"She's downstairs." The Mysteries of "The Awakening" (2011)

With my fondness for the late Victorian/Edwardian period of British history, I’m as addicted to Downton Abbey as the next guy. I fairly inhaled the Season Three DVD set in one snort. Weeks later, I am still feeling the after burn. It helps that I brought new lambs to the fold at my day job and get to relive the first two seasons vicariously through their excitement of discovery. But being a melancholic at heart, I can’t help but yearn for a ghost, a séance, or simply a Byronic hero with a juicy facial scar. Lady Edith would make such a Gothic heroine, n’cest pas?

Hot on the heels of the release of Downton Season Three stateside, along comes Nick Murphy’s tidy Gothic ghost thriller, The Awakening. There are no lords and ladies here, no scheming lady’s maid or vicious gay footman – this is the life as it was in post War England: 1921. The War has ruined the lives of the poor and nobleman alike. Class distinctions are quickly becoming a thing of the past. The pain of the Great War looms over The Awakening like a miserable gray pall. No one is unaffected.

The Spiritualist movement may have peaked in the late Victorian era, but anytime there a people are overwhelmed by the casualties of war they are prone to turning to others for spiritual guidance. Some find solace in the church. Others seek more specific contact with the dearly departed.

The Awakening opens with such a scene – querents gathered in a darkened London parlor hoping to speak to their loved ones one last time. Within minutes of the film’s opening, the séance is disrupted by a dramatic exposure of the mechanics used by the medium and her compatriots by one Florence Cathcart (Rebecca Hall), ghost debunker extraordinaire. If you think you’ve seen this scene before in Haunted (1995), you are correct. The Awakening knows its lineage and liberally pays homage to any number of films and fictions from The Sixth Sense and Don’t Look Now to Turn of the Screw and The Haunting of Hill House.

I’m always on the lookout for stories that take traditional Gothic templates and infuse new life into them. Florence Cathcart is a true neo-Gothic heroine for the 21^st century. Cathcart is arrogant and skeptical, confident in her scientific apparatus and in her analytical conclusions. She is invited to a remote boy’s boarding school in Cumbria where a child has died, apparently the victim of a ghost that haunts the school from the days when it was a residential house. The first half of the plot follows Cathcart as she pulls off feats of deductive reasoning worthy of Sherlock Holmes. The mystery is sewn up, the school closes for half-term…

And the fun begins. The second half of The Awakening spins the film into unpredictable territory. On first viewing I was swept away by the images on the screen, the visual elements that helped both to build and underscore the story. Just before the big reveal at the start of the third act I said to myself, “Whatever the answer is, it’s been right under my nose all along.”

It was – and it wasn’t. The Awakening is quiet, mysterious, cryptic, ambiguous – and when it needs to rely on a story cheat, it does so without apology. Like Don’t Look Now there are strong visual elements that support the denouement of the story, but even as the answers are spelled out during the final act, other questions arise. That, for me, is what makes The Awakening a powerful contribution to the pantheon of great Gothic tales. A stroll around the internet will turn up a number of angry customer reviews, mostly targeted at an open-ended final scene. I sat though the movie twice in one week. The second time I marveled at its complexities and the hints and clues which are buried in the film from the opening scene onward. I’ll admit the dialogue in the final scene is a bit of a head-scratcher, but I think the screenwriters are encouraging the audience to question the nature of subjective reality.

The real puzzle for me, though, was a line of dialogue uttered by Robert Mallory (Dominic West) from behind a closed door in an apparently empty room: “She’s downstairs.”

Watch The Awakening. Then, let’s talk.

Two Birds With One Stone: Whip and the Body (1963)

Bridging my mini-series on ghosts at the movies with a mini-series on Italian Gothic Cinema comes Mario Bava's bizarre bit of S&M Gothic, Whip and the Body. Barbara Steele turned down the role of Nevenka, here played by the stunningly beautiful Israeli actress Dahlia Lavi. Nevenka has recently married Christian Menliff, but as the story opens, Christian’s brother, Kurt, played by the menacing Christopher Lee, returns to the family homestead and picks up where he left off with lovely Nevenka, namely a sadistic relationship where Kurt loves to wield the whip as much as Nevenka loves to be on the receiving end of it.

Kurt’s return throws the entire castle into turmoil. Everyone has a bone to pick with Kurt in one way or another, so it comes as no surprised that Kurt is stabbed to death in the shadows at the climax of Act One.

Kurt’s death introduces the core of the film: a long, hallucinatory sequence in which Nevenka imagines Kurt has returned from the grave. One of my favorite moments of the film is when Nevenka is summoned from her bed by the sound of a whip cracking in the night and follows it through the dusky corridors of the castle.

During the final act, the story by Ernesto Gastaldi, Ugo Guerra, and Luciano Martino pulls out the red herrings left and right. As mentioned earlier, any number of characters in the tale had motive to kill Kurt. We are even led to believe that Kurt is not really dead. The final denouement of the film is a revelation of terrible beauty.

Whip and the Body is presented in a full restored and uncensored European version (in English) from VCI Home Video. The colors are eye-popping. I would not recommend the movie be watched while under the influence of certain consciousness expanding drugs. The DVD package also includes a booklet and commentary track by Tim Lucas, one of the finest scholars of mid-century horror films around.

While the sadism plays a strong theme in the movie, don’t let that dissuade you from watching this film. By today’s standards it would probably pass with a PG-13 rating. Whip and the Body manages to be a lush, romantic, erotic and ultimately Gothic masterpiece all at once. 

Back to Basics: The Changeling (1980)

Time slips away too quickly lately. Holiday socializing rears its attractive head. I have a number of writing projects all demanding my attention simultaneously. And with good intentions, I have a pile of notes and ideas for future blog posts and a stack of movies collecting dust on top of my DVD player to be reviewed.

Which brings me back around to where I was a some weeks back – ready to burn through a stack of classic ghost stories on DVD.  The Japanese influence on the ghost story in American cinema over the past ten years is on the wane, if the success of Hammer’s The Woman in Black and its in-development follow up is any indication. In researching ghost stories on film, I’m finding it is not a well represented branch of the horror genre. While these types of stories work best in oral and written form, I don’t think they will ever truly go out of style. Our modern idea of the ghost story has its origin in pre-Christian eras when man told tales of ancestor worship around the fire while shadows flickered on the cave walls.

Peter Medak’s 1980 film, The Changeling, is a fine example of a ghost story (and horror film) that did not become a victim of its time. In an era when R rated horror was the norm, The Changeling is blessedly free of blood, sex, and four letter words, choosing instead to present its story the old fashioned way – but implication alone.

The script by Russell Hunter and William Gray (allegedly based on Hunter’s personal experiences) follows the classic pattern that Gothic novelist Barbara Michaels handled so well throughout the 1970s – that of a desperate spirit reaching across the years for understanding and vengeance.

I’ve often said that this type of haunting works best when the main character is at a vulnerable crossroad in life. Here we have composer John Russell grieving the sudden, tragic death of his wife and child, who becomes a barometer for spiritual manifestations when he moves into an old mansion in Seattle. Straight away, Russell (believably portrayed by George C. Scott) sets to work composing a new symphony based upon a musical motif that surfaces in his subconscious soon after moving into the house. The ghostly manifestations are a sly, slow build up. At first, Russell, being a practical man, is unable to understand the significance of slightly off-kilter events in the house, until the ghost literally makes itself known by throwing rocks at Russell in the yard. Russell soon uncovers a secret attic room where he finds a music box which plays the same melody, note for note, that formed the structural basis of his symphony.

From this point on, Russell becomes more in tune with the sprit in the house and the story turns into a sort of supernatural detective story. I won’t divulge the intricacies of the plot any further, but feel compelled to point out that the séance scene in The Changeling is one of the most convincing and spine tingling I have ever seen on film.

The Changeling has long been a cult favorite among friends of mine who enjoy good old fashioned supernatural thrillers. The DVD has never gone out of print, and is easily had from Amazon and other retailers for a reasonable price. Ghost stories are an enjoyable past time on cold, dark nights during the northern hemisphere’s wintry season. Treat yourself to something old… and don’t forget to turn off the lights.

When It Rains It Pours: Dark Water (2005)

From the opening shot of the 2005 ghost story, Dark Water, we know we are in for a wet ride - so wet that I wonder why the filmmakers didn’t just go ahead and set it in Seattle. But the Roosevelt Island setting is, in fact, one of the standout elements of this often reviled American remake of a Japanese horror film.

Both films are adapted from the same source material, a short story by Koji Suzuki who wrote the original novel The Ring. Japanese horror flicks became wildly popular among horror fans in the 2000s after the successful American remakes of The Ring and The Grudge… so much so that they coined the nickname of J Horror. Displaying an overwhelming sense of unoriginality over the past twenty years or so, Hollywood has a way of plundering anything and everything it can get its hands on, so that by the time Dark Water arrived in 2005, fans of original foreign films were ready to ipso facto hate anything that had an English language remake. Take a look at customer reviews of Fincher’s version of TheGirl with the Dragon Tattoo on Amazon if you don’t believe me.

Prejudice in favor of foreign originals aside, I think part of the reason Dark Water has a bad rep is that it isn’t horror movie – not in the contemporary sense of the word. It is a ghost story first and foremost, with all the traditional elements in tact… and beneath the surface story lies a superb example of the Psychological Gothic. For my money, ghost stories work best when these two elements walk hand in hand. The Haunting (of Hill House), The Woman in Black, The Changeling – each a brilliant ghost story with a strong psychological undercurrent. In these stories, the lonely and bereaved are highly susceptible to supernatural manifestations.

In Dark Water we have a young mother, Dahlia (played with utter conviction by Jennifer Connelly) trying to raise a seven-year-old girl on her own while suffering through a nasty custody battle and a borderline addiction to sedatives. Connelly’s performance shows us a woman with a battered soul, already hanging by a thin, psychological thread, so that during the first half of the movie we wonder how much is in Dahlia’s head and how much is “reality.”

While Dark Water does not feature the old Gothic house which plays a starring role in the films mentioned above, the setting of the low income, industrial housing complex on Roosevelt Island is as dreary and depressing as any crumbling manor house. It is this visual element of urban decay which gives Dark Water much of its strength – an urban dwelling has not been this menacing since Rosemary’s Baby.

Dark Water hits my buttons on many levels. It’s the sort of movie that makes me say, “I wish I wrote that.” Hopefully, with the passage of time, Dark Water will be considered less an offense to J Horror enthusiasts and given the respect it deserves as a beautifully wrought Gothic ghost story. 

An Appreciation of Barbara Michaels Part I: Ammie, Come Home

After finishing my first novel (a lurid, over-the-top occult potboiler) I decided I wanted to try my hand at a more traditional Gothic romance, so I spent a few months rereading a number of old paperbacks from my collection. Of course, I had to start with Barbara Michaels. I had reread her first two books, Master of Black Tower and Sons of the Wolf, about a year before, so I picked up Ammie, Come Home, and was reminded once again what an underrated gem of a ghost story this little book is.

First published in 1968, a full two years before William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist made this type of old fashioned ghost story all but obsolete, Michaels’ tale of avenging ghosts and spiritual possession pushed the envelope for the Gothic romances of the era. The bona fide supernatural was not a popular theme among Gothic romance purists, and despite her continued popularity forty-odd years later (Michaels’ back catalog has never gone out of print), readers of old school Gothics still have difficulty embracing Michaels as the premier American Gothic novelist of her day. Ammie, Come Home was to be the first in Michaels’ unofficial occult trilogy.

Beginning with Ammie, Come Home and continuing throughout the rest of her career under the name Barbara Michaels (she is better known as Elizabeth Peters of the best-selling Amelia Peabody mystery series), Michaels makes a concentrated effort to subvert and expand the conventions of the Gothic romance genre which was enjoying it’s heyday in the late 60s and early 70s. Here, the protagonist is a middle aged, widowed aunt, and the romantic lead an irascible red-headed anthropology professor in his early fifties, but the romance takes a back seat to the ghostly manifestations.

 Original 1968 hardcover edition by Meredith Press, jacket illustration by Charles Geer

Our heroine, forty-something Ruth Bennett, takes a casual romantic interest in her niece Sara’s anthropology professor, Pat McDougal, and soon Ruth has scheduled a séance in her historic Georgetown home after meeting a famous society medium at a fancy soiree. First mistake. Before you know it, niece Sara is speaking in an otherworldly voice and violently attacking her aunt with no recollection of her actions in the morning. Said anthropology professor plays the devil’s advocate throughout, eager to cart Sara off to an asylum to have her checked out for multiple personality disorder. But Sara’s boyfriend, Bruce, and Aunt (and of course, we readers) know better. It seems Ruth’s home was the scene of a Civil War era domestic drama, and not only Sara, but Bruce, Pat, and Ruth are all players in the necessary reenactment of the crime and its vengeance.

No one will ever mistake Barbara Michaels’ books for being high brow Gothic literature of the Shirley Jackson variety, but Michaels has clearly done her research, managing to tell a rollicking tale of the supernatural judiciously sprinkled with arguments, both pro and con, to support the theory of ghosts and possession.

Whether you have or have not experienced Ammie, Come Home for yourself, late autumn is prime time to snuggle up on the couch with a classic late 60s ghost story while the November winds rattle the windows and icy tendrils snake their way across the floor. And if you listen carefully, you just might hear a voice calling to Ammie in the lonely darkness outside your window. ”Ammie…come home!”

Harry Bennett cover for the 1969 Fawcett Crest paperback edition