Welcome to the April 2015 Cinematic Meeting!
The theme this month was haunted houses. There is a lot of content for that theme. I could easily run the Society for years using only haunted house material, so making my selections was somewhat difficult. I like to strike a balance between content the members will enjoy and content that is classic or obscure (or both)—material that most would probably never find on their own. I eventually selected three shorts and one feature film that I thought best fit the theme and provided the correct mix of obscurity and enjoyment. As always, I’ve made informal references in text, with full references (to the main content only) listed at the end.
Aromatic Accompaniment: Midnight Berry by Chesapeake Bay Candle.
Surprise Literary Cameo
We didn’t have a Literary Meeting this month due to the fact that I was in Minneapolis for AWP, so I couldn’t resist reading a short story to open the meeting. That story was “Ghost Hunt,” by Wakefield H. Russell. This 1938 story follows an ill-fated paranormal investigation of The Grange, a haunted house near Richmond Bridge in London, England. Other than exercising the Chairman’s Prerogative, the excuse I make for shoehorning a literary entry into the Cinematic Meeting is that the story takes the form of a narration by one Tony Weldon as he and one Professor Mignon of Paris look into the reported haunting of the house for a radio documentary. I’d be happy to take anyone who would care to come with me down to the river to listen to what happens.
Shorts
Next began the proper cinematic phase.
Fist up was “Jasper and the Haunted House,” an old 1942 Paramount cartoon directed by George Pal. I originally ran across this cartoon in a VHS collection called 50 Classic Cartoons that my grandmother got my sister and me for Christmas sometime in the mid-90s. It was a multivolume collection, and I don’t know which volume “Jasper and the Haunted House” appeared on. I found the collection itself on Worldcat but not all the volume entries list full contents. If anyone figures it out, I’d appreciate a heads up.
Seriously, would you trust this guy to give you directions to Deacon Jones’s House?
I’m just going to acknowledge up front that watching this cartoon in 2015 is a little uncomfortable. Despite that, it’s an interesting short, and certainly meets the obscurity test, as well as the thematic test. What I love about this short is the sinister “Mr. Scarecrow.” Sandwiched between old Popeye cartoons, this seemed very dark when I first saw it. The scarecrow just seems evil, probably because of the way his entire head flattens when he smiles at the audience. He was the first cartoon character I ever saw who seemed to operate from a place of actual maliciousness. It stuck with me for nearly twenty years, but I never thought I’d see it again, when I stumbled across it on YouTube posted as “Racist Cartoon.” Heh.
Second on the list was an obscure gem (even by Internet standards) called “Barton Mansion.” This was something my friends and I watched back in Middle School, back in the days when it was somewhat difficult to watch Internet videos. I remember us crowding around the monitor in a poorly-lit house getting scared silly when the inevitable Spooky Thing popped out of a doorway to frighten the teenaged investigators.
This was another piece of Internet history that stuck with me, and I expected never to see it again after 7th grade. (Remember, this was at least five years before YouTube became a thing—go try finding an Internet video from your past that predates YouTube). I didn’t even remember what it was called. Then, when every Internet video imaginable got re-uploaded to this new site called YouTube, I thought I might be able to find it again.
I called my friend, who miraculously remembered what the video was called, and I started searching. The original website was long gone (no surprise), but I did find copies on YouTube—in full 144p. I gave up searching for another decade. Then, while I was compiling my materials for the Society, I stumbled across a clean copy of the investigation uploaded about a year ago. I was stoked! It reproduces the grainy teenage cinematographic ineptitude in its original glory. As far as I know, this is the only copy on the entire Internet of the full investigation at full resolution. It requires patience to watch, but if you dim the lights and take it seriously, the tension builds up to the point it hurts before finally breaking, and I promise the final reveal is worth it. Just, uh, don’t touch those rocks, yeah?
After such a long short requiring so much attention and quiet from my audience, I chose FEWDIO’s “Five Minutes Earlier” to bring some contemporary energy into the evening. After the long suspense of “Barton” this clip was a good choice. The audience was already on edge, and still recovering from the eventual scares, so they went into this one at an already heightened state of arousal.
FEWDIO never disappoints. Watch it. And think about this the next time you want to open your door at 3 AM.
Feature Film
Finally, it was time for the feature film. What better haunted house movie to show than MGM’s 1963 classic The Haunting? Don’t confuse this with the piece of 1999 drek that attempted to destroy its cinematic legacy—this is the real slow-burn deal, and you won’t find a jump scare anywhere among the terror that builds incrementally and gradually. The setting itself is magnificent, and I’ve never seen a stranger house (and this from the guy who grew up three miles from the Winchester Mystery House).
Despite the obvious opportunity, The Haunting blessedly avoids any use of the “You have to believe me!” trope, which in and of itself puts it head and shoulders above 80% of all horror. The Haunting also pioneered several horror tropes that have regrettably fallen out of favor (such as doors that bend inward as you watch), as well as others that are alive and well: you’ll never think of the pounding that starts when you pick up Slenderman’s first note the same way again after you watch this. And that doorknob across the room that’s rattling? Did you lock it Theo? Oh, I see. There is a psychological element to it as well. The movie is based on Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, which is also worth a read. It is easy to see how the director wondered if the book was really about anything supernatural at all, or whether it was all just a figment of Eleanor’s troubled imagination; the prose is rambling and incoherent and defies a modern reader’s punctuational and paragraphical sensibilities.
This movie terrified my sister and me when we were kids. It was the first scary movie that our mother let us watch, and some of my happiest childhood memories involve watching this with fresh popcorn next to a roaring fire on the few days it rained while I was growing up. (Yes, we watched it more than once.) This movie is far more unsettling in adulthood. The movie is more than just something scary that happens in a cancerous old house; Eleanor’s desperate need to belong is tragic and uncomfortable enough.
That said, plenty happens in this dusty old house. The cinematography is outstanding, and I struggle to come up with a modern example that surpasses it, but the soundscape is what really makes this movie. I don’t need to struggle to come up with a modern example that surpasses what the sound department did with this film—there are no modern examples that surpass it. Seriously, watch this. It will be the best thing you see this quarter.
That concludes the content for this month. Summer is rapidly approaching, and with it most of my audience will vanish, so there may or may not be regular meetings between June and September. At the very least, expect more reviews and musings.
Content References from the April 2015 Cinematic Meeting (in the order they were run)
Wakefield, Russell H. “Ghost Hunt.” The Mammoth Book of Haunted House Stories. Ed. Peter Haining. Philadelphia: Running Press Book Publishers, 2007. 73-79. Print.
“Jasper and the Haunted House.” Dir. George Pal. Paramount Pictures, 23 Oct. 1942. Animated short film. Convenience link: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=143&v=9OehR5S9zt4>
Chaosgriffon. “Barton Mansion.” Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 12 Apr. 2014. Web. 25 Apr. 2015. Convenience Link: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14l_v8ClMOk>
Daywalt, Drew. “Five Minutes Earlier.” Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 28 Mar. 2009. Web. 25 Apr. 2015. Convenience Link: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGC-NJ5CGr4>
The Haunting. Dir. Robert Wise. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1963. Film. IMDB link: <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057129/>
