The Amityville Horror

The Amityville Horror

1979

Director-Stuart Rosenberg

Cast- James Brolin, Margot Kidder, Rod Steiger, Don Stroud

           

     This haunted house pic, supposedly based on true events, definitely belongs alongside the other great Satanic classics.  The entity that harasses this suburban family is no trapped spirit or poltergeist. It is definitely evil and its demonic connections are delineated quite clearly; upside down crosses, gateways to Hell, an extreme dislike for priests and nuns and its avatar; a swarm of flies.

            

     The tension builds slowly. The actual scares don’t come until later in the movie. However, seeing the slow deterioration of the family’s father, as he is slowly brought under the evil’s influence, is as unsettling as any of the overt demonic imagery. James Brolin seems rather satanic himself at times as his eyes get darker and his jet black beard and hair gets wilder.

            

     Rod Stiger, who plays the clergy that opposes the house’s demonic presence, is a bit over the top and loud but it doesn’t detract from the movie’s understated nature. And it is understated to be sure, especially when compared to the disturbing imagery found in other movies of this genre. The film is more interested in the effect that the evil has on the family than on the evil itself.

            

     The unresolved nature of the films ending can be viewed as either anticlimactic or unsettling. Either way, the message is that the evil endures.

The film remains important because it connects to modern suburban anxieties; the blended family, religious faith, and the emotional and financial tie that Americans have to their homes. The home is where children are raised, where we shelter from the world and where lives run their course. Most Americans have all of their money and all of their possessions tied up into their homes.  A house is anyone’s single greatest possession but also their greatest source of financial limitation. People become tied to their homes, unable to leave without risking disaster. This family risks greater disaster by not leaving.

There were four films that helped create the Satanic panic of the 1980s; Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist, The Omen and this film. Rosemary’s Baby and The Omen are about shady cabals, groups of devil worshipers working behind the scenes. The Exorcist and Amityville Horror place the demonic forces square within the confines of everyday life.

Fun fact- This wasn’t James Brolin’s only brush with the Satanic. Two years earlier he battled a demonic sedan in The Car.

Fun fact #2- The Amityville Horror is the prologue for The Conjuring 2!

Se7en

  

Se7en

1995

Director- David Fincher

Cast- Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman, Kevin Spacey, Gwyneth Paltrow, R. Lee Ermy, John C. McGinley, Richard Roundtree

            

     As this blog is devoted to movies about devils, demons, and witches, no doubt many would disagree with the inclusion of Se7en in this list. There are no supernatural acts. Neither the Devil nor any demons appear. I have included this film for two reasons. First, it’s old enough that a lot of younger horror fans may not have seen it or heard of it. Second, as detective stories go, Se7en is closer to Angel Heart than it is to Silence of the Lambs. The movie is so steeped in religious symbolism and myth that it feels like an occult thriller.  Dante, Milton, and medieval religious philosophy form the backdrop of a movie so intense and original, it defies easy genre classification.

           

     Morgan Freeman plays Sommerset, a New York City detective on the verge of retirement. He is world weary, having his idealism and hope slowly whittled away by a life of seeing the worst that the world has to offer. Brad Pitt is Mills, an up and coming detective full of piss and vinegar and eager to prove himself.

            

     They are partnered up to solve a series of murders that have a religious theme. The victims are being murdered for having committed one of the seven deadly sins; lust, gluttony, sloth, pride, envy, greed and wraith. The crimes are intricate and clues left at one scene lead to another. I won’t spoil it by describing them; the revelation is the reward.

            

     In addition to a very clever script there is a great cast. Pitt and Freeman are supported by great character actors R. Lee Ermy and John C. McGinley. Kevin Spacey, decades before he would become persona non grata of Hollywood, is the movie’s enigmatic villain.  

Behind the camera there was also a lot of talent. The director, David Fichner, also directed Pitt in Fight Club and several years later directed the American remake of Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Andrew Kevin Walker, who wrote the screenplay, has some other impressive genre writing credits, having worked on Brainscan, Event Horizon, Sleepy Hollow, Stir of Echos and the 2010 remake of The Wolfman. Cinematographer  Darius Khondji worked on the interesting and weird French sci-fi film, City of Lost Children, the black comedy Delicatessen, and Ninth Gate. Film editing was by Richard Francis-Bruce who worked on The Shawshank Redemption, The Witches of Eastwick, and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.

The music was by Howard Shore, who among many other things composed the scores for The Brood, Scanners, Videodrome, The Fly, Dead Ringers, Naked Lunch, Ed Wood, Dogma, The Cell, The Departed the Lord of the Rings trilogy!!!

           

     Despite sometimes seeming like a Nine Inch Nails song come to life, Se7en is very much a noir film. Morgan Freeman, with his overcoat and slouching fedora, could have come out of any pulp story. It was nominated for an Oscar for editing, but the cinematography also plays a big part. The sets are dark, the colors are muted, the ambiance is gloomy.

The film has a depressing, oppressive feel. The sun never seems to be shining. The whole city seems noisy, wet, and dirty. I’d say, that the feel of the movie, the gloomy sense of fatalism, sticks with you long after the shock of the murders wears off. Morgan Freeman’s character warns us throughout the movie that nothing he does matters. He has spent a life trying, and failing, to stem the tide of human cruelty. With his impending retirement, he sees just what little difference he has made.

We are warned, early on, that there won’t be a happy ending.  That’s an understatement.

   

Necropolis

Necropolis

1986

Director- Bruce Hickey

Cast-  LeeAnne Baker, Michael Conte, Andrew Bausili, Jacquie Fitz, William K. Reed

           

     Eva (LeeAnne Baker sporting  white hair 30 years before The Witcher would make it cool) is a witch in Colonial New Amsterdam. She is conducting a Satanic ritual when she is attacked by a bunch of do-gooders. She tells them that she can’t be stopped and vows revenge.

           

     Fast forward a few hundred years and Eva is stalking the streets of New York. She is killing off people, most of whom have a connection to a local minister, Henry. Henry runs a program for local drug addicts. He gets them off of the streets, finds them jobs etc. As it turns out, Henry is the reincarnation of the man who attacked Eva those centuries before. Eva doesn’t just kill the people though. She gets into their heads and whispers their deep dark secrets to them, driving them to the pits of despair before they die.

            

     Two other people get drawn into the plot, Billy, a cop, and Dawn, a reporter. Both are investigating the string of deaths that seem connected. In addition to the deaths being connected, the bodies are also leaking ectoplasm (a fact that the medical examiner seems to be missing). Henry, in addition to being a preacher is also a bit of an occultist. He recognizes the ectoplasm for what it is, but doesn’t know why it’s there.

            

     Well as it turns out, Eva is draining her victims of their ectoplasm so that she can feed it to an army of ghouls that serve her. In the most memorable scene in the film, Eva grows 2 extra sets of breasts and begins lactating ectoplasm so that her ghouls can nurse off of her. Yep. You read that right.

            

     As crazy as this movie sounds, it’s not the weirdness or the horror that sells it; it’s LeeAnne Baker. She is awesome! She’s not just the villain, she’s the main character, and that’s rare. Oh, the villains may be the thing you remember about the film, but usually the protagonist, the person with the most screen time, is some final girl, often forgettable or at least overshadowed by the villain. Not so here.

           

 

     LeeAnne is so incredibly sexy and cool. She is like every MTV New Wave video you ever saw, boiled down to abstraction and then remolded into a pin-up. Everything about her is cool; fingerless gloves, patterned stockings, bold make up, riding a motorcycle with high heels. And the character has a real punk attitude. Her look and attitude have a lot in common with a porn star of that era, Lois Ayres, and given that this film came out at about the same time as Lois’ Devilin Miss Jones 3 and 4, I can’t help but wonder if one of these films influenced the other. Regardless, I don’t know why LeeAnne didn’t have a bigger career. She certainly had charisma.

           

     There aren’t, so far as I know, any great copies of the movie available. The only legit copy currently in print is being sold by Full Moon, and it looks like someone copied it off of a used VHS cassette. This movie probably isn’t popular enough to get a nice digital remastering, which is too bad. Oh well. This was a video store era film, so I guess it’s OK if it has video store era picture quality.

           

     Don’t watch if you want a sophisticated thriller. But if you want a bad ass sexy villain with attitude and some originality, you can’t go wrong with Necropolis.

 

 

The Black Gate

The Black Gate

2017

Directors- Guillaume Beylard, Fabrice Martin

Cast- Jeanne Dessart, Nicolas Couchet, Jonathan Raffin , Fabrice Martin, Antony Cinturino, Benjamin Combettes, Michel Coste, Patricia Flecher, Charles Gréa, Carl Laforêt, Jaques Langlois

From France

            

     Sarah and David (Jeanne Dessart and Nicolas Couchet) are orphaned siblings. They have an uncle, Simon, who was known to be a little weird and Sarah receives word from him that hints that he may know something about the death of their parents. They journey to the picturesque remote village where he lives to find out what he knows. They soon find out that not only is their uncle dead, they realize that he was involved in something sinister.      

           

      In his youth, Simon found an ancient grimoire in a cave. In the years since he had devoted his life to unraveling its mysteries. He discovers that he book holds the secret to opening a gate to a dark dimension. He opens that gate and evil cloaked entities pour through, killing the members of the town.

            

     Thrown into this mix is Jeff (Jonathan Raffin), one of a trio of murderous bandits that are on the lam after a heist in which they killed a cop. His two fellow thieves soon meet with grisly ends and Jeff has to strike an uneasy alliance with David and Sarah.

            

     Sarah decodes the mysteries of the grimoire and realizes that to close the gate they will have to do it on the other side. They journey to the other dimension filled with zombies and more of the mysterious cloaked beings.

           

     Even though this is French, not Italian, there seems to be a heavy Lucio Fulci influence. First there is the whole gate to hell theme as seen in his Gates ofHell trilogy. There is also a fascination with corpses with no eyes, and people getting their eyes gouged /poked out.  The zombies, in their design, are very Fulci-esque. And last but not least, we get some gross maggots (though not nearly as many as a Fulci film). I think a good way to characterize this film would be what if Lucio Fulci had made The Evil Dead.

           

      This is a low budget, independent film and the viewer needs to go in with that in mind. It’s made by people with limited experience and resources, but they make the most of what they have. Some of the action scenes look cheap but they obviously devoted their budget to the gore and make up effects which look as good as anything in any big budget film. The cinematography needed some help. It was too dark to see what was happening in some scenes and so bright it was distracting in others. Some of the individual scenes ,though, were well shot with interesting angles and colorful lighting.

           

     

     The movie doesn’t take itself too seriously. It is more interested with being entertaining than thoroughly realistic. David carries a samurai sword for most of the film and even after two viewings I can’t figure out where he got it. There is even a brief 80’s style montage complete with some hair metal in the background.

           

     I really liked the idea of traveling through the gate to the alternate dimension.  It reminded me of the sequel to the 80s movie,The Gate. If The Black Gate ever gets a sequel, I hope they explore this more.

           

      Over all, the movie has some forgivable flaws, but it’s gutsy and takes chances. And in my book that goes along way.