General Horror Stuff

The Goddess’s Favorite Creepy Movie Scenes, or Why You Should Keep Your Finger Out of That Hole in the Wall

/ Jenny Ashford / 6 Comments

There are a few parameters I’d like to establish with this series, now that I’ve thought about the scenes I’d like to feature and everything they have in common. As far as possible, I want to avoid including scenes that are nothing more than “jump scares.” Don’t get me wrong, these can be terribly effective when done right, and I’m not saying that I will never feature one in this series (in fact, I can already think of one or two I might want to do a writeup on at some point), but the bulk of the scenes I’ll describe will fall more into the category of subtle, creeping dread, simply because I find these types of scenes scarier and more prone to haunt the memory than scenes of shocking gore, for example (although I like my shocking gore as much as the next girl). I’ve always been of the opinion that the best horror comes completely from suggestion and atmosphere; once you’ve shown the monster in all its tentacled and bloody glory, you’ve effectively pissed the scare down your leg. Real terror comes from the not-knowing.

Additionally, I’d also like to focus more on scenes that don’t get quite as much attention as some of the better-known “scariest horror scenes.” It’s universally accepted, for instance, that many scenes from The Shining are sinister as fuck (redrum, the twins, room 237, the furry blow job, all work and no play), but since many of these appear on lists all over internet-land, I will probably refrain from beating a dead horse here. Everything I would have liked to say about these scenes has already been said better by someone else. I’m also probably going to stick with older, more “classic” films, not only because they’re the ones I tend to prefer, but also because I’m far more familiar with them as a whole.

With that housekeeping out of the way, let’s get on with the next entry in the series!

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Roman Polanski, despite his rather grave personal failings, has made some absolutely champion horror films, his particular genius lying in his portrayal of claustrophobic paranoia and spiraling descents into madness.

The Tenant (1976) was the third film in Polanski’s so-called ‘apartment trilogy,’ which also included Repulsion (1965) and Rosemary’s Baby (1968), both of which will likely turn up in this series at one time or another. The reader can check Wikipedia for a complete plot synopsis, but in brief, The Tenant is the story of a Polish immigrant, Trelkovsky (played by Polanski himself) who moves into a Paris apartment that was previously occupied by an Egyptologist named Simone who slowly went batshit and tried to end it all by leaping out of the apartment window. As the movie goes on, it becomes clear that Trelkovsky is either on his way to repeating the cycle of madness, or he has the most relentlessly malevolent neighbors on earth.

This ambiguity, also present in the other two films in the ‘trilogy,’ is one of the best aspects of The Tenant, and also one of my favorite horror themes in general. Is Trelkovsky simply losing his mind as Simone apparently did (raising the possibility that the apartment itself is somehow causing the crazy), or was there some kind of organized plot by the other tenants to eventually drive them both to suicide? Judging from what happens in the film, it could go either way, though I tend to fall into the “descending madness” camp.

Contact your physician if you notice yourself appearing in two places at once.

Contact your physician if you notice yourself appearing in two places at once.

There is really just one scene I’d like to call out, though the film is really an embarrassment of riches on this score. An atmosphere of close, dingy dread infuses every scene with jittery unease, and there is ample terror conveyed by simple shots of grungy shutters or twitching curtains. It’s bad enough that Trelkovsky has already discovered that the wardrobe in the apartment is still full of Simone’s clothes, that he can clearly see into the bathroom across the courtyard, and that the glass awning a couple floors beneath his window still bears a ragged hole where Simone’s body crashed through it. But then comes this unsettling development…

Trelkovsky is moving the wardrobe when he happens to glance out the window. He freezes. For there, standing in the bathroom window across the courtyard, is a woman. She is just standing there, staring at him. She is dressed in a long black coat and a black hat. Her face is blurred, but she looks startlingly like his crotchety landlady (played by Shelley Winters), feeding his burgeoning paranoia that the landlady and the other tenants are actively trying to freak him out. Troubled, he turns back to the wardrobe, and it’s then that he spots a hole in the wall that looks to be stuffed with a wad of cotton. He pulls the cotton out and peers into the hole with his lighter. He thinks he sees something, so he pokes his finger in there. And what he yanks out is a tooth.

A FUCKING TOOTH. A long, white canine tooth, clearly extracted at the root. Trelkovsky stares at it for a moment before dropping it into a nearby ashtray. Then, looking down at the tooth with a slightly disgusted expression on his face, he picks the tooth back up and sticks it back into the hole in the wall, and replaces the cotton.

The reason I love this scene so much is that it’s done so elegantly. There is no dialogue, and the background score (which sounds like an oboe) is suitably downbeat and eerie. Besides that, finding a vaguely squicky object left by persons unknown in a place where you weren’t expecting to find such a thing is a fantastic way of building suspense and keeping the viewer guessing. What is the tooth doing in a hole in the wall behind a wardrobe? Is it Simone’s? Did she pull it herself or did someone else do it? And why did she keep it? The imagination races to make sense of the grisly little relic. The appearance of the tooth is never fully explained, and that is what gives the scene this disquieting aura of menace.

There is a later, similar scene that I’d like to touch on as well. Trelkovsky is lying in bed, sick and slightly delirious. Eventually he leaves his apartment to visit the bathroom, making his way through the shadowed halls. When he gets there, a slow pan around the room reveals that someone has very meticulously carved hieroglyphics all over the walls. This is ominous enough to make Trelkovsky bolt from the room and hightail it back to his apartment, but when he gets back there, he glances out the window and sees someone standing in the bathroom he just left seconds before. And this someone is completely wrapped in bandages, like a mummy. Just standing there. Then, the figure slowly begins to unwrap the bandages from around her head, and it’s a weirdly smiling woman, Simone. Her smile reveals a missing canine tooth. This scene is also a great thematic callback, as not only was Simone an Egyptologist, but she was also in a full body cast the first time Trelkovsky saw her (though she died later from her injuries).

Please keep reading and I’ll keep putting these up as I think of them! You can also send me suggestions for scenes you like and why you thought they were particularly scary, or argue with me about the ones I picked. Thanks for your patronage. 😀

First in a Possible Series: The Goddess’s Favorite Creepy Movie Scenes, or Why the Fuck Does David Lynch Freak Me Out So Much?

/ Jenny Ashford / 3 Comments

Yesterday, as I was indulging in that great American pastime of frittering my workday away on the internet, I suddenly and quite inexplicably became obsessed with reading various publications’ rankings of the top 100 horror films and scenes. Unlike a large majority of the commenters on these pieces, I don’t so much read these types of posts to quibble with the films that were chosen or get into a lather about ones that were left off; I am, rather, simply very interested in what films other people chose and why they felt the way they did about them. The list I liked the best, incidentally, was this one from TimeOut London that was ranked according to votes from various horror heavy-hitters. It is, in my opinion, a great, diverse list that pretty equitably spans all genres and eras of horror and even threw in a few curveballs and non-traditional choices. Besides that, the recaps of the films were in-depth, informed, and insightful.

Reading all these lists inspired me to do a similar thing on this blog, though frankly I think I will stick to just calling out particular scenes in horror films that stuck with me through the years, and try to analyze why they made such an impact on me. That’s not to say that I might not do a “Goddess’s Top 100 Horror Films of All Time” one of these days, but at the moment I have a lot of other projects pending and don’t have enough free time to rewatch all the films I’d like to feature just so I can remember specifics. So consider this the first in a series of however many of my favorite creepy movie scenes that I’d like to write about. 🙂

The scene I’m going to feature first was a no-brainer for me; it was the first one that popped into my head when I decided to do this series. I have always said (to myself, mostly) that many of the scariest scenes in film don’t even come from what would normally be considered horror films. For a long time, I thought I was pretty much alone in this opinion, but then, in all my horror-list wanderings, I came across retroCRUSH’s 100 Scariest Movie Scenes. And right there, at number one, was SWEET VINDICATION.

WinkiesSign

Winkie’s. Fucking. Diner. *shudder*

If you have not seen David Lynch’s masterful 2001 mystery Mulholland Drive, kindly do yourself a favor and get on that shit tout suite. For real, I’ll wait. It’s a sinister layer cake of creepy-awesome that rewards multiple viewings, like a rich, nightmarish puzzle that taunts you with its dark, schizophrenic glamor.

The setup of the five-minute diner scene is mundane in the extreme. Minor characters Dan (Patrick Fischler) and Herb (Michael Cooke) are sitting in Winkie’s Diner in broad daylight. Dan is telling Herb about a recurring dream he’s had that took place in the very diner they’re sitting in. It all sounds fairly humdrum until Dan says that there is a man behind the diner. “He’s the one who’s doing it,” Dan says, though he doesn’t elaborate on what ‘it’ might be. “I can see him through the wall.” He then tells Herb that he hopes he never sees the man’s face outside of a dream, with the implication that the face is too horrible for him to describe. Dan looks sweaty and intense and apprehensive as he talks, haltingly. Later in the scene, Herb takes Dan outside in an attempt to show him that the man in his dream is not really back there, and this goes about as well as you’d expect.

PEEKABOO!

PEEKABOO!

What is it about this scene that gives me the heebie-jeebies every single time I watch it? It isn’t the most obvious “scare,” the sudden appearance of the nightmare man from behind the dumpster. That’s sort of freaky when it happens, in a jump-out-of-your-seat way, but it’s not particularly dread-inducing. No, the scariest part of the scene is everything leading up to that: Dan’s strangely rubbery facial expressions and lopsided nervous grins, the flat affect of his voice as he describes the dream, the way he seems to say a great deal without saying much at all. One particular moment that actually caused a chill to rocket up my spine was when Dan was saying that Herb had also made an appearance in the dream. “You’re standing right over there…by that counter.” The camera pans slowly over to the counter, at which no one is currently standing, then focuses back on Dan’s anxious face. “You’re in both dreams, and you’re scared.” A few minutes later, Herb goes to pay for their lunch, and thus actually is standing right where Dan saw him standing in the dream. The men share an extremely unsettling glance across the diner. Also rather nerve-wracking is the men’s walk out to the dumpster behind the diner. Every shot, every camera angle, every edit as they walk seems pointedly calculated to be as skin-crawlingly sinister as possible, but without being obvious or overtly frightening in any way. It’s a fantastic trick, and I wish I could figure out how Lynch so effortlessly achieved it.

The retroCRUSH rundown also pointed out that this scene should absolutely not be as eerie as it is, because Dan basically describes exactly what’s going to happen, and then it happens. Normally structuring a scene like that would only serve to take away any tension, but in this scene it’s precisely the opposite. There is an inevitability to the scene; both Dan and the viewer know that something bad is going to happen, but neither are able to prevent it, and the dread the viewer feels in Dan’s stead makes the scene, for me at least, very difficult to watch without looking away.

I am amazed that Lynch managed to film such an ominous scene out of elements that are anything but scary at first glance (other than the nightmare man’s horrible face, that is), but I’m even more amazed by the fact that he’s done it more than once. Lynch is a master at something I tend to call time displacement, for lack of a better term. He has filmed several scenes in which the line between reality and nightmare is blurred, of course, but he also seems to have a similar predilection for playing with overlapping timescales, characters being in two places at once, and that type of thing. In 2006’s Inland Empire, for example, the intensely freaky-looking Grace Zabriskie (as Visitor #1) points to an empty couch in Laura Dern’s house and tells her that if it was tomorrow, she would be sitting right. Over. There. And then suddenly it is tomorrow, and Laura Dern is sitting exactly where the old woman said she’d be sitting. There is also the famous scene from Lost Highway (1997), where a white-faced Robert Blake tells Bill Pullman that not only is he standing there talking to him, but at the same time, “I’m at your house right now.” Every single scene Lynch has filmed like this has freaked me right the hell out, and I can’t quite put my finger on why that might be. Perhaps because when done well, these scenes serve to undermine the fulcrum of reality and make the viewer feel completely adrift in a universe that makes no rational sense. Or maybe it’s the fact that Lynch, better than any other filmmaker in my opinion, is cursedly skilled at portraying the incongruity of dreams on film, so that we almost feel as though he’s directly tapped into our collective subconscious and forced us to look unflinchingly at what’s lurking there. Or it could be his consummate talent for utilizing slightly off-kilter facial expressions, camera shots, voice inflections, and background sounds to convey an unsettling mood. Whatever the reason, I suppose it just goes to show that in the right hands, traditional horror movie monsters and situations have nothing on a simple shot of the back of someone’s head, or a strangely intense glance, or a daylight stroll through a diner parking lot.

Inquisitions of the Middle Ages

/ Jenny Ashford / Leave a comment

For nearly six centuries, the Catholic Church operated a series of inquisitions for the purpose of wiping out heresy and witchcraft. The original article I wrote can be found here.

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Though the Inquisition is generally thought of as as a single organization or series of events, there were, in fact, several inquisitions occurring throughout most of Europe during the Middle Ages. In practice, the Catholic Church operated the various inquisitions almost like a franchise, with inquisitors being sent to different areas to establish offices for the purpose of rooting out heresy, sorcery, and various other perceived wrongdoings. And while the public might have an idea of the Inquisition as a crackdown on witchcraft, the earliest manifestations targeted mainly other, supposedly heretical, branches of Christianity.

The Early Inquisitions

Though the Catholic Church had, before the 12th century, considered heresy a crime that could be punished with imprisonment, it wasn’t until roughly 1140 — with the spread of the heretical Christian sect called the Cathars — that the church began taking the threat more seriously. The first of the so-called “Medieval Inquisitions” was established in 1184 by papal bull, and soon thereafter inquisitors were sent to parts of Italy and France to deal with new religious movements, including the Cathars, the Bogomils, and the Waldensians. While these were all Christian sects, their beliefs strayed from Catholic orthodoxy; the Cathars, for example, believed in both a good and evil God, and since the evil God had created the earth, everything material in the world was to be avoided as far as possible. Dominicans and Franciscans, who were generally also considered heretics because of their belief in the corruption of the Church, were not persecuted, and in fact were recruited by Pope Innocent III into the cause of the inquisition. The Knights Templar, on the other hand, who had long been valued allies of the Catholic Church, were ruthlessly targeted, possibly due to political maneuvering by French king Philip the Fair, who wanted to get his hands on their vast wealth.

Methods of the Inquisition

A 1252 papal bull authorized the use of torture by inquisitors. The various methods of torture — including strappado, the rack, and simulated drowning — were meant not as punishment, but to encourage confession of one’s crimes, and more importantly, to implicate others who could then be hauled in by authorities and subjected to the same treatment. Once an accused heretic was brought in for questioning, there was little he or she could do to win freedom. Even a confession was considered unsatisfactory without the naming of names. The accused had no right to an attorney, could be held indefinitely, and was never told what the charges against him or her were, or who had made the accusations. Torture would be applied until the “heretic” had confessed, though the confession had to be repeated later, so that the Church could avoid charges that the confession had been forced under duress. If execution was called for, the heretic was handed over to secular authorities to keep the Church’s hands clean. Once the execution had been carried out — usually by burning alive, though the victim might be strangled before the fire was lit if he or she had repented the crime — the victim’s property and assets would be confiscated and remanded to Church authorities, often leaving the family of the “heretic” destitute. And death itself was often no barrier to the Church’s investigations, as several supposed heretics who had died as much as fifty years before were sometimes dug up, paraded through the streets, and burned at the stake. The relatives of this unfortunate corpse were then stripped of their assets.

The Spanish Inquisition

Perhaps the best known of the inquisitions due to its mentions in popular culture, the Spanish Inquisition was also little concerned with sorcery or witchcraft. This particular inquisition — established in 1478 at the behest of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, with the help of Pope Sixtus IV — almost exclusively targeted Jews and Muslims who had converted to Christianity and were suspected of carrying on the rituals of their previous religions in secret. Known as Marranos or conversos, Jews who were observed changing their underclothes on Saturday or refraining from eating pork were duly reported, as were Moriscos, or “secret Muslims,” who were caught doing something as harmless as eating couscous. Later targets of the Spanish Inquisition included Protestants and members of the Greek Orthodox Church. This particular inquisition operated most everywhere the Spaniards conquered, including Peru, Mexico and Guatemala, and continued operating until about 1821.

Witch Hunts

Witchcraft and the Inquisition are inseparably intertwined in the popular imagination, probably due to the presence of horrifying texts such as the 1486 Malleus Maleficarum, but the fact remains that those accused of witchcraft or sorcery made up only a fraction of victims. Those accused tended to be female, single, aged and ugly; anyone exhibiting personal eccentricities in dress or manner were also suspected, as were midwives. Moreover, people accused of witchcraft were often tried by civil courts, as the local inquisitions perceived more of a threat from heretics than witches.

Additional Source:

Kirsch, Jonathan (2008). The Grand Inquisitor’s Manual: A History of Terror in the Name of God. HarperOne. ISBN 978-0060816995.

News on my upcoming novel, “Red Menace”

/ Jenny Ashford / Leave a comment

Today I received the review copy of my novel Red Menace from the senior editor at Damnation Books. It will be my last chance to make corrections before it goes to press, so I’m going to spend tomorrow going through it with a fine-toothed comb. Haven’t got a definite release date yet, but the editor says it will likely be October or November. Keep watching this space!

The Murder at Road Hill House

/ Jenny Ashford / Leave a comment

The grisly murder of a three-year-old boy in 19th-century England caused a national sensation and inspired many early crime writers. The original article I wrote can be found here.

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A country house situated near the town of Frome in Somerset, Road Hill House was the residence of Samuel Kent, who worked as a factory sub-inspector, and his second wife Mary Kent, along with their three children Mary Amelia, Saville, and Eveline. Also in residence were four children from Samuel Kent’s first marriage – Mary Ann, Elizabeth, Constance, and William – as well as three servants: Nursemaid Elizabeth Gough, housemaid Sarah Cox, and cook Sarah Kerslake.

Saville Kent Goes Missing

Elizabeth Gough, sleeping in the same room as Saville and Eveline, first noticed that the little boy was not in his bed. At first she was unconcerned, thinking the boy’s mother Mary Kent had taken the boy to sleep in the Kents’ bed. But it wasn’t long before it was discovered that Saville was missing, and that one of the tall windows in the drawing room was open. Patriarch Samuel Kent organized family members and servants for a search of the house and grounds, sent his son William to fetch the parish constable, then took his own carriage to Trowbridge to summon the police superintendent.

The Discovery of Saville Kent’s Murder

William Nutt and Thomas Benger, both of whom lived in the nearby village and had joined in the search, were the first to come across the gruesome remains of the three-year-old. Saville’s throat had been cut so deeply that the head was almost severed; he had been stabbed in the chest and bore dark bruises around his mouth. The tiny corpse had been stuffed into the privy located near the gate to the stable yard. Apparently the murderer had wished for Saville’s body to be hidden in the mounds of excrement in the cistern beneath the privy, but a recently installed splashguard prevented the corpse from falling.

Suspicions Among the Kent Family

From the start, it was presumed someone in the house had murdered the boy. Although the open drawing room window seemed to point to a break-in, police determined that the shutters could only have been opened from the inside. There were also several clues that hinted at dark doings within the family. Nurse Elizabeth Gough claimed not to have heard anything, though she slept near Saville’s cot; in addition, she also called the boy a “tell-tale” and was heard to categorize the murder as “revenge.” There was also the matter of an allegedly bloodstained nightgown belonging to 15-year-old Constance Kent, which later turned up missing. A piece of newspaper that was found near the privy looked as though it had been used to wipe a bloody knife; the paper was The Times, to which Samuel Kent subscribed. And when the cistern beneath the privy was drained, a piece of flannel was discovered, of the type women wore over their breasts to prevent their corsets from chafing. This flannel was found to perfectly fit Elizabeth Gough.

By far the most popular theory circulated by the press was that Samuel Kent and Elizabeth Gough had murdered the child after he had witnessed them in bed together; they feared that Saville would tell his mother what he had seen. But Jonathan Whicher, the investigator sent from Scotland Yard two weeks after the murder, pointed the finger at Constance Kent, whose strangely detached demeanor, coupled with the confusion about her missing nightdress, made her a prime suspect. Whicher discovered that several years earlier, Constance and her brother William had run away from home; Constance had cut off her long hair in order to pass as a boy, and had discarded the hair in the same privy where Saville’s body was found.

A Suspect Arrested

Whicher had Constance brought into custody. But there was a public outcry, as most people – including Charles Dickens, who used aspects of the case in his unfinished novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood – believed that Samuel Kent and Elizabeth Gough were the killers. Whicher was reviled as a lower-class snoop who took salacious delight in airing a proper Victorian family’s dirty laundry, and who enjoyed bullying an innocent teenage girl. Constance was released, and later went to a convent home, St. Mary’s. The rest of the family still suffered under a cloud of suspicion; Samuel Kent’s job was constantly in jeopardy and he was reassigned many times, and other family members were taunted and spat at in the streets. The theme of an upright family harboring terrible secrets in its midst was fictionalized in Wilkie Collins’s hugely successful novel The Moonstone, a locked room mystery and the first English detective novel. The book’s detective, Sgt. Cuff, was based directly on Whicher.

A Suspect Confesses

In 1865, Constance Kent entered Bow Street magistrates’ court in London and confessed to killing her half-brother Saville, using a razor she had stolen from her father’s bag. She claimed she had acted alone, and had killed the boy in order to punish her stepmother. Despite her confession, she received an enormous amount of public sympathy, with many people suspecting that she was insane or had been coerced into confessing. But Constance was duly convicted of murder, though she was spared the death penalty. She made many petitions for early release, but ended up serving her entire 22-year sentence. After her release, she went to Australia to stay with her brother William, who had become a well-regarded naturalist. Constance herself trained as a nurse and spent many years caring for patients with leprosy. It later came to light that Constance and William may have conspired together to murder Saville, but that Constance took the entire blame to protect William. Constance Kent died in 1944, at the age of 100.

Source:

Summerscale, Kate (2008). The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective. Walker Publishing Company, Inc. ISBN 0802715354.