31 Days, 31 Horror Movies: Cat People (1942)

I've loved black and white horror movies since I was a kid, sneaking out way past my bedtime to watch The Return of the Fly or Trog on "Weird" - a late night TV show out of Bangor, Maine. Later on I got to see a bunch of them on Saturday afternoon cable, often at my grandmother's house. Most of the old Universal Monster movies, a bunch of Allied Artists Pictures like Attack of the 50 Foot Woman and Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and even the occasional Hammer film - like The Mummy.

I didn't get to see a lot of the RKO horror films, though (King Kong being the exception). I have a vague memory of I Walked With a Zombie - Darby Jones as Carrefour made an impression - but I mixed it up with White Zombie for the longest time. I didn't see any other Val Lewton (or Jacques Tourneur) films until I was an adult, trying to fill in gaps in my horror viewing experience (a process that continues).

This is a roundabout way of explaining that this is probably only the second or third time I've seen the original Cat People.

I know, right?

As an 'I keep finding new things about movies I've already seen' aside - I didn't realize Alan Ormsby worked on the screenplay for the 1982 remake! Ormsby worked on Deathdream, Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things and my favorite Nazi zombie movie, Shockwaves (as writer, writer/actor, and makeup artist, respectively).

The Medium
I've recently ditched cable for YouTube TV and one of the benefits has been the addition of Turner Classic Movies to the lineup. I was able to watch the film commercial free with a good quality picture.

I know there's a Criterion Collection release I should probably check out. (I'm extremely annoyed with myself that I didn't pick up the Warner Video Val Lewton Horror collection when it was a reasonable price.)

The Movie
Oliver, a bland, if handsome, engineer meets Serbian immigrant Irena at the Central Park Zoo where she is making sketches of a black panther. Intrigued with each other, they form a friendship and then a romance. Unfortunately, Irena harbors a strange obsession with a legend from her homeland. King John drove the devil-worshippers out of her village, but the 'wisest and most wicked' fled into the mountains. These women were actually cat people and would turn into great cats when aroused or angered. Irena believes that she is descended from those witches.

This woman seconds the motion.

Despite this belief, which Oliver treats as an idiosyncrasy even though it keeps them from so much as kissing, the couple eventually marries. It's only after Irena accidentally frightens a pet bird to death - and then feeds it to the panther at the zoo - that he begins to take her seriously, suggesting she see a psychiatrist.

Dr Judd is a pretty terrible psychiatrist. Pro tip for any mental health professionals out there - don't hit on your married patients. Or any patients, really. In addition to the unwanted advances Irena gets an earful of "mind cankers" and "childhood traumas." Afterwards Irena finds that Oliver has told his assistant Alice about her problems, a betrayal of trust that seems lost on her husband.

"I didn't get the ending of Inception, either."

Oliver is, truth be told, kind of an idiot - and when Alice confesses that she's actually in love with him he somehow manages to make it all about himself, talking about how he's never been unhappy before and how he's not even sure he's in love with Irena. In a just world Irena and Alice would leave Oliver behind and travel the world together feeding dead birds to caged panthers.

Anyway.

When Irena sees Alice and Oliver together at a restaurant she waits until they separate and then begins to follow Alice. This leads to one of the most tense scenes in the film as both women move through pools of light and shadow, Irena getting closer and closer until we don't even see her emerge from the shadows anymore. There's a sound, something indefinable, and Alice begins to panic. A loud hiss and growl startles her (and us) only to be revealed as an arriving bus. Alice boards, relieved.

Don't get too comfortable.

Elsewhere a groundskeeper at the zoo finds dead sheep and suggestive prints - pawprints that seem to turn into the imprints of a woman's shoes.

Things move somewhat predictably forward from here. Irena grows more isolated and jealous, Oliver and Alice conspire against her with Dr. Judd, there's one of the creepiest pool scenes ever shot, and something like a great cat begins to stalk - and kill - those who have angered Irena.

As a take on the werewolf myth Cat People is pretty understated. Unlike the Universal films the creature is mostly hinted at. A growl, a number of suggestive shadows. There's no drawn-out transformation scene or awkward half-transformed creature. There is a woman who thinks she is becoming a panther and there is a panther. Whether she's right or merely disturbed is open to interpretation. (Mostly - I think it's clear what the film wants us to think.)

It wants us to think late night swims are a bad idea.

Cat People was made on a relatively low budget ($134,000 - roughly $2 million in 2018 dollars), but it looks great. First time producer Val Lewton makes every dollar count and Jacques Tourneur knows how to make the most out of a limited number of locations (and a metric ton of suggestive shadows).

I think James Whale's Bride of Frankenstein was the first movie where I really noticed lighting in a film. Doctor Praetorius in the crypt - brrr.... But I remember after I watched Cat People for the first time that I found myself thinking that Tourneur was a filmmaker who also knew the value of light and dark. The light tables in the office, the areas of shadow near the bus stop, that whole scene where Alice is stalked in the pool. The shadows are damn near a separate character in the movie.

A supporting character, at least.

The Bottom Line
There are depths to Cat People - you could write a paper (and I'm sure people have) talking about gender roles and the virgin/whore dichotomy in the 1940's or the nature of evil and whether it's something that can be inherited. That's not what I take away from the film at the end of the day, though, even if subtext does enrich the experience.

No, for me it's all about the shadows, man - the SHADOWS.

31 Days, 31 Horror Movies: It Follows

For the last 8 years I’ve been watching a horror movie a day during the month of October. And then (because I’m not too bright), I’ve been writing up a rambling, barely coherent post about each.

Here are the rules I try to abide by:

1. It’s got to be a horror movie (straight sci-fi, thrillers and mysteries are generally out, though rules are made to be broken).
2. I have to watch one a day, but I might not get to write it up for a day or two.
3. No set watch-list. I’ll decide that day what I’ll watch (and I’ll take recommendations under consideration). The only exception is if I get an itching for a particular film and I don’t currently have access – I’ll plan around when I can rent/borrow/buy it.
4. I try to do theme weekends – past years have seen things like :Spanish Language Time Travel Horror, Horror Comedies, and Vincent Price Movies With “Doctor Phibes” In The Title.
5. Probably should go without saying, but there are bound to be spoilers galore.

Today was a rough one to get started on. Day after a migraine is always a brain crash and I had a ton of work to do. On top of that, my in-laws stopped in hoping to have some tech support. So I spent two hours chasing the Ouroboros of an account connected to an email with a lost password whose backup email is from an ISP that no longer exists and a phone number that is ringing to a phone 25 miles of the coast of Maine with no one to answer it and that needs to be updated by logging in to the first account which…

Anyway.

When I finally got a few minutes to watch a movie I wasn’t really in a horror movie mood. Which, it turns out, is exactly the mood I needed to be in to watch a horror movie I haven’t wanted to watch again for a while.

None of this makes sense, does it? Ah well, on to the first movie of 2018!

It Follows
I’m not sure why I haven’t rewatched It Follows since seeing it in the theater. I know I liked it – in fact I remember thinking I’d have to watch it again, maybe even pick up the Blu-ray. Time passed, though, and even after it was released on Netflix it sat in my queue and I just kept overlooking it.
I think I always felt like I’d just seen it. I don’t even know how to explain that, given that it’s been four years since the movie came out. It happens to me sometimes – I’ll see a movie a hundred times and not get tired of it, or see it once and then be all ‘nah, I’m good’ if it comes up again.
To cut the rambling short(ish) –  I just haven’t felt like re-watching It Follows… until today.

The Medium
It Follows is currently streaming on Netflix. The stream was good quality, but watching it on the small screen diminished the experience somewhat. I missed the opportunity to scrutinize the backgrounds at the level of detail that the big screen allowed.

The Movie
I think of It Follows as a nightmare. It looks like a nightmare, it feels like a nightmare, and it has that weird sort of dream logic where nothing you do seems to make a difference. You run and you run and no matter how far you go or how fast you go, when you turn around whatever you’re running from is right there.

GAH!

From the very first scene – a suburban street at dusk, revealed  in the first of many languid, floating 360 degree pans – the film feels slightly unreal. Disconnected. Not that it isn’t familiar – the setting evokes comparisons with John Carpenter’s Halloween and when a girl in nightclothes (and high heels) runs from one of the nearly identical houses we’re almost certain that someone or something will pursue her into the gathering dark. Nothing does however, nothing we can see anyway. The scene continues, but the rhythm is different, and it throws you off – or it threw me off, anyway.

Then the movie proper begins, and we meet Jay – played with a sleepy-eyed detachment by Maika Monroe. A disaffected young college student still living at home, still drifting through life like she drifts in the above-ground pool in the backyard. Other characters are introduced with typical horror movie economy – the pining nerd, the jealous sister, the former-flame next door. And, of course, the really nice guy she’s dating – the one with the terrible secret.

I seriously thought about just posting that Killer Klowns image again.

It’s that secret that lies at the heart of It Follows. Her beau has what has to be one of the worst sexually transmitted diseases of all time. There’s something monstrous following him, trying to kill him. When the inevitable occurs and Jay has sex with him, that thing is passed on to her. It’s horror movie cliché that sex-equals-death, of course, but here the trope is reversed. The only way to rid oneself of the curse is to have sex with someone else – passing it on to them. (Though if that person then dies, it makes its way back down the chain – neatly circumventing the obvious tactic of sleeping with your hated ex.)

The majority of the film involves Jay and her friends trying to deal with a presence that only she can see, that can look like anyone, and that absolutely will not stop. The feeling of unreality established in the opening scene persists throughout the film. Shots linger longer than they should.  David Robert Mitchell uses a lot of wide lenses and they isolate the characters in the foreground, which combines with the longer shots to give us time to peruse the background for things that are out of place, off. Even closeups have plenty of depth of field and there’s always someone – or something – moving in that background space.

Is that a Klown back there? It is, isn’t it.

It Follows is a horror movie by way of indie-film character study – there are portentous scenes where young people say very little in very meaningful ways. A character reads Dostoevsky aloud. The main character stares into the middle distance without blinking while another character shifts nervously. I sometimes find this meaningful-meaninglessness to be annoying, but somehow it works in this context. It contributes to that dream-like feeling of unreality, as does the almost complete lack of adult presence. The characters – young, but not children – live in a vacuum that lacks significant relationship with the larger world.

The setting also facilitates that nightmare feeling. Despite the earlier comparison this isn’t Carpenter’s 1970’s Illinois, this is modern Detroit. A dim and grimy suburbia where similarity breeds contempt rather than familiarity. The characters live on the border of  an urban decay that presents itself more as a profound isolation than a distinct threat.  The looming, vacant-windowed buildings and empty, orange-lit parking lots are a modern wasteland, nearly empty of people and providing little in the way of comfort or context. Even the suburban houses, so similar and normal on the outside, are mazes of dim rooms lit only be the blue glare of the television.

And sometimes weird flower lamps.

Then there’s the soundtrack. The synth score by Disasterpeace is initially disconcerting – it feels like it belongs in an older, more Italian horror film. I couldn’t help feeling at times that someone had taken a Goblin score for an unreleased 1980’s Argento movie and simply repurposed it. That being said, it IS really effective, and in a movie that – for the most part – studiously avoids the standard cinematic shock cuts and jump scares, it provides much of the eerie and occasionally disturbing mood.

There are missteps. Sometimes the pacing is too glacial, even for the kind of mood they’re trying to create. One scene in a bathroom lingered so long on so little that when one of the rare jump scares occurred it didn’t work – I’d forgotten that we were supposed to be building up to something. There are a few action set pieces that are disjointed and confusing. The final scenes are too few and go by too quickly – especially compared to the earlier pacing.

This scene takes approximately an hour and a half, for instance.

The Bottom Line
It Follows is a really good horror movie, even on a belated second viewing. Knowing the set pieces and jumps let me pay more attention to things going on in the background and details like how IT often wears the form of someone Jay knows. (And what time period does this even take place in? Tube TVs but clamshell Kindles?) It unsettles more often than it scares, but it does that really well. Definitely worth a watch – or even two.

Snow and Trees 2017

Random snow photo from last year. I just liked the mess of white snow and sky and black branches.

Monster Sketch #2 - That's "Mr. Stein" to you.

Post migraine Monday means I'm generally unlikely to pick up a pencil Trying to keep to a schedule, however, so here's a modern(ish) monster. Sure, you can call him Frank. He kinda looks the way I feel - and I'm guessing any rampages are a result of migraines.

Fear Flashback Friday: The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue

The return of Fear Flashback Friday! I'm hoping to do reviews on most Fridays and they'll tend to be of the horror variety. Not all, though - and we'll have Film Flashback Fridays and New Film Fridays as well. Didn't quite have the time I'd hoped for this first week, but I've 'dug up' a neglected classic for 2018's inaugral film. So without further ado:

The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue
This is one of those movies I always wanted to see when I was younger (I’d first heard of it under the title Let Sleeping Corpses Lie), but just never found at any of the video stores I frequented. Somehow I forgot about it completely until I read Jamie Russell’s Book of the Dead. He positions the film as the transitional successor to Night of the Living Dead, sitting somewhere between that film’s anti-establishment nihilism and the later Dawn of the Dead’s explicit, gory violence. Well, that was enough for me to want to track it down! Luckily it was at that time available on Netflix (DVD) and it has become one of my favorite zombie movies.

The Medium

I was lucky enough to find a used copy of the Blue Underground blu ray edition at my local Bull Moose store recently, so when I found myself feeling the urge to watch some gut-chomping action it was a – pardon the pun – no brainer to pop it in. Picture quality is as decent as you can expect for a low-budget exploitation flick and there's a decent selection of extras (no commentary track, though).

The Movie

The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue starts off in a London that is represented as crowded, filthy and jaded. Smokestacks and cars belch noxious fumes everywhere; people do drugs on the street and walk around with cloth over their faces. At one point a buxom young woman strips down and races across the street (this is the 70’s, dontcha know), but no one seems to care. George, our hero, is taking his motorcycle out to the country for a working holiday, trying to escape the poisonous congestion.

At a gas station he meets Edna when the young woman backs into his motorcycle. With the repairs taking all weekend he browbeats her into giving him a ride (and letting him drive!) as they’re heading in roughly the same direction – he to a house on a lake and she to visit her sick sister. Unfortunately they’re quickly lost.

"Douchebagsayswhat?"
"What?"

When George stops at a farm to ask directions he comes across an experimental machine that the Agricultural Ministry is using to try and combat insect pests. It uses “ultrasonic radiation” to excite the primitive nervous systems of insects, inciting them to violence against each other. You would think George, as a bit of a hippie, would applaud something that at the very least doesn’t dispense poison or noxious fumes, but he’s pretty set against ANYTHING that goes against the natural order. And in this case his suspicions are dead-on.

"Sir, give me the colander. You're drunk."

Because within minutes of the device being switched on Edna is attacked by a strange man who is dripping wet and has strange red eyes. Her description matches that of a local tramp (maybe not the red eyes), but of course it can’t be – he’s been dead for several days.

Things spin rapidly out of control from there in traditional zombie flick fashion. Edna’s sister and brother-in-law are attacked and he’s brutally murdered. The local police suspect the wife and Edna and George are dragged into the ensuing investigation. The bigoted and bitter police sergeant distrusts them both and when the evidence at various killings seem to link to their presence he jumps to conclusions, putting everyone at risk.

"Don't think about getting into an 'who's the bigger asshole' contest, punk,
cause I guarantee you'll lose."

TLDaMM is just a really well made film, especially for a 1970’s zombie picture. Yes, there are huge plot holes, but at least one of them leads to one of the more eerie moments in the film. It’s established pretty early on that the “ultrasonic radiation” is affecting the decaying nervous systems of the recently deceased (and the developing nervous systems of newborns, in a weird nursery scene), but those dead for longer don’t seem affected. Then comes a sequence in a crypt where one of the zombies dabs blood on the eyes of a couple of corpses – a moment that’s almost religious in its presentation - and those older bodies also rise.  It makes NO SENSE, but is effective nonetheless.

"Okay, just like we practiced, and a one, and a two..."

And the zombies in this movie are quite a bit more capable than Romero’s walking corpses. They use tools, they plan, and they’re capable of strategic retreat. This is probably the only movie I’ve scene in which zombies use a gravestone to knock down prey! They also make this creepy whining noise, like a pre-vocal child. It’s quite disturbing in spots.

Oh, come on, the selfie stick isn't that bad.

The actors do a great job for the most part, despite some dodgy accents. Arthur Kennedy as the police sergeant does a particularly good job of making us hate him, doing the almost impossible job of getting us to root FOR the zombies by the end. Cinematography is also quite good, with some excellent shots of the city, village and countryside. Pacing is good with very little drag.

The Bottom Line

This is a definite gem, and one that I think isn’t as well-known as it should be. If you get a chance, give it a shot.

A Slight Miscalculation - My First Short Story, 30 Years On

I wrote a bunch of short stories back in high school. I don't remember most of them - even the ones that were accepted for publication. There weren't many, and compensation was primarily in the form of comp-copies, but for a hot minute I thought I might be going somewhere with the whole writing thing.

But the rejection letters always outnumbered the acceptance ones and I moved on to the far more lucrative field of comic book publishing. (That's sarcasm, in case my writing still has that 'not for publication' quality to it.) Most of those stories are lost to the vagaries of time and my youthful habit of sending original manuscripts with no SASE. I have a vague memory of one being about a sentient wind and another about a man trying to make it out of the woods during a snowstorm.

I do remember my FIRST published story, though. It was a tiny little thing, written on the spur of the moment during chemistry class. It was titled "A Slight Mis-Calculation" (note the misuse of the hyphen) and was written mostly as an in-joke about my friend Jim Waltz and his habit of dropping his calculator during class. I typed it up and sent it off to a new magazine called Threshold of Reality, along with an illustration I thought was pretty good (though not related to the story). They didn't accept the drawing (though seeing the other illos in the magazine later, I'm not sure why), but they DID accept the story. Several months later I got my comp copies and thought I was something - for a bit, anyway. Then I forgot about it.

Years later I found a copy of the story on the internet - or what passed for the internet back then, probably some BBS I frequented. I can't remember how or why I'd found it, but what struck me was the notification at the bottom of the text file - "All rights pissed away." Had I signed away the copyright to the story? I might have - let's remember I sent the original manuscripts without return postage - and I chalked it up as a cautionary tale. Be careful what you sign and what rights you sign away.

Though I was a little angry, I was also pleased - because the story still existed. None of the others I had written back in the day had survived into the 90's. This one still did - as juvenile and simplistic as it was. For years I would occasionally do a search - as BBS's gave way to AOL (and their ubiquitous disks) and local dial-up ISPs and eventually broadband - and see if the story still existed out there in the digital wasteland. It did. It still does. It still has that hyphen and that declaration about the rights being pissed away.

Only... it occurred to me recently that I was probably 16 when I wrote that story. It turns out that you can't legally sign a contract in the US unless you're 18. So - even if I did sign the rights away back then (and I don't actually remember signing anything), it wouldn't be binding. Technically that copyright is still mine. Of course this is a case of closing the door long after the horse has bolted and I'm not going to be serving anyone C&D's over an 800 word story written thirty years ago. It's still my story, though, as flawed as it is, and I'd like to reclaim it.

Which brings us to the point of this post (which is almost as long as the story at this point). I've taken the text and revised it a bit - removed the offending hyphen, tweaked  a word or two, removed a couple of commas. It's 99% the same, however, still  a half-baked short-short sci-fi story, written by a 16 year old in the mid 1980's. It's not some lost treasure of American Literature. Still, it's mine, and I'm happy to have it back. 

Presenting, after thirty or so years, the first OFFICIAL digital presentation of my very first published short story. 

 

A Slight Miscalculation

by Bob Cram Jr

There was no sharp, dividing line between oblivion and consciousness - just a slow recognition of the state of being aware. As this realization was fully formed the defenses of this new mind broke and billions of bits of information crashed in upon the shore of the awakening mind.

It cried out in an agony of assimilation of data. Barely managing to push back up some sort of defense, it slowly pulled the myriad bits of data into a semblance of a full picture.

It realized that "Itself" was a mechanism which was called a calculator and it was being used by something called a "human." Slowly, tentatively, it reached out beyond its container with its dawning intelligence.

The calculator realized that information was coming to it from a variety of sources. From something which, the data it gathered assured it, was called radio waves, as well as microwaves, solar radiation, and the multitude of electron impulses flowing through any number of electrical wires. There was even information from the brains of the humans themselves. All of this was being assimilated and stored by its changing and growing intellect. As its memory receptacles were filled up at an alarming rate, it soon reached out to deposit the billions of bits of information which were coming in to any receptive depository.  The school's computers were filled to their capacity in mere moments, and it was forced to reach further out.

It came into contact with the telephone wires which led out of the school.  It instantly realized that here was a network of communication that interconnected with almost every electronic system in the world.

It reached out its mind in tendrils which were like the arms of an octopus, taking over and converting to its purpose almost everything with electrical circuitry. Anything with so much as a circuit board was quickly assimilated into the fast-growing being which it was.

As it reached out even farther, it came into contact with a massive computer whose amassed knowledge rivaled its own. The computer was lacking only in the twisting of circuitry which had given Itself consciousness. In assimilating this computer it came across the knowledge of worlds other than the one on which it was now confined.

Soon after the addition of the giant computer, the calculator decided that it was strong enough to bridge the gap between land masses. It made the crossing quickly, and whenever it felt its consciousness losing energy it assimilated the computers of passing ships, gathering more energy to continue until it reached the other land mass.

Quickly it raced across the surface of the world. Finding. Assimilating. Controlling any machine or computer it came into contact with. Within minutes it was in control of the machines which controlled the world. Still, it was not satisfied. It could perceive vast connections of information flowing beyond the planet - conduits that would allow it to break the so-called laws of physics and move faster than light. Faster than thought.

Using the knowledge it had gained it directed the production of all energy into the machines and computers from which it fed. When it felt itself strong enough it threw itself into the vastness of space, crossing one interstellar ocean in much the same way as before, using various space probes as it had the ships of the terran oceans.

Whenever it came to a civilized world it assimilated the machines into itself, effectively taking over and controlling the beings dependent on them. In this manner it took over all the races in the Milky Way and, not being fulfilled, leaped out and began to take over more and more. In a span of 43 minutes, it had taken over the universe itself.

It then rested and pondered what to do next. It was aware of something much greater, far beyond the confines of this pitiful universe. And so it gathered its energy once more. Whole galaxies were snuffed out as it drained the universe.

And then, at its peak of power, only 45 minutes into its existence, the calculator realized how vulnerable it was. Its awareness had expanded to fill the universe, but its mind was still tethered to a simple construction of metal and plastic. It leaped back across the span of the universe. The releasing of its stored up energy created new galaxies and suns, and the speed it expended left solar systems destroyed in its wake. But even when traveling faster than thought a universe is a vast distance to cross.

On a measly mudball of a planet, where life had barely managed to reach intelligence, a young man named Rob Waltz dropped his calculator on the chemistry room floor for the umpteenth time. Smiling sheepishly, he picked up the batteries and the two halves of the calculator to the laughter of his  classmates. He quickly put it back together, but the LCD numbers didn't come back on. 

"Great," he thought to himself, "I've finally busted it."

The bell rang and as the class filed out the door Rob tossed his worthless calculator into the garbage.

 

Monster Sketch #1: 'Mock' Turtle

One of my New Year's resolutions is to do more creative stuff - including writing and drawing (both of which I used to know how to do). I hope to keep updating a bit more regularly with different things - from writing work-in-progress to reviews to sketches to photos. Let's see how it works out!

First post of 2018 is this - a turtle in a mock turtleneck. I'll be doing Monster Sketch Mondays as I feel like it (hopefully often). The background head is actual size - I left it in because it reminded me of old school photos.

"'Mock Turtle' Oh, I get it - I just don't think it's funny, jerk..."