Author: phil

   The fury of a mother believing her son was stolen
from her…later, left to die.  Her endless search for
justice—or maybe endless vengeance… going way past
an-eye-for-an-eye.

     A young father dealing with the loss of his
wife in childbirth.  He struggles to crawl out of the place
he has escaped to…he knows his son needs him.   But the pain
of feeling is nearly unbearable.   Now he is threatened with
losing his job—his work record has been poor since her death.
 He knows he and his boy stand on the edge of disaster.

     The last thing the young man needs is to enter
this woman’s world—yet he has no choice, if he wants to save his
job.  The house where this woman hanged herself needs to be
sold, and his law firm demands he settle the paperwork.
 “This is your final warning,” is how the head of the firm
puts it.

     The man, Arthur Kipps (Daniel Radcliffe,
veteran of the Harry Potter series) comes to a town haunted by
unending tragedy.  All Arthur wants is to take care of legal
business but he is unwelcome.   He cannot understand the
reasons all at once.  Everyone in town wants him to gather
the papers he needs—and get out—now.

     But Arthur can’t do what is necessary without
staying a while and investigating a house no one wants any part
of.  Everyone in town fears that the vengeful woman’s spirit
haunts this house.  If her spirit is disturbed in any way,
the town will suffer more tragedy; they already have suffered
deeply.

     Arthur needs to spend time there, with only a
small dog for company.  Some of these stretches will feel
like your standard generic haunted-house movie: the mysterious
noises, the ghostly figures emerging in silence, the white faces
of dead children standing motionless in the rain, the creepy
wind-up toys banging cymbals or shakingtheir tambourines at the
most suspenseful moments.

Arthur–no choice but to deal with the house and its
legacy  

     Yet Arthur’s character takes this story in
some new directions.  His personal tragedy (the death of his
beautiful young wife) gives him courage.  Whatever spirits
and ghosts he runs into, they can’t do much more to him than life
already has.  The house hasn’t got much that can really scare
him—he has a job to do, and he is already numb.  You don’t
expect him to run screaming out of this house unless it’s
something really serious.

Personal tragedy has left him with little else to
fear

     The irony is that people in town are exactly
right—any time the lady has a reason to appear, children will die.
 And anyone who sees her (Arthur the most likely)—spreads
death like a contagious disease.  Her presence at the house
is unmistakable—Arthur sees her again and again.  Just
glimpses, but enough.  The first child Arthur sees face to
face in town dies that day; she drinks lye before anyone has a
chance to save her.  

      Everyone is positive this girl won’t be the
last to die—Arthur has seen the woman,and this makes him a sure
messenger of death.

Three more children, swept up in Jennet’s spell

     You learn that the vengeful woman in black,
Jennet, lost her son to her sister, Alice Drablow.  Her son
Nathaniel never got the sweet, loving cards Jennet sent him—Alice
hid them.  Alice even got legal papers signed to keep Jennet
from visiting.  Later on, Jennet came to believe that Alice
left Nathaniel to die when their coach sank into mud on the
causeway between the house and the mainland.

       You watch the movie, and wait to see
who in town conspired with Alice the most.  On whom the
vengeance needed to strike the hardest.  And ironically the
answer is no one—there are no more dirty secrets.  At least
none that the movie tells you.  The
Woman in Black’s plot actually reminds me less of
an English ghost story than those of recent Japanese horror movies
such as The Grudge or The Ring—where an avenging spirit will hurt anyone it comes across,
guilty or innocent.  All it wants to do is lash out—at
everyone and anyone. 

        Arthur doesn’t understand all of this
yet.  He knows that Jennet’s spirit has found no rest…and how
the deaths of children in town took place.  All of them
appeared to be under a deep spell.  They suddenly stopped
whatever they were doing, and walked out of windows, or walked
into the sea.  The second girl Arthur saw dies by setting
herself on fire.

     What he does believe in is justice, and
bringing the deaths to an end.  

     He is searching for a way to make everything
right.  His wife’s death could have affected him in radically
different ways.  He could have become uncaring…believing the
Universe is uncaring; why should he care about anyone.

      Or his pain could have made him determined to
do the best he can, whenever he can, even when he is tempted to
slide back into not caring, to escape his own pain.  Watch
him put a tiny bird back into its nest while he explores one of
the creepiest rooms in the house.   Then a crow screams,
making him jump.  It lands on a bed.  But Arthur means
to do the right thing and let it escape—and he makes sure he does.

     Eventually he decides he must re-unite the
woman’s spirit with the body of her dead son…even though he must
risk his life pulling the child’s body free from the thick black
mud surrounding the causeway.  Many of us who have
experienced sorrow will later make a similar decision–we need to
do the right thing.

      The film-makers tried to find a middle ground
between the quiet, subtle, almost mannered approach of
The Innocents, or The Others,
and the loud, slam-shocks and close-ups of
Drag Me to Hell or Se7en.  
The shocks do tend to be loud in volume, but with hardly any
blood, let alone body parts getting chopped off.  Their goal
was not gore, but they did not want a stuffy period piece either.
  This is no Masterpiece Theater.

     One of the few movies I remember close to this
one was the much underrated 1979 film
The Changeling, with George C. Scott.  Like
Arthur, John Russell (Scott’s character) is grieving family
deaths, and like Arthur, he has no intentions of confronting any
ghosts.  But his exploring an old house frees a spirit
looking for justice over a past wrong.

     That story was probably a more traditional
one—revenge is visited on the guilty—and only on the guilty.
 Too many of the concrete facts are left out in
The Woman in Black.
 You are never told for sure, but it appears that Jennet
never had the chance to revenge herself on her sister.  In
some way, Alice was able to escape Jennet’s reach, her hatred.
 

     Jennet’s spirit became the proverbial
bottomless pit—no amount of vengeance could ever satisfy her.

      Many say there are no new stories to tell…and
they have some convincing arguments.  But there are not many
stories like this one; a spirit of pure hatred, face to face with
a character who has almost gone past fear.  An individual
struggling to find meaning in the death of someone they loved
deeply.  

     You don’t get a twist ending, at least not the
kind you have grown to expect the last twenty years or so.
 Instead, this story brings you to a conclusion that clearly
shows you what each individual carries with them.  Many
American Buddhists are taught some variation on the following:
Don’t look at the notion of karma as simply, “We all get what we
deserve.”  There’s a lot more to it.  You can look at
the ending as plain and simple…or something more subtle, that you
need to think more about.  I really don’t want to give
anything more away, to risk ruining it.  See it, judge for
yourself.

    Dead Silence sets its aim
high, especially for a recent movie.  The filmmakers clearly
wanted to tell an original story, not something re-hashed from
bits and pieces of other plots.  They wanted the characters
 to be more than obnoxious people having lame conversations
and casual sex before dying. 
Dead Silence also tried to blend a rather subtle,
ghostly, haunted house atmosphere with a scattering of violence
severe enough to give the movie an R rating, and an optional
Unrated version.

    This is asking a lot—making a blend like
that.  But Dead Silence achieves many of its
goals. It wasn’t a big box-office hit, although it didn’t bomb
either.  Still, this lack of success is saddening,
considering how many uninspired sequels…and even Parts #3-4’s to
various routine stuff are being made recently.

    What are some of the major goals that
Dead Silence succeeds at?  Let’s go through
some.  Story.  Characters.  The swings in
atmosphere mentioned previously.  Then the acting. 
 Ryan Kwanten, the Australian actor playing the hero Jamie,
never overdoes it.  Yet his love for his wife and his
unwavering search to bring her killer to justice give him courage
which shows in all his scenes.  In just a few minutes near
the beginning of Dead Silence, you get a sense of
two people (Jamie and wife Lisa) who have truly bonded. 

Miles away, many years later, the curse still reaches Jamie
and Lisa

     After her death, Jamie is willing to go
straight into Hell for answers, whatever his journey may
bring.  (A good example: the scene where the clown says to
him, “Come closer…”)

     Jamie and his wife Lisa had found a dummy
delivered to their apartment.  No return address. 
Thinking nothing of it, Jamie goes downstairs for take-out
food.  When he gets back, Lisa is dead.   And
suddenly Jamie is convinced the dummy killed her.

    Dummies started showing up in movies at least
as far back as Dead of Night (1945), possibly
earlier than that.  Even Anthony Hopkins, more than 10 years
before taking on Dr. Hannibal Lecter, made a movie with a dummy,
Magic.  Fortunately,
Dead Silence is not a slow build-up
leading to a dummy gradually taking over someone’s mind, with one
person after another telling that same character, “Oh… you’re just
letting your imagination get the best of you…”

    Jamie returns to his home town, Raven’s Fair, a
small, quiet, isolated place.  Years ago it was prosperous,
now it is rundown for the most part.  He already has a good
idea of what and who he is looking for.  As a kid, he and his
friends had heard stories and scary rhymes about a lady named Mary
Shaw.  Jamie believes there is a connection between her and
the dummy that killed his wife. 

    Mary Shaw, a resident of Raven’s Fair, had
disappeared years before, but she had been famous in the town for
her dummies and dolls.

     For years now, Jamie had been out of
touch with anyone in the town.  He never got along with his
father, had no idea that his father had remarried. (Bob Gunton, so
powerful in The Shawshank
Redemption as the corrupt warden, is effective as
the father.)  His new wife, much younger than Jamie’s dad,
hardly mentions Jamie’s grief, and generally seems a little too
friendly to him. 

    Mary Shaw’s memory still holds a power in this
town, especially for the undertaker and his wife.  As
frightened as the undertaker is, his wife is much worse—talking to
herself, or to someone else only she can see… hiding from time to
time in the crawlspace and basement.

   A New York City detective (Donnie Wahlberg) has
followed Jamie to Raven’s Fair.  He doesn’t have enough
evidence to arrest him yet but he is sure Jamie committed the
murder.  He also doesn’t want Jamie to bury the dummy. 
(Something  the undertaker’s

wife tells Jamie he must do.)

Jamie–Lisa’s death makes him follow the clues, even if he
must die to do it

     At last, the undertaker is willing to reveal
what he knows about Mary Shaw.  His story is similar to what
Jamie remembers hearing as a boy.  Mary lived alone with her
dolls and dummies, and was a skilled ventriloquist.  
Occasionally she did an act at a stately theater located on a
lake. 

    But there is more.  The undertaker still
has intense memories of the last show that Mary did.  He was
a sensitive young boy then, very polite, very respectful. 

    But another boy at that show was the
opposite—rude and disrespectful.  This boy criticized Mary’s
skill (he yelled out he saw her lips move while she did her
act).  Not long after, the same boy disappeared and was never
seen again.  Then several others from Raven’s Fair
disappeared too.  Shortly after,
Mary  disappeared.   Later, you learn that
it wasn’t the boy’s rudeness so much that angered Mary.  It
was his suggesting that her dummy Billy wasn’t real.

     Some of the plotting seems a little
far-fetched.  You generally didn’t see that much rudeness in
small-town America at that time, except where people had big class
differences.  Another thing; after all these disappearances
in Raven’s Fair, wouldn’t the FBI or at least the state police be
called in?

    But as unlikely as you would expect, two scenes
here are the strongest in the movie.  First the undertaker’s
memories of going down to his father’s workroom to get another
look at the dead Mary (his father was also an undertaker). 
Second, the old photos of Mary’s victims seated grotesquely next
to each other, their mouths mutilated.

    The undertaker is afraid to help Jamie more
than this.  Jamie goes to what is left of the theater where
Mary did her last show, and to Mary’s home near-by.  Here he
finds some of her sketchbooks, featuring designs for more
realistic dummies (very creepy, although the pages look way too
clean, considering  their age).  Jamie’s father also
fills in some of the story from years ago.   The rude
kid at the show was Michael Ashen,  Jamie’s great-uncle.
 Jamie’s family and their friends killed Mary Shaw.
  

Mary and one of her children    

Plenty more plot twists and turns are still to come.  But
perhaps the most frightening scene is only a brief suggestion;
that Michael was not killed right away, but slowly turned into a
doll by Mary.

     Again, it is sad that
Dead Silence did not do better in theaters (I
need to check out how the video has done).  Meanwhile, the
same director’s Saw, a much cruder, less
imaginative movie, has already been followed by one sequel after
the next.  I found it original, but not much more than
that.  I’m thinking I need to watch it again, and then figure
out if I missed something.

     After
Night of the Living Dead began to make big money,
many low-budget filmmakers tried a
similar approach.   Small cast, few special effects
or none, and a tight story.  But most are bad rip-offs of
Night, or of another movie about that time,
Deliverance.

    Deliverance asked disturbing
questions.  Basically this: You and your middle-class
friends/ family are alone in the wilderness when you run into
a savage clan of strangers doing their best to kill you.
You’re too far away to get help from
anyone.  How much violence will you take on to stay
alive?

    This movie is one of the exceptions among those
inspired by Deliverance and Night.   One of the real good ones.  (Another is
the hard-to-find Canadian movie Rituals starring
Hal Holbrook.)

    The Hills wastes no time
getting started.  The Carter’s, the typical American
middle-class family in The Hills Have Eyes
must make these life and death decisions—real fast.

   An accident has left them stranded in the middle of
the desert;   too far away to get help on their
CB radio.  The family seems in danger from the
beginning—the rocks and mountains look bleak
and threatening.  You can believe that
anything could live up there.  Stuck on this dirt
road (after swerving to avoid a rabbit) the Carter family
seems to be exposed and vulnerable.  Not a place where you
want to be stuck for the night.

   Little do they know that a cannibalistic family is
about to close in on them.  This family, with names
like Jupiter, Pluto, Mars, and Mercury, actually kills and
eats one of the Carters’ dogs (named Beauty) and captures
their one grandchild for their next meal. 

 Pluto (Michael Berryman)

In a night and day, the Carters’ will lose three family members to
the cannibal clan.  Now it is their turn to
fight…and they’re soon prepared and ready.  Just one example;
Doug tells the surviving dog, Beast, do your job–
kill these people.  And the Beast is ready to give
it his best shot.

   But it’s not only The Beast who is forced into
action.  The two youngest Carter family members,
Bobby and Brenda must use their wits to survive.  Not
only that, they are forced to kill at close range with an axe
after their booby trap fails to complete the job.

  Was Wes Craven trying to do more than to create a low
budget action/horror movie?  Without question, the movie
works real well on that basic level.   You just watch
and enjoy it for its plot and characters.  I don’t know
if he had something more to say, on a symbolic level, or if he
was just looking to create a gripping story.

     Critics have suggested the idea that the
families reflect or mirror each other.  Each does have
a father, mother and four “children.”  (The Carter’s
have two daughters, a son, plus a son in law; the cannibals
have three sons, Mars, Pluto, Mercury, and a daughter, Ruby.)

   Ruby is the one member of the cannibal clan who wants
a different life.  She will go to the point of killing a
family member to get free.   And she returns Doug’s baby
to him.  Otherwise there is nothing good about her
family…or at least none that the movie shows you.  And yes,
the Carter family does get caught up in the violence and
becomes part of it.

     But the screenplay and direction never
show you anything to suggest the Carter’s are
bad people, (except for some racist comments by the
father) or that (apart from Ruby) the cannibals

are good people.  It is more like a documentary
showing a family of buffalo (or some other basically peaceful
animal) fighting back to protect their young against some
predator.

  No doubt, this could have been a better movie with more
sympathy for the cannibals and less for the Carter’s.
But I don’t think this was what Craven had in mind.  More on
that later.

    The movie Deliverance was one
of the first to dump one more question in your lap before
walking away with no answer.  That question is
this:  Can you go into the wilderness and
kill people and then return to your old,
middle-class life?

    At the end of the excellent novel
Deliverance, you get a little of the hero’s
long-term reflections about what he was forced to do, years
back.  The movie simply ends, with no flash-forward.
The Hills Have Eyes also
stops short after the violence is done; you are left wondering
what will happen to the survivors.

    Maybe Craven’s point (if he has a point) is
that the answer is yes.  If you can deal with what
you did, and convince yourself there was no other
way, then you can return to your old life.

  But you will be a changed person.

  We hear the story of the Vietnam vet who says, even at
a birthday party where a dad hugs his kid and helps them open
presents; the vet can still see a man who is capable of random
killing, maybe torture, in the jungle.

    The vet has been there with people, and seen
what they can become under the right

conditions.  Especially when it comes to protecting our
families, almost all of us are capable of this kind of
violence.  But we pray that we’ll never be in a situation
where we have to make that choice.  The Hills Have Eyes is at its center, about bonds
between family members.   With both of the
older generation in the family killed off, then their oldest
daughter, it is left up to Doug to save his
newborn daughter.  As much as you have gotten to know
him, Doug is a quiet guy, and not particularly macho.  But
with his daughter’s life on the line, he is ready to turn to
violence.

    When I first saw this movie, I thought it made
kind of a positive statement about the typical American
family.  How they stick together in a crisis.  If they
(the Carter’s) had any other choices, I sure couldn’t see
any.

    Like so many Vietnam veterans were forced to
do, these survivors will try to put their lives back together
again.  (Craven had once been a war correspondent in Vietnam,
and more than likely the experience stayed in his
subconscious.)   To me, the movie has done its job when
you sit there at the end, overwhelmed.   Simply
not ready to give the future any thought.  That’s
for another day.

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    I had a lot of fears about being objective in
reviewing the re-make of The Hills.  First,
because people have a special feeling about a movie they saw
before any of their friends, family and co-workers—you tend
to over-rate it a little.  It feels like your
baby.  Because you get the privilege of turning people
on to it.

   That was my experience with the original.  I
remember not finding a VHS or DVD tape of it for years, then
finally spotting one and telling my son, “You’ve got to
see this.”

        When I saw that the remake was
produced by 20^th Century Fox I got worried too; Bigger
does not always equal better.

    But the remake is exceptionally true to the
spirit of the original.  Not that the story and characters
are exactly the same; they are not.  What I am happy to
say though; none of the changes are false steps, just about
every one works.

    Set in New Mexico, the remake focuses more than
the original on the atomic bomb legacy of the 1950’s. The
monsters here originated from the generation of miners who were
ordered to evacuate the area , but refused to leave when
atomic bombs were tested.  They survived the radioactive
fall-out but paid a heavy price.  Each was deformed
physically; most became cannibalistic maniacs.

WORK IN PROGRESS

    Witchfinder General comes
close to being the ultimate revenge fantasy.  It is unique in
other ways too.  Vincent Price gives possibly his all-time
best performance, working with a director who didn‘t want Price to
start with.  Third, it is about as grim as movies get. 
Not as bloody as a few, but bleak.

      For years, it could only be found in a
version prepared for the USA, retitled
The Conqueror Worm, to make it sound like an
Edgar Allan Poe movie.  (That version ended with Vincent
Price reading the last lines of Poe’s poem
The Conqueror Worm.)  Because of extreme
violence, it was often shown with massive cuts.

     Price’s reading is effective and the lines of
poetry do complement the story you have seen.   But
actually the story has nothing to do with Poe’s fiction. 
Instead, it was based on a novel by Ronald Bassett. 
Bassett’s novel is loosely based on a real man, Matthew Hopkins
who worked as a witchfinder in England during the 1600’s. 

     One of the people who produced this movie
describes Hopkins as a bad man who makes the people around him bad
too.  You could argue that Hopkins only takes a festering
situation and exploits it.

      A civil war in England filled with great
religious persecution already rages.  Different religious
groups (mainly, Protestants and Catholics) are anxious to destroy
other groups.  Hopkins gives them an easy way to do this, by
denouncing their enemies as witches.   Again and again,
you see Hopkins and his assistant Stearne dragging people away,
then torturing them or killing them, while others look on, some
with satisfaction,some with blank looks.

.

A world with all decency gone      

    Hatred, jealousy, religious intolerance all
contribute to what Hopkins is allowed, and encouraged to do. 
But is he truly a bad man?

   You can’t possibly see him another way.  The
movie never gives you the least reason to justify anything Hopkins
does.   He is only for himself, torturing anyone he’s
able to, and using the torture for whatever money, power and women
he can get along the way.  The script does not go very deep
into any psychological motivation for his actions; all he knows is
inflicting pain.

Matthew Hopkins–man without conscience    

Hopkins’ effects are seen most on the hero, a
farmer-turned-soldier, Richard Marshall.  The script does not
try to analyze Marshall deeply either.  He is more of an
Everyman in a Hell-ish place and time than someone you get to know
deeply.

    Hopkins is responsible for the death of
Marshall’s old friend John Lowes.   Lowes is also the
  guardian of Sara, Marshall’s bride- to- be. 
Marshall is torn between his love for his wife, and his vow to
kill Hopkins.   He doesn’t know yet that he actually may
have to choose between the two.   The civil war is
changing his life…too fast.  He has just killed for the first
time.  By doing this (shooting a sniper) he saved his
superior officer and became a hero.      

     But clearly, soldiering has brought out the
violence in him too.  He tries his best to resist this; when
Sara says to him “The army has taught you rough manners,” he
struggles to be tender with her.   But hatred for
Hopkins will make that impossible.

     One of the reasons
Witchfinder General works so well is that it
sweeps you up into this deadly desire for revenge…then clearly
shows you  the actual revenge.  It’s the classic case
of: Be careful what you wish for…

     Reeves’ outlook is a bleak one.  Marshall
is someone who truly wants to do the right thing.  He wants
no harm to come to Sara and to Lowes.  When Hopkins deceives
Sara into having sex with him, then has Lowes killed, Marshall
promises Sara to take revenge.  But again and again, you get
the sense that the world is not a just universe.  Already
it’s clear that it is not a safe place.

      In directing, Reeves works
hard to show the contrasts between the calm, serene beauty of
nature, and the brutality of people.  The movie starts in a
pristine forest—sunlight actually creating a cross between the
trees.  All is quiet. 

     Then, the sounds of hammering.  It is a
man putting together a gallows to hang a witch.  Soon she
will be dragged into this scene, with not a soul doing anything to
protect her.  Many in the crowd look happy to see her die,
many seem totally uncaring.  Nowhere do you see the least
sign of compassion.

       Lowes’ neighbors hate him and are
willing to see him die because of their religious
differences.  But if he has wronged them in any way, the
movie never shows it. Later, Marshall tells Sara she will be safe
in another town, Lavenham.  They find the same hatred and
bigotry exist there too. 

     To get his revenge on Hopkins, Marshall is
willing to put Sara’s life in jeopardy, actually see her
tortured.  It is as though his love for her has been held in
suspension; revenge must come first.  Sara gets a long,
intense look at the man Marshall has become…with devastating
results.   At the end of the movie, both Sara and
Marshall seem lost to insanity—possibly forever.

     Witchfinder’s director,
Michael Reeves, was forced to use Vincent Price as Hopkins in
order to get financial backing from the American film company
AIP.   The movie was actually produced by a small
English company, Tigon.  Reeves wanted an English actor,
Donald Pleasence, ( Dr. Loomis from the mental institution in
Halloween I and II). 

     I am a big fan of Pleasence.  If you can
find it check out the obscure Charlton Heston movie
Will Penny  (one of Heston’s personal
favorites) for Pleasence’s incredible performance.  A truly
scary portrayal, a man you pray you’ll never run
into.  I caught myself more than once, picturing Pleasence
doing some of the scenes Vincent Price was doing, and very
effectively.

     Having said that, I think that Reeves got most
of what he wanted out of Vincent Price. Price’s tendency to ham it
up, that slight wink to the audience; these are nowhere to be
found.  Price is cruel, unprincipled, cold as
ice.   But he never overdoes his performance. 

       A lot has been written about Reeves’
outlook, which is bleak, especially for a movie made in
1968.  As in Night of the Living Dead, you
find few heroes able to follow their ideals and show people a path
out of prejudice, festering jealousy, and apathy.  In this
climate, the few good people are swept away in the flood. 
They are quickly turned into victims, or blind seekers of revenge.
 

For a long while, Hopkins can corrupt all who listen to
him

  In 1984, a brilliant theater director and playwright made
the jump from the stage into movies.  Stuart Gordon was
virtually an unknown outside Chicago.  Out of all his
choices, he decided to make a horror movie, a decision based most on money factors.

Reanimator got a standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival as a midnight feature.  American movie critics had good things to write about it too.

Gordon’s movie (co-scripted with Dennis Paoli
and Brian Yuzna) deserved all this word of mouth.  Although
cheaply made, the writing, directing and acting were
professional and more.  You probably won’t think about
this until later—watching this picture is like riding a roller
coaster.  But to make the absurdly crazed story work,
everyone involved had to play it straight.  To the nth degree.  If you’ve seen Reanimator, I’m sure you know what I’m talking about.

Stuart Gordon; Despite a “too much ain’t enough” approach to
style, he is generous and thoughtful in his interviews

The plot is loosely based on an H.P.
Lovecraft short story.   It’s not easy to describe
Lovecraft’s fiction briefly.  His great strength was his
imagination—to see further and deeper.  Edgar Allan Poe had a
similar gift.  The years that passed between Poe and
Lovecraft were filled with scientific discoveries and advances.
Lovecraft used some of these as a jumping-off point.
For example his fascination with other dimensions.
Invisible to virtually all, but still there nevertheless; strange
forces, strange creatures awaiting a chance to break free.

Another gift Lovecraft had– the insight to see
the limitations of science.  In other words,
scientists might say– this stuff you’ve dreamed up:
survivors of the Old Gods, creatures from other worlds,
other dimensions, black magic, witchcraft, cannot be proved
scientifically.

I think Lovecraft would answer this way: Science has
its own limitations, it can’t account for everything.  No way
can our science disprove it either.

Lovecraft’s biggest weakness?  Probably, his characters.  Although many of them narrate their stories
in an overstated, borderline-hysterical tone, Lovecraft doesn’t
develop them much.  As generous a person as he was said to
be, he doesn’t seem that interested in the people in his stories.
He married and had women friends but few female
characters—the only memorable woman I can remember appeared in ashort story called The Thing on the Doorstep.

Gordon, Paoli and Yuzna had the imagination to
ask:  What if Lovecraft had pushed the sexual limits in his
stories as far as they could go, along with everything else?
What would that look like?  As far as I know, no Lovecraft adaptations before had asked that question.  The
Reanimator team tried something taking realcourage:  Take Lovecraft’s vision/imagination and flesh out the characters including their sexuality.

Hardcore Lovecraft fans may not necessarily like what the writers came up with.  But I think they would admit that to interpret Lovecraft in any way that does him justice, you need great imagination.  I think this movie does that…at the very least.

And briefly:  For all his ‘overstatement’
Lovecraft knew how to use a story to set you up.  Go back and
re-read The Rats in the Walls…how flat, how
mechanically the narrator tells the story…till the last page.
Crazy things happen–much earlier in
Reanimator, yet slowly but surely its story is
also setting you up for an out of control finish.

You meet Herbert West right away,  a
student in a European medical school, unsuccessfully trying to
bring a dead man back to life.  The authorities have a strong
suspicion West killed the man.  But they let him go, in
return for his promise to get out and never come back.

The next time you see him, he’s a student in
Arkham, Massachusets.  The staff at the new school is unsure;
is he is a genius, or a psycho?  What they don’t know is that
West is like a silent avalanche coming straight at you.  He’s
picking up right where he left off, and they may as well try to
stop a tidal wave.

West–egomania that rolls over everyone in sight

West doesn’t even bother sucking up to the
people in power at Arkham.  He’s about as far as you can get
from a people person.  West is interested in one thing and
one thing only—a compound he’s created that can bring the dead
back to life.  All it takes is an injection of the bright
electric-green liquid.  The substances West used are never
explained—you have to take his brilliance for granted.  But
for all his genius, he is the ultimate accident about to happen.

The first to be swept up in the tidal wave is
Dan Cain, a bright, kindhearted, dedicated medical student.
Dan is already in a difficult situation.  He is in love
with Meg, the beautiful daughter of the medical school dean.
Dean Halsey is a basically good man, but over-attached to
Meg, and an arch-conservative.  He’s always gotten along with
Dan, but would go ballistic if he knew his daughter was having sex
with him.  And Dan has no money; he is on scholarship, a
scholarship totally at the dean’s discretion.

From out of nowhere, West barges into Dan’s
life.  (To ease his money problems, Dan has placed an ad for
a roommate.)  In no time, West sizes up the situation with
Dan and Meg.  He blackmails Dan into letting him stay.
Meg feels intuitively that Dan is in deep deep shit already.

The reality is even worse.  Dan’s cat
goes missing.  Meg finds the body in West’s refrigerator.
West denies everything.  But days later, Dan hears
ominous noises and follows the sounds down to the basement.
There he sees West, struggling to get the now-crazed cat off
his back.

West talks about his discovery.  His
formula will work on lifeforms dead less than 12 minutes, and
their brain not traumatized.  He mentions overcoming the “6
to 12 minute brain death,” something Dan knows well.  (He
lost a patient, only days before; someone he was sure he could
revive.)  West’s words strike a deep chord in Dan: “We can
defeat brain death.”

Dan–in awe of the possibility of defeating death

Dan is torn between disbelief, disgust, and an overwhelming wish
to give mankind this great discovery.  He allows West to
inject the cat—again.

“Don’t expect it to tango,“ he tells Dan.
The cat screeches quietly, then loud.  “Birth is
always painful,” West says.

Dan sees that West is out of control—anyone
with a pulse can tell.  But West’s self-confidence,
his dream of  defeating death—all this touches something in
Dan.  He doesn’t want to lose another coded patient when he
could be using this weapon.

West reminds me of Hitler—a man who believes in the
purity, the ultimate greatness of his vision.  He will let
nothing stop him.  Humanity, individual lives are minor
factors compared to the supreme force of his will, translated into
heroic deeds.

Dan is like the German people who followed
Hitler.  They took a leap of faith in the man’s character,
because they wanted so much to believe in the greatness of his
vision.  They were desperate for someone who told them…You
want glory?  I can give you glory beyond anything you’ve ever
dreamed.

Again and again, Dan does his best to clean up
the mess that West (actually both of them) has caused.   He
ignores what he sees; that reality means little to West.
That West sees every obstacle life throws them as one more
chance to use his liquid and observe the results.

If you have never seen
Reanimator, you may be getting the wrong
idea—that this is a tragic story, a grim experience.  A plot
about missed opportunities, like the Hammer
Frankenstein series. But the movie changes;
slowly but surely its irony, its twisted sense of humor begins to
show itself.   Speaking just for myself, horror and comedy
are usually a miserable combination.  But every once in a
while, adding subtle comic elements does work.  The Howling (I)
is a good example.

The humor starts to bubble up to the surface
at just the right moment—West and Cain have reached the point of
no return.  West is confident again after bringing the cat
back.  Ready for the big enchilada…human beings.  But
you can’t perform this experiment without some major risks.

Their plan to minimize the risks means
sneaking into the morgue.  Then look for the best possible
subject—a body recently deceased, the least amount of head trauma.

And still, things go wrong…big time.
Their cadaver of choice, a big muscular guy, is suddenly
awake, psychotic, throwing the two men around like rag dolls.
Dean Halsey shows up at the worst possible moment.  By
the time the cadaver is dead again, it has strangled Halsey to
death.

West may be crazy, but he can think on his
feet.  And he has a plan—his usual.   When in doubt,
whip out the liquid and his syringe.  He injects the dean.

Halsey is back…insane but alive.  West
somehow creates an explanation made-to-order.  No criminal
charges (yet) for West and Cain.

They don’t realize yet they have a problem as
serious as criminal charges.  Turning Halsey into a lunatic
has opened the door for a sociopath who’s waited a long time for
this.  Dr. Hill.  Only Halsey held more power than Dr.
Hill, whose quiet, thoughtful manner hides a devious, sleazy core.
Hill sees West and Cain as enemies he must stamp out.

Dr. Hill–even his severed head is dangerous

Cain’s dream of benefiting mankind is already
evaporating fast.  What started as a quest for progress has
now turned into duel between West and Dr. Hill.  For Hill
it’s all about power and fame.  Lobotomize Halsey so that he
can never be cured.  Force Meg to marry him—he has always had
a secret obsession with her.  And steal West’s formula.
Two egos the size of Mt. Everest, about to butt heads

Much of Reanimator’s humor is the “did he just
say what I thought he said?” variety.  In one scene, West
injects his liquid into a severed head.  The head lies silent
on West’s table.  West taps it impatiently with a pencil.
The eyes struggle to open.  West’s  scientific
curiosity is unending.  “What are you thinking?  How are
you feeling?” he asks the head.

West–unending curiosity

It’s easy to forget how well-done the characterization and acting
are, in the midst of so much bizarre, nonstop action.
Gordon’s creative view includes this:  A movie can’t
scare you if you don’t care about the characters.  Meg,
played effectively and more by Barbara Crampton is one example.
You definitely care about her.  She searches for some
way to stop the madness that the man she loves—Dan, is getting
pulled into.  And her father becomes a near-zombie; you feel
her desperation.

On the DVD’s commentary, Gordon does not come
off as I expected… chuckling like crazy over his own ingenuity.
Instead he is gracious in praising the acting of Crampton
and David Gale  (Hill) under trying circumstances.
Paoli talks about the creative process; how attached he
became to West’s character.  How he (Paoli) could move his
story ahead, based on how alive West had become, in his mind.

I think the filmmakers’ decision to leave out
any tongue-in-cheek attitude was absolutely right, the only way to
play this.  They got what they wanted and I am grateful.