Today is the day of Halloween. It is where you expect little kids trick-or-treating and wearing costumes bought from Halloween City. It is when humans develop their inner spookiness and holler, “Boo!”. However, in this particular article, it is a time where someone decides, “Hey, does anyone want to watch a scary movie?”. People utilize scary movies in relation to the season as a decoration, an event, or something fun or goofy to do during the season. What I am here to convey today is that there is a huge difference in the way horror movies are made.
The word on the street would be “eerie”.
Many horror films released in the past ten years like Drew Goddard’s “The Cabin in the Woods” and Fede Alvarez’s “Don’t Breathe” are both true horror masterpieces that would be considered modern classics in my eyes, but every film enthusiast out there like me miss the satanic feeling of such directors including Brian De Palma, Alfred Hitchcock, David Cronenberg, Wes Craven, and Roman Polanski. They believed the true evil realism of horror and how it contributed to the story itself. Goddard, Alvarez, and even “The Conjuring” director James Wan may understand the fear of horror, but directors like De Palma inspired the terror of it because possibly, the budgets were less expensive back in the ’70’s and ’80’s where prosthetic aspects came into real play.
First of all, let’s delve into the greatest Canadian director and a true trooper of independent cinema, David Cronenberg. Cronenberg knows how to distribute a movie whenever it is crime, drama, or horror.
The 1979 cult film that put him on the map, “The Brood”, showcased a father’s daughter named Candice getting attacked by a menacing brood (dwarf children), where a stricken woman is giving birth to as a mother. The actual dwarf children scenes are unsettling to sit through during the final act where Candice, not tolerated of the dwarfs themselves, locks the door because of her safe decisions. The dwarf children find a way to physically punch the door in order to try to kill Candice. There is also another scene in which two chaotic dwarf children in blue and orange coats that encounter a teacher during class and smash her into death. The thing that makes this film eerie enough as it is would be Howard Shore’s score. Sure it sounds cheap and lousy, but he knows from the opening credits that it is to create the tension and idea of “The Brood”.
Another scene that defines Cronenberg’s vision is his reincarnation of “The Fly” with Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis. It has some of the greatest, impulsive visual effects ever put in a motion picture. An example of this is when Jeff Goldblum’s character improves into the fly itself. The reaction that builds into Geena Davis’ character incorporates disgust when in the next shot, there comes desire for the character to shoot that bad boy. But there is still sadness and tragedy in her face after the death. Real emotion and character flow through the mind of David Cronenberg whenever horror is in store. It doesn’t mean something like “A History of Violence” and “Eastern Promises” aren’t brilliant movies because they still and always will be.
Roman Polanski, despite for me seeing only a couple of his films, knows how to not just seriously research, but also evoke ruthlessness and satanic imagery in films. There is a film called “The Ninth Gate”, despite not being eerie enough (because it came out in 1999), that brings on one of the most overlooked Johnny Depp performances ever showing a librarian that believes the inner depth of hell. Before that, he made what is to be one of the greatest horror films of all time, “Rosemary’s Baby”. Polanski evokes ruthlessness into her character, Rosemary Woodhouse, played by the amazing Mia Farrow, when during a dream in her sleep, a nightmare occurs where lying on a bed with tenants all around her saying, “This is really happening!” in tempting, nerve-wrecking dialogue. He also incorporates a theme of Christianity, where in the end of the film, the family after seeing Rosemary’s reaction to the baby has a strong disbelief in Christ chanting, “Hail, Satan! Hail, Satan!” because her baby is the son of the devil. Rosemary then mercifully screams, “What have you done?” to all of her family members, then spits at her husband (John Cassavetes) after recommending another baby to her. This is probably the most hard-to-watch depiction of the theme of Christianity in motion picture history.
Brian De Palma is a director that establishes the theme of bullying and the evil relationship between a teenage girl and a mother in 1976’s “Carrie”. In the opening shots of the film, Carrie (Sissy Spacek) is being bullied in a girls locker room where in that aftermath, she feels extremely depressed like never before. Sue Snell, the main bully, torments her during prom night with pig blood running all over her body. Her mother (brutally played by Piper Laurie) does not want her to to go to the prom because she is religious. Her mother is so religious that she even forces Carrie to read an excerpt from the Bible in a prayer closet. The ending goes completely ballistic when Carrie decides to kill her mother with kitchen utensils by telekinetic power, then their house decides to get destroyed since Carrie lost control of her powers.
Sure Alfred Hitchcock is the master of suspense for films such films like “Rear Window”, “Psycho” and “Vertigo”, but when it comes to films like The Birds, he can perform like he is the master of horror. Like “Poltergeist”, this film uses real-living birds over practical birds to make it look like it is truly a utter disaster. There is a scene where Tippi Hedren’s character is visiting her daughter in school because she sees that there are a flock of crows sitting on an electricity wire next to the school building. Expecting to be a fire drill, Hedren’s character and the teacher along with the students run for their lives when the crows are ready to attack so much prey. One smart and intriguing thing Hitchcock does so well with his films is that he prefers more dialogue than suspense because he wants you to get into the characters’ minds before being aware for them. Probably the best aspect about this film is that Hitchcock preferred this film to have no musical score by Bernard Herrmann, but instead have the sound mixing done by him to understand the fear of an unexplained bird attack. Now that right there is pure genius.
Finally, the most terrifying example of classic, evil horror is William Friedkin’s 1973 classic “The Exorcist”. In Regan’s possessed body, the filmmakers decided to make Regan vomit real pea soup and even recommended audiences to gather a vomit bucket when it first came out. Both fathers Merrin and Karras provide such eerie havoc during when they repeat the line, “The power of Christ compels you!” when the possessed Regan rises up in full glory. It is a memorable horror sequence that delivers the theme of hope since spirits need to be forbidden from pure existence. Plus, the communication between the possessed Regan and the fathers feels body-shaking and unnerving that it feels like a communication in a mental institute or even a prison.
I am telling everyone. Filmmakers like Cronenberg, De Palma, Hitchcock, Chicago’s own William Friedkin, and Polanski perform sensitive themes, imagery, and powerful stories in films that modern horror filmmakers cannot accomplish anymore.
There are many other phenomenal, authentic achievements that will never be revolutionized nor altered in recent cinema like John Krasinski’s thriller “A Quiet Place” will never be compared to the combustion of an alien out of a human chest in Ridley Scott’s “Alien”, Ari Aster’s “Hereditary” never matching up to the cynical and crazy family dynamic in De Palma’s “Carrie”, Andres Muschetti’s reboot of “It” not being as experimental as Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining”, and most importantly, James Wan’s “Conjuring” films never being as powerful as the supernatural powers portrayed in Tobe Hooper’s “Poltergeist”, where it is more of a disaster than only just a power. Many horror films like the recent “Halloween” movie will never even match the intrusive, religious imagery movies from the ’60’s, ’70’s, and ’80’s have to offer.
Simply, for a lack of better words, horror will never be the same like this.