Sometimes once is enough.
Three great films I'll never watch again, the 48th anniversary of the world's most famous poltergeist haunting, the return of Marble Hornets (or is it?) and a beauty-in-horror watchlist. These are the Sunday Scaries!
To die——to really be dead——that must be glorious.
~ Dracula (1931)
Hello again and welcome back to Sunday Scaries. I really should have thought this through a little longer: today is Sunday but for many of us, tomorrow is a holiday, so this particular Sunday is not quite as scary as most. However! We will push onward with confidence knowing that entire weeks and months will be scary from this point forward, as they already have been for decades.
Nope Nope Nope
I think it was just yesterday that someone I follow online was asking for some extreme horror recommendations. “What are your ‘I’m glad I saw it once but I’ll never watch it again?’ films?” This is usually when someone pipes up with the 2008 film Martyrs by Pascal Laugier, the ne plus ultra of New French Extremity. I saw it at a midnight screening at the Toronto Film Festival and greatly admired its ferocity, but thought “Yes, well, this is a box that has been very thoroughly checked.” I was wrong! I have it on disc (I might have it on two discs) and have seen it at least twice more since. I wouldn’t say it’s ‘enjoyable’ but I continue to find it compelling and appreciate the unsettling ambiguity of its conclusion.
So, if not Martyrs, then what? Surely there’s something that sits up on the high shelf, gathering dust, hands hovering over from time to time but never quite pulling it out of the slipcase?
Let’s start with the well-made, highly regarded emotionally gruelling drama Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, which I saw in New York at the Angelika Film Centre in 1986 when I was 24.
Like many horror fans, I went through an extreme phase in my 20s when death seemed a little more distant than it does at my current age, and when I was a little more willing to put myself through tests of endurance. Now if I want to be brought to the screaming edge of terror and revulsion, I just need to head to the airport for a three-day trip to anywhere. Never get old, kids.
Henry, thinly inspired by true-life serial killer Henry Lee Lucas (and inveterate liar, so who knows), is a man-shaped yawning lightless void. Perfectly played by Michael Rooker, he grimly goes about his business murdering a succession of people (including an elderly couple and, unforgettably, a terrorized family) while his loyal and none-too-bright friend Otis — a vile creature in his own right — tags along with a video camera making snuff-movie recordings of their encounters. Otis’s sister Becky becomes entangled with Henry and sees him as a possible lifeline out of her own bleak circumstances, but, well, a lifeline Henry is not. The violence in the film is not especially explicit or gory compared to the splatter films of the era, but the weight of it is deeply felt, and the whole story is suffused with a grimy despair that leaches off the screen. By the end, we don’t understand any more about Henry than we did at the beginning, or than he does about himself. Which is also the point, I’m sure. I bought this on DVD shortly after it was released. It’s never been opened. Is that a recommendation? It’s hard to say.
C’est arrivé près de chez vous, otherwise known as Man Bites Dog (1992), directed by Rémy Belvaux, André Bonzel and Benoit Poelvoorde, is — um — well — I guess you will see a theme emerging: this time, a charismatic, joshy jokey bro-type, Ben, also a serial killer, has a documentary film crew following him from murder to murder, sharing tips and tricks along the way and ultimately enticing/forcing the film crew to participate in his crimes. This undeniably excellent film (International Critics Prize, Cannes Film Festival, hello), ostensibly a satire though the laughs drop sharply well before the end, draws you in with its darkly comic tone and then grabs you by your scruff and rubs your face in its hatefulness until its only possible conclusion. Is it great? Yes. Is it terrible? Yes. Am I watching it again? No. Your mileage may vary though — it’s on the Criterion Channel if you think you’re feeling up to it.
Finally, one of my favourite filmmakers with one of my least favourite films: yes, it’s Funny Games (1997) by Michael Haneke. Two polite and proper sociopaths very kindly perform a home invasion on a bourgeois family who on one level get what’s coming to them, I suppose, but on the other are just trying to live their fictional little lives until someone comes along and brings them to an abrupt and horrible conclusion. When I first watched it I appreciated its formal cleverness, the winking and nodding and fourth-wall breaking, its implication of the audience in its cruelty. Now, I think back and realize we were implicated by our appetites for violence and atrocity all along, well before this film came out, and certainly well after, and we all knew it, and this film changed nothing. We just didn’t care. I love Michael Haneke. The White Ribbon. Caché. The Piano Teacher. Amour. Code Unknown. I love him. I did in fact watch this twice, just to make sure I wasn’t missing something. Apart from the cute little rewind (IYKYK), this had nothing to offer me, including insights about myself, that I didn’t already have at the start. C’est tout.
Currently watching: Eleven years later (!) Marble Hornets has returned with a new mini-series titled Rosswood. It’s a total mindfuck from the very first moments, and faithful fans are already scouring every frame for hidden meanings.
Cool Story, Dude: This week’s spooky free story is a modern classic, Alabama Circus Punk by Thomas Ha, published by Ergot in April 2024. Check it out.
This Week in Horror: Today is the 48th anniversary of the start of the Enfield Poltergeist hauntings, which were reported on daily news and transfixed people across England and around the world. Joel Morris on Bluesky (@gralefrit.bsky.social) reminds us that the Apple TV+ documentary on the hauntings which came out last year, and which uses actors to lip-sync the tapes originally recorded during the events, is “the single best Fortean-related TV series I’ve ever seen.” The trailer is enough to raise the little hairs. I’ll be watching.
Bloodstained Kisses
From time to time I hear that horror as a genre is ugly and pointless, and has no real message except nihilism. And what’s wrong with that? you may ask, and you’d be right to do so. That said, here is a short list of some horror films that I’d suggest are beautiful if not necessarily uplifting.
La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc / The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), Carl Dreyer (absolutely a horror film)
Les Yeux sans visage / Eyes Without a Face (1960), Georges Franju
The Seventh Victim (1943), Mark Robson
Curse of the Cat People (1944), Robert Wise & Gunther von Fritsch
The Night of the Hunter (1955), Charles Laughton
Blood and Black Lace (1964), Mario Bava
Kwaidan (1964), Masaki Kobayashi
Les Levres rouges / Daughters of Darkness (1971), Harry Kümel
Don’t Look Now (1973), Nicolas Roeg
Suspiria (1977), Dario Argento
Hausu (1977), Nobuhiko Obayashi
The Shining (1980), Stanley Kubrick
Begotten (1991), E. Elias Merhige
The Cell (2000), Tarsem Singh
Mulholland Drive (2001), David Lynch
Pulse (2001), Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Let the Right One In (2008), Tomas Alfredson
That’s it for today. Until next time, remember — you can’t get scared if you stay scared!
Help me. Help me be human.
~ The Fly (1986)