the groundhog day project

Clover (1992) argues, Certainly, the novelist's (and filmmaker's) target is not the female body, but the transformation that body prompts in the male psyche. Enmeshed from the outset in Karras's spiritual crisis are issues of intimacy and sexuality. Again, Regan provides the palpable field: she stabs a cross in and out of her vagina, speaks incessantly and crudely of sexual matters, is suspected of desecrating the statue of the Virgin Mary, and so on. ...however, it appears to be Karras's own anxieties that are at stake. The nature of those anxieties is hinted at in an early scene [in Blatty's novel] in which Karras is approached for comfort by a young and lonely priest: Of all the anxieties that Karras encountered among the community, this one had lately become the most prevalent. Cut off from their families as well as from women, many of the Jesuits were also fearful of expressing affection for fellow priests; of forming deep and loving friendships. "Lik...

For some reason, every time I watch The Exorcist , I forget that it starts with that sequence at the excavation in Iraq. Of course, the movie is not called The Possessed (though I am pretty sure that I have seen more than one movie with that title); it is not about Regan (Linda Blair) but about Father Merrin (Max von Sydow) and, even moreso, Father Karras (Jason Miller). Something Clover (1992) tries to explain "this gendered division of narrative labor--to understand what it is about the male crisis that needs harnessing to a narrative of female hysteria or indeed psychosis" (p. 70). While Regan's story drives the narrative, the narrative belongs to those two men (and primarily Karras). Man versus the devil. The girl is just their battleground. But, what kind of battleground is she? Kinder and Houston (1987) write about the "psychological interpretation" presented in the film to explain Regan's initial extraordinary behaviour--her parents' divorce ...

So, take away the Satanists, take away the details of that scene at the end with Rosemary seeing her baby, and what's left? A film about how crazy and hormonal a woman can be when she's pregnant, and how she can have a psychotic break when her child is stillborn. Most of the details that are here still work. People offering advice to a young woman pregnant with her first baby--that's certainly nothing new. A husband making demands on his pregnant wife--not new either. The idea that this is what Rosemary's Baby is about isn't really anything new, either. But, I noticed something yesterday while watching the movie. Now, the main guy's name is, well, Guy, which is plenty generic, and a bit obvious. (I have never read Levin's book, but just learned that Guy's name is made up. His name was Sherman Peden, but he changed it. To have more success as an actor, I guess.) But, Rosemary--not so much. Even if you shorten it to Rose, it's not so generic. Commo...

Some of the best horror deals in very down-to-earth details, mundane themes with a twist toward something extraordinary. Rosemary's Baby --today's film--deals in fears about pregnancy and parenthood. The Shining deals in alcoholism and... parenthood. Poltergeist deals in suburbia and... parenthood. I'm sensing a theme. The Omen films also deal with parenthood, and of course, the end of the world (because children are, in a way, the end of the world... Ask any single person.) Ghost stories like Crimson Peak deal in hidden pasts coming back to haunt the present (and that one has almost nothing to do with parenthood). Even the Hellraiser films deal in a sort of fear of the perverse and our own sexual impulses. (And, there's that thing about motherhood .) And, that's just movies I've watched this past month for this blog. How about some more recent fare? It Follows , for example, takes old slasher-film themes about the dangers of casual sex and updates them wi...

Now, we move beyond the actual Hellraiser sequels past Bloodline because they are, well, not good. Instead, the spiritual sequel-- Event Horizon . Let us get the negatives out of the way: as io9 says, " Event Horizon commits many flagrant fouls when it comes to ripping off other, better films (including, but not limited to, Alien , The Shining , 2001: A Space Odyssey , Solaris , Hellraiser , and The Haunting )." Of course, that same io9 article claims that the film "tanked" at the box office. It was #4 its opening weekend, covering $9 million of its $15 million budget. The next weekend, it would drop to #11 but would still make another $4 million, another #3 million its third weekend, another million its fourth. Sure, its not blockbuster numbers, but I'm not sure that quite qualifies as tanking . Plus, I was there opening weekend, and I think I may have even seen it a second time in the theater. So, regardless of the facts, I just don't feel a tanki...

What follows may end up as just a play-by-play, so allow an introduction of sorts: Kevin Yagher was a first-time director when he worked on Hellraiser: Bloodline . The final film is credited to Alan Smithee. If you do not know who Alan Smithee is, that is the name a director puts on a film when he wants his own name taken off. Usually that means studio meddling or something similar has altered the movie so much that the director--Yagher in this case--no longer wants the film to be considered his (or hers). The interesting thing to me, in regards to Hellraiser: Bloodline , is that the director that the studio brought in to finish Yagher's unfinished film was Joe Chapelle, director of Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers , the original ending (the so-called Producer's Cut) of which had to be reshot because of bad test screenings. Anyway, Yagher had disagreements with the studio and producers over how Hellraiser: Bloodline should go, he left (READ: was forced off) the producti...

The thing about the Hellraiser franchise is is started as something different from other horror films. It wasn't just about a string of murders like a slasher film, or some last-minute empowerment of the "Final Girl" to kill the monster. Clive Barker has an interesting take on monsters that he shares with Nigel Floyd of Time Out magazine, September 2-9, 1987: I write the kind of horror fiction in which the monster has to be made peace with, one way or the other. Within the metaphorical world which I create it's not possible to throw the monster out and assume that one's house has been purged. The house can never be purged, because the monster is part of the texture of our internal workings. It's the metaphor thing. Like your classic ghost story, Hellraiser is not about the Cenobites but about Julia and her relationship with Frank, what she will do for him. Hellbound is not about the Cenobites or even Leviathan and Hell; it's about (again) Julia and...

No recap as we get into Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth . The plot just gets going. A note as it starts, though: I was surprised to see talk of this film in Shadows in Eden ; I hadn't thought that Clive Barker really had anything to do with this film. I have always thought of the first two as a British... thing, and this one the first... American entry in the series. We're introduced first to JP Monroe (Kevin Burnhardt), who buys a redesigned... the movies never call it this, but apparently, it's called the pillar of souls. That thing with all the faces on it seen at the very end of Hellbound . Anyway, JP buys it for a small bit of cash from an updated version of the creepy homeless guy--who actually isn't all that creepy. Kind of has a Kris Kristofferson vibe. Then, our lead--Joey Summers (Terry Farrell)--a reporter stuck with a hospital with nothing happening. Boring night, cameraman Doc (Ken Carpenter) leaves to cover a better story and then the Hellraiser bit arriv...

There is at least the one female Cenobite. So, we could assume there's some civil war kind of split in among the denizens of hell, and Julia serves Leviathan and brings him Channard to be his body, in which case the homicidal joy in the last act of this film is not on Channard as much but on Leviathan. Structurally, Channard does serve as a sort of pseudo-Christ-Figure--and, not I'm not about to get into some Cinematic - Christ - Figuring ; don't need to. The guy willingly sacrifices himself, quite literally gets himself some stigmata, and has a giant penis attach itself to his head... Wait, that last one is not part of the Cinematic Christ - Figure . But, that penis is important to this third discussion of Hellbound: Hellraiser II because-- Actually, I've got to interrupt this entry because Kirsty was just telling Detective Bronson about fairy tales, and rather than thinking she's got no reason to connect the events of the first film to any fairy tale but jus...

Paula Ashe at Ginger Nuts of Horror takes it a little far in saying that, in Hellbound: Hellraiser II , Julia "is no longer working on anyone's behalf but her own, bringing souls back to Leviathan, a god that she has decided to serve." While Julia seems quite willing in all she does here, the murders, pushing Channard into that... thing that transforms him. But, she was willing in the first film as well, even as she operated quite explicitly within the confines of patriarchal society. Paula continues: Julia's purpose is not just concrete, it is now given a spiritual dimension as well, a philosophical motivation that transgresses the basic moral and ethical codes of not just patriarchal society, but civilization itself. This is inference on Paula's part, not any implication that comes from the film itself. Consider: why does Julia emerge from the mattress in the first place? Why did Frank emerge from the floor? Does the blood pull them out unwillingly, or is...

Generally speaking, there are two kinds of nightmares: the kind that you actually have, and the kind they make into movies. - Roger Ebert Great line. Of course, he also claims that Hellbound: Hellraiser II "has no plot in a conventional sense." I'm not so sure about that, but, to be fair, it has been a while since I've watched this movie. We'll see soon enough. Opening with pre-Pinhead solving the box works well. He seems to be opening it more out of boredom than some obsessive desire like Frank. And, the quick montage of the creation of Pinhead sets up the end of this film--Dr. Channard (Kenneth Cranham) becoming a Cenobite. But, the closeups on the head wounds-- --invoke some of the imagery of the labyrinth we will see later in the film, as well. On the... agreeing-with-Roger front, Annie Billson wrote in Sky Magazine , February 1989, "This is the kind of film which abandons logic for a non-stop barrage of weird goings-on and ultra-gory special eff...

Clive Barker talks with Lisa Tuttle in 1991* about creating good gods and bad gods in fiction and he says, I think that is so much more interesting than the division into the white hats and the blacks, between human and non-human, where anything that is defined as "non-human," whether it be slug, shark, crab, Woman, is presented as this terrible threat. It's grotesque, and funny, and simple, and what bothers me is its simplicity. I mind it not because it's grotesque, but because it's simple-minded, and that's boring. You know what I mean? If you turn all of nature into something to be repulsed by, you ignore the fact that whatever is read one way as grotesque or frightening can also be read another way, as something beautiful, as a celebration of variegation and paradox. * original source unknown, but it's reproduced in Clive Barker's Shadows in Eden . I was thinking about why the producers did not want this film to be named, like its source materi...

In his review of Hellraiser , Roger Ebert asks, "Who goes to see movies like this? What do they get out of them?" Now, he's not (initially) complaining about the despicable content--you know, the sex, the skinless bastard who actively comes on to his niece while pursuing her married stepmother, the Cenobites in all their Catholic priest meets dominatrix garb. He thinks the movie isn't good. I like good horror movies because I enjoy being surprised (and sometimes even moved), but there are no surprises in "Hellraiser," only a dreary series of scenes that repeat each other. What fun is it watching the movie mark time until the characters discover the obvious? This is a movie without wit, style or reason, and the true horror is that actors were made to portray, and technicians to realize, its bankruptcy of imagination. A few points: 1. Roger says "the Cottons buy the house" despite a "kitchen sink... full of maggots devouring rotten flesh....