Watching the zombie world war unfold

World War Z. I saw this film the night it had its premiere in Oslo (July 11^th) at the Colosseum in Oslo. Packed theater. Lights go down. The film starts. Normal family life for the first ten minutes, with Brad Pitt as Gerry Lane, who used to work as an investigator for the United Nations, and who now seems to be a stay-at-home dad, making his kids pancakes for breakfast. And then they’re in their car, he and his wife and two children, stuck in traffic on a Philadelphia city street. Normal life ends right here. All hell breaks loose in Philadelphia in a scene that is guaranteed to make you feel like you’re climbing endlessly to the top of a roller coaster hill followed by an unpleasant ride down, only to start on the next climb. That’s how the film continues for almost two hours. An intense, relentless, horrific ride to the finish. The final five minutes of the film resemble the first ten minutes—family togetherness, in this case, a reunion. In between, you’ve got to be made of stone not to be affected by some of the scenes that pop out at you (literally, thanks to the 3-D): the stewardess-turned-zombie moving on from economy class to the front of the plane on the plane ride from and to hell after having been bitten by a stowaway zombie, as well as the scene in the WHO facility in Cardiff Wales, where the former head of the lab, now a zombie, tries to ‘understand’ what happened to his prey (Gerry) who has injected himself with a deadly pathogen in order to camouflage himself from the zombies. This zombie won’t attack Gerry because the pathogen makes the prey sick and the zombies can smell sickness which they avoid.

The film has some similarities to other films/TV series in this genre: 28 Days Later (the fast-moving zombies, how quickly people ‘turn’ after having been bitten, and the apartment hallway scene where they climb the stairs to flee the zombies), Resident Evil (the suspenseful lab/facility scenes), The Walking Dead (the dimly-lit corridor scenes with zombies waiting to attack just around the corner), and a few others. But it’s on its own when it comes to some specific scenes: zombies swarming and piling up on each other like insects in order to scale the huge wall in Israel erected to keep them out, and the unbelievable plane scene come to mind. I think what sets this film apart is the relentlessness of the zombie hordes and the sheer numbers of zombies. Cities are overrun in minutes. There is nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. There is no time to hatch a plot, to follow it through. Panic ensues immediately among the crowds of people trying to flee. You’ve got to think on your feet, and if you don’t keep moving, as Gerry points out, you’re dead. Meaning you’re a zombie.

There are some implausible scenarios. One of them is when the plane crashes in the mountains of Wales and Gerry awakens and finds himself wounded and dripping blood. The female Israeli soldier he’s traveling with, Segen (played by Daniella Kertesz), who has had her arm hacked off by Gerry after having been bit by a zombie, has also survived. For a brief second, it looks as though she may transform. But she doesn’t. They both walk the distance it takes for them to reach the WHO research facility in Cardiff that is their intended destination. But my question is--why wasn’t there a horde of zombies attracted to the site of the plane crash? The zombies are apparently attracted by noise, and wouldn’t a crashing plane make a lot of noise? The other is when Gerry and Segen are walking very slowly through town on their way to the WHO facility, her supporting him since he is having problems walking. Where are the zombies? Or is Cardiff a zombie-free zone? It’s not made clear, or if it was, I missed it. They had ample time to reach the facility, something that seems rather out of tune with the rest of the film. Additionally, Gerry is losing blood fast, something the zombies would definitely register.

Once inside the facility though, they meet a team of scientists who are very skeptical to their presence; they want to know why they’ve come. Gerry explains his theory about using pathogens to camouflage the living from the ‘undead’, and they agree that his theory is worth testing. However, there are zombies wandering the halls of the wing of the lab building where the pathogens are stored; they are rather sluggish due to the lack of prey. They became zombies because the lead researcher accidentally infected himself with the blood of a zombie. And that led to his attacking other staff members; the uninfected managed to seal off this wing to keep the undead out.  

I’m halfway through the book of the same name by Max Brooks. I’d have to describe the tone of the book in much the same way—relentless and creepy, but the relentlessness and creepiness are spread out over many pages and the story unfolds gradually through the voices of the different people interviewed, who inform about what they have witnessed in a matter-of-fact tone. The book and the film are very different in this respect, as there is no ‘main’ character like Gerry in the book. But the ever-increasing paranoia and the shocking events are similar; the paranoia is perhaps more pronounced in the book than in the film. And at least with the book, I can put it down when I’ve had enough for an evening. Unless you close your eyes in the theater, it’s hard to escape what’s going on. At certain points, I had to remind myself that it was a film, to breathe normally. It occurred to me that World War Z is not a film for the kiddies or the weak of heart (just like roller coaster rides generally). I know I needed a few days to calm down after having seen it. I wonder if Brad Pitt let his kids watch this one?

Fear of the dark and of the creatures that live there

An interesting discussion this past weekend with some friends who were visiting—we ended up talking about the horror movies that have scared us the most. All of us are adults, and all of us ended up being scared, as in many sleepless nights after having viewed them. Scared as in lights on in all rooms of the house when alone, creepy images that seem to be imprinted on our brains forever—that sort of thing. The Grudge, The Ring, and I Am Legend were the films mentioned by several people, and it occurred to me that what these films all have in common are characters that are hideously deformed or grotesque in some way. In The Grudge and The Ring, female characters have been transformed into evil creatures with long dark hair that covers their faces, but when those faces are exposed, they are terrifying. They also have a tendency to glide along hallway walls or to crawl down stairs, and they have a nasty habit of appearing where you would least want them to turn up—in your bed or in an elevator. The shock value alone of having seen them is enough to make you want to sleep with all the lights on for many nights afterwards. The use of children in horror films can also be quite shocking—children who become evil, possessed children, little monsters--as in Children of the Damned; this offends our sense of normalcy. It’s not supposed to be that way. What scares us in I Am Legend are the humanoid monsters with superhuman strength (vampires in the novella by Richard Matheson on which the film was based) who roam the streets of the city by the thousands at night looking for prey. They can scale the outer walls of buildings and cross a city park in record speed, screeching and growling. But they cannot tolerate the light of day, which gives the protagonist (in this film Will Smith) the daylight hours to do the things he must do—find food and fuel for his car, and try to find other survivors like himself. But he must be home by sunset in order to lock down his house so that these creatures cannot find him or get inside his house. But of course you know they will at some point, and that he will make a mistake that will allow them to do so, and that is what is scary—when will it happen? It’s only a question of time. We can empathize with the protagonist; what would we do if we were in his shoes? How would we survive, and would we? Or would we go mad?

When I was a child, I thought that if I concentrated hard enough, I could create the imaginary creatures that scared me. Just that thought alone, that I might have the power to create those creatures, scared me. Where did those scary creatures come from? Perhaps from the fairytales that were read to us as children—among them Grimm’s fairytales about witches (Hansel and Gretel; Snow White), wolves (Little Red Riding Hood) and other odd and sometimes evil creatures. Perhaps they also came from our religious education that taught us about God and the Devil. They did not come from TV or films, as my parents did not purchase a TV until I was almost thirteen years old; I did not start going to movies until I was in my early teens. When I was a teenager, I was sure that by the time I reached adulthood, I would no longer be scared when watching horror or supernatural films. That has not proven to be the case. I need only think of The Shining, I Am Legend, The Grudge, The Exorcist, REC, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark (the original TV movie), Burnt Offerings, and a number of other films in this genre, to remind myself of the effect they had on me upon first viewing. I think that fears of the dark or of monsters in the closet or under the bed are primal fears; we do not see well in the dark, whereas our predators (mostly carnivorous animals in early times) did. They had the advantage. So we built shelters to keep them out and used fire to allow us to see but also to keep predators away. We are thankful for the protection of our modern homes—with doors and windows we can lock against anything or anybody that might want to hurt us. We turn on our alarm systems to be warned if an intruder breaks in. But what happens if the intruder is not human? If we keep the lights on, will that keep the non-human intruders away? What scares us is the possibility that our ‘protections’ are merely illusions—can locked doors and windows keep out things that really want to get in? Our locks, alarm systems and indoor lighting cannot protect us against supernatural threats. Films like Paranormal Activity, The Entity, and The Exorcist scare us exactly for this reason. And what happens if people become possessed by evil spirits, as happened in The Shining or in so many other supernatural horror films? How do you fight that type of evil? In the final analysis, perhaps horror films in general make us thankful for the good old routine daily life that we live; we do not have to fight off predators on a daily basis, nor do we have to hunt our own food. Most of us living in industrialized societies do not have to risk our lives each day in order to survive. 

Some thoughts about the film The Burrowers

Apropos Kristen Stewart—her recent film, Snow White and the Huntsman, was not a movie I liked very much and I really don’t understand the hype surrounding it. This film got a wide release and generated big box office; I cannot imagine why. I think all involved did passable jobs, but no more than that. The film is forgettable once you’re out of the theater. Charlize Theron overacted/over-reacted and Kristen Stewart under acted/under-reacted (few to no facial expressions in key scenes and so little to say; it was sometimes painful to watch, especially the final scene. It almost seemed as if she was struggling to get some words out, but they never came). Chris Hemsworth did the best acting job if you ask me, within the limited emotional range of the film. The entire film had a wooden feel to it. One can hope that there will be no sequel. I cannot see how it would be feasible, realistic or even necessary. What more is there to say about this story that hasn’t already been said?

The other night I watched a film on Showtime called The Burrowers, from 2008. This film was apparently never released to the movie public and instead went straight to DVD. I don’t understand the rationale for that move, since I thought it was a much better film than big budget Snow White and the Huntsman. Who makes these decisions? The Burrowers was actually quite a creepy little horror film, albeit a very unusual horror film since it was set in the American Wild West during 1879. It is a bit slow-moving, but the characters are interesting and well-developed, as is the storyline. A family living out on the lonely prairie disappears without a trace, and a posse is formed to try and find them/rescue them from the Native American Indians whom they are sure have abducted them. How wrong they are. Their discovery that entities other than Indians are stalking them, waiting for them in the dark, is as I said, creepy, because they, like us, find it hard to believe that such monsters could exist out on the plains. But they do. And they are not just any monsters, they are burrowers, creatures that live underground and who have a penchant for tracking and eating humans. But their mode for doing this is quite unique, and I won’t spoil the film by giving this information away, except to say that it is exploited in an effort to kill them off. The creatures, which are CGI creations, are scary enough such that the film works. The Burrowers is a clever film, and while some people on IMDB have complained about the film’s ending, I found it to be realistic, though unsatisfying. All the loose ends are not tied up. The monsters are not completely wiped out. What the film manages to convey very well is a sense of dread; imagine you are out on the prairie at night, sitting around a fire at your campsite. Your vision is limited, the dark envelopes you, you hear noises. Even if there were no monsters, the reality of spending the night out under the open skies, exposed and vulnerable, could be anxiety-inducing for many people. I am one of them. The film never plays for laughs; it takes itself seriously, and that is one of its strengths. Additionally, you get a real feel for what life must have been like in 1879—long periods of isolation, no internet, no phones, little communication, mostly rumors and innuendoes, and the constant threat of attack. I found myself thinking of the X-Files, always a good sign in my book, because some of the X-Files episodes were quite scary. The Burrowers brought to mind the X-Files episode Detour from 1997. Both the film and the TV episode are well-worth watching. 

In the spirit of Halloween

During the weekend I happened to be up late and decided to see what was on television. I stumbled across the new horror series that has been racking up rave reviews in the USA—The Walking Dead. The first season is being shown late at night here in Norway on the cable station Fox Crime; I understand that six episodes comprise the first season, and that the second season premiered in the USA last night. I have only managed to see two episodes of the first season so far, but what I’ve seen is fairly convincing. This is a cut above your average horror series. The zombies are very realistic and the entire show has such a realistic feel to it that you could almost imagine such a thing happening—a virus wiping out huge segments of the population and then the dead coming back to life as flesh-eating zombies. The episode I watched last night was the final one of the first season—when the CDC in Atlanta self-destructs after the generators lose power due to lack of fuel, taking the one scientist who decides to stay and end his life there with it. But before it is destroyed, this scientist shows the group of survivors who travel together the 3-D brain scans of his wife before she died of the virus, and how the virus spread through her brain, killing her. It was interesting to see the ‘live’ brain scans—the neural circuits in the brain flashing and then the virus spreading through the brain, causing the circuits to stop firing. Then, after some hours, some light started to glow in his dead wife’s brain stem, but nowhere else in the brain, allowing her to rise again as a zombie, at which point he shot her through the brain. I have to ask myself—why at my age do I still enjoy being scared by this type of show? Why do I still watch this type of horror? I find myself being scared in the same way as I was when I was a teenager. I know none of it is real, that it probably could never happen quite in this way, although an apocalypse of some sort could of course occur. That was more than realistically portrayed in Corman McCarthy’s book The Road, which I found to be quite a harrowing read. For that reason, I did not watch the film based on the book and which starred Viggo Mortensen, mostly because it all seemed so hopeless and dark beyond words. Perhaps the difference between it and The Walking Dead is that there seems to be some hope in the latter, if only in that the survivors can in fact take out the zombies, who are slow-moving and easy to kill. But they are ugly and scary-looking and the show is definitely not for children or the faint-hearted. I found myself thinking of I Am Legend with Will Smith and The Omega Man with Charlton Heston as well, also films where viruses led to scenarios quite similar to those in The Walking Dead—survivors battling virus-infected monsters and vampires respectively. Both of these films are based on the Richard Matheson novel I Am Legend, which is excellent.

Zombie and vampire movies continue to fascinate us, as is evidenced by how well most of them do at the box office. They scare us—and we seem to like being scared. Monsters scare us, the monsters of our childhood, the ones hiding in the closet or under the bed. The dark scares us, and it seems to be an instinctive response—we cannot see in the dark and that by itself leads to fear, because we are vulnerable in the dark. I remember that feeling as a child. What lies behind the door? What is in the closet? What is under my bed if I look down or if my foot sticks out from under the covers? What will get me if I am not protected? What if I look out the window and a monster stares back at me from the darkness? That is why the scenes of the monsters overrunning New York City in I Am Legend were terrifying. They were strong, vicious predators and nothing seemed to stop them. They hid indoors by day and came out at night. Imagine a society where that was the case—howling screeching monsters running amok in the night. 28 Days Later was another such film that created the same feelings; especially the one scene in the tunnel where the car with uninfected survivors won’t start and you can hear the infected mob bearing down upon them. Will they escape, and what happens if they don’t? We know the answer but we watch anyway to make sure they get away. Because some of them have to escape the horrible fate that awaits them—some of them have to live. We have to know that it is possible to survive, otherwise what is the point of watching?  

Halloween is soon upon us. Each year the USA (and now many European countries ironically enough) celebrates this strange holiday—a combination of pagan and Christian influences. Halloween is not originally an American holiday. The idea of Halloween with masks and costumes is in fact quite ancient, originating with the Celtic festival of Samhain, which marked the end of summer (information culled from different websites). The Celts (who were spread out over much of Western Europe) believed that demons and ghosts of the dead returned to earth during harvest time (before the winter months) due to the fact that the gates between life and death were more ‘open’ at this time of year. These other-world visitors were dangerous because they could cause trouble with the harvest and food stores for the winter months, so it was necessary to appease them. The Celts thus wore costumes and masks during Samhain to ward off demons and ghosts, sacrificed animals and burned crops to their gods in bonfires built by their priests (the Druids) who could control the supernatural energy present at this time of year. We thus have Halloween in our blood, so to speak. Despite the Christian influences that eventually overtook Halloween, the original pagan celebration is a part of our heritage. The fear of the supernatural world, of demons, ghosts, vampires and monsters, is as old as time. Fire could protect, darkness was danger. We would prefer not to be visited by ghosts and demons; we would do what we could to prevent that. In our ‘civilized’ age, we don’t believe that ghosts, demons, vampires and monsters walk the earth, but the superstitious part of us is tenacious and not easy to get rid of no matter how ‘civilized’ we are. Perhaps that is one explanation for our fascination with the darkness, with the unknown, with monsters. As much as we like to pretend that we don’t get scared, the reality is something else again.

My list of favorite fantasy/science fiction/horror authors and books

I have been a fan of fantasy/science fiction/horror literature for years, as I have mentioned in previous posts. There is something about this genre of literature that never ceases to fascinate me. I know many people who are completely uninterested in it, who find it boring because they say these types of stories are not real or logical. I have come to the conclusion that you are either a fan or you are not. There is no middle ground. I am a staunch fan. My mind was always stimulated by this type of literature; I had an active imagination as a child and could scare myself silly just thinking about the deformed creatures that were waiting for me behind the bedroom door or in the bathroom mirror. You would think that this fear would have stopped me from reading these types of books about alien worlds or strange creatures and the like. But it didn’t. And it was cool to imagine what other planets and worlds might look like, or how it would be to travel there and communicate with their inhabitants, even if it proved to be quite dangerous.

Some of the first books I can remember reading were fantasy novels for children, e.g. books by Roald Dahl (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; James and the Giant Peach) and CS Lewis. We read Edgar Allan Poe’s morbid tales of horror in grammar school and would discuss them at home around the dinner table in the evenings. Our teachers even organized movie sessions for us where we would watch films based on his books—Murders in the Rue Morgue comes to mind as a particularly violent story, although I believe we saw this in high school if memory serves me well.  As a teenager I became fascinated with the books by Ira Levin and JRR Tolkien as well as by Ray Bradbury.  I was drawn more and more to the idea that there are alternative worlds that we do not understand much about or that we cannot inhabit for one reason or another, or that there is alien life. That is the appeal of science fiction/fantasy to me. I don’t need to have this proven to me beyond a shadow of a doubt. I am not really interested in proof at all, although I think it is cool that much of science fiction is based on real facts. It is sufficient to me that these strange worlds and creatures exist in one form or another in the minds of their creators. I am interested in how the science fiction/horror/fantasy writers dreamed up the worlds they did; the fantastic stories about space and time travel, or how they managed to describe on paper the monsters that lived in the deep recesses of their brains. It is the creative process that interests me yet again. We are profoundly influenced as children by what we read, and I know that this is true for me. My parents never discouraged us from reading these kinds of books, hence the continued interest in them so many years later. I am including a list of favorite fantasy/science fiction/horror authors and their books that I have read and enjoyed during the past years.

1.       Aldous Huxley—Brave New World

2.       Bram Stoker—Dracula

3.       Cormac McCarthy—The Road

4.       CS Lewis—The Screwtape Letters; The Chronicles of Narnia; Out of the Silent Planet; Perelandra; That Hideous Strength

5.       Doris Lessing—The Fifth Child

6.       Douglas Adams—The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

7.       Edgar Allan Poe—The Fall of the House of Usher; Murders in the Rue Morgue; The Pit and the Pendulum; The Premature Burial; The Tell-tale Heart

8.       George Orwell—Nineteen Eighty-four; Animal Farm

9.       H G Wells—War of the Worlds

10.   Ira Levin—Rosemary’s Baby; This Perfect Day; The Stepford Wives; The Boys From Brazil

11.   Isaac Asimov—Fantastic Voyage

12.   JRR Tolkien—The Hobbit; Lord of the Rings Trilogy

13.   Madeleine L’Engle--A Wrinkle in Time

14.   Mary Shelley--Frankenstein

15.   Michael Crichton—The Andromeda Strain; The Terminal Man; Timeline; Prey

16.   Neil Gaiman—Coraline; The Wolves in the Walls; The Graveyard Book; Stardust

17.   Ray Bradbury—Fahrenheit 451; The Martian Chronicles; Something Wicked This Way Comes; The Illustrated Man

18.   Richard Matheson—I Am Legend

19.   Scarlett Thomas--The End of Mr. Y

20.   Stanislaw Lem--Solaris

21.   Stephen King—Salem’s Lot; The Shining; Cujo

22.   Tim Powers--The Stress of Her Regard

Two good sci-fi horror films--Alien and Pandorum

I keep promising myself that I won’t stay up late to watch sci-fi horror films on cable TV because they usually have a negative effect on my sleep. However, they’re not on all that often, so that when they do show up on cable, I’m tempted yet again to sit and watch them. I have been a sci-fi fan for years; the combination of sci-fi and horror started (for me) with the Alien films (four in all), all of which are excellent films due to tight plots and the terrific job that Sigourney Weaver did with her character Ripley in each of the films. And of course HR Giger, who crafted the Alien monster, did a fantastic job of creating one of the scariest non-humanoid creatures to ever inhabit a spaceship. The first Alien film (from 1979) mesmerized me. It managed to depict a claustrophobic, dark, scary and utterly mechanical/soul-less environment onboard the spaceship, which of course made the film very intense to watch. The scene in Alien where one of the crew goes in search of the missing cat in one of the more remote areas of the spaceship has to be one of the most nerve-wracking ever filmed. You know what’s coming, you just don’t know when and you’re not sure what the scene is going to look like. It delivers, as does the rest of the film. The other famous scene is one of the most revolting—suffice it to say that if you haven’t seen the film, you should be prepared for blood and a violent unusual alien birth. The Alien sequels also deliver, surprisingly enough, since sequels are usually never as good as the original film. This is not true of Alien 2, 3 or 4, which are stand-alone films and just as nerve-wracking to watch as the original, with the same measure of claustrophobia and terror.

I was reminded of Alien last night when I was watching Pandorum, a German-American sci-fi horror film from 2009 with Dennis Quaid and Ben Foster. Pandorum refers to the psychological condition of paranoia and hallucination that the astronauts experience due to their being in deep space. The film tells the story of the (remaining) astronauts who are on board a huge spaceship that is on a long journey to the planet Tanis, which they are to settle since Earth has been destroyed. All passengers on board are suspended in bio-chambers (pods) where they can sleep (a kind of dormance) for the long space journey. The spaceship also carries seeds and plants of all kinds that can be used in the creation of a new society on Tanis. But when the astronauts emerge from the pods they have problems remembering their mission, who they are, and what they are doing on board the ship, and they spend a good deal of time trying to figure out what is going on and what has happened to most of their fellow passengers who have disappeared. The film is pretty scary, with the same kind of claustrophobic intensity and paranoia that Alien has, but unlike Alien, its monsters are not aliens. Rather, they’re fast-moving strong humanoid-like monsters that were once human, but which mutated/evolved into monsters due to a combination of circumstances that the film explains nicely. They have been hunting and eating the passengers on board the spaceship that has become stranded on its way to Tanis. One of the major plot ideas of the film is that the remaining astronauts must repair the ship’s nuclear reactor before it shuts down and destroys the ship, and this quest puts them in constant danger as they must battle these creatures on their way to the reactor. You don’t find out until the end of the film what really happened to the spaceship or what has happened to the captain, which is good because the ending is definitely worth waiting for. Pandorum is a very good film on a par with Alien, and that’s saying a lot.

So I broke my promise to myself and watched Pandorum, which brought to mind Alien, and which led to my writing this post. I’m guessing that my life will be like this for a long time to come—loving and hating being scared at the same time and arguing with myself about whether or not I should watch these films. My husband doesn’t like these types of movies; he will always say how unrealistic they are. My father used to say the same thing. I know this is true, but there’s a part of my mind that’s willing to suspend reality so that I can enjoy such films. You either like sci-fi horror or you don’t. I guess I fall into the first category. I’ll write more about some of my favorite sci-fi films in future posts. 

Favorite movies and TV shows

(I'm updating this post as of 21 April 2013) to include Prometheus, Pitch Black and Oblivion under favorite sci-fi/horror films, and The Walking Dead under favorite TV shows)

One of my friends recently called me a film fanatic, and I have to say that she’s probably right. I’m not much of a TV watcher anymore (I used to be, but I hate reality TV and that’s all there is on TV these days), but you’ll never get me to stop going to the movies. I can’t think of a more pleasant way to spend a few hours than sitting in a dark theater with some candy and a box of popcorn, watching a movie. Movie theaters have changed—seats are very comfortable now (and they recline a bit), and each seat has its own plastic holder for water or soda bottles. Progress has been made for sure. The sound is exceptionally good, and the acoustics in the theater are too. You can now order tickets online and choose the seats you want. But that’s not why I go to the movies. I go because it’s a way to transport myself into another world for a few hours. I love being entertained; I love the fantasy, the magic, the escapism of movies. Always have and always will…….The following are some of my favorite movies, and while we’re at it, some of my favorite TV shows as well. If I listed all of the movies I’ve liked since I started going to the movies, the list would fill several pages for sure.

Favorite sci-fi/horror/fantasy films

·         2001 A Space Odyssey

·         2010

·         28 Days Later

·         Alien (all four films in the series)

·         Blade Runner

·         Bram Stoker’s Dracula

·         Burnt Offerings

·         District 9

·         Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark (TV movie)

·         Don’t Look Now

·         Harry Potter (all the films)

·         House of Dark Shadows

·         I Am Legend

·         Invasion of the Body Snatchers

·         Lord of the Rings film trilogy

·         Men in Black

·         Minority Report

·         Night of Dark Shadows

·         Pan’s Labyrinth

·         Psycho

·         Stardust

·         The Birds

·         The Exorcist

·         The Last Wave

·         The Man Who Fell to Earth

·         The New Daughter

·         The Omega Man

·         The Sentinel

·         The Shining

·         The Sixth Sense

·         Twelve Monkeys

·         What Dreams May Come

·         What Lies Beneath

Favorite films

·         40 Carats

·         All That Heaven Allows

·         All The Fine Young Cannibals

·         A Perfect Spy (TV mini-series)

·         Basic Instinct

·         Body Heat

·         Brigadoon

·         BUtterfield 8

·         French Kiss

·         Hair

·         Hold That Ghost

·         It’s Complicated

·         Jane Eyre (TV mini-series)

·         Jerry McGuire

·         Julie and Julia

·         Klute

·         Light Sleeper

·         Love Story

·         Marnie

·         Night Sins (TV movie)

·         Out of Africa

·         Romancing the Stone

·         Romeo is Bleeding

·         Saturday Night Fever

·         Some Came Running

·         Something Wild

·         Strangers on a Train

·         Sunday in New York

·         The Accidental Tourist

·         The Age of Innocence

·         The Apartment

·         The Fabulous Baker Boys

·         The Grifters

·         The Hours

·         The Last Seduction

·         The Long Kiss Goodnight

·         The Mechanic

·         The Moon-Spinners

·         The Pursuit of Happyness

·         The Sandpiper

·         The Shawshank Redemption

·         The Thorn Birds (TV mini-series)

·         The Witches of Eastwick

·         When Harry Met Sally

·         Witness

·         Zee and Co.

Favorite animated films/TV shows

·         Bernard Bear

·         Bugs Bunny and all the Looney Tunes cartoons

·         Coraline

·         Courage the Cowardly Dog

·         Fantasia

·         Ratatouille

·         Scooby Doo

·         The Flintstones

·         The Pink Panther

Favorite TV shows

·         Alfred Hitchcock Presents

·         Bewitched

·         Bonanza

·         Cheers

·         CSI Miami

·         Dark Shadows

·         Days of Our Lives (soap opera)

·         Dick Van Dyke Show

·         Disneyland

·         Frasier

·         I Love Lucy

·         I Spy

·         Kojak

·         Leave it to Beaver

·         Mary Tyler Moore Show

·         M*A*S*H

·         Maya

·         Night Gallery

·         Remington Steele

·         Six Feet Under

·         Star Trek

·         That Girl

·         The Avengers

·         The Brady Bunch

·         The Donna Reed Show

·         The Night Stalker

·         The Prisoner

·         The Rockford Files

·         The Sopranos

·         The Twilight Zone

·         The Waltons

·         The X-files

Dark Shadows and Collinwood mansion

Long ago, before the current fascination with vampires--before True Blood, Twilight, and The Vampire Diaries, there was Dark Shadows, the afternoon TV horror soap opera that ran from 1966 until 1971, Monday to Friday. If I remember correctly it was a half hour soap opera that started at 4 pm, at least in New York. The series was created and produced by Dan Curtis, who also made the two Dark Shadows movies that came afterwards. A remake of the series appeared in 1991 starring Ben Cross as Barnabas, but nothing ever beat the original Dark Shadows. It was truly a creepy series, and one that we and our friends followed devotedly. I remember playing basketball after school when I was in the seventh grade and running home from practice after it was over in order not to miss it. When my father became ill in 1969 and was home on sick leave for a while, even he got interested in watching the series with us in the afternoon.

The opening music itself would draw you in (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUuQK4CR5fM). It was spooky in its own right, accompanying the opening shots of the Collinwood mansion that sat atop a hill overlooking the sea, shrouded in mist during the early evening. I don’t recall all the plots and storylines, but I do remember the characters well: Barnabas Collins, the vampire, played by Jonathan Frid; Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, the Collins family matriarch, played by Joan Bennett; her daughter Carolyn, played by Nancy Barrett (with the beautiful long straight blond hair); Angelique, the witch, played by Lara Parker; Victoria Winters, the governess, played by Alexandra Moltke; Maggie Evans, a waitress, who resembled Josette du Pres, Barnabas’ love from long ago, both characters played by Kathryn Leigh Scott; Julia Hoffman, the doctor and friend of Barnabas, played by Grayson Hall; Quentin Collins, played by David Selby; Daphne Harridge played by Kate Jackson, and so many more. Barnabas could be quite evil at times and yet there was some sort of pity for him too- he was a vampire who wanted to be cured of his affliction. The stories were well-written for the most part, and quite strange. They were haunting--they got under your skin. Characters became identifiable with specific music as well; I remember Josette’s music box song (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LItWENw8Plk&feature=related), and Angelique had her music as did Quentin. The stories revolved around different love relationships (past, present and future), betrayals, witchcraft, vampirism, ghosts, and numerous Collins family problems. At times overly dramatic, sometimes campy, sometimes funny, but always memorable and the acting was always mostly good. There’s a reason the series has the fan base that it has, so many years later.

The actual mansion that was used (at least the exterior of it) as the fictional Collinwood mansion in the TV series is located in Rhode Island. When Dan Curtis decided to make his two Dark Shadows movies, he chose the Lyndhurst estate in Tarrytown New York (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyndhurst_(house)) as the film location. The Lyndhurst mansion became Collinwood mansion. Both films, House of Dark Shadows followed by Night of Dark Shadows, came out in 1971. The actual filming at Lyndhurst was done during the early spring in 1970, and there were many people who hung around the gates of the estate waiting to get a glimpse of or an autograph from the actors and actresses after they were finished filming for the day. I remember doing that with some friends from grammar school; we waited for hours for them to be finished on the set. The actors and actresses were always very gracious and they would sign autographs and pose for pictures with us. I have photos from that time of two of my friends posing together with Jonathan Frid, and I have autographs from Jonathan Frid, David Selby and Kate Jackson. It was an exciting time, and even more exciting when the films were actually shown for the first time at the Music Hall in Tarrytown. It was fun to see the Lyndhurst mansion transformed on the screen into a house that was inhabited by vampires and witches, a real house of evil.

Lyndhurst mansion--back view

Lyndhurst mansion--front