Singing the Blues

Have you ever been walking late at night, and, as you travel your route, you hear someone following. . . the sound of their footsteps, slowly gaining, the ‘thud thud thud’ of their slightly quicker pace penetrating your deepest fears – your heart starting to palpitate as you pray that this is just mere happenstance and not some sort of psychotic stalker. This is the premise of the 2013 horror short: 2AM: The Smiling Man. Directed by Michael Evans (and based upon a Creepypasta – something I was unaware of until writing this article. . . it is a horror legend or image that has been copy and pasted around the Internet), the audience is placed in the shoes of a late night Roamer (Sean Simon), a twenty-something ‘anyman’ who is making his way home at 2 A.M. one night.

We’ve all had it happen before. . . an experiment goes awry – a recipe doesn’t turn out (and the cake somehow turns green), or we simply think ‘the old Mentos in a bottle of Coke trick’ is just a myth, but you’ve likely never had a day quite like scientist André Delambre (David Hedison – the only actor to play Felix Leiter in two James Bond flicks), a moment that will change his life forever – so, without further ado, I present to you 1958's: The Fly. Written by James Clavell (based upon a short story by George Langelaan) and directed by Kurt Neumann, the story is set in exotic Montreal, the french speaking Canadian city that is one of the oldest continuously inhabited locations in North America. It is here that a wealthy industrialist family is seemingly struck by a more than unusual tragedy – André Delambre has been found dead, head and arm obliterated by a hydraulic press. . . further adding to the mystery, his loving wife Hélène (Patricia Owens) is seen running from the scene of the crime.

Special delivery – a five minute journey into a world devoid of science and logic, writer/director Roman Bubnov pits a mysterious, gift-giving force against a woman in an intriguing little Russian short film – Who’s There (2018). A twenty-first century Hitchcockian blonde (Darya Yanvarina) – ear buds in, phone attached to hip; a beautiful mystery, so alluringly aloof. . . a woman placed in a dire situation, she receives a text from source unknown, asking if she got the said sender’s present.

“Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and caldron bubble. . .” – witches, constant fodder for horror films, but one feature that takes a more sophisticated look at the boiled, pointed black hat wearing creatures, is first time writer/director Robert Eggers’ 2015 motion picture The VVitch: A New-England Folktale – remind me never to book a vacation to rural New England. Set in seventeenth century America, a puritanical Calvinist family has been banished from the plantation they once called home (due to religious differences). . . heading out into the wild unknown (a beautiful voyeuristic shot depicts the children leaving the bustle of the growing town), they look for some solace on their new plot of land, an open piece of property surrounded by a dark, brooding forest. More of a mood piece than a horror film. . . Eggers painstakingly recreates what life would be like in the lonesome location – the senses coming alive; you can feel the roughness of the carriage ride, see the sullen seclusion and ominously dark home life, smell the animals in the nearby barn, endure the weight of their clothing, suffer the same starvation they struggle with as their crops are destroyed by rot.

Though not one of Buster Keaton’s most iconic shorts, 1921's The Haunted House is, at its best, like one of those uber-fun Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? chase scenes – ghosts, skeletons, demons and other unexpected spooks flitting in and out of rooms and doorways, dodging, ducking, dipping, chasing, and ultimately, scaring our jarred, though still somehow stone-faced, hero. Where it struggles slightly is its setup. Keaton is a clerk, a hard working employee at a small time bank. The larger than life money manager (behemoth Joe Roberts) has hatched a plan to rob said bank, his team of thieves looking to a crumbling old home, long rumoured to be haunted, as their hidy-hole – preparing for the cops or any other unlucky trespasser, they have booby-trapped the long since abandoned abode while also gathering white sheets to act as ghosts, building on its infamous reputation. After a glue gag that kind of falls flat, Keaton is spotted by the owner with guns in hand (after having chased off the robbers) – it looking like he is the criminal mastermind. . . fleeing, he hopes to find respite in the haunted house.

A Psycho inspired Hammer Horror motion picture (a British film production company based in London, founded in 1934) set in the rural British countryside, 1963's Paranoiac finds a wealthy family in crisis, struck by a long streak of bad luck – parents dying in a plane crash (eleven years ago), eldest brother committing suicide at the age of fifteen (eight years ago), the rest of them struggling to pick up the pieces after these multiple heartbreaking hits. Written by Jimmy Sangster (loosely based upon the 1949 crime novel Brat Farrar by Josephine Tey) and directed by Freddie Francis (two time Oscar winner for Best Cinematography – Sons and Lovers and Glory), the pair builds mystery upon mystery. With Tony Ashby having committed suicide, Simon Ashby (Oliver Reed) is next in line for the fortune. . . an alcoholic – angry, confused, irrational and frustrated, he constantly spends the money that is supposed to remain in trust. The family lawyer, John Kossett (Maurice Denham), has finally developed a backbone, telling the youth that he will get no more money until he comes of age in three weeks.