Ten Days of Terror!: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Film: The Picture of Dorian Gray
Format: DVD from NetFlix on laptop.

One of the problems of a lot of Code-era horror films is that they aren’t really that scary. There are a few that genuinely try to get there, but especially the Gothic stuff is more fun than it is frightening. Some really do go for at least disturbing implications. That’s absolutely the case with The Picture of Dorian Gray, a film based on the classic Oscar Wilde novel. There’s nothing here that would cause most modern horror fans to consider this much of a horror movie because there’s nothing here that is really overtly horrific. All of the horror is much more internal and much more subtle, which makes it so much better.

It’s likely that you already know the basic story. Just in case you don’t the elevator pitch is pretty simple. A young man named Dorian Gray (Hurd Hatfield) has a portrait painted of himself. Due to the influence of the morally bankrupt Lord Henry Watton (George Sanders), Gray makes a wish that he remain young while the portrait ages. This wish more or less comes true. Dorian Gray remains a young man while the portrait ages. However, the portrait doesn’t merely get older; it also essentially reflects the quality of Gray’s soul. As his physical being no longer reflects any consequence of his actions, Dorian Gray becomes more and more morally bankrupt and his portrait becomes more and more terrible as the years progress.

Ten Days of Terror!: World War Z

Film: World War Z
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on laptop.

I didn’t really want to watch World War Z for a number of reasons. The primary one is that I’ve read the book, and Max Brooks’s episodic novel is absolutely the best piece of zombie literature that has been produced, at least to my knowledge. It’s smart, it covers the zombie plague from several dozen perspectives, it offers real, human heroes and villains, and manages to be politically incisive as well as entertaining. The minute I realized that the movie was going to be an action movie with zombies, I threw my hands up in disgust. That’s not what Max Brooks wrote.

What Brooks wrote—and I can’t recommend the book enough—is a survivors’ oral history. The book posits that the zombie war is over and has been more or less won, humanity having started pushing back against the undead and reclaiming territory. The book is a series of interviews with survivors at all levels: government officials, children, doctors, soldiers. Each person has a particular perspective on what happened and survived in his or her own way. The story goes from the opening moments of the plague, one of the first victims in rural China to the clearing of the American continent, the rescue of pockets of survivors, and the continued cleansing of the planet from the undead menace.

Ten Days of Terror!: Killer Klowns from Outer Space

Film: Killer Klowns from Outer Space
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on laptop.

I should say at the outset here that I went into this with my eyes open. With a movie called Killer Klowns from Outer Space we’re talking less Citizen Kane and more The Terror of Tiny Town; less The Lost Weekend, more Weekend at Bernie’s. There aren’t going to be a lot of surprises with this film given its name. It’s clearly going to be at least partly comedy, and it’s not going to be the highbrow sort.

So, what’s the story? A town gets invaded by clown-themed aliens. These aren’t aliens that have something vaguely clown-like about them; these are full-on clown themed. They have clown hair, red bulbous noses, wear clown outfits, and attack with clown-themed weapons. These include a gun that wraps up its victims in a cotton candy-like substance, a gun that shoots popcorn, and thrown pies that are apparently made out of some sort of acid.

Ten Days of Terror!: 13 Ghosts (1960)

Film: 13 Ghosts
Format: DVD from Northern Illinois University Founders Memorial Library on laptop.

I do have a warm, squishy soft spot for William Castle. None of his movies were ever really that great, but they were pretty much all a lot of fun. Castle was the master of the gimmick, creating electrified seats, floating skeletons, selling life insurance to the audience in case they died of fright, and more. With 13 Ghosts, the gimmick was something Castle called “Illusion-o.” It was more or less a play on 3D glasses. At certain times in the film, the audience could put on the glasses and see the ghosts on the screen. I’ve seen the film both with the optional ghosts (note the text on the picture above) and where the ghosts simply appear. Honestly, it’s pretty much the same film either way.

Like most of Castle’s pictures, 13 Ghosts much more about the staging than it is about the actual scares. The ghosts here are pretty laughable, my favorite being the ghost of a French chef who is adorned with the most ridiculous comic mustache seen outside of a pantomime melodrama. I honestly don’t see how much of this could have been frightening even in 1960. No, like most of Castle’s films, this is the veneer of horror. It’s a carnival spook house ride dressed up with the supernatural.

Ten Days of Terror!: 28 Weeks Later

Film: 28 Weeks Later
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on laptop.

I’m always prepared, at least a little, to be disappointed in a sequel. I first saw 28 Weeks Later in the theater the weekend of its release. I had very high hopes for it, even knowing that there was little chance it could match the first film, which remains one of my favorite films ever. But, as I say, I had hopes. Ten minutes in, and I was fully prepared for this to be the template for how to make a sequel. Thirty minutes later, and I was ready to throw up my hands in frustration and disappointment.

It’s strange, because this film has generally received positive reviews. Rotten Tomatoes, IMDB, and Letterboxd all rate the film relatively favorably, and for the life of me, I can’t understand why. 28 Weeks Later is a film that requires everyone in it to be collectively stupid all the time. The film wants particular things to happen and the screenwriters, rather than giving us legitimate, character-driven reasons for things to happen instead make the characters follow the plot arc that they want. This means that frequently our characters are going to act in very stupid ways, often in ways that defy logic and protocol, so that we can have a new wave of rage-infected people.

Ten Days of Terror!: The Craft

Film: The Craft
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on laptop.

I’m not sure why I like The Craft as much as I do. Some of it is that it seems like the greatest culmination of the 1990s in a single film. It also has a surprisingly entertaining soundtrack that is also the most ‘90s soundtrack imaginable. I like the effects that are used, and I like the way the story builds. I also really like Fairuza Balk and I wonder why her career didn’t build off both this movie and American History X. For whatever reason, I like The Craft a lot more than it deserves to be liked.

I’m going to make the plot rundown quick here because I really want to try to figure out why I like this movie as much as I do. Sarah Bailey (Robin Tunney) and her family move from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Enrolled in a Catholic high school, Sarah soon befriends a trio of girls who she soon discovers are the school’s weird triad. Bonnie (Neve Campbell), Rochelle (Rachel True), and Nancy (Fairuza Balk) are into the occult, sometimes popping down to a local store run by Lirio (Assumpta Serna) and shoplifting a few items to play around with magic. When Sarah, who appears to have some natural gift at witchcraft arrives, the can complete something like a coven.

Ten Days of Terror!: Taste the Blood of Dracula

Film: Taste the Blood of Dracula
Format: Turner Classic Movies on big ol’ television.

Evidently, Christopher Lee played Dracula more than anyone else in film history. I think that makes sense. He also apparently ended each film by claiming that he’d not play the role again until Hammer Studios convinced him to take it up just one more time. Taste the Blood of Dracula is clearly a film in that vein, since Lee, the titular character, is barely in it and has only a couple of lines. There are times when this works—in Horror of Dracula, Lee is absent from much of the film, but he casts a huge shadow over everything that happens. Here, he simply doesn’t. He’s there, but in most cases, he’s almost a non-factor in everything that happens.

We start by watching Dracula (Lee) die. The witness to his demise is a merchant named Weller (Roy Kinnear), who goes to the remains of Count Dracula and takes his cape, ring, and brooch that has essentially powdered blood on it. This will all be important eventually, even though the scene is going to shift radically after this.