to say about House on Haunted Hill (1959)— even the title is a mess; it feels like it should be 'The House on Haunted Hill,' and anyway, what in heaven’s name is a 'haunted hill'? And it’s the house that’s haunted anyway, not the hill. Add to that the fact that the nutty director William Castle decided to feature as 'the house' — not an appropriately haunted looking old gothic mansion as in Hitchcock’s Psycho —instead a quite gorgeous looking building — The Ennis House — designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. (As was Wright’s wont, the house looks more like a postmodern version of a Mayan Temple than anything else, but that’s the way it goes.) The most alluring thing about this movie is the vat of acid in the basement. That is truly the only thing that struck even a small spark of the slightest fear, in me. The idea of being dropped in a vat of acid is pretty horrifying. But other than that the movie is just arch, and silly, and about as scary as your grandmother’s behind (I take that back, in certain cases that might be pretty scary). This all explains why camp film director John Waters loves William Castle. Keep in mind also, that Castle was fond of promotional gimmicks, the gimmick for this one was called ‘Emergo.' When a skeleton flies out of the vat of acid at the end of the movie, a skeleton was rigged up — in some theatres — to fly over the heads of the audience. I think at this point we need to differentiate between ‘startling’ and ‘terrifying.’ Terrifying things have a psychological nature. In other words, you are terrified because your imagination is caught up in a fantasy; you are imagining yourself in a situation that is particularly terrifying for you (we are all terrified by different things). For instance, I am not afraid of skeletons, nor am I afraid of the ineptly painted fake heads that keep appearing in this film — at one point in a woman’s suitcase. The head looks nothing like a human head, it looks like a rubber face trying desperately to be a decapitated head. This is the essence of camp as Susan Sontag describes it; trying magnificently and failing. This makes William Castle very special — I understand what a pathetic filmmaker he was, and how stupid his gimmicks were. Waters loves what this says about the human condition, the human ego, ambition, imagination etc. It also says something about art; that all art is a fake and a manipulation and that we shouldn’t trust it; all very important to hear. Unfortunately though, what Castle does ultimately, is what most of the popular horror filmmakers do today. Like them, he doesn’t have the talent or imagination to invent a terrifying fantasy, or to execute a film about it (like Hitchcock does in Psycho) so what they de instead is surprise us. Again, in Castle it’s charming. But unfortunately this is now the modus-operandi of horror films everywhere. Nowadays horror films are populated mainly with moments of silence followed by sudden loud noise— but this is startling, not frightening. Then there is the unexpected appearance of a blood-soaked 'something', a 'something' you know is fake, whatever it is, but when it first appears, yes, it startles you. Ergo, the charming camp ineptitude of William Castle has been turned into much more than a cottage industry — people are making millions off bad horror films that are greedily consumed by the young — and this is a problem. I am concerned about the young (and I speak of them with fondness, you may imagine that I am old —which I am — but not that I am jealous of the young— I am merely concerned about them). The young have been trained by the commercial film industry to go to horror films with the expectation of camp — except it isn’t camp they are seeing. They go to a horror film expecting to laugh at the ridiculousness of the special effects, period. Oh yes, they also wish to be startled, but not deeply frightened, and certainly not deeply terrified. No, that would be too much for them. But being deeply terrified by art is what art is all about. If we have forgotten that, we have forgotten what art is. Take for instance — Midsommar (2019) a fine Swedish film directed by Ansi Astar. The film was somewhat of a success, but I know for a fact that some young people were afraid to see it. I was ranting about how wonderful the film was one day, and some young woman said to me: “We went but we left because my friend got too scared.” Okay, fine. People don’t have to watch scary movies if they don’t want to — after all I avoid movies about torture (for that reason I have never been able to watch The Usual Suspects). What I find worrisome is that when we watch a movie or a play these days we want to maintain ‘control,' when art is all about losing control (remember Dionysus?). It’s about intoxication, hypnosis, unreason, and the loosening of boundaries that keep us ‘normal.’ We experience art because we know we all will get sick and die, and we need to experience these things at a safe distance — it’s part of good mental health — and also part of just being a person who actually lives in the world. If we don’t experience these things then we end up like the young of today (again, I am concerned, not chastising) many of whom would rather not have any sort of truly unpleasant experience, or ever lose control. Midsommar is particularly scary for young people because it features pretty teenagers who visit a lovely commune in the Swedish countryside one summer. It seems like it is going to be an adolescent fantasy of romance in the woods and fields. It soon proves to be quite something else. Gradually the visit goes sour -- there are drugs, public sex rituals and inevitably -- human sacrifice. I found the whole thing exhilarating — and yes, truly scary. We are losing our capacity to dream; this may also be why so many of us are happy being locked up in our homes. For to really dream, is to escape everything that is normal, expected, and deemed correct. I do hope someday we will begin to dream again.
