Bram Stoker's Dracula; Garlic Knots

Dracula (1992)

Director: Francis Ford Coppola

Had I seen this before: Yes

I first saw Coppola's Dracula as a young teen, at which point I believed with 100% certainty that it was a Good Movie made by a Serious Director, a notion that I had no reason to question for a long time. Eventually it came to my attention that perhaps not everyone was on board with that read, but by the time I revisited it this week (in the theater for its 30th anniversary!) I became aware that there was some vague murmur in the culture about reclaiming it as Actually Maybe Good. Which took the wind out of my sails a bit, as I was ready to stand before you, wooden stakes ablazin', declaring this property as iconic and beautifully over-the-top, a maximalist fever dream of Gothic melodramatics, but I guess people are already out there doing the work. And having now actually rewatched it as a middle-aged person and not an adolescent, I can admit that those who said this is a Bad movie....may have some points.  And those who complain that no one make horny movies anymore (everyone has muscles, no one has sex, etc.) certainly have some points, because you simply cannot find a film packed with so much writhing per square inch as this one these days. There is a nearly inconceivable amount writhing and moaning, particularly in drapey fabrics with exactly one breast exposed.

You know what else this movie has that you rarely see anymore? Wall-to-wall practical effects. Aside from one (unnecessary, imo) ring of blue flames near the beginning of the film, everything in the movie was done in-camera. PAs just milling around with buckets of fake blood as far as the eye can see, one imagines. Beheadings and stake-driving and insect-eating and succubi appearing from under the dang floor and monstrous transformations and shadows moving about independently of their casters and growling wolves and a tower of rats--none of it CGI. It's all old-fashioned movie-making, for which I have an inordinate amount of affection. And the costumes, I mean--these costumes. Apparently Coppola initially wanted to have extremely sparse, impressionistic sets using mostly shadow and light in order to spend more of the budget on costumes. This is the kind of prioritizing I personally would like to see more of in filmmakers. Take a tiny fraction of the "things blowing up" budget in Hollywood to put Gary Oldman in twenty layers of gray and little round blue glasses, I'm begging you. Quibble with the acting, the accents, the story--when newly-undead Sadie Frost waltzes back into her crypt carrying a screaming child and wearing the most gorgeously demented burial outfit in history, it's positively mesmerizing. It's literally art, the entire spread.

Because I watched this in a movie theater and am a courteous cinema attendee, I did not take notes on my phone like I usually do, so am left with only general impressions and not a beat for beat recap. I will reiterate my previous point that I no longer believe there is "good" or "bad" when it comes to Keanu Reeves, there is only Keanu, and you can either get on board with it or you cannot. I know that this film and The Devil's Advocate are often cited as proof of Keanu's exceedingly loose grip on accent work, but I swear to you every time he responded with a surprised "Oh" and it was the most chill surfer Keanu-sounding "Oh" that could possibly exist, it only endeared him to me more. Your mileage may vary on that front. Also throwing his generously-budgeted, period-appropriate hat into the accent arena is Sir Anthony Hopkins, one year out from absolutely terrifying the entire world as Hannibal Lecter, loosely committed to being Dutch but fully committed to having the best time of his life as Van Helsing. I dare you to not enjoy any scene that Hopkins bulldozes his way through, hollering about the devil's concubine and so forth. Honorable accent mention to Billy Campbell, one year out from delighting me personally in The Rocketeer, who aims for Texan but hits The South, but is too adorable to be held accountable for this in any way.

You know I appreciate a director who makes choices and this film is like the director choice-pocalypse. We're cutting, we're fading, we're zooming, we're showing you three things happening in different places at once, we're using a Pathé camera from the Silent Era to introduce young-looking Vlad in the streets of Victorian London, we're seeing pulsing red blood inside of living bodies, we're tracking characters on novel-esque maps. At the end of the day I feel like my eyeballs were simply too busy to stop and register any complaints in a meaningful way. "Wait that's silly--" I would start to think and then, wham--Gary Oldman is collecting Winona's tears in his hand, where they turn into diamonds, and I am leaning forward in my seat.

Line I repeated quietly to myself unironically because even the corny emotional beats of this movie work for me: "I have crossed oceans of time to find you."

Is it under two hours:  Look, you can't be expected to contain this story in 120 minutes, what part of "oceans of time" didn't you understand

Thing that I will now be avoiding; for safety: International real estate transactions

Garlic Knots from Bon Appétit

The human characters do eat some roast chicken and potatoes and such, but, come on. It's clearly garlic time. "Oh, thaaaaat's the problem with being a vampire," Anna noted, "no garlic bread."

Up next: Grab your rye whisky and your cynical outlook, Noirvember is coming!

Cat People; Apple Pie

Cat People (1942)

Director: Jacques Tourneur

Had I seen this before: No

Before you get too excited by the title of this film (I assume everyone reading this has the same level of obsession regarding felinity as my daughters) I should warn you that this is really only a movie about a singular cat person. Or is it?? No, it is. She's a cat person. But if you ask me, she's also a grand gal who gets railroaded by the Hays Code. Railroaded, I say!

We open on an attractive woman at a zoo, sketching a black leopard. There is an element of Kelly Clarkson in her face and I immediately love her. She crumples up her sketch and tosses it in the general direction of a trash can but misses by, I'm sorry to report, a pretty significant margin. A tall, bland slice of white bread in a hat picks it up and disposes of it before pointing to a sign--the only reason I have related the opening moments of this film in such detail, because it is a delightfully 1940s sort of sign--which reads Let no one say, and say it to your shame, That all was beauty here, until you came. I'm talking hand-painted on wood. I want one of these for every room in my house. Litterers are getting absolutely roasted out here. Anyway, this is what passes for a meet-cute between Irena, our main character, and Oliver, the worthless man she is going to marry. This may already be apparent, but I am fully on Irena's side for the duration of this movie and blame her for absolutely nothing other than a tendency to be careless with her trash. 

We soon learn that Irena is a Serbian immigrant who believes that she is a victim of a mysterious curse passed down from wicked ancestors in her village. She also riles up the pets at the pet store something fierce (one of the best things about this film is the little asides from random characters, like the sweet old pet shop lady who reports that animals are quite psychic, and while she has nothing against her sister-in-law, for example, the cats can tell something isn't right with her), but I ask you--is it worse to have an aura that distresses a room full of birds or to have bought someone a whole entire kitten after a first date, requiring it to be returned to said pet store, Oliver? Anyway, Oliver dismisses her concerns as backwoods fairy tales and in the same breath describes himself as a "good plain Americano." Ugh, Oliver.

Despite Irena's reservations, Oliver eventually convinces her to marry him, but she is still afraid to be physically intimate with him--even kiss--due to the curse that she believes will turn her into a killer cat if her passion is aroused. When, on their wedding night, she asks him to be patient with her, he says "Darling, you can have all the time there is in the world if you want it." Hoo boy, start that timer! He arranges for her to start seeing a psychiatrist who is significantly more horrible than Oliver himself--his general advice is "stop believing what you believe" and also "consider kissing me instead?" THE WORST. When this therapeutic technique somehow doesn't immediately fix her problems, Oliver becomes frustrated and confides to his beautiful coworker Alice, verbatim: "You know what's a funny thing? I've never been unhappy before. Things have always gone swell for me. I had a grand time as a kid, lots of fun at school, and now at the office with you and Commodore and Doc. That's why I don't know what to do about all this! I've just never been unhappy." Oliver...I absolutely believe you and also this is a hilarious thing for a grown person to say. Being a white man in America in 1942, whew.

Less hilarious is that Alice sees an opening and is immediately like "well guess what, now that you mention it, I'm in love with you and I'm a good plain Americano as well!" Lady, they just got married! What is wrong with all of these people? Before long Oliver and Alice are discussing lawyers and such with Dr. Unprofessional and the fact that "you can't divorce an insane person" which--is that true? I thought mental illness was historically grounds for divorce? Anyway, I will tell you that one of these four people gets what is coming to them one of them gets what is not coming to them and that is because certain things had to be punished in American motion pictures in the year 1942, regardless of whether they were that character's fault or if she had literally spent the entire film being like "I'm trying to tell y'all."

Despite all that, I found this to be a tremendously enjoyable film with some very striking and suspenseful scenes, and if you enjoy movies of this era I highly recommend it. It's even credited with establishing the horror movie trope of the jump scare that turns out to be something benign, which means that roughly one million movies owe some credit to Cat People. And in the end, all I will say is: Dynamite the black leopard innocent!

Line I repeated quietly to myself: "Things have always gone swell for me."

Is it under two hours: Mister, it's barely over one hour

Thing that I will now be avoiding, for safety: The Motion Picture Production Code of 1934

Perfect Apple Pie from Pillsbury

Oliver's only redeeming quality is that when he is upset, his instinct is to go to a diner and order a coffee and a slice of apple pie, seemingly for breakfast. A good plain Americano indeed.

Up next: Can't wrap up spooky season without a single vampire, that would be spooky malpractice

The Ring; PB&J

The Ring (2002)

Director: Gore Verbinski

Had I seen this before: Yes

The Ring is a 2002 American remake of a 1998 Japanese horror movie about a very creepy VHS tape that wants to kill you. You, specifically. I mean, also me. This tape is pretty indiscriminate, it's really a chain-letter sort of deal. Anyway, this means The Ring deserves most of the credit for ushering in the J-horror trend in the U.S. and also the blame for the many inferior knockoffs that followed. I recently watched The Cabin in the Woods with the 13-year-old and didn't have to explain very many of the references, but when they threw to the situation in Japan, I was like "ah, right--J-horror has a lot of spirits and creepy children and everything is sort of bluish green," which I now realize was just me describing this movie specifically, despite having seen many actual Japanese films in the intervening years. It makes an impression, is what I'm saying.

We open with one of my favorite things, which is: a gimmick. The FBI warning glitches, everything glitches, we're entering a theme park and the theme is glitchy tech. Two high school girls are chatting and watching TV and the conversation turns to an urban legend going around about a cursed tape that kills you seven days after you watch it. One of the girls confesses that she did see a tape like that..................seven days ago!!!!! Oh no! It was at this point that I gently warned Anna that Amber Tamblyn was not going to be a Final Girl and she said "No, she is a what's-her-name from Scream." I did not point out that Amber Tamblyn in 2002 was nowhere near as famous as Drew Barrymore in 1996 and therefore it is an imperfect comparison because the audience expectations are very different in those two instances, but rather said "Yes, she's a Casey." Sorry, I know it's annoying when people low-key brag about their parenting.

At any rate, Amber Tamblyn gets good and Casey'd but we don't really see what happens--one of the things I appreciate about this movie is how it selectively hides the ball from the audience and then BAM whips the ball right at your face when you aren't expecting it. For the most part it is a pretty standard modern mainstream horror movie with a lot of familiar beats, but it does subvert expectations a couple of times in the way it tells the story. In this case, you escape that opening scene thinking "well that wasn't so bad" because everything scary was implied rather than shown, and then a couple of scenes later in the middle of what feels like a very safe, daytime scene between two characters talking in a kitchen you get a quick flashback to what Amber Tamblyn's corpse looked like when they discovered her and it is straight up horrifying. My guard? Well, it sure was down. So kudos to Gore Verbinski for that one.

Cursed tape established, we meet our main characters, Rachel (played by Naomi Watts) and the young son she displays absolutely zero interest in parenting, Aidan. Turns out Amber Tamblyn was Aidan's cousin and they were very close and he's having a tough time. Rachel does not seem particularly concerned about this or about the tragic and inexplicable death of her 16-year-old niece but she is very intrigued when some teens at the funeral describe the cursed tape rumor, because she is...........an investigative journalist!!!!! She excitedly tells her editor "I'm cooking up too good a story" with absolutely no hint of grief for her extremely dead niece at the center of it. This is because work is her life and Aidan is just her sad little burden who distresses his teacher with his death-related drawings and makes his own lunch and walks himself to school and, spoiler, selects his own filmed entertainment because no one is ever supervising him. 

Rachel watches the tape. It is basically the scary boat ride scene from Willy Wonka but in black and white. She enlists the help of her ex, Noah, another hot person who absolutely does not want to be a parent, which is a shame because he is Aidan's father. They spend so much time together not parenting their shared eight-year-old. At least we see at one point that Aidan has a babysitter, who reports that he was very good and easy to take care of, like, maybe you should try it sometime, Rachel or Noah. They can't though, because they are busy investigating. Eventually Aidan watches a copy of the tape that Rachel brought home and just left sitting there for him I guess. She pays some lip service to the fact that she's really gotta figure this thing out now that her kid is in danger, but I gotta say, you do not really see the hustle on the screen.

Several horror tropes come at you pretty fast: people affected by the tape show up blurry in photos and security cameras; multiple people have nosebleeds that indicate, I dunno, something scary; a patient in a mental institution is cryptic rather than helpful; animals act strangely. At one point Rachel is on a ferry and tries to pet a horse (?) that is also riding the ferry (?) and the horse is like "no thank you" but she keeps trying for reasons that I absolutely do not understand. When a horse says no, it means no, Rachel! So she's shushing it and shushing it and still trying to touch it and eventually it fully loses its mind, breaks out of its little cage, jumps off the dang ferry, and gets chopped up by the propellers. It's a genuinely shocking and awful scene and also is 100% Rachel's fault.

Eventually the pieces of the puzzle start coming together and it is a satisfying sort of mystery with nicely creepy clues. The fact that they have this physical object--a tape--and a bunch of equipment to science it with is pretty great. I'm not going to explain everything that happens in the back half because despite my personal reservations about the character of Rachel as a human I do recommend that you watch this if you haven't seen it. But I will say there is a terrific rug pull near the end of the film that elevates it above a lot of other things in the genre--this movie basically lulls you into thinking you're at the happy ending and then puts all of its actual scary shit after that. Respect.

Line I repeated quietly to myself: "I'm sure it's a lot scarier at night."

Is it under two hours: Yes

Thing that I will now be avoiding, for safety: Low-rise jeans

Simply Sandwich Bread with Peanut Butter and Jelly from Simply Recipes

No one in this movie eats anything (except that one horse who ate some ferry propeller sorry sorry sorry it really did upset me so much) but as mentioned above we do watch Aidan the parentless child make and pack his own little lunch complete with peanut butter and jelly on white bread.

Up next: A rousing 1940s game of Cursed or Neurotic?

Paranormal Activity; Butter Chicken with Naan

Paranormal Activity (2007)

Director: Oren Peli

Had I seen this before: No

One of the things I touched on in my Blair Witch post was the movie's funny-in-hindsight hyperbolic marketing which implied that the events in the movie might be real and also that the terror of seeing them might be fatal. But of course I am now a seasoned consumer of both cinematic horror content and cinematic horror advertising, a worldly and skeptical sort, not some nervous teen. And it is with that worldly and skeptical voice that I say to you now aaaaaaauuuuuugggggghhhhhh you guys. I can't believe I fell for this movie's over-the-top marketing for so many years. I was genuinely afraid to watch this film, which as it turns out is mostly about an annoying boyfriend and a door that swings open or shut once in a while, neither of which are the kind of thing that keeps me up at night.*

Released in 2007, Paranormal Activity took up The Blair Witch's found-footage torch in a major way, spawned seven sequels and counting, and kick-started a low-budget horror empire. It borrows a lot from its spiritual predecessor, including a chyron at the top of the film thanking the families of of Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat (the actors' real names), setting up the idea that this video footage was turned over to the filmmakers by the victims' families. (The fact that the last shot in this movie--spoiler spoiler spoiler obviouslyyyyyyyyyy--is of Katie's face morphing into a literal demon, makes that idea is very funny to me, like their families saw that, shrugged, and were like "well here you go I guess.") And like Blair Witch, it involves far more scenes of scared people arguing with each other than it does of scary things happening. 

It also thoroughly convinced me that it was too frightening for me, a suburbia-dweller who is often alone in my house, as the premise seemed to be "your suburban house is constantly doing weird stuff when you're not looking and probably wants to eat you." In that sense it is also continuing a different legacy, that of John Carpenter's Halloween, which spends a shocking amount of its fairly short runtime on various characters just walking down the sidewalk through a quiet neighborhood in order to impress upon you that your nice suburban neighborhood might be harboring dark things, such as an inexplicable gentleman in a Star Trek mask. The dark thing in this case is not a seemingly motiveless knife-wielding maniac, but rather a demon who is attached not to the house itself but to the main character Katie. When I thought we might be dealing with a ghost, I was interested, because I find ghosts to be compelling and scary and good vehicles for storytelling because there are all manner of things that a ghost might want from you and figuring what that is can be pretty fun as a viewer. I have absolutely no use, on the other hand, for cinematic demons. Demons in movies are almost all the same, just raging asshole bullies who are overly attached to Latin. And like human asshole bullies, they are very boring to me. What does a demon want? To make you unhappy and cause pain. But...making someone unhappy is the easiest thing in the world! That's not narratively intriguing at all! Like, try tip-toeing through life trying not to cause other people pain if you want a real challenge, demons.

Anyway. This particular demon spends the days sleeping I guess (?) and the nights just sort of wandering around Katie and Micah's big ugly house, so Micah buys a video camera to try to record the goings-on. Now, I am personally in possession of one (1) camera-adoring husband, so I do have some immediate empathy for Katie on this front, but I want to point out that Dan is nowhere near as annoying as Micah is with that thing. I guess this is in the grand tradition of characters in horror movies being irritating so you don't mind later when a demon stabs them (spoiler), but ugh. For reasons knows only to the entity itself, it does a lot of things that don't wake up the house's residents but do look spooky when played back on a laptop screen. So is it just showing off for the camera? At one point it moves a planchette around a Ouiji board and then lights it on fire, but there is no one in the room when that happens. What was that for?? If you were trying to get a message across, why not do it when someone is looking? This demon is a bully and a weird show-off. YouTube was a brand new platform when this movie was shot, but it seems like it might have been a natural home for Katie's entity, a true stunt queen.

Anyway. The funniest character in the movie is the paranormal expert who comes over twice and both times is like "sorry, I do ghosts not demons, I'm getting out of here." Same, man. Same. And the most inexplicable decision made by the main characters is to pull the very cozy-looking comforter off their bed every night and just sleep under a flat sheet. Upsetting.

*The kind of thing that keeps me up at night: Victorian children, ventriloquist dummies, bad things happening to eyeballs

Line I repeated quietly to myself: "Knock it off Micah" (I might have improvised this line)

Is it under two hours: Yes

Thing that I will now be avoiding, for safety: San Diego

Butter Chicken from What's Gaby Cooking

At least Katie and Micah eat one solid meal before things really go sideways, and that meal looks to be some very tasty Indian food.

Up next: Gonna watch this VHS tape I found and hope nothing horrifying happens seven days from now

Over the Garden Wall; Potatoes and Molasses

Over the Garden Wall (2014)

Creator: Patrick McHale

Had I seen this before: Yes

Over the Garden Wall is an animated miniseries that first aired on Cartoon Network in 2014, but that I personally discovered last year with an overwhelming sense of why didn't anyone tell me this existed? So here I am, telling you that this exists, trying to spread the autumnal vibes as far and wide as possible. This show is everything I want in the month of October: funny, spooky but not terrifying, full of pumpkins and crunchy leaves and trails of candy, safe for (older) kids but still entertaining to adults, or at least this specific adult. I have indicated that I consume a lot of "horror" content, which is true, but I should clarify that I am very picky about what kind of scared I prefer to be, which is: quietly unsettled and is not: grossed out or depressed. I like mysteries and cobwebs and nice wool coats and creaky floorboards. I do not like viscera. Think British people in drafty old houses looking mildly alarmed, not maniacs with masks and chainsaws. Somehow this cartoon fits essentially all the things I like into ten 11-minute episodes and still has time for several musical numbers.

The story follows two brothers, serious teen Wirt and his hijinks-inclined little brother Greg. We meet them wandering through a perfect set of breezy fall woods--Wirt is wearing a tall conical red hat and an old-fashioned button-down cape (nice wool coat check) and Greg is, for reasons that will become apparent late in the series in my favorite reveal of the whole show, wearing an upside-down teapot on his head. He also has a pet frog whose name changes frequently, my favorite of the list being Dr. Cucumber. They are joined by a cagey talking bird who is clearly harboring secret motivations of her own. It is soon apparent that they are lost and attempting to get home, but they will first have to make their way through various places that range from slightly strange to deeply creepy. There is a gruff woodsman, a mysterious beast, a town of dancing pumpkins, a child-eating witch, an eccentric old tea baron in a labyrinthine mansion, an archetype-populated tavern, and a ferry filled to the brim with anthropomorphic frogs. There are clear references to Disney's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, The Wizard of Oz, and Alice in Wonderland, as well as a lot of general visual throwback to cartoons from the early 20th century. All of those allusions combined with the simple but lovely 2D-animation style manages to create the feeling that you are watching something old and comfortingly familiar, but fresh and interesting at the same time. It's like taking a bath in a giant mug of apple cider. 

Here are some of the voice actors that appear in this series: Elijah Wood, Melanie Lynskey, Christopher Lloyd, John Cleese, Shirley Jones, Chris Isaak, Bebe Neuwirth, and Tim Curry. Even though this blog is an avowed spoilers-whenever-I-feel-like-it zone I don't really want to give away any of the secrets of this show, but I will tell you that the character Tim Curry voices is named Auntie Whispers. So I assume with that information you either know for sure that this is not something you're interested in or there is already a you-shaped hole in the wall left behind in your pursuit of watching it.

Line I repeated quietly to myself: I've been singing the "Potatoes and Molasses" song (see below) to myself for daaaaaaaaaays

Is it under two hours: Yes, even all added up

Thing that I will now be avoiding, for safety: Expressing my feelings via mix-tape

Perfect Mashed Potatoes from Favorite Family Recipes (and Molasses)

Oh, potatoes and molasses

If you want some, oh just ask us

They're warm and soft like puppies in socks

Filled with cream and candy rocks

Oh, potatoes and molasses

They're so much sweeter than algebra class

If your stomach is grumblin'

and your mouth starts a mumblin'

There's only one thing to keep your brain from crumblin'

Oh, potatoes and molasses

If you can't see 'em put on your glasses

They're shiny and large 

like a fisherman's barge

You know you've eat enough when you start seeing stars

Oh, potatoes and molasses

It's the only thing left on your task list

They're short and stout

To make everyone shout

For potatoes and molasses

This is a "Big Top Candy Mountain"-esque song performed by Greg in an old-timey schoolhouse full of animal students while an escaped gorilla rampages outside. I really don't know how else to sell you on this show.

Up next: A movie I have actually been too scared to watch until now; if there are no further entries you should assume that I simply failed to work up the nerve

The Haunting; Plum Jam and Hard-Boiled Eggs

The Haunting (1963)

Director: Robert Wise

Had I seen this before: No

First, I would like to point out that there is a fun-bad 1999 adaptation of this same novel that I saw in the theater starring Catherine Zeta-Jones as the arch and smoldering Theo and yet I chose not to revisit it here. Please clap. Second, said novel--Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House--is one that I enjoyed a great deal but do not remember every specific detail from at this point, so this will not be a comparison of novel to movie, but rather a look at this movie on its own terms. Being assigned Jackson's short story "The Lottery" in middle school probably shaped my eventual tastes more than I realized at the time, and I sort of doubt any visual adaptation can scratch the same itch for me as her prose, so it seems unfair to expect it to. Plus I am too lazy to re-read it, as I am already very busy not reading this month's book club book. At any rate, I was curious to check out the contemporary adaptation of the 1959 novel and especially curious to check out the movie that director Robert Wise made in between making a couple of tiny films that you've probably never heard of called West Side Story and The Sound of Music.

The movie opens with a voiceover from "scientist" Dr. Markway explaining the tragic history of a 90-year-old New England mansion known as Hill House with unsettling glee. I scare-quoted his credentials in the previous sentence because although I was excited for a round of "let's apply science to ghosts," I would find, to my disappointment, that his methods were decidedly imprecise and mostly consisted of saying "mmm, yes, interesting" and "just as I expected." I'm not saying I need a bunch of spectrometers everywhere, but I did think he should at least be taking notes. I noticed that the doctor's name was the only one changed from the novel, where it was Montague, and then was changed again in the 1999 film, where it was Marrow. All of the other main character's names stayed consistent, so I'm not sure what the deal is with everyone trying to pin down this slippery doctor. I did like that this version of him reminded me a bit of John Astin's Gomez Addams, although probably 80% of that can be attributed to the mustache. The best thing about the doctor is his wife, who shows up late in the movie and makes fun of everyone at Hill House for being scared.

The Mysterious Doctor M is assembling a team of paranormal investigators to get to the bottom of Hill House's alleged haunting, again using methods that I neither understand nor approve of, but I'm not the one running the show here. He ends up with three assistants: Luke Sanderson, who has no interest in the paranormal and is only there because he is in line to inherit the estate; Theodora, allegedly a psychic and subtly--1963 subtly--a lesbian; and our heroine Eleanor "Nell" Lance, an anxious, lonely woman whose life was dedicated to caring for her invalid mother until her very recent passing. This movie is about the relationship between the house and Eleanor's persistent grief and guilt and stress and yearning to belong somewhere, so although it is not one of those "everything is happening in her mind" situations--all the characters very much experience haunting--it is closely echoing the pre-existing issues in Eleanor's life. That doesn't explain why she was selected for this job, but I guess it worked out.

Now, here's the thing about this version of Eleanor--she is a tough hang. She is rude to the servants who work on the grounds (more on them in a second!), she lashes out at everyone around her in a childish way when she is upset or overwhelmed, she refers to Theo as a mistake of nature in the movie's least thinly-veiled reference to her sexuality, and is generally just pretty unpleasant. In case we didn't get what her hangup is about, she starts almost every sentence with "My mother..." and often that is the entirety of the sentence. It made it slightly difficult for me to be scared for her because she seemed very determined to become a part of the house and frankly as far as I was concerned, the house could have her.

I'm pretty sure that's how the Hill House staff felt about the situation, too. When she arrives at Hill House she encounters a locked front gate and an admittedly unhelpful Mr. Dudley, the groundskeeper, who informs her that no one else is there and she shouldn't be there either. Now, Eleanor has taken the car that she shares with her sister without permission and is all wound up and very desperate to embark on this independent project and I understand that this obstacle is a frustration; I also know that if Eleanor was born in 1925, as the actress playing her was, then the name Karen only accounted for 0.0004% of the population of women her age. But her reaction is very much "I am going to escalate this situation to your manager, how dare you" and Dudley is like "....fine." Once she's in, she encounters Mrs. Dudley, who keeps up the usually-empty house, and they have the following exchange, which I'm including in full because it was my favorite part of the movie (transcription courtesy of IMDb):

Mrs. Dudley: [Eleanor has just been shown her room after she arrives] I can't keep the rooms the way I'd like, but there's no one else they could get that would help me.

Eleanor Lance: How very nice.

Mrs. Dudley: I set dinner on the dining room sideboard at six. I clear up in the morning. I have breakfast for you at nine. I don't wait on people. I don't stay after I set out the dinner, not after it begins to get dark. I leave before the dark.

Eleanor Lance: Your husband?

Mrs. Dudley: We live over in town, miles away.

Eleanor Lance: Yes.

Mrs. Dudley: So there won't be anyone around if you need help.

Eleanor Lance: I understand.

Mrs. Dudley: We couldn't hear you. In the night.

Eleanor Lance: Do you have any idea when Dr. Markway--

Mrs. Dudley: [cuts her off] No one could. No one lives any nearer than town. No one will come any nearer than that.

Eleanor Lance: I know.

Mrs. Dudley: In the night. In the dark. [Mrs. Dudley grins and leaves]

Now that's a harbinger!

So, it's not like Eleanor didn't know what she was getting into. I did find some of the effects nicely spooky--loud banging in the middle of the night, for example, is incredibly scary! When a doorknob seems to twist a bit a the behest of some unknown but potentially malevolent hand, it helps that it already has a creepy face carved into it. A rickety staircase of questionable design makes for a tense set piece. The house having endless halls full of confusingly identical closed doors where everything is just slightly tilted is effectively disorienting. Being trapped with strangers who you feel are being mean to you is a true nightmare.

Overall, I'm not sure this is as iconic a work from Robert Wise as the two musicals bookending it, but it does have one thing those don't and that's Mrs. Dudley grinning and leaving.

Line I repeated quietly to myself: [cuts her off]

Is it under two hours:  Yes

Thing that I will now be avoiding, for safety: Questionably pedigreed scientists

Hard-Boiled Eggs and Plum Jam from A Baker's House

Okay, I genuinely did try not to refer back to the novel too much in this post but when it came to food there was none that I noticed in the film and plenty that I remembered in the book. Fortunately, the most helpful website I've ever seen gave me a list and I just grabbed a couple of appealing items.

Up next: Over the garden wall we go