Tag Archives: Halloween movies

Halloween Countdown

Halloween Countdown, Day 5

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The Innocents (1961)

The film opens with a black screen, a child trilling a spooky tune about a heartbroken girl weeping beneath the willow where she and her lover once lay. Then the ghostly image of hands in prayer, and a woman’s whispered:

“All I want to do is save the children, not destroy them.”

Are those the only options? Maybe split the difference with some pizza and bowling? Kids enjoy bowling, especially if the alley allows bumpers. Fun for everyone, really.

But bumper bowling is not in the future for little Miles and Flora, the orphaned nephew and niece of a selfish London bachelor. Uncle hires the clearly brittle governess Miss Giddens (Deborah Kerr) based on her letter confessing that more than anything, she loves children.

The ease with which he charms her into taking the position, and the first of the film’s regular mentions of imagination as a gateway to the truth, predict quite a lot.

Quietly desperate and delicately high strung, Kerr’s performance is the perfect central image in The Innocents, the best of many screen adaptations of Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw. Is Kerr’s hypersensitive governess turning delusional as she spirals toward spinsterhood, or are her angelic charges in danger of becoming possessed by the spectral lovers who seem to haunt the property?

Thanks to Kerr, the wickedly cherubic turn by Martin Stephens (the most popular child actor in England’s Fifties and Sixties) as young Miles, and Freddie Francis’s gorgeous black and white photography, this eerie ghost story is a glorious study in the shadowy line between reality and imagination.

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Diary of a Creepy-Ass Doll

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Annabelle

by Hope Madden

Who doesn’t love a creepy-ass doll? Someone must, right? Doesn’t everybody’s old auntie keep a display case of them right in the guest bedroom where you have to sleep when you visit? And you really want to close the windows because the curtains are blowing in that menacing way, but you’d have to walk right past the display case. Well, that old auntie needs to see Annabelle. It’s for her own good. Because you have been right about those nefarious dolls all this time.

Yes, the horrid looking doll that introduced us to The Conjuring – hands-down the best horror film of 2013 – is back with a film all her own. It’s the dawning of the Seventies and a young pregnant housewife gets a gift from her devoted husband – a hideous vintage doll. Oh, how they cherish her…until she tries to eat their souls.

Old fashioned dolls are absolutely terrifying, but only in small doses. Luckily, director John Leonetti (upgraded from cinematographer on The Conjuring) understands this and presents three different faces for the scares. None is overplayed, each is genuinely frightening in its own right, and the anxiety over which might show up where keeps the tension tight.

Annabelle Wallis (seriously, the lead’s real name is the same as the doll’s!) turns in a solid enough performance as the vulnerable mom looking for the strength to protect her newborn from evil. Alfre Woodard manages to find some dignity in an obvious and underwritten character.

Ward Horton has less luck showcasing a pulse as supportive husband John. If you don’t pay close attention you might mistake him for a walking slice of Wonder Bread.

But they don’t really matter, do they? What matters is this: how scary is the doll and how cute is that baby she’s trying to harm?

Very and very.

The screenplay by Gary Dauberman throws in enough fun, unexpected scares to keep you jumpy while Leonetti tosses in some knowing nods toward iconic genre flicks. And while he cannot touch the timestamp authenticity of The Conjuring, the film has some fun with early Seventies images and ideas.

Annabelle never comes close to the near-classic status The Conjuring reached, but it’s a fun seasonal flick. Take your aunt. You may just save her soul.

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Halloween Countdown

Halloween Countdown, Day 2

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Poltergeist (1982)

Come back to a time when TV stations went off the air late at night, after running the national anthem. Yes, it’s the early Eighties, an era that delivered Poltergeist, spawn of the dissonant marriage between Steven Spielberg and Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s Tobe Hooper.

Their aggressive take on the haunted house tale wraps Hooper’s potent horrors inside Spielberg’s brightly lit suburbia. Indeed, the put-upon Freeling family lives in a little California neighborhood, Cuesta Verde, that bears a striking cul-de-sac-riddled resemblance to the development where Elliot and his outer space buddy once rode bikes. In both of Spielberg’s ’82 films, the charade of suburban peace is disrupted by a supernatural presence. In E.T., though, there’s less face tearing.

That particular scene, where paranormal researcher Marty (Martin Casella) watches in the mirror as his hands rip the flesh from his skull, caused quite a stir when the film was released. Today it looks a bit goofy, but overall, Poltergeist still packs a real wallop.

Part of that success emerged from pairing universal childhood fears – clowns, thunderstorms, that creepy tree – with the adult terror of helplessness in the face of your own child’s peril. JoBeth Williams’s performance of vulnerable optimism gives the film a heartbeat, and the unreasonably adorable Heather O’Rourke creeps us out while tugging our heartstrings.

Splashy effects, excellent casting, Spielberg’s heart and Hooper’s gut combine to create a flick that holds up. Solid performances and the pacing of a blockbuster provide the film a respectable thrill, but Hooper’s disturbing imagination guarantees some lingering jitters.