Funereal Plots

Horror Cinema reviews

Matthew M. Bartlett

The Ugly Stepsister

Writer/ Director: Emilie Blichfeldt

In this blood-soaked and grotesque retelling of Cinderella, Elvira (Lea Myren) longs for Prince Julian (Isac Calmroth), a handsome but vacuous poet. She and her sister Alma’s mother Rebekka is set to marry Otto, a widower with a daughter named Agnes. This, Rebekka, thinks, will solve their money problems. But she’s in for a surprise when, after the wedding, Otto dies suddenly and is found to be broke.

So, she surmises, she will endeavor to marry one of her daughters to Prince Julian. But Elvira is ugly (one must, as this point, bring to bear one’s ability to deny what one sees on film, to suspend one’s disbelief). So, in order to make her suitable to win the Prince’s affections, and compete against Agnes, who is conventionally beautiful, a cosmetic surgeon is brought in. He violently breaks her nose and fits it with an ungainly apparatus to hold it in place. Elvira is also made to eat a tapeworm egg in order to lose weight (again, here, we must suspend our disbelief). Worse than all that, she’s sent to finishing school.

One night Elvira sees Agnes consorting with a lowly stable boy and reports the incident to her mother. The stable boy is sent away and Agnes is relegated to a servant’s role and is addressed, cruelly, as “Cinderella.” Throughout the movie, we occasionally see Otto, who lies dead, still in the house, rotting away, ridden with maggots and, one imagines, reeking to high heaven. Meanwhile, the attempts to beautify Elvira begin to fail, as malnourishment causes her hair to fall out and, at the ball where she hopes to be matched to Julian, she flees and vomits up tapeworm eggs. And Julian sees the masked Agnes and is intrigued by her, but she too flees, leaving behind a shoe.

When she discovers that Julian will come seeking the wearer of the shoe, Elvira, with some difficulty, hacks off her toes to try to make the shoe fit. She then breaks her nose and finally expels from her body, with violent, goopy force, a hideous, seemingly endless glut of segmented tapeworms. Her disintegration is complete, and she and her sister Alma run for the hills as Agnes and the Prince connect.

The Ugly Stepsister is effectively both lushly lavish and grotesque, gorgeous to look at while at times necessary to look away from. At one point, when I paused it, I burst out laughing. For after all the violence, the frontal nudity of both sexes, the gore and grotesquerie, on the screen it warned viewers of 18+ to use caution while viewing, due only to “flashing lights.”

 

The Long Drive

Coconut peach ice cream

for my little girl

who was never born

and regards from mommy

in her happy place

Death drives a pink Corvair 63

and the clouds were blue that day

and the wind blew itself away

Daddy buys you ice cream

between each scream

yet you never were

anywhere but in this poem

sometimes if you pray for the apocalypse

your prayers are answered

coconut peach ice cream

for my little girl

there is no such flavor

Life drives a hearse

and the clouds are black today

and the wind blew your name away...

 

Horror Cinema Countdown:

Ten Haunting Images I'll Take to My Grave

Introduction:

As an impressionable young lad, I often sat in the dark movie theater without thought to what film I was about to see. Every Saturday I'd simply buy my ticket and watch whatever two movies were playing that afternoon. In most cases, they were what we used to call "scary" movies. Who knows when "horror movies" took hold?! Often I'd glance at the movie posters by the ticket booth where a pretty young girl reading a book waited for the next customer. I'm sure they only hired girls who didn't suffer from claustrophobia, because those booths were snug. Anyway.... To a child the movies were always entertaining, no matter the subject matter. But there were those films that just had that insane image that captured the whole feel of the movie. And that is the image I'd like to share with you. Although there were many non-horror movies that had such an image (the "kiss" in The Sergeant 1968, starring Rod Steiger and John Phillip Law), I'm only sharing images from "scary" movies today. I have reduced my list from 17 to 10 images for convenience. Let's begin the countdown. 

10. Carnival of Souls (1962)

The specter at the window.

Poor Mary (Candace Hillgross) seems to have survived a traffic accident, but everywhere she goes, this pasty-faced man follows her, even as she's driving the highway. It was when this ghoulish figure appeared outside the passenger's side of the car that I was totally creeped out. How is he keeping up with a speeding car?1 His later appearances only served to remind us of his spectral nature and the fragile state of mind of our poor Mary. 

9. Black Sunday (1960)

Asa (Barbara Steele) is punished for being a witch.

Tame by today's standard in horror fare, a spiked mask hammered into a woman's face was shocking at the time for this lad. I remember some girls in the audience screaming, adding to the feeling of repulsion I felt. Later when Asa reappears with holes in her face only added to my horror. This was the film that started my appreciation for actress Barbara Steele.  

8. Dead of Night (1945)

Sally (Sally Ann Howe) recounts a Christmas ghost story. 

The film Dead of Night is a British anthology of ghost stories and psychological suspense tales. They are all good, but the story of Hide 'n Seek, where the children seek hiding places throughout the vast mansion is my favorite. I saw this one on late night TV one Halloween night. I've always had a love for black and white cinema, no matter the genre. In the tale, Sally finds a room within a room, where a child weeps in fear. She puts the child to bed and returns to the game of hide and seek. She tells her friend about the child she found, and her friend is surprised to hear her speak of the child. Believing she is joking, he tells her about the brother murdered by his sister in that very room. Poor Sally upon hearing the tale, repeats over and over, "I'm not afraid, I'm not afraid," to hide the fear welling in her that she had just met a ghost. 

7. Village of the Damned (1960)

The children first display their powers to destroy.

As a kid at the movies watching Village of the Damned, there is only mystery. Why did every person and animal fall asleep at the same time. Why did the police surround the village? How did all these women get pregnant at the same time? While I was waiting for a flying saucer to land and explain everything, these children born from that mysterious event begin to show powers. At first they act alone, but when they work together in this scene to display their destructive nature, I was creeped out by their eyes. Some couples in the theater left during this scene, which made me want to stay all the more to watch this to its conclusion. 

6. The Fly (1958)

"Help me!"

The Fly, the original 50s version, was a tale of teleportation. More science fiction than horror. Until that fly's molecules get mixed up with the human's molecules, each creature part man, part insect. I could not understand how putting these two mixed up creatures back in the transporter would make them normal again. Wouldn't it make it worse?! Anyway, there's not much I can say about this iconic scene. Any kid who sat through this movie was traumatized for life. But in a good way. 

5. Caltiki-The Immortal Monster (1959)

The dissolving face scene.

Caltiki  was not just another Blob movie. The Blob came down in a meteor, while Caltiki was born from the radiation of a passing comet. See the difference. And beside, this monster was fed human flesh in Mayan sacrifices to the Goddess, Caltiki. How the monster became known as Caltiki is never explained. Nevertheless, the gore for this movie are some of the most memorable. Originally I wanted to find the scene where a piece of the creature is removed from a man's arm, revealing a few chunks of flesh still attached to the bones of his arm. Great scene. In this scene above, the same man is completely eaten, and we are shown the slow-motion dissolving of the flesh of his skull. Not as good as the arm scene, but still effective for this kid's imagination. 

4. It! The Terror Beyond Space (1958)

It reaches the top level.

Not exactly a horror film, but a 50s science fiction creature feature. It!, the title monster, stowaways about an Earthbound rocket ship shaped like a cigar with fins. The ship is sectioned by floors leading up to the tip of the rocket where the control room sits. Of course, the monster works his way up, till what is left of the crew must do battle with the creature on the last tippy-top floor. I must point out that I saw this with my aunts at the drive-in, so the environment was already surreal as I was used to dark movie theaters, not wide-open parking lots. But when that monster reached the final level to confront our survivors, I was scared into the front seat with my aunt not only for comfort but for a closer look at the monster. I found these two shots of that scene. They're both a bit grainy, but in my mind, that was a monster, not a man in a monster suit. 

3. Diary of a Madman (1963) The Horla

Vincent Price discovers what happens when the Horla possesses him.

I was obsessed with this movie. I saw it three times over the weekend. Many people are confused with the title, Diary of a Madman. Very misleading. The Horla would have been a better title, even with a kicker like, The Immortal Monster. Or something. There are no madmen. There is this creature that drives men to kill and mutilate women. The story is divided between the monster and the possessed men it controls. The exchanges with monster and man are scary, until our hero, Mr. Price, playing a judge who convicts an innocent man who was previously possessed by the Horla, must find a way to kill the creature that now is possessing him. The final battle is epic. But the haunting scene that turned the tide for me as a ten year old kid watching this horror classic, was when the judge finds his model's head inside the clay sculpture he himself made while under the Horla's spell. Still gives me the willies.  

2. House on Haunted Hill (1959)/

She steps into the dark closet, and a ghost floats by. 

House on Haunted Hill, another Vincent Price movie, promises scares and ghosts and murder. I mean, Elisha Cook Jr., wove a wicked history of the house that foreshadowed creeps that never came to be. Well, we do get murder. Still, until that cop-out ending, we did have one scare that made this kid jump. The old woman with the frozen scream on her face gliding by without touching the ground was a shocker. Too bad that was the set-up to the biggest fake-out, in this kid's humble opinion. The adult me still likes to watch this for Halloween with the grandkids. 

1. Black Sabbath (1963)

Don't steal from the dead.

Black Sabbath was an Italian horror anthology. Each story has its merits, and depending on whether you watched the American or Italian version, The version I saw had "The Drop of Water" last; in the TV version, "The Wurdulak" was the final episode. I prefer the theatrical order because that's where the horrific scene that I write about today can be found. A nurse is brought in to prepare the corpse of an elderly woman for burial. She takes a ring from the old woman's hand, admires the trinket, and when she looks back at the corpse, her eyes are open and her lips are snarled around a grinding grin. In the theater, the audience jumped at this scene. Me included. Every time the camera panned to the old woman, we gasped. The suspense was tangible. We didn't need to see any horrific actions. It was enough to see this corpse just popping here and there with that face looking right at the audience. Yep, this is my number one haunting image in horror movies to this day. 

 

Funereal Plots

Horror Cinema reviews

Matthew M. Bartlett

Nosferatu

Writer/ Director: Robert Eggers

Of the three best known Nosferatu movies, my favorite is the second, directed by Werner Herzog and starring Klaus Kinski in the titular role. From its somber opening scene, an array of real corpses set to dark music by Popol Vuh, that movie is horror all the way down. The 1922 original is pretty to look at, and eerily done, but I am a heathen who doesn’t care much for silent films.

Which brings us to 2024’s highly anticipated version, directed and written by Robert Eggers (The Witch)—and, well, the news ain’t great. Like the 1922 film, it’s pretty to look at—gorgeous, even. And there are two scenes of horror that will stick with me—one involving Nosferatu feasting on children, and the last, lingering shot.

Not enough.

In the meantime, we get a lot of portentously delivered, sub-Shakespearean dialogue delivered in overwrought, melodramatic tones. Lily-Rose Depp is hard to watch as the cringing, crying wife of Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult, always solid), the man who is traveling to Transylvania to seal a “business” deal with Count Orlok. Oh, Count Orlok. I’ve been listening to the audiobook of Dracula (the source material), and in that book, the Count is loquacious, inquisitive, and very verbal, peppering the young man with questions about London and myriad other matters.

This movie’s Count Orlok, played by Bill Skarsgård (a surprise to me, I thought the Count was entirely a CGI creation) talks so slowly and ploddingly and sparingly, that if he were to replicate the written and implied dialogue from Dracula, the movie would have to be made into a four-season series. I suppose the Count looks the part from the book, more than the other various Nosferatus and Draculas, and thank goodness they don’t try to give him Gary Oldman’s hair from Coppola’s version.

Anyway, apart from Willem DaFoe’s scenes—gods, is he ever a watchable actor—there isn’t much to this Nosferatu. Terrified villagers, gothic castle, plague rats on a ship, Ellen’s histrionics, all of it very familiar and not essayed in any new or interesting ways, and everyone jabbering in sort of English accents, and maybe it’s best to turn off the sound and use the subtitles to make it a silent movie after all.

 

Strange Journeys Without and Within

Tony Tremblay - Dark Roads Traveled: Four Novellas

Reviewed by Barry Lee Dejasu

The history of four-novella collections in dark and horror fiction is rich with varied and masterful works. Stephen King, of course, has Different Seasons (1982), Four Past Midnight (1990), and If It Bleeds (2020). Rick Hautala had a fall-themed collection of interconnected works, Four Octobers (2006). And T. E. D. Klein’s seminal Dark Gods (1985) is considered a classic of modern horror. So it is that New Hampshire author Tony Tremblay has joined these ranks with his new release, Dark Roads Traveled.


In Orange Eyes, a troubled taxi driver discovers that his own mysteries—amnesia, and orange-colored eyes—are uncannily mirrored by someone else: his fare’s sister. Soon, the trio embark upon a dark, hallucinatory, feverish journey to figure out the mystery that binds them all together.


The eponymous Cabin on the Mountain marks the entrance to a path upon which many a person has traveled, never to be seen again. A mysterious caretaker heralds these visitors along their journeys, although even he doesn’t know what awaits them. But his whole world gets turned upside-down with the arrival of a vengeful husband seeking his runaway wife and, soon after, a young boy trying to escape his abusive father. This tale also begins with a mysterious and heartbreaking illustration of a wife struggling to care for her husband, who has been suffering dementia—setting up for a genuine surprise for when these roads converge…


Ghosts is full of surprises, starting with those that a woman discovers upon moving into her new home—a grisly history of murder that occurred within its walls. Things quickly become eerier as signs of something uncanny manifest, driving her to seek information and help from neighbors and locals alike—and she very quickly realizes just how far in over her head she really is. There are some clever spins on the notions of ghosts here, transcending expectations and making for a very unpredictable tale.


And finally, The Tempest may not have to do with Shakespeare, but it is every bit as unique and vast a tale. An apocalypse is upon us, both with literal storms as well as a sound that kills people and animals alike. The atmospheric descriptions are palpably real throughout this tale, positing the reader directly alongside its two main characters, an elderly man and a young woman, as they struggle to survive in this dangerous and darkening world—leading them to a hole in the ground that holds mystery and maybe, just maybe, hope.


These four tales of horror and wonder are as memorable as they are unique, yet all told in Tremblay’s distinct and confidently comfortable voice. A signature of his works is the frequent use of the very real town of Goffstown, New Hampshire, as their setting and backdrop. Charles L. Grant set much of his works in his fictional town of Oxrun Station; Stephen King frequently returns to his towns of Castle Rock and Derry; Kevin Lucia has Clifton Heights—and so Tremblay has Goffstown, with some familiar sights and sounds recurring, including his frequent protagonist, Goffstown Police Department Captain Pendleton.


A personal confession: I’m a big fan of stories set in a single, shared universe, both in what I read and what I write, and so I greatly enjoyed this aspect of these novellas. I personally have never been to Goffstown, but with the rich illustrations and atmosphere in describing it, it is both familiar and effective for me in Tremblay’s storytelling template.


Dark Roads Traveled is a strong and memorable collection of four tales, and is not to be missed. Take these journeys today—and be sure to share your experiences when you return.

 

Little Brother Borne

The winter snow falls hard this bitter year;

Poor sister Anne lies sick with fever high.

My youthful eyes can see what parents  fear:

Red-eyed Death on leather wing hovers nigh.

I am ordered to bed but feign repose;

I hide until my folks have gone to sleep.

With scythe in hand as the candle flame glows,

I enter Anne's cold room with soundless creep. 

Death turns its bony face upon the blade 

As it sweeps across its black leather wing;

A second strike cuts through its hooded braid

To splinter skull and spine with forceful sting. 

Anne survived the night and woke the morn

As my soul took flight into heaven borne.

 

Looking Up to See Down

{A Sonnet in Shakespearean Form}

I am the boy on top of the tower

Looking down at the red broken body

Of the boy splayed like a bloody flower

Of a mattress ripped freed of its shoddy.

His lifeless brown eyes staring up at me

As if telling, warning me not to jump

A pool of blood halos his head so wee

His fingers twitch with death's last thump.


I stare down as a crowd gathers around

The ambulance arrives with siren loud

Police men caution tape the gory ground

Pushing back the unruly gawking crowd.


I regret climbing the ladder for fun

I am the boy looking up at no one.