The Vanishing (1988) - Dir. by George Sluizer The Vanishing (1993) - Dir. by George Sluizer

If you come across a copy of a movie called The Vanishing, make sure it doesn’t have the names Jeff Bridges, Keifer Sutherland, or Sandra Bullock anywhere near the title. Not that these actors, are bad—I like them all quite a lot, particularly Sutherland—but I can’t recommend the version of this film in which they star.

That one was made in 1993, with the same title, story, and director as the original Dutch production. As far as acting goes, the stars of the American remake are more than up to the task; and technically, the film is well-made. The only difference—or anyway, the one glaring, enormous difference—is the ending. In George Sluizer’s original production, the ending is dark, bleak, and makes sense. The ending of his remake is silly, unrealistic, and disappointing.

I don’t think I felt that way when I saw the remake of The Vanishing (the first version I saw) in . . . oh, I don’t know, ninety-ninety-something . . . but that probably had a lot to do with my teenage naivete and the fact that the ninety minutes leading up to the ending are completely engrossing, top-notch suspense material.

In both versions, a man and woman are on a cross-country trip and stop at a gas station off the highway. She goes in to buy some things, and he never sees her again. This begins a three-year-long quest to find the missing woman. Simultaneously we follow the man who likely kidnapped her. Somehow the fact of knowing his identity early on does not detract from the film’s suspense.

The ending of Sluizer’s original film will disturb the viewer. Indeed, I put on something very light-hearted and easily digested, when the film had finished, as I did not want this to be the last thing I saw before shutting my eyes for the night.

The American version will likely leave an unsuspecting viewer feeling like they’ve just watched a well-made American thriller. They might not even notice how cheap the ending is.

The Collector - Dir. by William Wyler (1965)

William Wyler supposedly turned down The Sound of Music in order to direct this creepy little thriller. Probably not a great career decision, though one can see why he might have been attracted to this small-scale, two-person story about a demented man who kidnaps the woman he desires, in a misguided attempt at making her fall for him.

I’m far from an expert on Wyler’s films, but from what I’ve seen, The Collector has more in common stylistically with The Children’s Hour (1961) and the claustrophobic Desperate Hours (1955) than his higher-budgeted films like Ben-Hur (1959) and The Best Years Of Our Lives (1946). The basic plot alone might remind one of horror films which came later (Misery [1990], Captivity [2007]), and so for that reason, the story may seem too familiar. But the performances and Wyler’s masterful atmosphere draw the viewer in, and while the film goes on perhaps ten, fifteen minutes too long, the tension is solid, and builds, from the beginning to the end.

I also found myself quite surprised by the ending—one which, if the film had been made a few years earlier—wouldn’t have been allowed, I’m sure. While not strictly a horror film, The Collector has its share of creepy moments, along with a perfectly bizarre villain played by Terence Stamp.

As with films studying similar themes, the dynamic between captor and prisoner is strange and unsettling—but documented in real-life cases. This movie is worth checking out; the suspense slowly builds to an expected, satisfying conclusion.

The Nightwalker by Thomas Tessier (1979)

Today's post will take the form of a discussion. We hope you enjoy.

Mark: OK, starting things off here . . .

Let me ask you, did you find the protagonist in The Nightwalker to be at all likeable? Because I think this is one thing that kept me from enjoying this book more--although I did like it.

When he first starts changing and hurting random people, he seems conflicted and upset about it, but there were times that he really just sorta rolled with it and overall came off as kind of a bastard. But then, I found that somewhat intriguing at the same time. I guess I still haven't made up my mind how I feel about this character. I did sometimes wish there was more of a protagonist, someone else to follow besides this guy exclusively.

So, did he actually change into a wolf or not? It's left fairly open, just like in Werewolf of Paris. I don't know if I like that or not--though I do like the descriptions, the brief descriptions, we get when he confronts a few of the folks towards the end, the stuff about his hands being gnarled and his walking strange. I don't feel that he turned into an actual huge hairy beast, though.

Michael: To answer your first question - no, I didn't find Bobby Ives especially likeable. I also found it striking that he did not express any sort of remorse for the senseless slayings of the people he was closest to. Especially, the first girl, Annie, who seems to be really quite normal and healthy. He doesn't dwell too long on whether he murdered her, and he doesn't express any real emotion, any sense of missing her. But I think Tessier tries to explain this with one of the Vietnam stories that Ives tells, the one where he kills the prostitute who has just impaled a soldier. I think we're supposed to understand that Bobby has been really desensitized to this type of violence. So, while Ives is not likeable, I think he is, at least, interesting and complex.

I liked the fact that Tessier didn't resort to too many overt werewolf cliches. We get the sense of Ives's metamorphosis, the way he turns into a lethal pretador. I don't want to see a huge hairy beast in this setting. I think it would take away from the reality of the text.

On that note, I'd like to bring up Miss Tanith. I was really worried when Ives started looking for a psychic to tell him what the hell was going on. This is a device that is used in too many horror novels. I don't want a hokey gypsy psychic to be the portal to the realm of the supernatural. But I thought Tessier handled this really well. Miss Tanith is very subtle in her reading of Ives's problem. She doesn't spout any mystical mumbo jumbo, just does her job like a professional. She helps Ives in a practical way, by locking him in the room and adjusting his diet and lifestyle. It would have totally ruined the novel for me if she did some sort of exorcism or other ritual.

Mark: Oh, I definitely agree on that count. Miss Tanith was very well-done. Not overused, and staying away from genre cliches as much as possible. I enjoyed the bit with Ives locked in the room, and also found it interesting that he didn't kill her at the end.

I liked this book, and I think Tessier could be an author worth checking out. The novella that came with edition I got was very good; I actually enjoyed it a little more than Nightwalker.

Anyway, I liked this book for the most part. The "stalking" scenes were particularly excited; he has a talent for writing action/suspense scenes.

Michael: Another thing I thought was really interesting was how Tessier brought the whole punk culture into the ending, after Ives meets Angel. He doesn't glamorize it or dismiss it as a disposal youth movement. I think he gives Ives exactly the right reaction at the basement punk show. This guy is more oriented to the Allman Brothers than punk rock, but he's got anger inside of him, so something about the aggression and sheer power of the music and the manic singer really gets to him. You don't get many believable descriptions of punk shows in fiction.

However, I think Tessier could have spent a lot more time on creating a rich and detailed portrait of London. I'm thinking he cut this book down to its barest bones, taking out anything that seemed unnecessary. But I would have loved to see more of Ives running around the city, getting into his head a bit more about how he feels about people. Being a Vietnam vet he's probably got some interesting views on everyday life, on the silly mundane things people do in a peaceful city. I'm thinking of some of those scenes in Taxi Driver where Travis Bickle is just looking at people. I want Ives to look at people more, to be more introspective and express some of his thoughts.

Mark: Yeah, the section with the punk shows was done very well. I liked that character, Angel. I kind of wish there was a bit more of her in the story.

Michael: Another thing I'd like to discuss, is Ives eating habits. I know this may seem like a strange line of criticism for a book (I'll call it dietism), but I think it's important. Ives eats nothing but honey and ginseng supplements and a vitamin here or there, and I think maybe he eats a hamburger soon after Annie dies.

I was really wondering what Tessier was getting at with this. I would have completely let it go if Ives only ate his honey and ginseng once or twice, but it comes up in almost every chapter. It reminded me a bit of this theme that runs through Marc Brandel's The Hand where the main character's wife gets into all this silly dieting and meditation to try to deal with the problems of her marriage, instead of confronting the real problem. Maybe Ives is trying to suppress his appetite for flesh by eating such a strange, bird-like diet. But I think in reality it probably serves to make him even more blood thirsty. I know I'd be ready to eat some joggers if I only ate honey all day long.

Mark: Yeah, that was very odd, and you're right, never fully explained. I immediately thought of a bear, how you figure bears like honey, but never gave it much consideration beyond that. It just seemed kind of, I don't know, animal-like?

Michael: Yeah. Maybe he was a werebear, not a werewolf. Werebear doesn't sound very scary though. It, in fact, sounds less scary than a plain old bear.

Another thing that's pretty striking in this novel is Tessier use of trashy sex descriptions, bordering on erotica, especially in some of the first scenes with Angel. Some of this was just a little too over the top for me. Not that any of it was too explicit, but I just thought that it came out of nowhere. Ives seemed like a normally sexually repressed dude who wouldn't have the nerve to screw with a woman the way he does with Angel. Is this the werewolf coming out? If so, it's an interesting concept. I don't know too many werewolf stories where the monster sexually ravishes his victims. Maybe it's a part of the legend that is generally neglected. Can you think of any films or books in which the werewolf is a sexual predator, as a well a predator predator?

Mark: Werebear may not sound that scary, but it DOES sound awesome.

The Howling. I don't recall exactly how the book differs from the movie, but I believe this would be one case.

Also, even though not technically a werewolf, when Dracula is in beast form and sexually assaults . . . Mina? Lucy? I can't remember which it is.

Check out this overview of Tessier's career.

Triangle - Dir. by Christopher Smith (2009) Dead Snow - Dir. by Tommy Wirkola (2009)

Here are two solid horror films from overseas. Both came out last year, neither of course receiving much of a release by their distributors, but now both widely available on DVD and the Internet.

The artwork I saw for Triangle featured a killer wearing a bag over the head, eyeholes poked out, and immediately reminded me of Strangers (2007). Aside from that small detail, however, this movie shares no similarities with that film. Some fun-loving adventurers, including a woman (Melissa George) who’s just had a frightening and unexplained experience with her autistic child, set off on a boat for an afternoon voyage. They’re bowled over by a sudden storm, and find themselves capsized and without help. Seemingly out of nowhere (perhaps out of the mist, out of the fog) appears a cruiser. The scared group boards the cruiser, and that’s when the really weird shit starts happening.

It’d be pointless for me to try and describe what occurs next without attempting to explain the entire film and thus, give away the ending. Let me just say that this movie appears, from the beginning, to be one of those stories that includes some sort of supernatural element, and could possibly lead to a disappointing twist—one of those deals that has such a great setup, you wonder how they could possibly pull off a satisfying finish. I’m thinking Identity (2003), that kind of awful ending, where the surprise, the twist, is nothing more than a cheat that negates everything the viewer has previously seen. (If I wanted to open myself up for taking some real shit, I’d say that I felt similarly about the much-beloved The Usual Suspects [1995].)

Triangle’s ending makes sense of everything that came before, and ties into the movie’s theme, hinted at towards the beginning, with great effect.

A much different film, this one from Norway, Dead Snow I’ve seen described as a horror-comedy. The comedy—which one can naturally imagine, based on the description: Nazi zombies attack vacationers in the woods, during winter—comes a bit late in the film, after roughly a half-hour of creepy, somewhat violent moments. I didn’t welcome it.

The comedy in Dead Snow isn’t like the outrageous humor of Shaun of the Dead (2006) or what one would normally expect from an American horror-comedy show. Naturally, things are going to be a bit different coming from that part of the globe, but for me, the humorous moments simply stuck out from the film and took away from the spooky atmosphere established in the opening.

There are some extremely effective scenes here and there, however, and overall, the film is suspenseful and enjoyable. I grew a bit tired with the last half hour’s attack scenes, running scenes, shooting scenes, etc., but there’s a lot to admire in what leads up to that final showdown between the campers and the undead Nazis.

Check out this interview with Christopher Smith, director of Triangle.

Check out this interview with Tommy Wirkola, director of Dead Snow.

Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (1886)

In Danse Macabre, Stephen King’s 1981 nonfiction examination of horror fiction in literature, film, television and radio, he names Robert Louis Stevenson’s novella Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde as the prototypical werewolf tale. Whereas his choices for the other two major horror formulas are uncontroversial – Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein for The Thing Without a Name, and Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula for the vampire – Strange Case seems an odd pick for the piece that set the mold for all future werewolf stories, considering that we don’t find a typical werewolf in the novella at all. And it’s not as if Stevenson doesn’t have predecessors who used a more recognizable werewolf, an honest-to-god lycanthrope, in their fiction. Going back all the way to Petronius’s Satyricon from the late first century CE, we see evidence of folk tales involving men who morph into humanoid wolves and terrorize the countryside. These figures show up in a few medieval texts, but don’t become a staple of horror literature until the mid-nineteenth century with George W.M. Reynolds’s Wagner the Werewolf (1848), Alexander Dumas’s The Wolf-Leader (1857), and Erckmann-Chatrian’s story “The Man Wolf” (1859), which all contributed to the werewolf legend’s decidedly middle European feel. Really the cliché Hollywood werewolf was pretty much set in stone at this point. Just substitute foggy English moors for a stormy Black Forest and you’ve got a very recognizable piece of horror fiction. Even in Wagner the Werewolf our villain is unwillingly terrifying young women.

Now, I don’t know if I agree with King’s choice of Strange Case as the prototypical werewolf story, but I do agree with skipping over Wagner for this honor. Though Wagner might express all the necessary tropes of a werewolf story, it is practically unreadable. Strange Case remains an entertaining, and evocative exploration of the irresistible lure of the lowly and vile, and while Mr Hyde doesn’t howl at the moon, Strange Case certainly exhibits the key traits of a werewolf tale long before this archetype was codified. Dr Jekyll is a handsome, successful, almost overly optimistic and jovial character, who enjoys the peaceful company of his friends. He shows himself to be preternaturally good. So when he falls from grace, when he dabbles too far into quack science, the contrast with his alter-ego, his “werewolf” of sorts, is made all the more terrifying. This contrast must be present for a truly successful werewolf tale. It’s what separates the vampire from the werewolf, and makes the latter a much more introspective horror story, where the reader puts him or herself in the villain’s shoes. Where Strange Case diverges from the ideal werewolf tale, is that Jekyll, when transformed into Mr Hyde, is not drawn specifically to the people closest to him, he never attacks his friends or family. However, this might be explained by Jekyll’s self-imposed isolation, which plays a very important role in the novella. In this respect, I’d propose Guy Endore’s 1933 masterpiece, Werewolf of Paris, as the purest werewolf tale, but we’ll leave that discussion to a future post.



The power of Stevenson’s most popular piece of horror fiction lies with his understanding of two extremely important aspects of genre storytelling, or for that matter storytelling of any kind. You must have a compelling story to tell, of course, but without strong and resonant settings and interesting, believable perspectives, any form of fiction falls flat. Too many horror writers sacrifice these two elements for the gimmicks of gore, plot twists and a preoccupation with trends in the genre. In Strange Case, Stevenson created a dark and foggy London, one that traces its literary lineage directly through William Blake. It’s striking that Blake could conjure such a rich picture of a place in sixteen lines (“London” 1797), something many novelists can’t do in 100,000 words. Stevenson manages, however, to create a brutal, unforgiving picture of London with its decaying alleys and mansions. Everything is imbued, here, with a sense of dissolution and death. Utterson and all his friends, including Jekyll, seem on the brink of oblivion, seem to be about to disappear into their gray surroundings.

Another important aspect of Strange Case, which Stevenson skillfully employs, is perspective. So many contemporary novelists confine themselves to a bland third person omniscience, or lifeless first person, in a futile and counteractive attempt to make their fiction “objective”. What Stevenson understood, and what I think all great novelists understand, is that there is no such thing as an “objective” narrative. Even something as objective as a movie camera is manipulated in such a way to provide a unique, subjective perspective to the audience. Stevenson uses many different perspectives to reveal a tale of decay and distrust, in a powerful way that could never be achieved through a straight third person narration. Utterson, a close friend of Jekyll, unfolds the action for us, and it is his compassion for Jekyll that makes his transformation into Mr Hyde all the more terrifying. We respect Jekyll because Utterson does, and we feel revulsion towards Hyde because Utterson does. The final passage of the novella is presented as Jekyll’s own words from a letter he’s written accounting for all the strange events surrounding him. This confession is a riveting psychological portrait and brings yet another fully formed perspective to add a depth to Strange Case that is remarkable for such a short book.

If you’ve only experienced the story of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde through adaptations, do yourself a favor and read the original.



Check out this free audio book of Strange Case at LibriVox.

We All Scream For Ice Cream - Dir. by Tom Holland (2007)

The tropes of We All Scream For Ice Cream, Tom Holland’s installment in the Masters of Horror series, are well-worn. We’ve got the communal guilt and childhood temptation, not to mention the creepy clown, of Stephen King’s It and the unwieldy power of children, straight out of John Wyndham’s Midwich Cuckoos, the novel Wolf Rilla used as the basis for his brilliant 1960 film, Village of the Damned. But here Holland, director of Fright Night and Child’s Play imbues his subject with enough creepy camp and nostalgia to turn a fresh twist on that old adage that you can’t go home again.

Adapted from John Ferris’s short story, We All Scream For Ice Cream follows the mysterious disappearances of a group of middle aged men, once known as the West End Bunch, who are now paying for a horrible crime they committed when they were very young. Buster, a dim-witted clown, who sells Cheery Time ice cream to the town’s children, has returned from the dead to exact vengeance on the West End Bunch, and he’s using Cheery Time ice cream and the appetites of children to do it.

Honestly, Holland’s job making Buster into a terrifying lure of temptation for the West End Bunch’s children is no accomplishment. Clown’s are scary, plain and simple, but the delight that modest treats like ice cream brought to an American suburban childhood through the second half of the 20th century, is easily manipulated and combined with a child’s resentment for his or her parents into a guilt-ridden paranoid trip through the past.

The real terror comes not from the children who wield the power to destroy their parents, but the ghost of Buster, who represents the regret we all feel for our own childhood indiscretions. The death Buster brings is almost a sweet release for Big Joe, who as a kid didn’t even directly participate in the crime against Buster, but who still feels wracked with guilt. Do we submit to our painful memories like Big Joe, or fight back?

Since Tom Holland’s at the helm here, all this deep stuff is delivered with a spoonful of schlock and kitsch, including a righteously redneck old bully flexing his muscles in a barrel full of suds, and plenty of lukewarm sexual tensions between the protagonist and his wife. Still, I’d recommend this for fans of Tales From the Crypt, both the HBO series and the old EC comics, for its great ironic imagery and fun morbid twists.

William Forsythe delivers an awkward but arresting performance as Buster, a mentally retarded clown, who has an endearing and annoying shtick, overshadowing most of the other bland actors in this low budget production. But when the lives of your characters are so expendable, in such a short period of time, you don’t want to make your audience fall in the love with them. So, Buster’s death is, rightly, the only one here that makes an impact, the rest just melt into oblivion and out of our minds.

Check out this interview with director Tom Holland.

Homicidal - Dir. by William Castle (1961)

William Castle, sometimes thought of as a low-budget Alfred Hitchcock, went to great lengths to give audiences in the fifties and sixties a reason to get excited about going to the movies. Whether this involved outfitting theater seats to vibrate (as he did for The Tingler) or issuing life insurance guarantees in case one were to “die of fright” during screenings of his film Macabre.

Indeed, the fifties, with the advent of 3-D (albeit bad 3-D), and CinemaScope, provided a number of things people hadn’t seen before. It’s hard to imagine a more energetic, crafty showman than Mr. Castle, who employed all sorts of gimmicks to get people in the theater.

His 1961 Psycho-inspired, rarely discussed film, Homicidal, entertains a subject matter somewhat more serious and less fantastical than those of his previous successes (The House on Haunted Hill, Thirteen Ghosts, etc.), and is virtually gimmick-free, until the end.

The gimmick Castle used this time around for this otherwise “serious” film is a warning delivered via voice over approximately forty-five seconds from the climax, in which the theater audience is told that anyone “too scared to see the end of the picture” may get up and leave. The voice then, with the aid of a clock superimposed over the paused scene, lets the audience know they have twenty-five . . . fifteen . . . seconds to leave.

It is said that when one percent of theater attendees actually did request a refund, Castle became angered and set up a “Coward’s Corner,” along with yellow footprints leading out of the theater, in order to shame those who dared not stay for the ending. It is also said that Castle may have had “plants” in some audiences, in order to add to the spectacle, give the gimmick some feeling of legitimacy. I can’t help wondering how effective, how feared, and how jokingly, audiences took some of these Castle tricks.

There are at least two scenes, and many elements, of Homicidal which will remind the viewer of the far superior Psycho; the film’s influence is obvious from beginning to end. That’s not to say it’s a bad movie, though. Castle manages to create some genuine tension and excitement, and even a few scary moments (that kid at the very beginning—tell me somewhere on this planet there’s another kid that creepy-looking).

I found this one on Netflix’s Instant View. A good choice if you’ve seen Psycho a million times and wouldn’t mind something relatively derivative but fun.



Check out this review of the 2007 documentary film Spine Tingler! The William Castle Story.