (Sien Nui), DVD from Rockford Public Library projected on big screen/finished on big ol’ television (Repulsion)

It’s April Fool’s day, which means that I’m watching comedies, right? Well, April Fool, constant reader, we’re watching weird stuff from other lands. Comedies would be far too predictable for this day. Anyway, there’s a need for me to continue watching films that are new to me and foreign films as well.


We’ll start with Sien Nui Yau Wan, known as A Chinese Ghost Story in the U.S. This film is based on a traditional and popular Chinese folk tale of a young man and a ghost who fall in love. The man, Ling Choi Sin (Leslie Cheung) is a debt collector who ends up spending a night in a haunted temple. There he meets Lit Sin Seen (Joey Wang), who is a ghost in the service of a powerful and evil tree demon.

The tree demon needs the flesh of men to stay powerful, so it is Lit’s job to lure men to their doom. Additionally, the tree demon has promised Lit in marriage to a much more powerful demon, and the wedding is in three days. Ling falls for the beautiful ghost, though, and wants to save her from her terrible fate. To do so, he must face all of hell with the help of a Taoist swordsman named Yin Chek Hsia (Ma Wu).

What follows is a film that either wants to be everything to all people or can’t decide on what it truly is. Is it a romance? Yes. Is it a martial arts film with amazing stunts and effects? Yes. Is it a comedy? Yes. It plays very much like an homage to early Sam Raimi films, particularly the first two Evil Dead films throughout. Some of the effects are wonderful. The black demon, for instance, when pierced with a weapon, reveals hundreds of disembodied heads beneath his cloak. These fly out and attack the group in a scene that is a bit disturbing.

What really doesn’t work is most of the comedy. It doesn’t blend as seamlessly into the rest of the film the way it does in Raimi’s work, and the comedy especially feels like a harkening back to much of what Raimi has done in the past. Whether that’s intentional or simply a merging of two similar styles, I can’t tell. Some of the pieces are funny, but they just don’t seem to blend well with the story the film is telling.

The stunt work is tremendous, though. It’s important to remember that while in this day and age, a lot of what we’d see in a film like this would be CGI or similar trickery, this is all real stunt work performed by real people. Much of it is wonderful to watch and performed beautifully throughout. The battle sequences, and the traditional “people flying through the air with swords” expected in Hong Kong films are certainly here, and they are beautifully done as well.

I’ll grant that it’s a good story—it was a popular Chinese story for a reason, after all. But I’m completely flummoxed as to how this ended up on this list. It’s fun, but I have no desire to ever watch it again, and see no need to watch it again. There wasn’t enough there. There are other more interesting ghost stories in the world (El Espinazo del Diablo, for instance), and more interesting martial arts films (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) to make this anything more than a simple curiosity. Sorry Hong Kong cinema; your actors may fly, but the film doesn’t.

It’s worth noting that the English subtitles on at least the version that I had are ridiculously terrible. Sometimes, it was easier to try to just follow the action on the screen than to try to parse the Engrish along the bottom.


Repulsion is a whole different story. While the film is in English, it feels very much like a foreign film. This is in part due to the heavy accent of Catherine Deneuve, and in part due to the direction of Roman Polanski. It is his first English-language film, and it feels like it. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s a true thing.

The film tells the story of the meteoric descent into insanity of Carole (Deneuve). A Belgian girl living in England with her sister, Carole works in a spa doing the nails of women with enough money to spend their days in spas. Her sister Helen (Yvonne Furneaux) is the opposite of Carole. While Carole is shy, retiring, and timid, Helen is outgoing and sexually independent. She is in the middle of a relationship with a married man (Ian Hendry), who attempts to be nice to Carole.

However, Carole is incredibly repressed. While she has a boyfriend named Colin (John Fraser), Carole shrinks from his touch and almost refuses to talk to him. She frequently forgets dates with him because the idea of sex, let alone intimacy, terrifies her. Helen, on the other hand, has loud sex with her boyfriend in the apartment, forcing Carole to listen in.

Helen and her boyfriend go on vacation together leaving Carole home alone. And this is where things start to go wrong. Carole quickly spirals into a combination of depression and insanity, where every noise is a stalking predator and every thought is of rape and murder. As she spirals further and further into this mental quagmire, events get out of control, leading to a terrible but inevitable climax.

There are two things worth saying about Repulsion, both of them conscious choices by Polanski. First is that the film stock is incredibly grainy and at times difficult to watch. I’ve seen grainy films before (Clerks and Man Bites Dog spring to mind), but it bothers me a lot more here. I’m certain that Polanski had a reason to place the film on such stock—as Carole’s world becomes detached from reality, so too is our ability to accurately see what is happening made difficult. Okay, artistically valid, but that doesn’t make it easy to watch.

Second, this film is slow. This is actually the second time I’ve tried to watch Repulsion; I fell asleep the first time a month or so ago. When things happen, they happen suddenly and shockingly, but part of this shock is that nothing seems to happen for a really long time otherwise. For all of the rapidity of Carole’s descent into madness, it seems like we’re watching it in real time.

This isn’t unusual for Polanski. The Tenant worked very much the same way. I guess for a film that has been selected so often as such a dangerous and threatening film, I expected things to move faster.

Why to watch Sien Nui Yau Wan: A cool, traditional Chinese story.
Why not to watch: You’ve seen it all somewhere before, just maybe not all in the same place.

Why to watch Repulsion: A gripping descent into insanity.
Why not to watch: A gripping descent into insanity and gritty film stock.

Pay Careful Attention Here

Films: Das Kabinett des Dr. Caligari (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari), The Usual Suspects
Format: DVD from Bettendorf Public Library through interlibrary loan (Caligari), DVD from personal collection (The Usual Suspects) on big ol’ television.


Before we start, it’s worth noting that both of these films are great, and both rely on a shock at the end that is worth enjoying if you’ve never seen them. Don’t read the spoilers unless you’re already familiar with how these end.

I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating now and again. I knew going into this that there were films I wouldn’t like or that would be difficult to watch. I haven’t watched things like Eraserhead yet on purpose because there’s only so much completely freaking myself out that I can handle in a given month. I’m sure I’ll find something along those lines in April since March has close to run its course at this point, and I’ll be good again for another six to eight weeks.

Additionally, there are genres that are more difficult for me than others. I don’t love musicals in general, and so I don’t watch a lot of them. In fact, I can probably count on one hand the number of musicals I’ve watched so far this year—it’s a genre I need to start working on very soon. I’ve done better with foreign films. I like foreign films often enough, but they require intense concentration. I should do a little better and try to get through one or two every week at least. I’ve done very well so far with silent films, and have watched probably a larger percentage of them than the number on the list warrants. Like foreign films, silents require intense concentration—I have to be mentally prepared for them.

Today’s first film involves two of the genres I’m less apt to watch on a given day—it is silent and foreign. Das Kabinett des Dr. Caligari is considered the first true horror film, but it is difficult to really call it thus. Like many films that came from this particular German tradition, the film explores ideas of fantasy and reality, sanity and insanity.

We start with a young man named Francis (Friedrich Feher), who is sitting in a garden with an older man. Francis sees a young woman walk past, not noticing him or the older gentleman. He claims that the woman is his fiancée, and that the two of them have been through a series of terrible trials, a story he will now unfold.

Francis’s two best friends are Alan (Hans Heinrich von Twardowski) and Jane (Lil Dagover). They go to a carnival where they encounter Dr. Caligari (Werner Krauss) and his sleepwalker, Cesare (Conrad Veidt). While Cesare spends all of his time asleep, he is capable of telling the future when he is woken up. Alan asks for his future, and is told that he doesn’t have one—he will die at dawn.

The prophecy comes true, and for the viewer, it is evident that the killer is the somnambulist Cesare himself. Another failed murder leads to a crazed local as the perpetrator, but Francis is still convinced of the guilt of Dr. Caligari, and continues to press his investigation, convinced that Caligari is the madman behind the rash of killings. To stop this investigation, Caligari tells Cesare to kill Jane. Naturally, Francis is correct about the identity of the true madman.

Cesare dies in his attempt to kill Jane, and Caligari vanishes. It also becomes evident that the somnambulist who stays in Caligari’s cabinet is nothing more than a dummy. And now the hunt is on for Caligari.

*** HERE THERE BE SPOILERS ***

In its own way, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is something of an extended middle finger to the audience, because it becomes evident when Francis finds Caligari near the end of the film that Caligari is actually a psychiatrist and Francis is one of his patients. Jane is as well, and she’s as completely lost in her own delusional world as Francis, and so is Cesare. What has gone before has not been a story of truth, but instead has been the ravings of a madman. We’re seeing his delusional world instead of the reality of the story that brought him here.

It shouldn’t necessarily come as a huge shock, though, because hints have been given along the way. We get a very realistic world in the opening and closing scenes, but something very different in the middle, the main part of the film. Nothing truly looks real. Instead, the world looks as if a child has drawn and populated it. Nothing exists on a straight angle. Houses are canted and tilted oddly, windows are an uneven shape, even floors and doorways are irregular, vague trapezoids instead of rectangles. The people as well are caricatures of reality. Cesare, with white face and black-rimmed eyes is from a child’s imaginings rather than reality. This is the world seen through the distorted lens of Francis’s madness.

*** THUS ENDETH THE SPOILERS ***




















In ways that will be revealed in the spoilers that follow, The Usual Suspects bears a lot of similarity to Caligari. Here we have an elaborate crime drama that, like many films, starts at the end. We see a brief conversation on a burning ship. One man we can see, who is wounded and another who is not. The wounded man is shot and killed, and the ship bursts into flame.

From here, we are taken in flashback through the rest of the film. First, we are introduced to our major players, and are taken through our truly all-star cast. Five men are arrested in connection with a stolen truck of weapons. In the line-up, each man steps forward and reads off a sentence, and from each, we get a capsule of their various and varying personalities.

First is Hockney (Kevin Pollak, an actor I almost always enjoy). Hockney is world-weary and beyond caring about anything, a man who has seen and done it all and is bored by whatever is left. Next is McManus (Stephen Baldwin, in easily the best role of his career). McManus is only slightly in control, apt to go off on wild, ADHD tangents at a moment’s notice. Third is Fenster (Benicio Del Toro), who speaks in the most unintelligible patois ever conceived. Fenster pals with McManus and doesn’t always seem all there. Fourth is the real prize of the line-up: Dean Keaton (the always underrated and tremendous Gabriel Byrne). Keaton is a former-cop-turned-crook-turned-businessman, who brooks nothing and is willing to do anything to keep what he’s made of his life. Last is “Verbal” Kint (Kevin Spacey), palsied, pathetic, and oddly proper. We get more of the same in the interrogations of the five men. By the time this scene is done, we know as much as we’ll need to about these five men.

The five men are thrown in a holding tank together, and McManus decides that it’s a good idea to get back at the police for this current indignity. The idea is to damage the reputation of the police, have a little fun, and make a little money at the same time. “New York’s Finest Taxi Service” is a corrupt group of NYC cops who happily drive criminals from one place to another for a large fee. The job is to catch a group of dirty cops in the act, cause some consternation, and get away with the money.

Meanwhile, back at the boat, there’s an investigation taking place from the FBI in the person of Jack Baer (Giancarlo Esposito), who looks straight out of a ‘40s noir. One of the survivors of the massacre on the boat is that very same Verbal Kint, who is now in custody at a New York police station under the tender care of U.S. Customs agent Dave Kujan (Chazz Palminteri) and police sergeant Jeff Rabin (Dan Hedaya, who should get more roles like this one).

Verbal talks at length to Kujan, telling of the attack on New York’s Finest Taxi Service, and the aftermath. This aftermath involved a mythical criminal mastermind named Keyser Soze. Soze is legendary for being untouchable, unknown, and completely vicious. The story of Soze’s past Verbal tells is of a time back in Turkey when a rival gang captured Soze’s family. Soze, finding the men in his house, kills his family, claiming that he’d rather see them dead than in the clutches of such inferior men. And from that moment forward, Soze builds his legend, destroying everything of those men, killing their families, their friends, the people they knew, and then disappearing to run a massive criminal underground empire.

It seems that each of the five men from the lineup crossed Soze at some point in the past. According to Soze’s contact, a lawyer named Kobayashi (Pete Postlethwaite, who is one of those “that guy’s” and better than many of his roles), these five men owe Soze a job for past problems. Their job is to destroy the cargo of a ship—the one from the start of the film.

*** IT’S THE MOST SPOILER-Y TIME OF THIS POST ***

It’s not revealed until the end that this movie has anything in common with Caligari, but when that comes out, it comes out for real. What we discover at the end, the very end of the film, right when it feels like the audience understands everything, the rug gets pulled out from under all of us.

Dave Kujan is convinced that Dean Keaton is really still alive, and that Dean Keaton is Keyser Soze. And it all fits. Everything that Kujan says at the end fits perfectly with what we know and what we’ve been told. But it’s all a lie. Dean Keaton really is dead, because Verbal Kint is really Keyser Soze. He’s the one who has been weaving the entire tale, which means that, once this is revealed to us, it becomes evident that there is no way to tell exactly how much of the story we’ve seen is real.

It’s a great story—a fun and entertaining ride, with exciting twists and turns, intrigue, and violence. And yet, like the story we see in Caligari, it’s all a sham, and likely, all coming directly out of the head of Verbal/Keyser.

*** NO MORE SPOILERS FOR TODAY ***

Movies can be wonderful things. At some level, all movies, even those based on real life, are little trips into another world. Sometimes, as with these films, our trip into that other world takes a few additional twists and turns before that world comes to an end for us.

Both of these films can be infuriating, but both are also worth that risk.

Why to watch Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari: It’s where horror movies, psychodrama, and a great deal of thrillers came from.
Why not to watch: A long-dead director can still tweak you.

Why to watch The Usual Suspects: A ripping yarn like no other
Why not to watch: The holiest of holy shit endings that might really piss you off.

How to Make a Scary Film

Film: The Haunting
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library through interlibrary loan on big ol’ television.


The world is filled with movies, and many of those movies are bad. There are probably more bad comedies than any other genre. Coming in second is undoubtedly bad horror movies. It’s not that difficult to gross people out or make them jump, but to really inflict terror on an audience is incredibly difficult. There’s a reason that great horror movies are treasured by those who love a good scare. It’s not just the visceral thrill—it’s also the fact that it’s so rare.

One of the standout examples of a truly magnificent horror film is Robert Wise’s The Haunting from 1963. This is a film that exudes more atmosphere than any ten slasher movies or knock-off alleged scary films. The Haunting is a relatively low-budget film, contains almost no special effects, and has only five actors who are in the film for any length of time. There is no giant monster, no ghost, no dude in a rubber suit. Nada. And yet this is one of the scariest film experiences ever created.

The film is based on the Shirley Jackson novel “The Haunting of Hill House.” A researcher into psychic phenomena, Dr. John Markway (Richard Johnson), has rented a house reported to be cursed since the time of its building. Several people have died around the house, and always in terrible or unusual circumstances. His goal is to discover a true psychic phenomenon, a true ghostly occurrence or spiritual sighting.

To help him, he enlists three people. The first is Eleanor “Nell” Lance (Julie Harris), a frail woman who can sense the presence of spirits. Nell has little life experience, having spent the last decade caring for her ailing, overbearing mother. The recent loss of her mother has left Nell particularly fragile, in no small part because Nell’s sister, who she lives with, blames her for the mother’s death. The second arrival is Theodora (Claire Bloom), who has no last name, at least publicly. Theo is a witch of sorts, and also something of a sensitive. Third is Luke Sanderson (Russ Tamblyn), a skeptic who hopes to inherit Hill House some day.

Almost immediately, strange happenings start around the house. Noises that only some of the people hear, terrifying thumping footsteps, doorknobs moving on their own, and voices all begin to plague the new tenants. Particularly affected is Eleanor, who is more sensitive to such things than she thought. Eleanor herself is strangely attracted to Hill House just as she is completely terrified by it. While frightened of the terror and unexplainable noises, Eleanor, for the first time, feels as if she belongs somewhere. She is also attracted to Markway, and is disturbed when his wife, Grace (Lois Maxwell) appears.

Much of the film takes place in Eleanor’s head in the form of her thoughts. These start merely as her thoughts but quickly become more and more disturbing. One of her final voiceover segments is brilliantly directed, particularly for the time in which the film was created. While Luke, Theo, and Dr. Markway argue, they slowly fade into black while Eleanor is brightly lit. Her inner monologue begins, and the voices of the others drown out.

Robert Wise, who began his career doing uncredited filming on Orson Welles’s The Magnificent Ambersons, is perhaps better known for his musicals West Side Story and The Sound of Music. As will be apparent when I get to that particular film, I dislike musicals in general and that one in specific with a burning passion. However, The Haunting is so good, and so good specifically because of the direction and genius of Robert Wise that I can forgive him Austrian children singing about deer and sunshine.

What makes the film so good is precisely the fact that nothing is ever shown. The closest we get to a real spook is a rickety spiral staircase, a few statues, and some bulging woodwork. All of the scares here are done with magnificent camera work and incredible use of sound. There is truly only one great jump moment, and this comes very near the end of the film. Despite this, the film is oppressively frightening. Wise uses camera angles and tricks to convey the fear and paranoia of the people in the house.

True terror is nearly impossible to achieve in any audience. Scare ‘em, sure, but to genuinely create a feeling of dread and paranoia in the people watching the film is difficult, and because of this, the gold standard for horror movies. If you can truly get your audience to feel as if their own life is haunted during the watching of your film, you have succeeded in no small respect, and that is what Wise does here.

One of my favorite movies of all time, El Espinazo del Diablo, begins with a line about the nature of the spiritual visitors who plague Eleanor: “What is a ghost? A tragedy condemned to repeat itself time and again? An instant of pain, perhaps. Something dead which still seems to be alive. An emotion suspended in time. Like a blurred photograph. Like an insect trapped in amber.” Hill House seems to be all these things, but my favorite of these is “an emotion suspended in time.” Hill House wants Eleanor, just as Eleanor’s mother wanted her, just as former resident Abigail Crain wanted her caretaker. Hill House, and Eleanor, and the film itself, are all filled with pent-up emotions that both cannot be revealed and must be released. Is the house truly haunted? Is Eleanor manifesting psychic abilities to remain in the house and become the center of attention? These questions are not answered. Also unanswered is the question as to whether Eleanor—or any of us—truly belong anywhere, or are deserving of love and acceptance.

Special effects would have killed this film. What the audience imagines is always more terrifying than what they are shown. Anyone looking to make a scary film that actually scares someone should watch this one over and over. Skip the stupid remake. This one is the one that asks you to walk alone.

Why to watch The Haunting: True terror.
Why not to watch: You need to have special effects, gore, and a guy dressed like Satan.

It's All in Your Head, Man!

Films: Pi, Jacob’s Ladder
Format: DVD from personal collection on laptop (Pi), DVD from personal collection on big ol’ television (Jacob’s Ladder).

There was a time in my life when I was more than good at math. In high school, I studied calculus, and started college as an engineering student. Then I got to multiple variable calculus—pure theoretical math—and it was time for me to switch to something else. If I could wish for anything, it’s that I understood math better than I do.

Darren Aronofsky’s Pi starts with the assumption that math is the center of the universe in all respects, that math can explain anything and that everything in nature is a mathematical construct. We follow the person of Max Cohen, a mathematician searching for something that everyone would love to find: predictable patterns in the stock market. The theory Max works under is that because math is the language of nature, nature itself is a pattern. There must be a pattern in everything, including something as complex and complicated and chaotic as the New York Stock Exchange.

Max is vastly troubled, however. The moment his is introduced to us, we discover that as a narrator, he is extremely unreliable. He frequently takes large amounts of medication, both in pill form and by injection, and appears to have frequent hallucinations. People appear and disappear on the subway, visions come to him at random, and there is virtually no end to his paranoia. A man with a bleeding hand appears in subway terminals, and at one point, Max finds a pulsing human brain on the subway stairs.

Max’s paranoia is evidenced by the extreme number of locks on his door. The locks are there to protect Euclid, his computer, which Max uses to make stock market predictions. Max is also disturbed by a woman named Marcy Dawson from a brokerage who wants answers from him as well as a Hassidic Jew who is searching for numerical truth in the Torah.

While making predictions, Euclid blows a gasket and spits out what Max believes to be a series of random meaningless numbers. He discards the printout only to later discover several important facts. First, his mentor Sol encountered a string of random numbers during his own research with pi, a string of about 216 digits, roughly the same length as the random number string Max got from Euclid. Second, he learns that the Kabala students are looking for a string of 216 digits in the Torah, because this number string represents the true name of God.

As Max continues to push for the 216-digit number his world falls more and more apart and he descends further and further into madness. The answers he wants appear to be everywhere, taunting him, and yet just barely out of his grasp, a fact that drives him on while it pushes him further into insanity, evidenced by the slow progression of the number of pills Max takes at regular intervals.

Frankly, I’m not sure what to make of Pi, although I’m fascinated by it. Much like mathematics itself, I find the film compelling, and yet beyond my grasp at the same time. The black and white cinematography adds a great deal to the film—this film would not be nearly as effective or disturbing in color. The fantastic soundtrack adds to the head trip as well as is the strange camera work. In essence, for me, Pi is what the secret of the 216-digit number is for Max; it’s just out of reach and I can’t turn away from it.

















As with Pi, much of Jacob’s Ladder takes place in the protagonist’s head. Jacob Singer (Tim Robbins) is a Vietnam veteran whose platoon suffered near total casualties due to a disturbing attack. Singer, back home now, is having a strange series of flashbacks to the night in question. He also has flashbacks to his first marriage and his son Gabriel (an uncredited Macaulay Culkin), who was killed in a traffic accident. More disturbing is the fact that he’s seeing distorted and horrifying creatures virtually everywhere, things that look like demons. Many of them move in disturbing fashions, doing that rapid headshaking thing which prevents one from focusing on the object in question. Despite his Ph.D., Singer now works in the post office with his current lover, Jezebel (Elizabeth Pena).

Singer’s flashbacks intrude on his waking life, and it becomes impossible to tell what is the dream and what is reality. The only solace he has is from his chiropractor (Danny Aiello), who frequently repairs Singer’s back and gives him advice to hold onto. Singer flashes between his life with Jezzie, his former family, Vietnam, and a nightmare world of demons until it becomes impossible to know which reality is the true one.

***HERE THERE BE SPOILERS***

I find it impossible to talk about Jacob’s Ladder without getting into what the movie actually means, or at least means to me, and this means getting into the ending. If you haven’t seen the film and don’t want the ending to be ruined , you should probably skip down to the end now.

The question to be asked when watching Jacob’s Ladder is what each of us will see when we die. The answer the film seems to be giving is that where we end up after our death is our own decision. Moving on means giving up on the life we had, and that clinging to life essentially tortures us and breaks us down. Jacob’s Ladder puts a new spin on the old “it was all a dream” motif, giving us a two-hour ride into a man’s mind as he decides whether or not to make peace with his life or cling to the scraps that remain.

***THUS ENDETH THE SPOILERS***

Both of these movies are difficult to classify in terms of genre. Neither one fits comfortably into any particular type of movie. Both have elements of horror films, and both are unquestionably at least partly psychological drama. Both can also be difficult to watch, although of the two, Jacob’s Ladder is both scarier and more rewatchable.

The human mind is a terrible thing to waste, and a very scary place to get lost in, as both of these films aptly demonstrate.

Why to watch Pi: It’s a head trip like no other, a disturbing, waking dream.
Why not to watch: You’re not ready to be more freaked out by math than usual.

Why to watch Jacob’s Ladder: An old trope given new and terrifying clothing.
Why not to watch: You scare easily.