I fell down a hole this past week searching out horror documentaries. A few months ago, mid-pandemic fall, I watched a lot of them that showed up in my streaming options, mostly since it was hard to concentrate on anything with a narrative line. I enjoyed many of them, including the very awesome Horror Noire, about black horror, and In Search of Darkness, a year by year account of 80's movies . This past week's delve included Crystal Lake Memories, a whopping six hours devoted to everyone's favorite hockey masked killer, and Room 237, which framed various critical (I say that word loosely) takes on The Shining.
The former was rather more a nostalgic delight in a 6+ hour journey, film by film. What struck me was the difficulties in bringing horror to the screen, esp in the Reagan era, when it seemed so much wound up on the cutting room floor to appease the all powerful MPAA, including elaborate and finely crafted gore and violence scenes, not so easy pre-CGI. This reminded me what I talked about a couple weeks back re: the power of the FCC in Pump Up the Volume and the tyranny of the Christian right on entertainment (such snowflakes!) Also, the struggle to get good critical coverage, or any at all really for the films to get audiences in movie theater seats. The very first Friday the 13th is one i have fuzzy memories of watching, either on VHS or HBO probably in the year after the release. I would have been 6 or so, and I don't remember being scared of the killer, so much as, of course, Jason popping out of the water at the end. Most of the others, I would have seen on video over the years--I think my only theatre outing was to see Jason Goes to Hell when I was in college. The 8th one, Jason Takes Manhattan has a fond place in my heart since I was obsessed with it when I was 14 (it's not the worst, but definitely up there.) I do like that, #4, in casting Corey Feldman in the lead, roughly the same age, they ensured that everyone our age would both see themselves in and gravitate to horror if not already (my cousin had a subscription to Fangoria and I remember closely following such things with relish. )
I of course, have a special interest in "the final girl" and how she evolved over the course of the franchise, and of course, final girls in general. They definitely were coming off the riff of Halloween at the time, but it was interesting how the character shifted in the late 80's with the addition of telekinetic and psychic powers (7 & 8)--the more supernatural possession elements in #9. The doc also gave some love to the series, which was required Friday night viewing for me in a tie when, outside of things like Tales from the Crypt and Tales from the Dark Side, you didn't get much of in 80's television. I remember being so excited about it, but having no one who stayed up that late on Friday nights to watch it and talk about it on Mondays oustide of mys sister, who at 10, usually fell asleep mid-episode. How dd we even find our people pre-internet? (Luckily in my adult life, I have many, many friends --in person and online-- who love horror and such things.) I think what struck me most about the study was how much fun each cast, no matter how bad the film, had in creating it--to have been part of making something so legendary. Also the tension of trying to do new things to keep audiences interested, but criticism from those same audiences when you varied from the formula. How to do both successfully at the same time and usually failing.
The Kubrick doc, of course, tales a little bit more of a fan & scholar focused approach, presenting several takes on the film--The Shining as allegory for the treatment of Native Americans. As Holocaust commentary. As Kubrick's apology for help faking the moon landing (yes, really.) What stuck out here was the amazing ability to, whatever Kubrick's intentions, to impose and find echos in a film that many just think is a story about an abusive husband and a haunted hotel. The coolest part was a guy who talked about how the film is a mirror image of itself, and if you overlay the thing going both forward and backwards, scene by scene, it gives you so much to talk about visually, in terms of narrative and visuals. They also spoke with the woman I've referred to in my Overlook research who attempted to map the hotel as it exists in the film with little success that makes sense--the nonsensical cottage-ey window in the orange office at the beginning that doesn't fit with the hotel design. The decor was something that I am particularly obsessed with--how the Native American inspired motifs of the Colorado Lounge give way to the deco of Room 237 and that gorgeous celadon bathroom, To the claustrophobic floral of the help's wing. The Gold Room itself and it's 20's glamour. Another critic talked about the minotaur myth and the labyrinth. It's amazing that so much can be interpreted from a single film, but also some things seemed a little bit stretchy. Some really do, even with the filmmaker's careful eye, to have been continuity errors--a chair that is there then gone. Danny's positioning on the carpet pattern that shifts in a cut. The way a poster on the wall in the game room looks like a horned creature. I am intrigued by the change in the typewriter color mid-film.
Someone did mention that whatever Kubrick's intention, the text of the movie exists beyond him, and that things, intentional and unintentional hold a similar weight in the long run, which of course got me thinking about writing--my own, that of others, the books I read in college, where we were just coming out of the New Critical stance and into a more cultural studies based approach. Also how, when I was working on Overlook, the film lent itself to my own examination of class and violence and the role of the artist, whether the filmmaker intended these things or not (I would say he did--the devil in the details) Or whether, at a time when I was thinking largely about how people experiences the pandemic differently on an economic scale, these were things subconsciously rising to the surface. To the point where I got the end of the project and was like, hey, that's not what I was thinking going in, but it makes it even better.
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