In 1965, Dan Curtis had a dream about a woman riding alone on a train. The next day, he pitched it to ABC, who immediately picked it up as a daytime soap opera. Curtis was only known as a producer of golf related programming but, I guess, he had enough sway for the network to take a gamble on this vague idea. This is the beginnings of "Dark Shadows," initially a black-and-white, half-hour soap inspired by the Gothic melodramas of the Bronte sisters. After about a year of daily broadcast, the ratings remained poor and ABC threatened to cancel the series. That's when Curtis, already a fan of classic horror literature, decided to introduce a vampire into the previously non-supernatural program. Viewership quickly improved. A cult following of teenagers made it ABC's most watched daytime program for a bit. After switching to color, "Dark Shadows" became a full-on monster mash. Witches and warlocks, ghosts, werewolves, zombies, demons, a Frankenstein, Lovecraftian eldritch abominations, cursed portraits, a doctor with a split personality, shadow people, and a crawling hand all appeared in short order. Sounds like my kind of thing, right? Probably should be but I have never truly watched “Dark Shadows.” It's possible that a soap opera, even one with monsters in it, was a big ask for me as a kid. As much as it would amuse me to own the 131 disc complete series box set, in the shape of Barnabas in his coffin and containing all 1225 episodes, I decided on a more practical way to finally get into this: Watch the 1970 film adaptation, “House of Dark Shadows.”
The Colinswood estate has housed the Collins family for generations. While searching the grounds for hidden treasure, shady handyman Willie Loomis accidentally releases Barnabas Collins. Feeling peckish after a century chained up inside a coffin, the vampiric Barnabas sets out biting people. Introducing himself to the family as a distant cousin, Barnabas instantly falls in love with Maggie, the girlfriend of young Jeff and the spitting image of Barnabas' lost love. After a few people end up dead – including Carolyn, the daughter of matriarch Elizabeth – family friends Dr. Stokes and Dr. Hoffman suspect a vampire might be responsible. After Carolyn rises again and gets staked, their fears are confirmed. Realizing Barnabas is the bloodsucker, Dr. Hoffman agrees to give him special injections that might make him human. He is freed to pursue his romance with Maggie – never mind that she's engaged to Jeff – but life is rarely that uncomplicated for a lovelorn vampire.
The somewhat unfocused plotting is far from the only indication that this is an adaptation of a soap opera. The emotions are, unsurprisingly, pitched at an unusually high volume. When we first meet Willie Loomis, before he becomes Barnabas' Renfield-ian thrall, he suggests that he's blackmailing other members of the family. Before Carolyn gets her blood drained by him, she randomly seems to announce romantic feelings for the vampire. Later, Dr. Hoffman does the same thing, having fallen in love with between scenes, it seems. This is excluding the central romance between Barnabas and Maggie, which at least has some lost souls reconnecting over the eras type shenanigans going on. The point is, yes, “House of Dark Shadows” is quite melodramatic at times, very concerned with the romantic entanglements between its characters and various other types of intrigue.
Much of “Dark Shadows'” cult following is because of Barnabas. In the days before “The X-Files” and “Buffy” made horror and sci-fi plots on TV hip, monster fans and baby goths had to settle for whatever spooky business they could find. In this dark age, any show with a vampire or werewolf in it was all-but guaranteed a cult following, even if it was otherwise a standard cop show or a cheesy soap. As a character, Barnabas Collins is written inconsistently. Whether he's meant to be a love-lorn anti-hero or a blood-thirsty monster, ready and able to kill at a moment's notice, changes from scene to scene. Are we suppose to root for this guy or be afraid of him? The answer is, obviously, both. He's a byronic hero in the gothic tradition, right? I'm not sure it entirely works. However, I do understand why the guy became an instant fan favorite. Jonathan Frid does have a compelling screen presence. He projects the proper amount of mysteriousness, strangely attractive even when being awful to everyone around him. Frid has the same qualities as Karloff, Lugosi, and Price before him: Intimidating but with sad eyes, sullen but with a stylish charm about him. He could've been a great horror star, if he had chosen to walk that path.
Any time a noticeable trend starts to emerge in the genre, the question begs to be asked. Are all these similar movies arriving because they are commenting on something happening in our collective culture? Or is everyone simply trying to leech off another hit's success? Did the folk horror revival of the last decade occur because of a growing, worldwide fascination with pagan rites, ancient legends, and the psychology of cults? Or did a bunch of hacks see "The Witch" and "Midsommar" and think "If I make a movie like that, I could probably get it distributed all over." The correct answer is both, one assumes. However, you can usually tell which filmmakers are genuinely into folklore as a concept and which merely want to cash in. There's been a lot of indie horror movies full of weird shit happening in the woods, stark but very green landscapes, religious enclaves as plot points, and farm animals photographed ominously in recent memory. This is a worldwide phenomenon too. Look, for example, at 2019's "Luz." (Usually subtitled "The Flower of Evil," to distinguish it from the German horror movie of the same title released the year before.) This was a film made in Colombia, a country not usually known for its horror flicks, and one must wonder whether it represents an eager attempt to bring local culture to an international audience or more economic concerns.
Deep in the Colombian jungle resides a man known only as El Señor. He lives in a simple wood cabin with his three teenage daughters: Uma, Zion, and Laila. The man believes himself to be a prophet of God, with divine insight into the ways of the world. He has raised his daughters in this faith, informing them that the outside world is evil and that the Devil is everywhere. He has amassed a small local following as well. Since the death of the girls' mother – whose body was planted under a barren tree – the man's behavior has grown increasingly unhinged. He has begun to kidnap children from nearby areas and proclaim them to be the new Messiah, treating them cruelly in hopes of goading them towards performing miracles. When they inevitably die, he buries their bones in the woods and moves onto the next one. The discovery of a cassette tape player among the girls causes them to doubt their father's ways, shortly before he brings home his latest Jesus.
There certainly have been a lot of true crime documentaries, podcasts, and movies about cults over the last few years. I suspect this is because of the observation that the followings of openly fascist politicians have grown rather cult-like and how this has begun to direct our daily lives. Perhaps this is a reflection of a growing need for answers in a world ravaged by climate change and economic inequality. Or maybe some goofy shit went viral online. Either way, yes, "Luz" is another movie about a clearly unhinged, self-proclaimed prophet and his followers. Truthfully, El Señor's cult seems small. It is mostly composed of him and his daughters, with a handful of other people seen around in a few scenes. Writer/director Juan Diego Escobar Alvarez' script never exactly details the tenets of the cult's beliefs or what draws people to this man. There's disappointingly little insight into the psychology behind social systems like this. We see El Señor abusing his position of power. He lords over his daughters, controls every aspect of their lives, and rapes the woman whose son he abducts. Here in the real world, most cult leaders are simply assholes with God complexes who want sexually pliable followers at their feet, who prey on the vulnerable with made-up beliefs to exploit those weaknesses. El Señor seems to genuinely believe the rhetoric he's spitting. How this appeals to those around him, especially when the Messiahs he keeps bringing home have a habit of dying, is left unexplored. Similarly, how the man justifies his cruel actions within his own made-up morality is not dug into.
Instead, Alvarez' film suggests a lot. Past events, mostly revolving around the girl's dead mother, are hinted at in dialogue. The film is shot with a deliberately stylized palette and exaggerated natural features. The moon is huge in the sky, the rainbows under the clouds are prominent, the colors are extra bright. The voice over narration from one of the girls suggests we are seeing her version of events.... Despite the film including scenes without her, creating a confusing sense of perspective. More than once, the film's surreal tendencies point towards the possibility that something genuinely supernatural is happening here. However, whether this is an example of group hysteria among an isolated trio of impressible kids or proof of an actual demonic presence is frustratingly never clarified. The Jesus kid stares ahead unblinkingly and never speaks, which makes you think something is up with him. He also never explicitly does anything miraculous or diabolic. There are creepy images of a Luciferian goat, Black Philip's southern-most cousin, lurking in the night fog. Is this a hallucination of the daughters or further evidence of the devil being real? Are the girls possibly magical? Was their mom? I dunno. The film doesn't seem to know either.
The most cynical part of me feels like "Luz" wants it both ways. The film wants to utilize the visual cliches of modern folk horror to create an eerie atmosphere while also half-heartedly implying that all of this stuff only exists in the heads of its followers. The characters discuss the potential for good and evil in all of us, a theme that never seems to solidify into anything potent. Each of the sisters seem to have different degrees of belief in their dad's rantings. However, none of the girls are fleshed-out enough to be compelling characters in their own right. In general, Alvarez seems most interested in the social drama elements of this story. El Señor has hang-ups with women. He wants to protect his daughters, while indulging in his own base desires. His doctrine has not prepared the girls for the realities of human interaction. Uma does not understand her own body or the consequences of sex. This predictably ends badly, in the film's grisliest scene. Yes, this is another moody indie exploring the always relevant topic of "dudes suck." However, there's simply not much depth to the observations made. The attempts to wrap them in horror trappings ultimately lack novel or gusto as well.
Alvarez lists Alexandro Jodorowsky as an influence, a filmmaker that might be an actual cult leader with questionable attitudes towards women. Aside from the surreal colors, it's not a link I especially notice. "Luz" does not have the sheer intensity of Jodorowsky's visions nor the deep investment in their esoteric significance. But that's true for most movies. By the way, the title comes from the dead mother's name with the subtitle of "The Flower of Evil" referring to the tree above her grave. Not that I'm entirely sure how exactly that connects with the rest of the movie's ideas "Luz" shows some promise. Alvarez has made another feature since, which sounds more rooted in Colombian folklore. He should've done that here too and left the demonic goats behind, while focusing on the elements of the script that actually interested and making the girls into more detailed characters. [5/10]
Deep in the Colombian jungle resides a man known only as El Señor. He lives in a simple wood cabin with his three teenage daughters: Uma, Zion, and Laila. The man believes himself to be a prophet of God, with divine insight into the ways of the world. He has raised his daughters in this faith, informing them that the outside world is evil and that the Devil is everywhere. He has amassed a small local following as well. Since the death of the girls' mother – whose body was planted under a barren tree – the man's behavior has grown increasingly unhinged. He has begun to kidnap children from nearby areas and proclaim them to be the new Messiah, treating them cruelly in hopes of goading them towards performing miracles. When they inevitably die, he buries their bones in the woods and moves onto the next one. The discovery of a cassette tape player among the girls causes them to doubt their father's ways, shortly before he brings home his latest Jesus.
Instead, Alvarez' film suggests a lot. Past events, mostly revolving around the girl's dead mother, are hinted at in dialogue. The film is shot with a deliberately stylized palette and exaggerated natural features. The moon is huge in the sky, the rainbows under the clouds are prominent, the colors are extra bright. The voice over narration from one of the girls suggests we are seeing her version of events.... Despite the film including scenes without her, creating a confusing sense of perspective. More than once, the film's surreal tendencies point towards the possibility that something genuinely supernatural is happening here. However, whether this is an example of group hysteria among an isolated trio of impressible kids or proof of an actual demonic presence is frustratingly never clarified. The Jesus kid stares ahead unblinkingly and never speaks, which makes you think something is up with him. He also never explicitly does anything miraculous or diabolic. There are creepy images of a Luciferian goat, Black Philip's southern-most cousin, lurking in the night fog. Is this a hallucination of the daughters or further evidence of the devil being real? Are the girls possibly magical? Was their mom? I dunno. The film doesn't seem to know either.
Alvarez lists Alexandro Jodorowsky as an influence, a filmmaker that might be an actual cult leader with questionable attitudes towards women. Aside from the surreal colors, it's not a link I especially notice. "Luz" does not have the sheer intensity of Jodorowsky's visions nor the deep investment in their esoteric significance. But that's true for most movies. By the way, the title comes from the dead mother's name with the subtitle of "The Flower of Evil" referring to the tree above her grave. Not that I'm entirely sure how exactly that connects with the rest of the movie's ideas "Luz" shows some promise. Alvarez has made another feature since, which sounds more rooted in Colombian folklore. He should've done that here too and left the demonic goats behind, while focusing on the elements of the script that actually interested and making the girls into more detailed characters. [5/10]
Historias para no dormir: El trapero
The episode of “Tales to Keep You Awake” I watched last year was quite good and made me curious to check out more of this ground-breaking Spanish television series. Unfortunately, there's not a lot of information about the series and its creator and sometimes host, Narciso Ibáñez Serrador, on the English language web. I do know that the series took a long hiatus after its 1967 season, while Serrador pursued a number of other projects. Eventually, Serrador would return to “Historias Para No Dormir” in 1982, for a quartet of feature length episodes, now in color. The last of this was “El trapero,” “The Junkman.” If IMDb's listings are to be believed, this might have been the fourth time Serrador told this story. Each are loosely inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's “Berenice” and each star Serrador's father, Narciso Ibáñez Menta. I say might because I can find no information about the 1959 or 1965 versions. A half-hour fragment of the 1975 version is on Youtube so we can be certain it did exist. The language barrier and generally obscurity of foreign television makes it a difficult topic to research.
Anyway... Despite being an entirely Spanish production, “The Junkman” is set in London at the dawn of the Victorian era. Edmond is an elderly man who can barely support his family with his work as a junk man, someone who fishes valuables out of the trash. His mute wife Berenice and their dog Rosa appreciate what Edmond does for them anyway. His layabout, alcoholic adult son Bernard, meanwhile, is openly resentful of his father. A prostitute with a gold tooth is murdered and Edmond suspects his son, who was drinking in the same bar, might be the man responsible. Eventually, the authorities find the actual killer but still can't explain what happened to the woman's gold tooth. That is when Edmond uncovers an entire collection of plucked out gold teeth in his son's cabinet. The father comes to believe that his son, when intoxicated, develops a compulsion to rob graves and dig through the jaws of the corpses. Following the gruesome death of Rosa, and the tragic passing of Berenice, the tension between father and son comes to a head.
Despite these flaws, “El trapero” does prove to be a compelling, at times chilling, narrative. A lot of this is because Narciso Menta and Daniel Dicenta's performance. Menta has such a sense of history and feeling in his eyes. His face conveys a life time. When discussing how much his wife's partnership or their family dog means to him, you truly believe him. Dicenta, meanwhile, is all sweat and nervous energy as the boozy son. His delirious detox nightmares or drunken rants truly give the impression of a man at the end of his rope. The tension between the two escalates towards a suitably unsettling finale. The concluding image of the episode – which would also be the concluding image of the entire series – is creepy as hell, following a potent twist ending. Not so much an adaptation of Poe's story as an evolution of its themes, “El trapero” does prove to be an effectively tense program for patient horror fans. [7/10]
Margaret Hamilton was clearly too good of a guest star not to bring back, especially after Ophelia became a reoccurring character. “Happy Birthday, Grandma Frump” has Gomez and Morticia being aghast that they were not invited to donate money to a retirement facility. (Called a “home for the aged” here, which I guess is nicer than “old folks home.”) Gomez instead decides to fund his own. On a totally unrelated note, Morticia decides to pay for a week long stay at a spa for her mom's birthday. While Granny Frump is visiting, the mischievous kids tell her that their parents are planning on shipping her out. Frump mistakenly comes to believe that Gomez and Morticia are sending her off to pasture, so she attempts to prove her usefulness. Through further misunderstandings, this leads to the elderly lady trying to act like a little kid again. Morticia, noticing that her mother is acting very strangely, seeks out a psychiatric institute to help.
Obviously, this is a very silly episode, even by the standards of this admittedly extremely silly series. “Happy Birthday, Grandma Frump” is one of those sitcom half-hours revolving around the kind of improbable misunderstandings that only happen in television, getting more convoluted as it goes on. But that's okay, for a simple reason: Watching Margaret Hamilton acting like a lunatic is funny. Whether she's frantically dusting the house, washing a huge pile of dishes at super speed, or hopping around on a Pogo stick while dressed as a kid, Hamilton is committed utterly to the bit. Honestly, I didn't know she was such a skilled physical comedian, able to embrace acting like such a goof-ball on-screen. Turns out the Wicked Witch of the West was a pretty funny lady! The joke comes to a natural conclusion when the on-going act of behaving like a child exhausts the grandmother.
In general, this episode has a lot of strong gags in it. There's a throwaway sequence of Gomez and Morticia playing with his toy trains together, a delightfully goofy moment. The running gag of Gomez covering his wife's arm with kisses gets two amusing variation here. The first occurs as he's interrupted in the middle of a kissing frenzy, marking Morticia's sleeve so he can pick up where he left off. Later, she summons him while he's in the middle of shaving. With the exception of Blossom Rock as Grandmama – I guess one grandmother was enough for this episode – the whole cast is given some good jokes here. Lurch's reaction to the unusual gift Granny Frump brings, Uncle Fester's method for keeping his fingernails short, Thing's skill as a phone answering service: All good stuff. (Though the show has been returning to the joke of Mortician plucking on her shamisen while blabbing random Japanese words too often.) This episode also marks, outside the original Charles Addams comic strips anyway, the first time Wednesday was depicting torturing her brother as a fun game. As I've said in the past, Lisa Loring's Wednesday being such a classically adorable little kid makes the joke of her having such morbid hobbies much funnier, in my opinion. No shade on future Wednesdays, who deadpan sadism I obviously also love. [7/10]
Obviously, this is a very silly episode, even by the standards of this admittedly extremely silly series. “Happy Birthday, Grandma Frump” is one of those sitcom half-hours revolving around the kind of improbable misunderstandings that only happen in television, getting more convoluted as it goes on. But that's okay, for a simple reason: Watching Margaret Hamilton acting like a lunatic is funny. Whether she's frantically dusting the house, washing a huge pile of dishes at super speed, or hopping around on a Pogo stick while dressed as a kid, Hamilton is committed utterly to the bit. Honestly, I didn't know she was such a skilled physical comedian, able to embrace acting like such a goof-ball on-screen. Turns out the Wicked Witch of the West was a pretty funny lady! The joke comes to a natural conclusion when the on-going act of behaving like a child exhausts the grandmother.
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House of Dark Shadows has been on my watchlist for a while, for largely the same reasons (the show sounds fascinating, but... daunting). Actually, the initial thing that got me to put it on there was some sort of interview with Quentin Tarantino where he mentioned this movie and something called The Mephisto Waltz. I keep thinking I'll do a midweek theme for those two movies (no idea if they actually complement each other, but the Tarantino connection is probably enough), but I simply haven't been able to squeeze them in (and at one point, it was definitely hard to find a way to watch them - legally, at least)... Maybe next year!
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