Let's Scare Jessica To Death

Even though everyday is Halloween as far as my movie-watching and book-reading preferences go, I find that the weeks leading up to Conal Cochran's favorite holiday always make everything a little spookier, a little weirder, and a little creepier.

Certainly watching and reading the news this past October seemed that way.

I also find that, as I've gotten older, I get more enjoyment out of movies that thrill me with atmosphere and mood instead of blood and guts. I want fewer jump scares and more just plain ol' creeping terror.

One movie that ticks those boxes and has quickly become one of my “must-watch” favorites for the Halloween season is a classic creeper from the year I was born: Let's Scare Jessica to Death (John D. Hancock, 1971).

Let's Scare Jessica to Death is a film that I only recently discovered, even though I'd been aware of it for a long, long time. I might have read about it in Fangoria back when I was reading Fango religiously in the mid- to late-1980s. I seem to recall it playing on Commander USA's Groovy Movies, but I don't think I watched it (which is weird because I watched just about everything that the Commander showed back then). I also have vague recollections of seeing the VHS box art at my local video store in Cranberry Township, PA. Those skeletal hands reaching up from the blood-red water to the edge of the boat is an image that my eyes — not to mention my $0.99 for the rental fee at the local Phar-Mor — would have been drawn to.

Alas, I never watched it.

I am not sure why that is exactly. Maybe it was because the woman on the VHS box looked more like Miss DiPesto from Moonlighting than star Zohra Lampert? Maybe it was the typeface used for the title that made it look more like a rom-com than a horror movie? Maybe it was the title itself that kept me at arm's length? I was quite the gorehound in them thar days, and Let's Scare Jessica to Death isn't really a title that gets the blood racing...or spurting for that matter. (The original screenplay was entitled It Drinks Hippy Blood, which is just as weird and silly, but at least it puts the red stuff up front.) The title makes it sound like a campy, self-aware horror film. Back then, I was sure that “real” horror movies could only have names like The Evil Dead (Sam Raimi, 1981) or Friday the 13th (Sean S. Cunningham, 1980) or The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Tobe Hooper, 1974).

What'd'ya want from me?  I was fifteen.

Flash forward to the present, and it seems that yours truly isn't the only one to reconsider the importance of John D. Hancock's pseudo-vampire picture. After Paramount released the movie on a barebones DVD back in 2006, folks from Fangoria, Videoscope, and a host of other genre movie mags have written about it glowingly. Indeed, Rue Morgue, that fine Canadian horror mag, gave Jessica the front-cover story treatment back in December 2016. There's even a really super (and really old school lookin') website dedicated to the picture. Not bad for a nearly 50-year-old film!

So, what's all the hubbub?  Let's take a look...

The film opens with an image that should seem familiar to anyone who (cough, cough...shameless self-promotion) read my previous post about Steven Spielberg's Duel (1971): a bloody sun hovering just above the horizon. In fact, we see not just one sun, but two. The second, just below the first, is reflected in the misty surface of a lake, which gives it a smeared and distorted cast. In Duel, the setting sun represented the main character's loss of humanity. Though we can't be sure of what it is representative (as we haven't met any of the characters yet), it’s an eerie opening shot nonetheless.

Then, as the sounds of crying birds and the whispering wind rises, there comes an electronic tone, like a bell chiming dissonantly, and the image of a woman sitting in a rowboat comes to the fore through a slow cross-fade. She does not have her hands on the oars. She drifts just beyond a bed of reeds. As she floats, she speaks to us via voice-over:

"I sit here, and I can't believe that it happened. And yet I have to believe it. Dreams or nightmares? Madness or sanity? I don't know which is which."

There is another off-key peal of the electronic bell, and the image takes on a watery, undulating quality that should be the tip-off to any regular movie-watcher that we are entering the land of the memory. The image of the woman in the boat cross-fades with the image of two men pushing what looks to be a coffin into the back of a hearse.

And that's just the first minute of the picture!

Even though we have no idea who anyone is or what they are doing, we have the perfect distillation of what a spooky movie is: creepy natural surroundings, strange visuals, weird sounds, mentions of madness and nightmares, and a coffin. Talk about starting off on the front foot!

Once the hearse is loaded up, it takes off for parts unknown. As it travels along the highway, a sparse piano score starts up on the musical soundtrack. Its solemnity matches the setting. It is autumn; the leaves on the trees are sere and many shades of gold and red. It is either early in the morning or late in the afternoon, because the shadows are long and thin. After exiting the highway, the vehicle moves over narrow back roads. Soon, the car comes to a graveyard, where it stops, and its passengers alight.

This small section of the picture (it takes less than a minute) feels like a reference to the beginning of Night of the Living Dead (George A. Romero, 1968). As Johnny (Russell Streiner) and Barbra (Judith O’Dea) make their way to their father’s grave, Romero uses the backdrop of the cemetery as a recognizable, traditional, horror movie trope to lull its audience into a false sense of security. The cemetery in Night of the Living Dead is itself a reference to the old Universal horror pictures of the 1930s and 1940s. As the years passed and Universal made their back catalog of films available for television syndication via the Shock Theater movie package, those films had become jokey, campy fun to audiences. In fact, Johnny does a passable Boris Karloff impersonation as he chases poor Barbra around the gravestones, laughing at her fright. Soon, however, no one — not Johnny, Barbra, or the audience — is laughing at anything anymore. Romero performs a bit of sleight-of-hand magic and substitutes a horror film that is shocking, dangerous, and bleak for the safe and well-known horror to which audiences had grown accustomed.

Let's Scare Jessica to Death, too, will turn horror movie conventions on their heads, though not in the revolutionary way that Romero's film did. John Hancock uses the cemetery as a way to establish his horror movie street cred, but he also knows that audiences, thanks to Romero, no longer see this space as "safe." Horror movie traditions had changed over the past few years. Cemeteries — as well as the movies — were dangerous again.

The back of the hearse opens and out pops a young woman. Was she in the coffin?  Is she one of the living dead just visiting some relatives? No, this is Jessica (Zohra Lampert). As she runs into the graveyard with a roll of papers in her hand, the hearse's other occupants get out, too. Her friend, Woody (Kevin O'Connor), is a decidedly hippie-ish looking fellow, complete with sideburns, mustache, and colorful scarf. The other man is her husband, Duncan (Barton Heyman), who is slightly older, balding, and more staid looking. They both watch Jessica run amongst the gravestones as she takes rubbings of their markings. Woody tells Duncan not to worry about her. "The farm," he says, "will be great for her. The apartment was beginning to scare me, too."

It is at this point that Let's Scare Jessica to Death does something very interesting. As Jessica gambols through the graveyard, we hear what she is thinking:

"For the first time in months, I'm free. Forget the doctors. Forget that place. I'm okay now. We'll start over."

Voice-over narration in cinema had kinda fallen out of vogue by this point. The various "New Wave" movements had shifted away from it and moved towards a Hitchcockian, "pure cinema," visual storytelling style of filmmaking. Think: show, don't tell. When one thinks of voice-overs, one tends to think of the film noir pictures of the 1940s and 1950s. The use of voice-overs in these films made sense since so many of them were based on novels and short stories, and the filmmakers wanted to keep that first-person narrator feel that the written word had. The use of flashbacks also tended to make voice-over narration necessary.

The voice-over at the beginning of Let's Scare Jessica to Death makes sense when we look at it from a "framing device" perspective. The person in the rowboat (we think that is who is talking to us — maybe it is, maybe it isn't) tells us that what we are about to see has already happened and that she is remembering it. We don't expect to hear voice-over narration again, and we certainly don't expect it to be so personal, so internal. These aren't the words of Jessica addressing someone else, of her telling a story to an audience. What we hear are Jessica' inner thoughts. She is addressing herself. It is very disconcerting. Not only are we eavesdropping onto her private thoughts, but we also learn from them (as well as from Woody) that she has been through some traumatic event. She needed to be in "that place" with doctors for several months because she was scared of her apartment. We are listening to the thoughts of someone who possibly had a mental breakdown. Can we trust what she thinks?

The first test of our trust comes soon enough. Jessica is hard at work making rubbings of the writing and pictures on gravestones. As a deep, unsettling electronic tone plays on the musical soundtrack, she looks up and sees a young, blond woman in a white dress. Jessica attempts to tell Woody and Duncan about the woman, but cannot speak. She turns back and sees the woman is gone. As Jessica looks around for her, we hear the whispering of voices. These are not the voices of her husband and friend; they are inside her mind. The joy that was on her face only a moment ago has completely disappeared. She looks frightened, like a woman who suddenly realizes that what she is walking on is not solid ground but is actually a tightrope. She walks back to the car, and we hear her think, "Don't tell them. Act normal."

Uh-oh. Unreliable narrators are one thing. What do we do with an unsane one?

From the cemetery, the graveyard gang catches the ferry. Aboard the boat, an old man asks them where they are headed. "Other side of Brookfield," Duncan says, "It's a farm on Cove Road called the Old Bishop Place. Do you know it?" The old man's face becomes a frozen mask, and his easy bonhomie fades away. “Yes, I do,” he says as he walks quickly away. Once on the other side of the water, Jessica and her friends stop in town and meet their new neighbors. The old men outside the local general store (and they are all old men) look them up and down disdainfully. "Damn hippies," one of them says. "Good riddance," another says as the hearse drives away.

I guess the town's welcome wagon won't be showing up at the Old Bishop Place with a casserole anytime soon.

After leaving town, the three newcomers head to their new home. As the hearse pulls up the driveway, we see a Victorian house with a tall tower swathed in fog. It’s an incredible image; it’s romantic and spooky all at once. Like the scenes in the graveyard and the trio’s encounter with the locals — which felt like an echo of the meeting between Renfield (Dwight Frye) and the Innkeeper (Michael Visaroff) at the beginning of Tod Browning’s 1931 film, Dracula — our first glimpse of the Old Bishop Place is another well-worn horror movie trope. This is the “Bad Place,” the “Old, Dark House.” We know from countless other movies that this is a place where nothing good can ever happen. It immediately sets the viewer on edge.

But not Jessica. Jessica bounds from the car and looks at the house and the land that her husband has bought with a sense of utter delight. "Oh, God, it's fantastic!" she says.

Her excitement is short-lived, however. As she runs up the steps towards the front porch, she catches sight of a figure sitting in a chair just behind one of the columns, rocking slowly back and forth. Whereas the musical soundtrack during the shots leading up to this moment is a light, but sad, duet between guitar and piano, when Jessica sees the figure, the electronic drone begins again. It is only a fleeting buzz, but it is an effective cue signaling the strangeness of what Jessica (and the audience) is seeing. Jessica looks to her husband for help, but he and Woody are too busy unloading the car. When she looks back, the figure is gone, but the chair continues to rock.

The camera cuts to a close-up of Jessica as the whispering voices return. As in the cemetery, Jessica looks frightened and forlorn. From the cacophony of mutterings, a women's voice (not Jessica’s) calls out: "Jessica, why have you come here?" Jessica presses her hands against her head in hopes of keeping the voices out and her sanity in.

As she approaches the front porch, she notices that the door is already unlocked. The sounds of insects buzzing and birds chirruping fill the air. She pushes it open, but does not enter the house. Woody and Duncan come up behind her and ask if everything is okay. "Don't tell them," we hear Jessica tell herself. "They won't believe you."

Inside, as the two men unload the boxes and bags they've carried, Jessica stops dead and gazes up the stairs. Duncan, worried, asks her what's wrong. He looks up the stairs and sees a figure run away, as another electronic buzz plays on the soundtrack. "It's okay, Jess," he says, "I saw it, too." The sense of relief that Jessica (and the viewer) feels is palpable.

Throughout these scenes (and for the rest of the movie), Zohra Lampert's ability to project Jessica's anxiety and terror is heartbreaking to watch. Her performance is a collection of sad smiles, nervous twitches, and slumped shoulders. Jessica is a character who is fully aware of the tenuous hold she has on her sanity. She often stands outside of herself and sees the danger she is in. Her emotional state swings back and forth like a pendulum between childlike joy to paralyzing depression, from self-confidence to neurotic self-doubt. Lampert expertly uses her voice and her body to convey to the viewer every shade and hue of every feeling on this emotional spectrum. It's a very natural performance in a very supernatural situation, and it draws the viewer into Jessica's plight.

Upstairs, Jessica and her friends discover a squatter living in the house. A young, red-haired woman named Emily (Mariclare Costello) says that she thought the house was abandoned, so she just moved in. She hid, because she became frightened when she saw a hearse pull up in front of the house. As Emily packs up her things to leave, Jessica asks Emily to share their dinner and to stay the night with them. After a little arm-twisting (that probably wasn't necessary), Emily agrees. There is a shot-reverse-shot between the two women as they formally introduce themselves to one another. Physically, the differences between them are striking: dark-haired, dark-eyed Jessica and pale-skinned, blue-eyed Emily. Even the color of the clothes that each woman wears seems to be at odds with one another. Emily is dressed in bright red, while Jessica wears pastel blues. Jessica's color scheme makes her blend into the rest of the scenery. Everything seems to have a soft, bluish tint. Emily, on the other hand, pops off the screen as if to say, "I don't belong here!"

As they shake hands and the scene ends, Emily casts a look at Jessica that can best be described as "hungry."

I hope for Jessica's sake that Emily is a vegetarian.

During dinner, the dialogue fairly drips with double and triple meanings. When asked if she doesn’t live somewhere, Emily replies in a dreamy way, “Oh, yeah, sure, but I haven’t been there for a long time, and I’m not sure I’m ready to go back yet.” Is she talking about a hometown or something more sinister? And Jessica nods her head in agreement, as if she, too, recognizes herself in Emily’s answer.

Emily begins playing what looks to be a lute. She is very hippy-esque in her speech and manner, but the lute (or whatever it is) gives her character a slight dissonant feel to the viewer. We would expect her to pick up a guitar and start singing folk songs, but the look of the instrument she has gives her an older, more exotic look, as if she doesn't quite belong. Emily strums her instrument and sings a song whose lyrics speak to the counterculture on one level, but which also have a sinister quality to them:

Stay forever, my love, my love

We’re together, my love, my love

Leave the world you know about

And stay with me, my love.

Duncan leaves the room and comes back with what was in the large, coffin-shaped box: a double bass (more doubling!). He and Emily begin an improvised duet as Woody (who has taken a shine to Emily) and Jessica watch. Jessica seems sadly fascinated at her husband’s easy ability to join Emily in song. The music and Emily’s singing echoes and reverberates on the soundtrack. “He likes her,” Jessica says to herself.

To hide her pain, she begins to clean up the dirty dishes. Looking down at the remains of a steak on one of the plates, the voices in her head (not her own voice, but one that sounds mysteriously like Emily’s) tell her, “It’s blood, Jessica. It’s blood.” Then, echoing that phrase, Jessica’s internal voice repeats, “Blood, blood.” Her eyes flutter and she winces sadly at the internal dialogue (not monologue). This is a woman who is fighting for her sanity every minute of the day.

The party moves to the living room, and we discover the reason the three friends have moved to the country. Duncan was a member of the Philharmonic in New York City. It’s a life he has left behind so that he can, as Woody tells Emily, “farm, raise apples, have a garden, get back to nature.” Emily has always wanted to go to New York, but Duncan assures her that it is a “mad city.”

What we have here, then, is another example of the 1970s horror trope about the dark side of the “back to nature” movement. This usually entails an individual or group of people who leave the city for the country in hopes of a cleaner, simpler life. Oftentimes, the group in question is a family looking for a better environment in which to raise children.

This shift from the city to the country came at time in America’s history when many major metropolitan areas were in dire straits. Many people (usually of the hippy variety) saw the city as the decadent dead-end of civilization. The infrastructural collapse and bankruptcy of cities like New York was a sign that western civilization was sick and dying from its own excesses. In order to become fully human and live as people were meant to live (or so they believed), those who left the crime- and poverty-ridden cities viewed the countryside as a space where people were more real.

But, as The Who sang, it’s just a case of “Meet the new boss / Same as the old boss.” The new surroundings are just as dangerous, however, as the old ones. The people who live in the country are not as welcoming to new folks as one would hope.

For a nation that prides itself on its mobility (economic as well as physical) there seem to be an awful lot of movies whose horrors are based in movement within America. Whether it is a case of people leaving the big city to live in the country/small town (The Dark Secret of Harvest Home, The Stepford Wives, Pet Semetery, etc.), or people are just passing through rural areas (Psycho, The Hills Have Eyes, Duel, etc.), there seems to be a deep-seated fear and distrust of rural America. It is very rare that a horror movie moves in the opposite direction: country folk move to the city and are terrorized (so rare, that I can’t think of one). Dramas and melodrama seem more adept at telling the story of the country mouse that is corrupted when s/he moves to the big city. Horror just seems more interested in the opposite. Perhaps it is the isolation in the country that allows horror to take hold of such a story.

While Jessica and her friends tell Emily about the dangers of city living, Emily, in turn, tells the trio about her life in the country, in the Old Bishop Place. Her answers to their questions have many meanings. When asked how long she has been living in the house, Emily says, “Ages.” Does she ever get lonely, Woody wonders? “Sure,” Emily says,

“but sometimes it’s not lonely. Sometimes, I hear things. Like, you know, when I’m alone, and it’s very quiet, like now. You can let you imagination go and listen to the stillness and watch it get dark, and the shadows come to life. You know what I mean?”

When Emily says she hears things, we are shown a close-up of Jessica’s face and an electric piano begins to jangle on the musical soundtrack. Zohra Lampert’s acting in this moment is understated, but sad. Indeed, Jessica knows exactly what Emily means. Jessica is terrified that her imagination will make the shadows she sees come to life. But Lampert doesn’t play it in such an obvious manner. A smile plays on her face, and she seems intent on hearing what Emily has to say, as if it were a confirmation of her own experience, no matter how out of the ordinary it may be.

“Have you ever had anything like that happen to you?” Emily asks. Jessica looks to her husband for guidance on how to answer. “Once,” she says,

“I was going to your concert, and I was afraid I was going to be late, and I was very exhausted around that time because my father had just passed away. And I woke up, and suddenly I saw my father. And I heard his voice. He was calling to me: ‘Jessica.’”

Although the voice that calls to her, says her name — Jessica — throughout the movie is a woman’s voice, could her father be one of the myriad voices she also hears whispering in her mind? Now we begin to wonder if Jessica is really crazy. Could she just be a woman who is attuned to the spirit world?

Speaking of tuning into the spirit world, Emily seizes on Jessica’s story and suggests they conduct a séance. “Nothing is completely dead,” she says. One begins to get the idea that Emily is speaking from direct experience. The four of them hold hands, and Emily begins:

“I’m calling on the spirits of everyone who ever died in this house. If you’re present, give us a sign. Give us a sign. All the dead, come to us.”

All we hear are insects chirping in reply. Emily encourages Jessica to call to the dead, as well. (Was this the plan all along?) “Give us a sign,” Jessica says. There is another close-up of her face, and she is very earnest. She wants to make contact. Maybe it would mean she wasn’t crazy if everyone could hear what she hears. “Give us a sign,” she says again.

The camera pans across the ceiling and the walls of the room. The wind howls, and from out of the sound comes the whispering of voices. “I’m here, Jessica,” a woman’s voice says. “Jessica, I’m here.” The camera stops on an old photographic portrait of a baby. Jessica does not look frightened; she looks ecstatic and at peace. “Come to us,” she says.

Bells begin to toll, and a man’s voice says, “A toast to my bride, Abigail, and to all the Bishops.” The camera cuts directly to a close-up of Emily, who is watching Jessica very intently. We cut back to Jessica’s blissful face, then back to an extreme close-up of Emily’s blue eyes. The camera begins to pan around the room again. A ghostly clock chimes and a woman begins to sob. “Abigail,” a man’s voice says. “My Abigail.” The camera stops on a clock on the wall. The chiming of the real clock overtakes the sounds of the spectral one.

Jessica is in close-up again, and she is crying. “Oh, God, it’s sad,” she says as she and Emily share a look. Emily seems to know more than she is letting on. “We gave a séance, and nobody came,” Woody says as a joke to lighten the mood.

But is it a joke? And if it is, who is it on?

What I have outlined above is only the first twenty minutes of the movie. I don't want to go overboard (as if I haven’t done so already!) and discuss the entire movie. It would be so satisfying to do so, though! There is nothing particularly original happening here — this is stock, spooky story territory — yet the tension that is created is delicious. There doesn’t seem to be a wasted frame of film. Every scene in this picture either moves the plot forward or creates an atmosphere of dread. Every line of dialogue seems to point to something important, some clue to Emily’s past and Jessica’s future.

I haven’t even touched upon the very, old photo that Jessica finds in the attic that seems to be of a woman who looks just like Emily. I haven’t discussed what Mr. Dorker, the antiques dealer, tells Duncan and Jessica about Abigail Bishop drowning in the lake behind her house in 1880. “They never found her body,” he says as Duncan tries to interrupt him for Jessica’s sake. “The legend is that she’s still alive. Some say she’s a vampire.”

I haven’t told you about the strange scars that all the old men in town seem to have on their necks.

Or the reappearance of the woman in white that Jessica saw in the cemetery.

Or the thing that floats just beneath the surface of the water. The thing that reaches up and tries to grab hold of Jessica.

Or the fact that I don’t think the filtration mask and goggles that Woody wears as he sprays poison all over the apple trees are gonna keep him safe and healthy.

Let’s Scare Jessica to Death is a deeply terrifying, deeply sad movie. While the musical soundtrack and the sound effects generate a mood of spine-tingling horror, it is the acting of Zohra Lampert that really creates something special to watch. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a performance in a horror movie that was so naturalistic and filled with such pathos. Normally, performances in horror films tend to be over the top (in a good way). The fear and melancholy that Lampert exudes throughout the film seems very real. Her every look and movement works to create a fully realized character.

Zohra Lampert is an actress that you’ve probably seen many times before as she has loads of TV work under her belt. If you’re a fan of Kojak, Quincy, M.E., and Hawaii Five-O, then you’ve seen her do her thing. (Personally, I’m disappointed she never appeared on Murder, She Wrote, like her co-star Mariclare Costello. Seems like a perfect match for her.) She starred opposite Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty in Elia Kazan’s Splendor in the Grass (1961). I remember her from an episode of the PBS series American Playhouse entitled The Cafeteria. This hour-long program is based on the short story of the same name by Yiddish writer, Isaac Beshevis Singer. In it, Lampert plays Esther Mirkin, a Holocaust survivor who claims to have seen Adolf Hitler in a New York City automat. Like her work in Let’s Scare Jessica to Death, Lampert is wonderful in portraying a deeply troubled and wounded woman.

As I’ve said, I could talk about every scene of Let’s Scare Jessica to Death. I could pick apart every shot, talk about the music, the sound effects, the camerawork, the acting (I feel as though Mariclare Costello as Emily is getting short shrift in this post. She is as good as Lampert, and the two women work off each other very well). All of it is excellent. Each part complements the others to create a nearly perfect film. There is good reason why so many viewers have reevaluated Let’s Scare Jessica to Death and have concluded that it is a classic. I pay tribute to it and to the great Zohra Lampert by watching it every Halloween. You should, too!

...or else Mr. Dorker is gonna get you!

Some thoughts on the new Halloween

"The night HE came home."

Or maybe that should be: "The night SHE circled the wagons and waited for him to come home."

I have another post that I am currently working on (it's a look at John D. Hancock's 1971 spook-fest Let's Scare Jessica to Death), but I wanted to touch briefly on something I noticed about the new sequel to Halloween (John Carpenter, 1978) — which, oddly enough, is also called Halloween (David Gordon Green, 2018) — and the critical dialogue surrounding it.

As I am sure you well know, David Gordon Green's Halloween is a critical and box office hit.  It is well-deserved.  The movie scraps everything that happened outside of Carpenter's original film.  Gone are any mentions of Druidic death cults and familial connections between Laurie Strode (Jamie Leigh Curtis) and Michael Myers (played in the new film by James Jude Courtney, but with a little help from the original Shape, Nick Castle).  The new film benefits from this stripping away of superfluous storylines.  It is very lean and very mean.

I am not going to delve into the story.  This post isn't a review or anything like my other writings.  I just wanted to point out something that I noticed when I saw the picture but, when I read other reviews, hadn't seen other critics bring it up.  (And if they have, please bring them to my attention!)  Maybe I'll expand all this later, but, for now, I just want to kinda stake my claim to the idea.

One of the things that screenwriters David Gordon Green, Danny McBride, and Jeff Fradley do well is set up lots of echoes between Carpenter's film and this new iteration.  Some people have complained that the film just revels in nostalgia, but I think the little twists that they give to these moments are well done.

For instance, there is a call back to the scene from the original in which Laurie Strode is in class and sees The Shape standing outside.  In the new film, it is Laurie's granddaughter, Allyson (Andi Matichak) who is in class, and when she looks out the window, she sees her grandmother.  Both scenes deal with a lesson in fate.  In 1978, Laurie learns that fate is like a natural element, "like earth, air, fire, and water."  It exists, and there is nothing you can do to change it.  In 2018, Allyson is also learning about fate, but she is doing so by reading the work of Holocaust survivor, Viktor Frankl.  Frankl's view of fate is much different.  He thought if a person could accept it and learn to live with it and from it, then s/he could create meaning from it.

"Hey, Laurie. Did you do your chemistry homework? Can I copy?"

I expected there to be a lot of references and parallels to the original Halloween.  Whatever you may think of them, "easter eggs" are a part and parcel of this kind of remake/re-imagining/whatever-it-is.  What I did not expect were references to other Carpenter movies, namely those films that were themselves references to the director's favorite movie genre: the western.

John Carpenter has always talked about his admiration for the work of Howard Hawks, particularly his westerns.  One of the movies that Carpenter says influenced his career the most is Rio Bravo (1959).

The plot of Rio Bravo is simple: a rag-tag group of misfits holes up in the local jail to keep a gang of killers from getting hold of one of the prisoners.  In fact, the plot is so simple that you could probably rattle off a dozen similarly constructed westerns.  It doesn't really matter where the "good guys" are holed up (a jail, a circle of stagecoaches, or the Alamo), and it doesn't really matter who the "bad guys" are (bandits, cutthroats, and assorted other ne'er-do-wells), all that matters is that one group is on the "inside" and another group, on the "outside,"  wants in.

John Carpenter movies like Assault on Precinct 13 (1976), The Fog (1980), The Thing (1982), Prince of Darkness (1987) are all, like Rio Bravo, "siege" pictures in one form or another.  They are films that feature large and diverse casts of characters coming together to fight off the attacks of some foe(s).

What is Halloween (2018) but a siege picture?  Laurie Strode is the leader of a group of women who have to learn to work together in order to protect the family homestead from Michael Myers's vicious onslaught.  Even the rifle that Laurie uses echoes the lever-action Remington rifles seen in countless westerns.

Not only have the screenwriters for the new Halloween referenced John Carpenter's original movie in countless ways, but they have also written a film that references other films in a way that Carpenter himself would.  I think the western / siege elements of the new Halloween are what made Carpenter excited enough to give his blessing to Green's and McBride's project.  Indeed, if Carpenter had written and directed the picture himself, I think he would have made it a modern-day western.  Maybe he'd have Laurie team up with her fellow survivors, Tommy Doyle and Lindsey Wallace, to fight off the Big Bad Shape one last time?

Well, there's always the sequel, isn't there?

...but would that make it Halloween II or III?

I'm so confused...

Duel

"There you are, right back in the jungle again." 

—David Mann (Dennis Weaver)

The Aero Theater in Santa Monica, CA, recently ran a film series entitled "Auspicious Debuts".  This series featured the first flicks of famous filmmakers.  (Say that five times fast!)  Included in the series were David Lynch's Eraserhead (1977), Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead (1981), and Spike Jonze's Being John Malkovich (1998) (which was also screenwriter Charlie Kaufman's first movie).

Also a part of the series was what I consider to be one of the best double-features I've ever seen (and I've paid good money to see Pitch Perfect 2 b/w Mad Max: Fury Road at the drive-in!)...

Hey, buddy! Run, don't walk to the box office and get yerself a ticket!

While I am a fan of George Lucas's dystopic science fiction debut, THX 1138 (1971), this particular evening's trip to the movies was all about seeing Steven Spielberg's small screen masterpiece, Duel (1971), on the big screen.  Watching Dennis Weaver twitch and sweat his way through the back roads of California with a crazed truck driver on his tail was pretty intense on my old 9-inch TV.  How twitchy and sweaty would he look when he's 38 feet tall and 18 feet wide? 

Let's find out by taking a closer look...

Twitchy and sweaty.

David Mann (Dennis Weaver) is a white-collar worker who has left the comfy confines of his office in the city and hit the road on a business trip.

Of course as the movie begins, we don't know any of this —  who our protagonist is, what he does for a living, where he is going and why — because for the first five minutes of the film we are only privy to one thing: that we are in motion.  For much of the beginning of Duel, the viewer sees only what our protagonist sees.

In fact, for the first five minutes of the movie, we are the protagonist: we back out of the garage and pull onto the streets of our neighborhood, we drive through the city and dodge traffic and pedestrians while the downtown buildings loom over us, we merge onto the the freeways that take us out of town and into the countryside.  (Unfortunately, I don't think we get our S.A.G. card or even a paycheck for any of this.)

We could even take this a little further and say that our identification at the beginning of the film is not with the driver at all, but with the car itself.  The camera sits rather low, below the eye level of the vehicle's operator.  When we come upon another car, its bumper and license plate is directly ahead of us, not its rear windshield.  Our point-of-view, then, is not with Mann but with his machine.

(Don't worry, folks, I have a Masters Degree in Film Studies.  I am a professional; you are in good hands.)

Slow and low, that is the tempo.

While we move from the city to the country, the movie's soundtrack is morning, "drive time" radio.  The incessant gabble of traffic, weather, sports, commercials, and news that flows from the car's speakers proves one thing: "morning zoo" radio was just as lame in 1971 as it is today.

One of the shows we listen to is a disc jockey who calls the census bureau pretending to have a question about whether or not he should register as the head of the household:

"I lost the position as head of the family...I stay at home. I hate working...So, she works, and I do the housework and take care of the babies and things like that...I'm really not the head of the family, and yet I'm the man of the family. Although there are people who would question that."

As the woman on the other end of the phone tries to help the DJ save his masculinity, the camera moves inside the car, and we get our first glimpse of David Mann in the rearview mirror.

Duel's screenplay was written by Richard Matheson (based on his short story that was published in Playboy magazine in April 1971).  The loss of masculinity's power in the 20th century is a subject that Matheson tackled in several of his stories, most notably in his 1956 novel The Shrinking Man.  Introducing the character of David Mann in conjunction with a male radio show host discussing the lost position of men in the American family, then, is no mistake.  Masculinity and power (and who wields it) is something that Duel will deal with again and again.  Indeed, it is not too long after Mann's introduction that the first test of his manhood occurs.

As the DJ blathers on, Mann comes upon a truck.  It is a gas or oil tanker, and it looks like it has been in use since the days of George Bissell and Edwin Drake.  Emblazoned across its back, not once, but twice, is the word "Flammable."  Mann's shiny, little, red car — a Plymouth Valiant — is dwarfed by the rusty, exhaust-bellowing behemoth as he approaches it.  With the truck spewing greasy, black smoke in his grill the way sand is kicked into the face of the 98-pound weakling in a Charles Atlas ad, Mann puts the pedal to the metal and zips past his tormentor.

If only getting rid of bullies was as easy as doing a few exercises in front of the mirror at home or speeding past them on the road, eh, David Mann?

Thinking that he'd left the smelly ol' truck in his rearview, Mann is very surprised when the truck, in turn, passes him.  Unaware of what lies in wait for him over the rest of the day, Mann attempts a little vehicular oneupmanship and passes the truck again. As Mann speeds away, the truck's horn screams its frustration and anger.  Mann turns to look at the truck, and for the first time (but certainly not the last) he looks a little worried.  "Just what have I gotten myself into here?" he seems to be wondering.

"Chief?..."

It must be pointed out that in Matheson's original script, Mann's car is described as "a low-power, economy model."  In other words, he doesn't drive a gas-guzzling "muscle" car; he drives a fuel-efficient compact.  In a country like America, where conspicuous consumption rules and one's belongings are a sign to others of one's status, Mann's choice of "a low-power, economy model" car is a symbol of his lack of power — physically and economically.  He may try to outrun the big boys, but they'll catch him in the end. And when they do...look out, David Mann.

Mann pulls into a gas station.  As he exchanges some witty repartee with the attendant (Mann: "Just fill it with ethyl."  Gas Jockey: "If Ethyl don't mind!"  Har-har-har.), who should come pulling into the station, but Mann's road buddy.  Mann sits in his car contemplating the truck, perhaps even waiting for the tough guy to climb down out of his cab and give him a hard time.  Instead, the trucker just sits there...waiting...

This is one of the places where Duel really excels: the sense of mystery surrounding this truck and its driver.  Spielberg never shows much more of the driver than a beefy arm or a cowboy-booted foot.  (We catch sight of a face briefly when Mann passes the truck, but this is only fleeting.)  There's never an explanation.  And it's this lack of motivation that really turns the screws on the viewer.  Who is this guy?  Why is he doing this to poor McCloud?  Like trying to find out how many licks it takes to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop, the world may never know.  And that's where real terror dwells.

I'm sure if this movie were remade for today's audiences, we'd be given the whole backstory of the truck driver.  We'd have to know all the whys and wherefores.  Say, maybe the driver is Gerrit Graham's character from Robert Zemeckis's 1980 picture, Used Cars?  My god, that's it!  He hates red cars so much, he'll force them all off the road!

It's at the gas station that we're given some foreshadowing and another glimpse at the precarious grasp that men had on their masculinity in the early days of the Women's Lib Movement:

Attendant: “Looks like you could use a new radiator hose.” 

Mann: “Where have I heard that before? I'll get one later.” 

Attendant: “You're the boss.” 

Mann: “Not in my house, I'm not.”

Mann asks the attendant to use the phone.  He drops a dime and calls his wife.  As he talks to her, we get fed a little more information. For instance, Mann is taking this particular road trip to get to a hard-to-please client who is leaving for Hawaii the next day.  It is intimated that Mann's success in reaching this client will have some bearing on his status in his office.  He just has to reach his destination or else his position as breadwinner is in jeopardy.

We also learn that Mann's wife is angry at him for not sticking up for her at a dinner party the night before:

Mann: “I'm sorry about last night.” 

Wife: “I don't really want to talk about it.” 

Mann: “Well, don't you think maybe we ought to?” 

Wife: “No, because if we talk about it, we'll fight, and you wouldn't want that, would you?  Of course not.” 

Mann: “What is that supposed to mean?” 

Wife: “Oh, never mind.” 

Mann: “Just a minute.  I know what it's supposed to mean.  It means you think I should go out and call Steve Henderson up and challenge him to a fistfight or something.” 

Wife: “No, of course not.  But you could have at least said something to the man.  I mean, after all, he practically tried to rape me in front of the whole party.” 

Mann: “Oh, come on, honey.” 

Wife: “Just forget it.”

Things ain't looking too good for ol' Davey Mann's manhood, are they?  Not only is his position in the office teetering on the edge of ruin — "If I don't reach him today, I could lose the account." — but his ability to protect his loved ones at home is being called into question, as well.

This entire conversation is taking place in a laundromat attached to the gas station.  Spielberg places his camera in an interesting position: beyond the washers and dryers with Mann framed in the doorway, beyond which sits the truck.  As he talks to his wife, a woman enters the laundromat, walks past Mann, and opens the dryer to remove her clothes.  Shot in this way, Mann is literally caught between a frock and a hard place.

That's right.  I said it.

It's early days yet in Duel, but already, through the superior use of sound, dialogue, editing and camerawork, the viewer knows exactly what is at stake for David Mann.  Steven Spielberg was only 24-years-old when he directed this movie, and for a filmmaker this young to have such control of his craft is quite remarkable.  Of course, it helps to have a stable of thoroughbreds at your service (Richard Matheson writing your screenplay, Dennis Weaver in front of the camera, Jack A. Marta behind it), but it takes a very talented person to hold the reins on those artistic horses and get them to go where he/she wants them.  Mystery writer and ex-jockey Dick Francis once told Kurt Vonnegut (who was surprised that Francis was bigger than he'd imagined him to be) that it took a big man to hold a horse together during a steeplechase.  Duel is a cinematic steeplechase, a grueling race filled with harrowing obstacles.  Only fifteen minutes in, and Spielberg has shown us that he is a big enough man to hold this particular horse together.

Over the next 75 minutes, the stakes keep rising for David Mann (and the viewer).  He is chased up and down mountain roads at speeds close to 100 m.p.h.!  He's forced off the road and laughed at by rednecks!  He has to dodge the truck...and rattlesnakes...while on foot!  Heck, at one point, he has to make a desperate telephone call while some skinny, beardless kid and a camera crew watch him!  I can only imagine what it was like to see Duel on TV on that fateful November night in 1971.  With every commercial break, the viewer had to be asking him/herself, "What on earth is gonna happen to this poor guy next?" 

Yes, I see you out there, Steven, and, no, you can't use the phone!

At the screening I attended at the Aero, the audience shifted in their seats, moaning and groaning uncomfortably, as the truck driver cut Mann off every time he tried to pass.  A woman sitting behind me gasped aloud as the truck driver motioned for Mann to pass him on a twisting mountain road only for an oncoming car, coming around a blind corner, to nearly hit him head-on.  Like Mann, she whispered, "My God!" as she realized that the trucker meant for Mann to hit the other driver.  With every escalation in road rage, the audience became more tense and more focused on seeing what was coming round the corner next.

Editor Frank Moriss deserves a lot of credit for keeping a good rhythm during these sequences.  Without resorting to today's quickie-cut school of editing (where a single shot never seems to stay around longer than a second - no matter what emotion the scene is trying to convey), Moriss uses fast-slow editing patterns to keep the audience, like Mann, off balance.  As Mann's anger builds, as he approaches the truck and is rebuffed, the editing begins to speed up.  In those moments when Mann pulls away from truck, the editing slows down, giving the audience time to breathe, to think, like Mann, it's over.

Apparently, Gregory Peck was originally up for the role of David Mann.  When Universal could not get him, Dennis Weaver was chosen, and the film, instead of being made as a feature film for release to theaters, was given the green light as a made-for-tv movie.  As much as I love Gregory Peck, I don't think anyone plays arrogant, paranoid loser quite like Weaver.  For one thing, his voice is higher-pitched than Peck's, and it breaks whenever he gets emotional or starts whining about something.  Not only does Duel look at the state of men and manhood in the 1970s, it also is a study of the dichotomies between the city vs. the country, white-collar vs. blue-collar, civilization vs. barbarity.  Gregory Peck is Atticus Finch, for crying out loud!  I could see him being able to take quite good care off himself out there on the open road.  Dennis Weaver, on the hand, stinks of panic sweat throughout.  He's losing ground in the office and at home, and now he's got a lunatic wielding a truck like a loaded gun to deal with.  As the movie progresses, Weaver exudes a hysteric desperateness that is perfect for the character of David Mann.

Duel builds to a satisfying crescendo that is both cathartic and bleak.  Like Wes Craven's The Hills Have Eyes (1977) or Sam Peckinpah's Straw Dogs (1971), we get the gratification of seeing the weak hero become strong for the final stand, but there is a cost for such a victory.  In order to defeat brutality, we sometimes have to become just as brutal, and it is cold comfort to be the last man standing.  Come the end of the film, Mann scampers on the edge of a cliff, as well as the edge of his own sanity and humanity.

It is interesting that both THX 1138 and Duel end with similar shots.  In both, the main characters are framed with the setting sun behind them.  In Lucas's film, the hero has emerged from underground into the open air.  He has escaped a repressive society and taken his first steps in to freedom.  In Duel, Mann sits on the edge of cliff tossing rocks at his defeated enemy.  In both films, the setting sun suggests that hard earned victories are never what we think they will be.  It's a powerful image, one that seems to say that sometimes, when we least expect it, circumstances show us that we aren't as evolved as we like to think we are.  As David Mann says, "There you are, right back in the jungle again."

THX 1138

 

Duel