Who let the monsters in?

Back when I wrote about Let The Right One In, the Swedish vampire movie, I noted that it had an American remake, called Let Me In (2010). The good news is that the story has not been Spielbergified or otherwise translated into standard Hollywood tropes. The director found a cold and isolated analogue to the claustrophobic Nordic winter of the original. A few things are done better, a few done not so well. My favorite scares seemed to be not quite as good, due to changes in camera placement and cutting, but it may be that since I knew they were coming, I was inured to their shock value. (Specifically, they are the hospital facade scene and the final encounter in the pool.)

The film makes good use of CGI, especially in one sequence in which the protagonist retaliates on some bullies. In the past, such a sequence would have to use misdirection, clever staging and tricky editing to cover up the necessity of not actually injuring one's actors. Now CGI permits such a scene of personal violence to be handled in a straightforward fashion.

On the other hand, director Matt Reeves, the near-genius responsible for Cloverfield demonstrates a Spielbergian flair for a bravura sequence of everyday terror, namely a car crash, using a spectacular mix of real footage, green screen, CGI and composites thereof. Here it is:



And here's a "making of" sequence that explains how it was done:




The best news is that both films are currently available on Netflix Streaming, so you can do a side-by-side comparison. There are many worse ways to spend an evening.

My biggest misgiving about the remake is the title, which, coupled with the poster art, suggests words spoken by a potential victim, rather than the words of the vampire, who, according to standard lore, must be invited into a room.

But that somewhat misleading title puts me in mind of the only entirely worthwhile sequence in the lesser Val Lewton film, The Leopard Man (1943). The film shoots itself in the foot, horror-wise when it introduces the title leopard in the first sequence in such a way as to be no scarier than "Baby" in Bringing Up Baby. Then it meanders around with a dull detective plot for a long time.

The sterling exception is this sequence in which a young girl is sent out on a simple errand by her mother. It has been set up that she is rather fanciful and her mother rather impatient. This Youtube poster has put a number of shots together which in the film are distributed over a longer sequence, but it is useful to see this thread isolated from the other parts of the film. The climax in this clip, consisting of offscreen action, ranks among the top five fright sequences in the history of film, at least to me. As usual, the unseen horror is worse than anything that a filmmaker can picture. If you are seriously interested in film, you owe it to yourself to watch this:

A brilliant blend of cinema elements

I've finally had the opportunity to see a film I've been after for over 40 years, the original 106-minute version of The Devil and Daniel Webster, a variation on the Faust legend which has been traveling around in 99- and 84-minute versions as All That Money Can Buy, which isn't that bad a title. Having finally seen it, I'm wondering if I shouldn't substitute it for the rather chilly Citizen Kane as a demonstration of how the elements of classical studio-style filmmaking could be orchestrated for a stunning and complex total effect.

That would make particular sense since so many key Kane craftsmen were involved in DADW, including editor Robert Wise, sound recordist James G. Stewart, effects artist Vernon Walker, and most critically, composer Bernard Herrman, here earning an Academy Award for his second film ever. Cinematography is by veteran Joe August rather than renegade Gregg Toland, but August has clearly absorbed Toland's lessons in deep focus and strong sources, added to a penchant for chiarascuro already evident in August's career.

Exhibit A, the entrance of the devil, known as Scratch, from an unidentified source so bright and smoky as to suggest a back entrance to Hell. His musical accompaniment is an electronic distortion of a recording of wind stirring some humming high-voltage wiring -- extremely avant for the Spring of 1941 when it was filmed. Add to that the unemphatic fire effects of Mr. Walker and you have one of the devil's best film entrances in film history:



Notice the daring rapidity of Wise's cut at 2:23, harking back to silent film technique. Speaking of rapid cuts, check out this sequence as the Devil's seduction advances at a country dance. Scratch has provided the hero with a new seductive housemaid in the person of Simone Simon, whose film entrance is kneeling in front of a hearth that looks as though it were a portal to sulfurous fires somewhere below. Here he is tempted to dance with her in order to hold her body, while the Devil fiddles to a hellish mix of a four different recordings of the same violinist improvising to "Pop Goes The Weasel." Again, Wise goes to town, especially starting at 1:09 in this clip.



Take that, Charlie Daniels!

The supernatural elements, work of Wise, Stewart and Walker and the career-rescuing performance of Simone Simon also point the film forward toward the low-budget horror films produced by Val Lewton later in the 1940s, such as Cat People, Curse of the Cat People, The Body Snatcher and I Walked With A Zombie, especially in its use of suggestion and dark and light. (Lewton upped the ante with his use of off-screen sound to dramatize the unseen.)

The film is co-written by Stephen Vincent Benet, based on his own story. Benet was popular in the 20s and 30s for his use of American folklore to reflect on then-contemporary themes. The result for this film is an unparalleled mix of Americana, surrealism, theatricality, mysticism, horror and Christian myth. That might seem like an unpalatable mix, or at least a rather lumpy stew, but the result is completely coherent, moving easily from Daniel Webster's lecture about freedom to the hero's son straight into his pleading to a jury of the damned including Blackbeard and Benedict Arnold for the soul of the hero.

The only flaw in the film is the unfortunate necessity of substituting the incomparable Thomas Mitchell, who was injured in an on-set accident, with the more limited Edward Arnold, who despite best intentions, and whether through his own shortcomings or our memory of his other roles as a slimy business comes over as a bit greasy and pontificating for the role of Webster, who is meant to be well-educated but homespun (a stand-in for Lincoln, who was a very popular character in Depression culture). But despite Webster's titular billing, he is not central to the film, and Arnold is adequate, not terrible and does not demolish the film.

Let's leave the last word to actor Walter Huston, director William Dieterle (best known to me for being fired from The Adventures of Robin Hood for working too slowly) and most of all, Bernard Herrman, who really gets to show off his vivacious and sharp-elbowed musical voice in this final moment of the film, as Scratch considers his next "customer." The music looks forward to Herrman's classic Hitchcock scores, the iris-out looks backwards toward D.W. Griffith, and Huston's gaze into the viewer's eyes must have been bone-chilling projected on movie screens in 1941.

One good shock can be enough

Judging horror from the 1940's is a tricky matter. I grew up on 1930's horror--old grave-haunting monsters and 1950's horror--new atomic monsters. But the 1940's were delicate, perhaps because the audience was living through real horror at the time. It was an era of benign ghosts, of angelic and other fantasy assistants helping people get through--perhaps a projection of the guardian angels the people who fought World War II were hoping for--either to guide them in difficult times or to bring the comfort of time with a departed loved one.

This was not the time to be gruesome, and so the horror films of the era (other than Universal's endless monster re-matches) tend toward the wispy and fey. Shadows, footsteps, windgusts--these are the stuff of 40's horror, especially as exemplified by RKO producer Val Lewton.

Reportedly, RKO executives pressured Lewton to use Boris Karloff in order to push him toward more conventional horror. In an act of artistic jiu-jitsu, Lewton did indeed use Karloff; he used the actor better than he had ever been used before (or since)--as an actor careful of subtle and darkly humorous effects. Freed of the monster make-up, he is a literally barefaced scoundrel in these films.

True to their nature, there are not a lot of shocks in The Body Snatcher (1945) by modern standards. There's an interesting character study by Henry Daniell, who usually was confined to playing sneering snobbish villains, but here plays the protagonist. Karloff has a lot of fun skulking around and even killing Bela Lugosi (again). But the one sequence that is likely to grab an audience even today comes within the last three minutes of the film. Daniell, an early 19th century anatomist who needs cadavers for teaching purposes has murdered Karloff and assumed his body-snatching duties. As he races his phaeton through a howling storm, bearing the body of an old woman he has taken for his students, his guilty mind conjures up the corpse of Karloff, literally white as a ghost, clutching him in a hideous embrace from behind as Daniell lashes his horses furiously. I am not worried that my description will spoil the shock of this moment--I have been reading descriptions of this scene since my high school days and never seen it until now. Here's a good scare that still holds up.

Boo!

Attempting to address yet another gap in my film history knowledge, that is, the legendary RKO horror cycle produced by Val Lewton famous for suggesting its terrible subjects rather than showing them, both out of aesthetic conviction and budget considerations. These films, which were produced in the shadow of Citizen Kane and which bear its mark, at the very least visually, are also famous for spawning such talents as directors Jacques Tourneur, Robert Wise and Mark Robson.

Judging by the first I've seen, I Walked With A Zombie (1943), they are going to be hard to judge as horror films. This film was unable to raise the mildest apprehension in me. It was very pretty to look at, has one creepy looking dude, Darby Jones, pictured here and dialogue that is less stupid than in most 1940s horror movies. But it really seems to be a romantic melodrama about an ill-fated triangle with a somewhat morbid ending. I found the out-and-out soap opera Leave Her To Heaven way more scary. I could understand the cult following if the film was no longer effective as horror, but had some other remarkable elements to recommend it, but to my mind it really doesn't. It exudes a pleasant competence and literacy--but if we're talking about great "B" pictures, the most routine film noir holds up far better.

I will withhold judgment on the Lewton cycle until I've seen a few more, but this was not a promising start.