Ten Days of Terror!: Arachnophobia

Films: Arachnophobia
Format: DVD from Geneseo Public Library through interlibrary loan on The New Portable.

I remember when Arachnophobia came out because I remember hearing about how people liked it and I remember specifically not going to see it. This is not because I was not yet a horror movie fan. By 1990, I was very much a horror fan. It wasn’t because my girlfriend at the time (now wife) wouldn’t go with me because she is not a horror movie fan. No, it’s entirely because I was and am freaked out by spiders.

Before I get into a full look at Arachnophobia, I feel like I should more fully explain my own fear of arachnids. Before you, faithful reader, get on your high horse telling me about how useful spiders are and how important they are to an ecosystem, and even how many harmful insects they eat, I get it. I really do. I’m in full agreement. If there’s one in my house, I try not to kill it and get it outside instead. I understand their importance. They just freak me the hell out. I know intellectually that they are important and useful and beneficial. And they still make my sphincters clench.

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actor 1930-1931

The Contenders:

Richard Dix: Cimarron
Lionel Barrymore: A Free Soul (winner)
Adolphe Menjou: The Front Page
Fredric March: The Royal Family of Broadway
Jackie Cooper: Skippy

Ten Days of Terror!: Curtains

Film: Curtains
Format: Streaming video from Amazon Prime on the new internet machine.

There are specific rules for slasher movies, or at least specific things that we expect from them as members of the audience. One of them is that we expect there to be actual slasher deaths within the context of the film. In this respect, Curtains has some real issues with calling itself a slasher. This is probably the most bloodless “slasher” movie I’ve ever seen. I mean I’ve taken a stance against gore for the sake of gore plenty of times in the past, but this is ridiculous.

It starts out well, too. We’re given a director named Jonathan Stryker (John Vernon) and his frequent muse Samantha Sherwood (Samantha Eggar). Stryker has long wanted to make a movie called Audra, and has finally come to the point where he’s going to make it. To prep Samantha for the role, he has her committed to an insane asylum, a move with which she agrees. What she doesn’t agree with is the fact that Stryker decides to leave her there, because he wants to take his movie in another direction. Don’t worry; she’ll be playing a part in all of what is to come.

Ten Days of Terror!: Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Films: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Format: DVD from LaSalle Public Library through interlibrary loan on The New Portable.

Everyone has holes in his or her viewing history. A lot of those holes will never be filled, of course. There are just too damn many movies for anyone to see them all. That being said, there are some viewing holes that are more embarrassing than others for any number of reasons. For me, one of the big holes I had until now was Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Chalk it up to timing. My wife doesn’t like anything that smacks even a little of horror and in 1992, we were recently married. That’s going to make it tough for me to see it.

Anyway, Buffy is far more well known as a television show than it was as a movie, even if the movie came first. Still, it’s pretty well beloved, so I felt like I was missing something by not having seen it. After all, it’s alleged that Buffy the Vampire Slayer is everything you want in a horror comedy, right? It gives us an ass kicking female protagonist who is substantially different from the stereotype. In this case, our undead slayer is a bubble-headed cheerleader (at least initially). That’s the sell here—rather than a classic warrior against the undead, we get the leader of the cheer team.

Ten Days of Terror!: The Raven (1963)

Films: The Raven (1963)
Format: DVD from DeKalb Public Library on The New Portable.

I said not that long ago that horror comedies aren’t that difficult, or at least don’t have to be. There are more or less two basic ways to do it. The first and most impressive way is the make the film equal parts horror and comedy. Plenty of movies have done this and done it successfully. The other way to do this is to make no real pretense about the horror part of the film and instead create a comedy that dances on the edge of horror—something that implies horror without actually being horror or anything like it. The Raven from 1963 follows this second path. It wants its audience to believe that it has something to do with the well-known poem by Poe, but in truth, aside from a few hints at the start and an overt mention at the end, they’ve almost nothing in common.

Not content to stick with something contemporary with Poe, we’re going to jump far into the past, into something like the 15th or 16th century. Dr. Erasmus Craven (Vincent Price) sits in his study when he is visited by a raven, eventually letting the bird into his house. It turns out that this raven is actually a person named Dr. Bedlo (Peter Lorre), who has been turned into a raven by a magical rival. Bedlo is convinced that Craven is also a practitioner of magic and should have the ingredients on hand. Craven denies this, but then claims that his father was a wizard and would have such ingredients like dead man’s hair and evaporated bats blood. Two concoctions later (the first one brought back Dr. Bedlo but left him with raven wings), and our two magicians have decided that they must pay a call on the man who transformed Bedlo.

Ten Days of Terror!: Dracula (1979)

Films: Dracula (1979)
Format: DVD from Moline Public Library through interlibrary loan on The New Portable.

Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula is almost certainly one of the most adapted stories on film, not unlike Shakespeare’s Hamlet. This is not even including stories that are more or less the same thing as Dracula (or Hamlet) under different names. Of all of the various Draculas that exist, the 1979 version, titled simply Dracula as many of them are, is probably the first filmed version I ever saw. I would have been 11 going on 12 when it was released, and I’m also pretty sure that I’d seen the stage play before this time (or potentially around this time—this is decades ago, so the time is a bit hazy). Certainly I knew the story going into this.

What this means, like it or not, is that at some level, this version of Dracula is formative for me. It reminded me a great deal of the staged version that I saw in Chicago, which further cemented the idea that this is what Count Dracula should be and look like. Looking at his IMDb page now, I’m a bit gobsmacked that Langella didn’t have a long-standing career in horror after this role; I genuinely thought he did, because I associated him with horror movies for years, such is the strength of this role.

Ten Days of Terror!: Invaders from Mars

Films: Invaders from Mars
Format: DVD from Peotone Public Library through interlibrary loan on The New Portable.

There’s a part of me that loves 1950s science fiction because it has so many qualities that I admire. It’s so often campy without trying, meaning that it’s the sort of camp that has a chance of actually being good. It’s also so often earnest. Science is respected as being the source of American (and thus, in the mind of these movies, human) strength and power. The aliens generally want to destroy our civilization and enslave us or take over our planet. And, since this is pre-Close Encounters of the Third Kind, we get a good variety of aliens to attack us. Invaders from Mars, as the name implies, is right in that sweet spot of alien invasion, campy characters, weird special effects, and boostering for the American military.

One night, young David MacLean (Jimmy Hunt) sets an alarm for himself to do a little stargazing. After a mild, good-natured rebuke from his parents, (Leif Erickson and Hillary Brooke), David is awakened by a thunderstorm. Looking out into it, he sees a massive spacecraft descending not too far from the family home. He wakes up his father (again), who puts the boy back to bed and decides to go take a look. When he finally comes back the next morning, Dr. MacLean is angry, short, sullen, and otherwise unemotional. He’s almost, dare I say it, a pod person. David notices a strange puncture mark on the back of his father’s neck.