Halloween Movie Marathon: Hush...Hush Sweet Charlotte

When I talk about "horror movies," I'm usually talking about something with a supernatural elements--ghosts or demons or witches or vampires or something. But there's a whole level of movies without that element, movies that are terrible in a wholly human way. Hush...Hush Sweet Charlotte is a movie like that, an over-the-top melodramatic version of a psychological horror story starring two great actresses in the sunset of their careers. On IMDB, the movie is tagged as a drama/horror/thriller and it is all three of those.veryone remembers that Olivia de Havilland and Bette Davis starred in this movie about a southern belle gone looney, but most people don't remember that the movie was chock full of fabulous supporting actors including Agnes Moorehead, Bruce Dern, Cecil Kellaway, VictoBuono, and  Joseph Cotton.You can watch the full movie on IMDB.

I always associate this movie with What Ever Happened to Baby Jane, starring Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. I've always seen them together and my memory of them is so entwined that I can't remember which one had the moment where a boiled rat is served up for dinner. (I'm pretty sure that's Baby Jane). Baby Jane came out in 1962; Hush...Hush Sweet Charlotte came out in 1964. Both were directed by Robert Aldrich, who went on to direct The Dirty Dozen three years later. (Victor Buono co-starred in both movies, which was another connection between them.) Buono was only 43 when he died in 1982, and he was all over the landscape of the television shows I watched as a kid.

Nitpicking 666 Park Avenue

I really wanted to like this series; I really, really did. I loved the idea that it was a Faustian sort of show with touches of Stephen King's Needful Things. And there are some things about it that the writers and producers got right. That elevator scene with the photographer, for example. It was unexpected and really effective. There were also a couple of cool moments when things showed up in the dark, out of the field of vision of the characters, one of which was a really good things that go bump in the night" bit.
Terry O'Quinn is terrifically reptilian as the master of ceremonies in the dark circus that is the building (the Drake Apartments), and Vanessa Williams is just stunning. The show is filled with young women we know are beautiful, but they all seem to be cookie cutter types, pretty enough but not memorable, either as faces or as actresses.  (The young men are pretty bland as well and O'Quinn just acts them all off the screen. I'd love to see him and Bryan Cranston in an acting face-off.)
I love the dragon mosaic in the basement of the building. (Just in case we don't know, we're told that the word "Drake" is another word for "Dragon" but no one mentions its biblical symbolism, which is surprising because this is NOT a subtle show.)
I can tell you the exact moment that the show lost me and that was when the pretty blonde resident manager runs into the lovely Samantha Logan, playing a sort of psychic gypsy type, and the character and she complains about a washer in the laundry room being on the fritz.
Okay--to review--the building at 666 Park Avenue is a luxurious old building from the Twenties with a doorman and a concierge/bellman and the apartments don't have their own laundry facilities?  Really?
Then later, our plucky new resident manager decides she's going to do some research about the building at the public library, apparently never having heard of Google. (And the library's really old special collection turns out to have a whole lot of stuff about the building out in the general stacks. I've worked in libraries--that sort of thing would be kept under lock and key.
I wouldn't quibble if the show had engaged me but it just didn't. There's a moment t hat seems to have been lifted from The Devil's Advocate (and other movies I can't recall).
I think, if I had to put my hand on one thing that's not working, it's that the writers aren't giving their viewers enough credit. Every throwaway line is UNDERLINED, as if the audience won't get the innuendo.
I'm so disappointed. I don't watch a lot of television, but I had high hopes for this show. 

Feminist Horror Films--Where are they?

I'm not the first woman to ask this question and I won't be the last. Bitch Media, a site that accompanies the magazine Bitch (a feminist response to pop culture) has an interesting post on faux feminism and the lack of feminist horror films. (They don't count rape-and-revenge films and neither do I.)
Are so few horror movies feminist because if you take out "women as victim" you don't have much of a movie?  Is Cat People a feminist movie?
Heartless Doll posted a list of 10 top horror movie heroines back in 2008. I doubt they'd have many to add in the four years since they compiled their list. (Is The Others feminist?) Among those they listed were Carrie from Carrie; Wendy from The Shining, Ripley in Alien (which I don't really call a horror movie) and Rosemary in Rosemary's Baby. I don't quite get that last one. It's not like Rosemary prevails, but at least she is more than the usual drippy heroine who screams a lot.
The NBC television show Grimm is about to do an episode based on the myth of La Lorona (the weeping woman who steels children she finds by running water) and I'm looking forward to that because the stories of La Lorona are so sad and gender-specific. There must have been a horror movie centered on this myth/folk tale before but I've never seen it.
We need more horror movies with female villains and even more with empowered females hunting monsters. Buffy the Vampire Slayer can't really be the only one, can it?

Deb Butler's campaign ad

I went to college in North Carolina and I wish I still lived there so I could vote for Deb Butler.Butler's the kind of person I admire. She worked her way through college, according to her bio, toiling at restaurants and on landscape crews and a bunch of other jobs to pay her way through college and law school.
She has run businesses. She has gotten involved in her community. She. Gets. It.
Deb Butler is running for the North Carolina State Senate against Republican Thom Goolsby. Goolsby like his Virginia colleagues, supports mandatory trans-vaginal scans for women seeking abortions. (It's part of the "Women's Right to Know" Act enacted in 2011.)  In her latest campaign ad, Butler holds a transvaginal wand and says, "I think we need to have a candid conversation..."
You can see the article here, and watch the ad as well.
The Raleigh News & Observer (in a massive understatement) called the ad "visually frank."  Butler's opponent has voted to slash funds for birth control  (He's also voted to cut funds for cancer screenings, which is another topic altogether.)
Abortion is such a hot-button issue that at times it doesn't seem like anyone can discuss it in a calm and rational manner. I have a friend, who is long past the age where it's even an issue for her, who is so rabid a supporter of unfettered reproductive rights that it is the ONLY political issue she considers when she goes to the polls. (And no, she never had an abortion.)

October 11, International Day of the Girl Child

It's been a tough year for girls and young women all over the globe. Just this week, a 14-year-old girl became a target for speaking out against the aliban's attempts to limit education for young women. (Read the story here.) Even in the U.S. young women have been branded "sluts" for demanding their reproductive rights. Female mutilation is still practiced in numerous countries. If you're a girl, or used to be a girl or have a daughter or know a young woman, celebrate the International Day of the Girl Child by thinking about what can be done to help girls throughout the world achieve their goals and dreams. If you want to do something concrete, click over to Raise Your Hand.

Halloween Movie Marathon: Changeling

This is another haunted house story. I seem to be fond of haunted house stories. The centerpiece of this movie is a scene that sounds totally laughable when you try to describe it to anyone who hasn't seen it. 
It involves a wet ball bouncing down a flight of steps.
If you've seen the movie, you know the moment I mean.
And you know how scary it was.
George C. Scott starred in The Changeling and when you realized how scared his character was by that wet ball, you lost all shame about being scared yourself.
Because you know, George C. Scott was scared so you'd better believe that it was scary.
The movie co-starred Melvyn Douglas, a two-time Oscar winner who also had an Emmy and a Tony on his mantle. Douglas' last movie was Ghost Story, based on  Peter Straub's novel of the same name. I wasn't a huge fan of Ghost Story, but it was a chance to see Douglas, Fred Astaire, John Houseman and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. in the same movie. The movie also co-starred Trish Van Devere, Scott's fifth wife, who also co-starred with him in Day of the Dolphin.(Scott actually married Colleen Dewhurst twice.)
The movie was directed by a man named Peter Medak who is the hardest working man in show business. Born in 1937 in Hungary, he fled to the UK when he was 21. He's directed 60 movies (and has one coming out next year). His resume includes a lot of television (like Breaking Bad) but an eclectic list of features too, from Zorro the Gay Blade to The Krays.
The movie was the second feature for screenwriter William Gray, who also wrote The Philadelphia Experiment and a terrific genre movie called Black Moon Rising with Tommy Lee Jones and Linda Hamilton. Mostly since then he's worked in TV, writing episodes of everything from Dark Shadows to the Killer Wave miniseries that ran in 2007.
The Changeling is another "classy" horror story of the kind that's been out of vogue for awhile.  Pair it with Nicole Kidman's The Others for a Halloween double feature.

Halloween Movie Marathon: The Uninvited

The Uninvited (starring Ray Milland) is one of those black and white movies I saw on a local TV channel in Richmond when I was in high school. I consumed movies pretty uncritically back then and as a result, I can keep up my end of the conversation whenever talk turns to vintage films, as it often does in my circle of friends. (I know. We all need a life.)
My father loved movies more than any video store geek I ever met, but he preferred westerns to horror, so most nights when the creature-feature came on, I was left alone in the living room to watch while the rest of the family slept upstairs.
The living room had two French doors that opened onto a porch, and at night, they reflected ghostly images that could really freak you out after a while. And the house was old, with creepy creaky noises every time the furnace kicked on or the radiators heated up or someone got up and went to the bathroom.
But the living room also had a very comfy couch, just right for sharing with the family cat, an aloof black puffball who fed the anti-cat fervor of all who met him. (The cat tolerated the family but only loved my sister, but when it was chilly, he was a slut and would cozy up to the nearest warm body.)
The first time I saw Nightmare on Elm Street, I was lying on the couch in the living room, with the family's phone on an end table by my feet. I think if the phone had rung, I'd have jumped out of my skin. (BTW, I never saw the remake with Jackie Earle Haley, an actor I really like. Did anyone? How was it?)
The Uninvited is a ghost story and has a classic setup. A composer and his sister discover that the reason the gothic seaside manor they've just bought was so cheap is that it's haunted.  I remember being impressed with the special effects, which were probably state of the art for 1944. The ghosts looked real to me.
Alan Napier, who is fondly remembered by baby boomers as Alfred the butler on the Batman television series was in the cast; as was Cornelia Otis Skinner, an actress, playwright and humorist whose first novel, Our Hearts Were Young and Gay is an absolutely hilarious account of two girlfriends on a grand tour of Europe after their graduation from college.
The movie was written by Dodie Smith, who was also a novelist. She wrote the children's book 101 Dalmations that formed the basis of the wildly successful Disney movie of the same name.
The movie was directed by Lewis Allen who, the next year, directed Unseen from a screenplay by Raymond Chandler. He went on to direct a lot of episodic television (Bonanza, Big Valley, Little House on the Prairie.)
This movie is low-key and would make a perfect pairing for the more intense Haunting.