A Dreadful Decade (Part IX): The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh (2012) dir. Rodrigo Gudiño

Logline: After inheriting the estate of his estranged mother (Vanessa Redgrave) upon her death, Leon Leigh (Aaron Poole) visits her empty home to gain a sense of closure to their unresolved relationship. Alone in the house and surrounded by her collection of occult relics and decorations, Leon begins to recall his traumatic childhood, during which his mother incessantly tried to induct him into the bizarre cult of angels that she and her husband belonged to. Over the course of the night, the ghosts of Leon's past and the monsters of his present will converge in order to test the strength of his disbelief.

Analysis: There are two different interpretations that we are encouraged to read from Leon Leigh's journey back through his tortured personal history and decayed family relationships. Rather than being antithetical to one another, these separate readings are both required pieces of the same sad puzzle.

At first, we're encouraged to read the haunting that Leon experiences while spending the night in his mother's home as symbolic of him confronting the trauma of his childhood spent with her. We learn as the film progresses that Rosalind subjected the juvenile Leon to borderline sadistic "games" that sought to pressure him into becoming a believer of her occult faith in the power of angels. The rift that formed between mother and son was caused by Leon's steadfast refusal to "play" his mother's game and his eventual flight away from the oppressive coercion she placed upon him at home. Now, separated from his experience for many years, Leon begins to subconsciously doubt his decision, despite his outward gestures demonstrating his continued agreement with the conclusions of his younger self (e.g. putting his cigarette out in an angel statue's stone eye). Leon begins to fear that his mother was right, and that by turning his back on the angels of her faith he has encouraged the angels to give up protecting him from the horrors of the world. Thus, the horrors of the world come scraping at the front door, in the form of a snarling, impossibly long-limbed cat-beast, a creature that could have oozed its sickeningly hairy form from the pages of one of M. R. James's tales. Thanks in part to the rationalizing psychological advice of his girlfriend/therapist as given through various phone conversations over the course his harrowing night, Leon is eventually able to shake off his frightening hallucinations and renew his conviction in the falseness of his mother's beliefs, ridding himself of her cloying spirit and his lingering self-doubts in the process. As a final gesture indicating that he's ready to move on, Leon announces his intentions to sell off every bit of Rosalind's property. This chapter of his life has been completed.

But the film's final moments provide us with the second interpretation of the events that have transpired. Rosalind, who has been speaking to us throughout the film as a disembodied voice on the soundtrack, finally reveals her words as emanating from beyond the grave, rather than from the written last will and testament of the title. From her restless spirit, we learn of her suicide, and how it was motivated by her son's unwillingness to forgive her, the loss of faith that accompanied her belief's inability to set things right, and the subsequent loneliness that crept up on her, "like an animal ready to pounce," over the years spent without her beloved son. We learn that in her continuously cruel desperation to coerce and control her son's feelings, she leaves Leon a suicide note reading, "Do you miss me as much as I miss you?" Finally, we learn that Leon never reads the note, for he never deigns to visit her accursed home, even after she bequeaths it to him. The Leon of the film is Rosalind's fantasy, an imaginative torture she puts herself through nightly as she watches, again and again, her son abandon her and her beliefs, even as she cries out pitifully for him to stay. The ghost becomes the haunted, and rightfully so. Rosalind's inability to understand the effect of her actions on her son, and thus her unwillingness to seek forgiveness or change her ways, marks her for her haunted fate. We could call this existence Rosalind has made for herself a sort of hell, but perhaps not: in her imagination, at least Leon wills himself to remember her, if only for a night.

Technical Merits: The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh is writer/director/Rue Morgue Magazine founder and president Rodrigo Gudiño's first full-length feature film, produced after creating only a handful of short films prior. Though inventive, his shorts lack the substance to elevate them above their visual gimmicks. What is so surprising about Rosalind Leigh, then, is how confident, controlled, and deliberate its style feels, and what a boon it is to the film's realization of its narrative. Though minimalist by design and budgetary necessity, the film hardly feels like an apprentice effort. Gudiño effortlessly blends long takes, voice-over storytelling, found footage, single location shooting, dodgy (but well-masked) CGI, and documentary-esque explorations of visual space as if to do so were his second nature. You could label the film's freewheeling, ever-evolving style as the product of an overeager first-time filmmaker wanting to cram all of his newly learned tricks in at once, but that feels to me like the wrong assessment. There's a clarity of purpose in the film's every wild and unexpected stylistic shift, as it seeks to make strange once again the horror stories and situations that we've become overly familiar with. I don't necessarily understand every one of Gudiño's stylistic choices (uh, opening credits over the little brother of Kubrick's cosmic fetus?), but I suspect he has his reasons. And, even if not, the cumulative effect of the film's technical experimentation is a breed of weird I can still get behind

Pared down to its bones, Rosalind Leigh contains no plot development or horror set-piece that we could call wholly unique, but the myriad ways in which these familiar elements are presented to us sure make them feel that way. An example: a character calls up a home security company to review the footage from the camera outside the front door of the house he's in. We've seen this scene before in other horror films, and we know it might (very likely) end with the discovery of some fiend or creature barely visible somewhere within the frame of the blurry footage. Gudiño makes this typical scene strange by a) implying vaguely, and without future consequence, through religious music on hold and creepy amateur web design that the security company is run by the mysterious angel cult, b) presenting the customer service representative on the other line as a strangely lifelike computer-generated voice that can seemingly respond to complex human language commands, and c) having this impossibly strange computer be voiced by the very same actor who is speaking to it over the phone. Nothing of any particularly horrific value occurs during this scene, plot-wise -- unless you find a man on the phone sitting at a computer to be a terrifying sight in and of itself -- but the film's off-kilter presentation of the action makes it one of many uniquely disquieting scenes sown throughout the film, sprouting strangeness.

Relevance: As a single-location, (more-or-less) single-actor horror film, Rosalind Leigh bears a certain resemblance to the excellent middle portions of the two adaptations of Susan Hill's The Woman in Black (1989; 2012), in which our lone protagonist wanders around the dreary home of a now-deceased occupant and uncovers curiosities, documents, and recordings that reveal a macabre secret history underlying the present day narrative. But unlike both versions of The Woman in Black, Rosalind Leigh realizes that the isolation and anxiety produced by this haunted ramble can be intensified by never leaving the property. We're given no respite from the subtle terrors lining the walls and lurking behind every door of Rosalind Leigh's unheimlich abode, and this helps make the film one of the stronger examples of horror cinema fascinated with architecture and physical space. Like The Shining's Overlook Hotel, The Innkeepers' Yankee Pedlar Inn, or Session 9's Danvers State Hospital, Rosalind Leigh's grotesque home is essentially the film's secondary protagonist, and exploring the very form and atmosphere of this space provides many of the film's most suffocating terrors. (And, again, unlike those other films, Rosalind Leigh never allows us to fill our lungs with the air from any other location, not even for a moment.)

Also of interest to horror fans is Rosalind Leigh's exploration of the relatively untapped potential of angels as objects of horror. Sure, we can't help but see shades of Doctor Who's Weeping Angels in the possibly animate angel statues of Gudiño's film, but the defining characteristic of Rosalind Leigh 's angels (besides them not being, well, time-energy feeding aliens) is how creepy they act while ostensibly trying to save our souls from an afterlife of torment. That's an impressive feat. The film employs its angels as symbols of the uneasiness you feel when a little old lady on the street hands you a church pamphlet while cheerily informing you that you're going to burn in hell. The horror of these angelic figures is generated from the jarring disconnect between the dual religious messages they impart to their victims, alternately turned towards them with open arms and turned away with grimaces carved upon their faces: If you believe in me, I will comfort and protect you; If you disbelieve, fear the worst. These are the sort of benignly horrific angels that cinema could use more of. They're a welcome development away from the mopey badass angels of The Prophecy (1995) and Legion (2010), and they're just about as frightening as a winged John Travolta in Michael (1996).

A Dreadful Decade (Part II): Resolution (2012) dir. Justin Benson, Aaron Moorehead

Logline: After being e-mailed a video chronicling the dire condition of his drug-addicted friend (Chris, portrayed by Vinny Curran), Michael (Peter Cilella) resolves to help his long-estranged buddy break free of his dependency by confronting him at his remote cabin in the woods. Michael decides to go the tough love route, handcuffing the stubborn Chris to the wall and vowing to help him through his violent, expletive-filled withdrawal over the next few days and nights. Complications arise when it's discovered that Chris has lost a large supply of his dealers' drugs and that he's actually squatting on a Native American reservation. But worst of all are the mysterious documents and recordings being left around the cabin and surrounding woods for Michael to discover, documents and recordings that begin to reveal the horrific history of the area and eventually suggest the possibility that someone is attempting to revise the story these two friends are living out.

Analysis: Resolution is a film about the demands audiences make and the unfortunate effects these demands can have upon characters living within a narrative world. As part of an audience, we have certain expectations for structure. We expect development and complication, explanation and resolution. Beginning, middle, end. Only the most tolerant of us aren't angry when a narrative fails to include any of these aspects, whether it be out of ineptitude or defiance. After watching movies or reading books we've been somehow disappointed with, we often express our wish for how it should have ended. In contrast to most narratives outside of Choose Your Own Adventure books, Resolution gives this power of revision to the audience, though in a limited way. The film presumes to know what sort of plot we want, and it chastises and punishes its characters whenever they fail to provide it. What we want (says the film) is an unhappy ending.

The first time I watched Resolution, I was somewhat put off by this assertion that the film makes. After all, hadn't I grown unusually fond of these characters over the length of the movie? Hadn't I wanted them to escape their predicament and resolve the issues in their lives and friendship? Why would I wish them the ill that the film claims I do? I thought that the film was working at cross purposes by including such well-wrought character drama and then assuring me that I wanted to see these likable fellows dead, one way or another. But further viewings and reflection has me feeling differently. 

I think Resolution is correct. As an audience member, I wanted events beyond the mundane to transpire in these characters' fictional lives. When creepy recordings turn up in and around the cabin, I want Michael to explore them despite his better sense, to probe further and risk putting himself in danger. I desire problems and drama within the central relationship of the film, and I yearn for them to be resolved. When the characters maintain that their personal problems (like so many problems in our real lives) can't be solved, I'm happy when the film forces them to reconsider, in spite of whatever further dangers or traumas they will have to experience. In a sense, I derived my entertainment from these characters' suffering, and so, by extension, how could I ever be satisfied with a happy ending, especially within the context of an ostensible horror film? I'll need the truly horrific to rear its ugly head eventually, whatever the cost. Resolution doesn't fail me on this count. Or, rather, I don't fail it.

Technical Merits: The film's naturalistic, nearly Dogme 95-esque approach to visual storytelling (single location, handheld camerawork, the absence of a musical score) is offset by creeping reminders of the essential artificiality of the images on screen. Scenes occasionally transition from one to the next by way of an audio and video effect that is akin to a hot projector burning up the print passing through it. One of these faux-antiquated effects (the presence of such being curious enough considering the film was captured digitally on the Red One camera) even interrupts a scene mid-conversation, causing our two leads to question the strange noise they just heard (but which, of course, they should not have.) These metafictional stylistic contradictions are deliberate, making apparent on screen that the archetypal audience's desire for a certain type of ancient narrative transcends time, format, medium, and style itself. Notice, for example, the fact that Michael's discoveries throughout the film reveal numerous narratives to us, and while each takes on a different form--photographs, projector slides, books, vinyl records, film reels, video tapes, audio tapes, computer-recorded video-- each also possesses the same grim ending. As the medium improves over time, imbuing its images and sounds with greater clarity, definition, and verisimilitude, we may forget that what we're watching is a constructed story. Resolution's approach ensures that we remember.

Relevance: A quote from the Village Voice on the front cover of Resolution's home video release boldly proclaims that Justin Benson and Aaron Moorehead's film "puts The Cabin in the Woods to shame." That's not an entirely honest assessment. Certainly, both films are metafictional reflections on horror cinema and both take place in a woods-ensconced cabin, but similarities end there. Cabin in the Woods is unmistakably a genre film, while Resolution is not so easily classified. Cabin in the Woods revels in the various permutations of the same basic story we see again and again in horror films; Resolution dreads the inescapable pull of a deeper, ingrained narrative structure that anticipates (perhaps requires) tragedy. Cabin in the Woods is excess; Resolution is restraint. A "one coin, two sides" situation. For the open-minded viewer, they make lovely companion pieces to one another.

But it's that unclassifiable nature of Resolution that makes it noteworthy for admirers of horror cinema. Its decided refusal to engage earnestly in any stock horror movie cliche is noble. (Moments of the film gleefully deflate recognizable scare tactics like the figure tapping on the window or the person lurking in the dark of a cave.) Yet, it's the film's dedication to employing a primal essence of horror that is what defines it. It presents us with objects of fear that have no face, and with suspense that derives from no obvious or explainable catalyst. The film is full of palpable unease, but its audience would be hard pressed to describe for you its monsters. Are these monsters indeed personifications of the audience, or are they more supernatural in origin, as the final moments might suggest? Or are they instead all too human, or cosmic, or spiritual? As the eccentric French hermit, Byron (Bill Oberst, Jr.), asks Michael in the film, how can an isolated tribesman in Ecuador tell the difference between an alien, an angel, and a ghost? He can't, of course, but he can perhaps sense a difference of intent, and the intent of those undefined forces in Resolution is undeniably no good.

A Dreadful Decade (Part I): Left Bank (2008) dir. Pieter Van Hees

a.k.a. Linkeroever

Logline: After being diagnosed with an inexplicable bout of chronic fatigue syndrome and dropping out of a big track competition, Marie (Eline Kuppens) moves into the apartment of her new boyfriend, Bobby (Matthias Schoenaerts), in order to convalesce. While there, she begins to unravel the mysteries of the sudden disappearance of the apartments's previous occupant and the sinister pagan history of the surrounding area, Antwerp's Left Bank. As her condition worsens and the peculiar encounters pile up, Marie begins to realize that someone or something in the Left Bank has plans for her.

Analysis: If Left Bank has any obvious fault, it's that it might have hammered away too freely at its themes of wasted lives, second chances, and rebirth before its incredible final moments, when this previous talk takes on very literal significance and (almost) all is made clear. Perhaps there's one too many lines of dialogue in which Bobby expresses his desire to give Marie "the chance to do better" or Marie herself wishes she could "just start all over again." For the viewer, Bobby's observation that Marie doesn't even look happy when she's running (i.e. engaging in her life's passion) was apparent already from Eline Kuppens's sober and aimless performance. At only 27 years old, Marie is a young woman who has been beaten down too far by her own brief existence, saddled as she is with the baggage of an overbearing mother, a disappointed father figure, the absence of a social life, and a sense of self-loathing bred from perfectionism. In truth, she's a typical twentysomething who is having difficulty making the transition to full-blown adulthood, and so she experiences the malaise of having to Figure It All Out. There's nothing inherently fatal about Marie's condition, though it might certainly feel that way to her, stuck in the moment. She yearns for a return to the childhood innocence she has left behind, when all this stuff didn't matter.

Peculiarly, this dilemma in Marie's life is that which the film's pagan guild exploits for their earthly magic. Reading the overdramatic suffering and ennui on Marie's blandly tortured face, the guild members decide to lead her (forcefully, but perhaps not unwillingly) towards sacrifice in honor of what they call alternately The Diabolical Vagina and the great Dragon in the ground. Through their drawn-out occult ceremonies, they usher her towards both death and life renewed. This makes them rather odd villains. They're certainly menacing enough (and mean with a crossbow when threatened), but the pagan guild is essentially doing no more than giving Marie what she outwardly desires. Sure, the guild themselves possibly receive immortality and eternal youth in return, but would we begrudge them that for their good deed? In one sense, they're preying on Marie's youthful weakness and confusion for their own benefit; in another, they're teaching her what so many of cinema's gypsies have taught us in the past-- be careful what you wish for.

Technical Merits: Though the pagans' plot against Marie is ultimately revealed to be quite simple (at least in comparison with other human sacrifices we've seen in film), director Pieter Van Hees and his screenwriters don't shy away from including ambiguous visual symbolism--the sort to inspire much baffled IMDb discussion board commentary--whenever they have the chance. The choice to include so many of these unexplained moments (like Marie's discovery of ash in the crotch of her panties, her suckling of a grown man while on a jog through the forest, the rat that explodes from out of her hairy knee wound, and the presence of her paternal track coach at her apparent rebirth) could be frustratingly vague, but the cinematography from Nicolas Karakatsanis and the editing by Nico Leunen ably support such maneuvers by never lingering the shot or prolonging the scene in order to hold our hands through an interpretation of its ripe imagery. Nor does the cinematography or editing easily explain away these surreal visuals as products of Marie's dream life; rather, these aspects of the film ground the visuals in a skewed sense of reality. This approach gives such moments a subtle coherence or logic: despite how strange they may appear, they're presented as if they're organic to world we're witnessing on screen. To make the bizarre commonplace is an impressive feat.

Relevance: Left Bank should be of interest to horror fans for its successful melding of two European horror subgenres previously unassociated, Polanski's Polish/French/American urban paranoia thriller (as seen in The Tenant [1976], Rosemary's Baby [1968], and Repulsion [1965]) and the rural pagan superstition horror that was dominant for a time in the United Kingdom (in films like The Wicker Man [1973], Robin Redbreast [1970], Lair of the White Worm [1988], and The Blood on Satan's Claw [1971]). We can call the combination successful because the juxtaposition of what seems at first to be two disparate subgenres serves to point out the obvious facts that we've forgotten: the cities of Europe were once rural landscapes, and the people inhabiting these areas might not have possessed the same cuddly, (largely) non-violent belief systems of the modern world. The film asks us to ponder what dark, ancient history might still remain buried in the earth, beneath the excess of concrete and metal that we've built up around us. Beyond its narrative conflation of the subgenres, the film also does a swell job of reminding us visually of this dual history of its location by giving frequent screentime to placid shots of the quietly menacing forests, fields, and waters scattered alongside the Left Bank's busy urban environments, reminding us that the latter has not consumed the former but simply masks it.

Left Bank is also of interest in that it--along with a few other notable recent films--marks a revitalization of Belgian horror cinema, which has been nearly nonexistent in the last few decades, and previously was only marked by a few scattered films like Daughters of Darkness (1971), The Devil's Nightmare (1971), and Rabid Grannies (1988). Left Bank is the first of three (!) contemporary Belgian horror films to make this collection of my favorites of the past ten years, so (in my estimation at least) we're in the midst of a mini-renaissance of horror from the land of fries and waffles.

ESSAY: The Sacrament (2014), Willow Creek (2014), & the Shape of Found Footage Horror to Come

Abstract: An essay on the current state of the found footage subgenre of horror. Prognosis: Fatal, probably, but that death nerve keeps on twitching. An examination, in particular, of two recent and once-promising FF films (The Sacrament [2014] and Willow Creek [2014]) that fail to add much new to the subgenre while basing their approaches to the form in those of a couple of films over a decade old. The found footage movement appears stagnant, but does any opportunity for advancement or maturation remain? There are slow-burning glimmers of hope.

This essay features discussion of:

The Sacrament (2014) dir. Ti West

Zero Day (2003) dir. Ben Coccio

Willow Creek (2014) dir. Bobcat Goldthwait

The Blair Witch Project (1999) dir. Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick

Back in 2012, after the release of the non-FF but sneakingly like and advertised-as FF horror film Chernobyl Diaries (2012), I predicted that as found footage horror films began to fall from favor, as Hollywood studios and independents alike began to realize that the success of Paranormal Activity (2009) was not quite as repeatable as they'd hoped (even for further Paranormal Activity films), what we'd begin to see was something akin to osmosis. Screened alongside mainstream fluff at the multiplexes for long enough, found footage horror would begin to rub off on its more traditionally filmed peers to the extent that the two would soon become indistinguishable, I imagined. The handheld, documentary style would pop up in films that weren't intended as faux-documentaries, and the emphasis on "character" and "narrative" in traditional horror would evolve into an emphasis on the audience's "experience" of the audible and visual horror. I will pat myself on the back for this one: the fingerprint of the found footage movement is omnipresent as of 2014. You'd have a smaller list by simply noting those films that don't in some way utilize the found footage aesthetic, but for the sake of supporting my claim here's a collection of relevant films that do: Sinister (2012), The Conjuring (2013), The Banshee Chapter (2013), Lovely Molly (2012), The Apparition (2012), Oculus (2014), The Purge (2013), The Quiet Ones (2014). None of these films could reasonably be classified as a found footage horror film, and yet each either contains sections that utilize the FF aesthetic or are traditional horror movies filmed in an FF-reminiscent style.

So my glimpse into the crystal ball of horror cinema's future proved me correct that once, but could I manage a repeat performance of foreseeing? Later in 2012, while fuming over the detritus released to the general public under the working title of The Devil Inside (2012), I posited that all of the creative potential in the unadulterated FF form hadn't been evacuated quite yet, and I was certain that those storytelling champions of the subgenre were riding their horses into view from off on the horizon. Any second now, they'd be here, and found footage horror would find its redemption in the public's eye through their efforts.

I'll admit that I was maybe less of an oracle on this matter. The last two years of found footage films, both major and minor, have been pretty much what I had hoped they wouldn't be: hours upon hours of paranormal investigation or Satanic happening found footage with ambitions stretching no farther than "BOO!" As the gap between consumer and professional digital video fast closes, another sort of osmosis is happening in the realm of budget horror cinema, in which narrative inspiration seems to be derived from supernatural Youtube Gotcha! videos with the highest number of views. The creative bankruptcy of the majority of FF films being produced and released at this moment signals that the subgenre is undoubtedly at its lowest point.

Yet, I wasn't entirely foolhardy in my prediction. In the last few years, a handful of genuine filmmakers have indeed seen the value of the non-traditional found footage form in communicating their stories on screen and thus have produced found footage films of their own. For instance, Barry Levinson (The Bay [2012]) , Renny Harlin (Devil's Pass [2013]), and Bernard Rose (Sxtape [2013]) have all directed found footage horror films within the last two years. Sure, those three aren't exactly visionary filmmakers (as each of their FF films indicate), and, moreover, their embrace of the FF form might be rooted in practicality (promising an FF film's budget might be the only way these relative old-timers can find work within the ever-youthful genre), but the point stands. Filmmakers raised and practiced on traditionally filmed cinema are turning toward the found footage form for some reason or another. Notably, this year saw the limited releases of two promising found footage films from two very different but equally legitimate directors: The Sacrament, directed by Ti West (The Innkeepers [2011], The House of the Devil [2009]), and Willow Creek, directed by Bobcat Goldthwait (God Bless America [2011], World's Greatest Dad [2009]). Perhaps, I imagined, these bonafide filmmakers, whose previous features I find to be both intelligently and artfully crafted, would indeed be the subgenre's ghoulishly pallid white knights, rescuing it from the clutches of insipidness.

My imagination was a bit too romantic. The Sacrament and Willow Creek are both fine films, and in style and execution are among the most satisfying the found footage crop has produced in the past few years. Yet, while watching them, I couldn't shake the vague sense of disappointment that comes with reliving a once-fond experience after years spent apart and finding it somehow diluted, cheapened in the interim. Against my hopes, the majority of what these two films bring to the subgenre is a rehash of what had already come before, over a decade earlier, in a pair of superior films (namely, Zero Day [2003] and The Blair Witch Project [1999]). Despite the best efforts of these talented artists, the subgenre in their hands remains a set of carnival rides eroded with age and held together with rubber bands.

Allow me to explain:

First, there's Ti West's The Sacrament. Heading into it, I held an unreasonable amount of hope for this one. I felt the subgenre needed a savior, and who could be better equipped to accomplish this salvaging than one of our best contemporary horror filmmakers? I nearly peed myself in anticipation when I found out West was making an FF film. Sure, his first effort in the subgenre (the "Second Honeymoon" segment from the FF anthology V/H/S [2012]) wasn't revelatory, but it was the shining pearl of relative intelligence and creativity in that turd pile. I hoped that a full-length effort, unencumbered by the anthology format, might prove even stronger. But The Sacrament is a disappointment. It's been accused of being a slavish faux-reproduction of the Jonestown Massacre, and that it is, but that fact alone doesn't make it a wasted effort. The Jonestown Massacre is a bizarre and perplexing event in American history that no number of talking head documentaries can suffice to make total sense out of. Thus, The Sacrament poised itself to be an enlightening, if fictional, dramatization of events that could attempt to explain, on some level, the damaged human minds that caused it.

It's at this point that I'm reminded of Ben Coccio's faux-Columbine shooting found footage film, Zero Day. What that film and The Sacrament have in common is the use of the found footage form to bring immediacy to a historical tragedy, to allow our camera eye to witness the events firsthand without the glossy layers of Hollywood filmmaking separating us from the very real (if, again, slightly fictionalized) carnage. But, in contrast to Zero Day, The Sacrament doesn't succeed in this goal of making real the horrifying unreality of the actual events. Being a "Horror Film" first and foremost, The Sacrament keeps its cult members frightening and alien to us, and thus we're never presented with the opportunity to know or understand them. We are made to become firsthand witnesses to the events, but we leave them knowing no more about why they happened then those real-life viewers watching television news reports of the Jonestown Massacre's aftermath. It's a problem of perspective: Zero Day utilized the found footage form as a video diary of its Columbine-esque killers, and we, aligned with them as viewers, were encouraged to identify with them and their deeds. The film doesn't justify the actions of its teen murderers, but it allows us to, on a human level, understand a bit more about these killers (both real and imagined) beyond the sneering villain yearbook photos burned into our brains. The Sacrament, released a decade after Zero Day, neglects to forcefully provide us that human identification, and thus its use of this particular history-pilfering form fails. By the close of the film, we know nothing about the motivation of Gene Jones's supernaturally charismatic Father, nor do we truly understand what it took for his many followers to blindly live and die by his dictates, against their better sense and reason. The Sacrament strives to be a Creepy Cult Found Footage movie, not a Chilling Investigation of the Human Condition and Mass Suicide, and thus reeks more of "exploitation" than "examination." This observation doesn't render The Sacrament's most powerful scenes, like the inevitable Kool-Aid guzzling, any less visceral, but it does make them feel significantly more hollow.

And if the connection between The Sacrament and Zero Day feels more spiritual than direct to you in this argument about found footage's inability to advance, then consider Bobcat Goldthwait's found footage Bigfoot hunt, Willow Creek. Before Willow Creek, Goldthwait had never made a  horror film. Regardless, it was difficult for me not to be intrigued by the prospect of what he could bring to the subgenre. His previous, darkly comedic features proved to be winning satires with a keen eye focused upon the shallowness of our current media. Could Willow Creek enact a similar critique, perhaps with that keen eye focused on the innumerable Bigfoot Hunter or Paranormal Investigator "reality" television programs littering the broadcast schedule? Somewhat unfortunately, Willow Creek is a straight-up Bigfoot hunt found footage flick. Bigfoot FF is some of the worst out there at the moment (beaten for the title only by Abandoned Asylum Ghost Hunter FF), so as this realization about the film's intentions dawned on me about a third of the way through my viewing of Willow Creek, I feared for the worst. Fortunately, Willow Creek's steadfast return to the basics of the found footage form reveals the lingering potency of the subgenre's style.

But, simultaneously, Willow Creek reveals the subgenre's unwillingness to move that style forward. As a Supernatural Documentary Gone Awry FF, Willow Creek follows, beat-for-beat, the exact structure of the subgenre's chief progenitor, The Blair Witch Project. As in The Blair Witch Project, we witness the intrepid protagonists of Willow Creek preparing for their documentary shoot, filming introductory footage, entering the relevant town and interviewing the locals, heading to a famous local spot and filming more footage, camping out and being relentlessly terrorized at night while in a tent, getting lost in the woods, and perishing in an enigmatic ending in which much camera-whirling carnage is had and a vague callback from earlier is made. Goldthwait's film is not as succinct as The Blair Witch Project (the townie interview section of Willow Creek drags on far too long), but despite sharing an identical structure, the film doesn't prove grating. While more ramshackle and amateurish than I would have banked on, the film features amiable performances and enough suspense to justify its existence. But still, the question must be begged: is aping (pun intended) another decade-plus-old entry in the subgenre the best that a legitimate filmmaker can muster in 2014? Does such an obvious purloining of previous source material (however effective in isolation) herald the death knell of found footage? Has the shaky well run dry?

I'm still unsure. Considering The Sacrament and Willow Creek in retrospect, I realize that each film's most effective scene provides something to the viewer that traditionally filmed narratives would be extremely reluctant to and that most FF films of yesteryear would also most likely shy away from in their push toward kinetic, nausea-inducing camera movement: the extended stillness of frame. We see this in The Sacrament's horrific stationary long shot of the force-injection of cyanide between once-loving family members. We see it in Willow Creek's remarkable, nearly 20-minute-long tent-entrenched long take. (Actress Alexie Gilmore's face throughout this shot is the film's MVP). These shots may not be new uses of the form (even each of Paranormal Activity films makes occasional use of the camera that lingers), but they're by far the most prolonged and effective uses of a stationary camera that I've seen in the subgenre. Each of these scenes (though brief when considered in the larger running time) remind us of FF's effectiveness as a form, of the squirm-inducing splendor of the camera that won't flinch, and of the filmmaker whose presence is felt only through an absence of interference, who refuses to give us relief through a cut to quieter pastures and instead leaves us as helpless as a camera dropped to the ground. Moving forward, I hope the FF movement embraces this stillness of stationary horror. Let the cameras fall-- and remain-- where they may.

Shepperton Screams (Part XII): From Beyond the Grave (1974) dir. Ken Connor

For sixteen weeks, Jose Cruz of The Grim Reader and I will be delving into the complete horror filmography of Amicus Productions and regaling you with our spirited discussions. Below is our mutual consideration of Amicus's FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE (1974). Check back every week for more dialogues and (naturally) more nightmares.

GR: Having plundered the collected works of American frighteners Robert Bloch and Entertaining Comics to varying degrees of success, Amicus turned to the short stories of one of their fellow countrymen, Ronald Chetwynd-Hayes, to supply the sundry beasts and bloody bits for their next portmanteau feature, FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE (1974). Chetwynd-Hayes was a literary brother to Bloch in many ways, mainly in the manner in which he utilized stock genre tropes and seasoned them with black humor, though Chetwynd-Hayes lacked some of the sharpness in prose that Bloch demonstrated with his snap endings and biting dialogue, be it however laden with bad puns. Chetwynd-Hayes’ fiction was a bit jollier in comparison, but his stories were an ideal fit for Shepperton Studios, always eager as they were to leaven their grisly subjects with little winks and pokes at the audience.

FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE is especially notable for its expert art direction and inventive design. The film is filled with neat little camera transitions, a delicious color palette, and sumptuous sets. The screen becomes awash in hues of blue when the supernatural is present, showing us ghostly vistas of fog and skeletal trees as well as decadently decorated parlors of Gothic furniture festooned with dust and cobwebs. Even the most innocuous of decisions—letting a blood drop fall from a ceiling to fill the camera lens with red—add a significant amount of visual wit to the proceedings. The overall technical skill of FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE is somewhat surprising when you take into account that this was director Kevin Connor’s very first film at the helm. Having worked previously as an editor and sound editor on a handful of features, it’s evident that Connor brought his expertise and that of cinematographer Alan Hume (THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE, THE WATCHER IN THE WOODS, STAR WARS: EPISODE VI – RETURN OF THE JEDI), art director Bert Davey (THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY, SUPERMAN III, ALIENS) and set decorator Simon Wakefield (BATMAN BEGINS, CASINO ROYALE, MUPPET TREASURE ISLAND) to the project to give us a very pretty-looking picture.

Sadly, the style seems to outweigh the substance here. As wonderfully macabre as all the knick knacks are, the stories themselves are not quite as memorable as one would hope. Whereas Bloch had his share of ingenious little plots—you could easily name them off as “That one with the head-eating cat” or “The one where those body parts came back to life” and have someone instantly recognize which one you’re talking about—Chetwynd-Hayes’ offerings run a little on the dry side and, had it not been for the engaging and fun tech work, might be completely forgettable. There’s at least one entry here that stands firmly on its own two legs as a singular horror fable while the others fall on the wayside. Two of them are practically interchangeable! But we’ll get to that in the bit.

The film’s wraparound segment involves a curiosity shop called Temptations Ltd. owned by the Proprietor (Peter Cushing), a quiet little man whose shop is packed to the brim with grim antiquities that would make any genre fan’s heart skip a beat. This uniting framework is used once more to promote the moral justice of the Amicus universe, though here the punishments seem quite disproportionate to the crimes of our characters. Instead of the murderers and sadists that we’ve seen before, the victims of otherworldly justice in FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE are basically just a bunch of folks who are trying to skimp on paying the Proprietor the proper price for his artifacts. Whether it’s switching tags on the items or boorishly haggling for a lower rate, these folks find out that even if you’re nothing but a cheat in Amicusland, you’re screwed. It’s even wryly remarked that the film’s final customer, a young lad low on funds, still has to go through the hellish wringer before Cushing sees that he did in fact pay him the total and correct amount for his purchase. No one’s safe!

Speaking of which, I suggest that you step away from that iron maiden you’re eyeing there to give us your side of the story before ol’ man Cushing kicks us out for loitering.

NT: For me, FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE is the dark horse among the Amicus anthologies.

When we began preparing for these dialogues, I was surprised to realize that FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE existed. I’d previously seen every one of Amicus’s anthologies, and yet somehow this one had managed to elude my memory. Of course I fondly reminisced about the one in which Peter Cushing ran a curiosity shop, but, I thought, wasn’t that in THE VAULT OF HORROR? It was only while watching FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE—the production company’s (sorta) penultimate portmanteau—for the second time that faint recollections of the individual episodes began to flicker across my consciousness like the blue flame of a spooky séance candle. In my experience, FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE began to resemble an Amicus-patented Vengeful Corpse: dead and long forgotten in my ignorance, the film was resurrected by a second viewing and crept its way inexorably into my den, eager as it was to unleash its delectable morbidity upon me once again.

In truth, FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE might be my favorite Amicus film we’ve done thus far (though TORTURE GARDEN runs a close second). Why, then, had I almost completely forgotten about the film and all of the small, ghoulish treasures contained within? It’s difficult to say.

It’s not the fault of director Kevin Connor (MOTEL HELL) or the assembled cast and crew. As you’ve duly pointed out, this is an attractive film full of technical flourishes that set it apart from the usually quite static (if still attractive and appropriately atmospheric) Amicus visual style. The acting is on par with what we’re accustomed to in these bite-sized sketches of wicked souls, and we even a get few new welcome faces added to the roster who put in distinctive performances of their own (Donald and Angela Pleasence, David Warner). The score is effective, the sets are impeccable, and the production’s (most likely) miniscule budget was wrung dry. FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE feels invigorated by its fresh but experienced creative talent behind the camera, unlike our last entry, THE VAULT OF HORROR, which gave the impression that Amicus was exhausted with (or perhaps had exhausted) the anthology format.

You’ve pointed towards the writing as a possible culprit for the film’s unmemorable status, but I’m not sure that I can agree. These four segments feel no more featherweight than any other segment we’ve seen in an Amicus portmanteau and— as you also note—they certainly express a similarly wry wit interspersing the bloodshed. The film’s longer than average running time might lead us call them quieter, more slow-burning tales in comparison to what we’re used to from Bloch and EC Comics by-way-of Milton Subotsky. Yet, I can’t think of a finale in the Amicus oeuvre more explosive than the one we witness in the final tale, “The Door.” Hell, even “The Elemental” jumps farther over the top than we’re accustomed to with its climactic living room windstorm. All four tales are recognizably Amicus material, and (I’d argue) they’re stronger than the majority of their peers.

So what is it about these tales, then, that prevents them from sticking? My best guess relates back to your remark about how two of these tales are essentially interchangeable (I’m guessing you’re referring to the first and the fourth). FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE presents a coherence that’s foreign to us anthology connoisseurs. Rather than being disparate tales plucked at random from an author’s collected works and crammed (however clumsily) into the confines of a frame narrative (looking at you, HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD), these four tales are all of a piece. Each focuses around witchcraft, the occult, and the ancient supernatural evil that lurks in the cracks of the world (and within the cracks of various mundane antiques). These tales work together, revising each other’s basic themes and story content. This grouping of tales isn’t designed to be as attention-grabbing as we might expect (we’re not barreling swiftly from a story about a head-munching cat to a story about a murderous piano, after all), and thus they do tend to blend together in our minds. This is made especially apparent when, as you’ve said, two of the episodes only significantly differ in the identity of the haunted object and in the story’s final outcome. Even the film’s curious anthology format (which finds the film moving sequentially in time from the events of the frame narrative to the events of each tale without utilizing the conceits of flashbacks or visions of potential futures) encourages us to view the film as a cohesive unit, as a single chronological story rather than subdivided bits of horror fantasy. When we think of Amicus anthologies, we think of their wild variety of horror elements, their abandonment of consistent tone, and their tendency towards a disregard for internal coherence. FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE possesses none of these attributes, and I can only imagine this is what left it underrated in my estimation until now.

Now, I’m going to go gaze into the beyond (courtesy of this nifty haunted mirror) while you give your further thoughts on these specific curiosities.

GR: As a matter of fact, I do agree with you in regards to the high amount of sturm und dang on display in FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE, as it truly is the most ferocious Amicus picture we’ve yet seen when it comes to scenery-destroying action. So why then, as you admit, does it leave such a foggy impression in the mind? Let’s see if we can find out.

“The Gate Crasher” is the first of our crackly tales, telling of the young Edward Charlton (David Warner) who purchases a gilded, antique mirror from Cushing’s store to enliven the atmosphere of his flat. It’s a great conversation starter, as it so proves when his friends are inspired by the spooky looking-glass to hold a séance. Afterward Edward is haunted by a Rasputin-like figure from the mirror-world who demands that Edward feed him blood. Because what else do ghosts do? Connor and company certainly start with their best foot forward here, as “The Gate Crasher” is the vignette in which they really let loose with those little flourishes I mentioned earlier. The séance scene is particularly notable, the blue flame of the candle dancing high like an angered wraith as the camera pans around the little table to each of the participants’ leery faces. When Warner is transported to the mirror-world in a dream, the primary color scheme and close camera angles recall the memorable, off-the-cuff night terror that Cushing himself suffered in the “Waxworks” episode of THE HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD (1970).

Even at its abbreviated length, “The Gate Crasher” comes close to feeling a little overlong, the narrative supported solely on our protagonist’s seemingly endless supply of plasma to his new, reflective friend. The bit with Warner knifing a prostitute is a cute little wink pointing towards his future turn as Jack the Ripper in TIME AFTER TIME (1979), though it is curious how, in his hypnotized state, Warner doesn’t bother cleaning up the sticky mess in his apartment yet makes it a point to dress in his pajamas before going to bed! The story becomes an intriguing parable of a man descending into the pit of addiction, as we see Charlton’s once handsome lodgings go to shambles and his healthy pallor transformed into a waxy, sickly countenance. The Face, as it is credited, is like a demonic monkey on Charlton’s back that constantly demands more hits of the juice it loves so much; as it so tellingly intones to him at one point, “You must feed me.” Charlton eventually becomes lost himself, a restless specter ready to plague the next foolish mortal to fall under the mirror’s hold. And if that’s too self-consciously high falutin’ for you, check out that bit when the Face, finally released from his prison, orders Charlton to take his own life with the instructions of “Grip my shoulders. Now thrust forward.” That naughty monkey!

The following story, “An Act of Kindness,” is probably the film’s high mark for a number of reasons. For one, it probably has the strongest sense of character and purpose of the lot, not to mention being the one that is perhaps the most cleverly and tightly plotted. I don’t say this merely because “An Act of Kindness” has a twist ending but because for the whole of its running time you are never entirely sure where it’s going to end up. It has a canny unpredictability that’s gripping to watch. Ian Bannen portrays Christopher Lowe, a by-all-means average man who tries to become just a little more than that in the eyes of a streetside ragman, Jim Underwood (Donald Pleasence). He does this by obtaining an honorary military medal from Temptations Ltd. and Pleasance duly offers Bannen his home and heart, not to mention the hospitality of his daughter Emily (Angela Pleasence). Not only are the Underwoods remarkably kind, they also know just how to alleviate Bannen of his nasty wife and apathetic child with a little brand of their own magic.

Or is that really the case? “An Act of Kindness” is a sneaky little number, and its general atmosphere (barring the wickedly cruel finale) seems like an anomaly compared to the wild and woolly haints and ghouls that inhabit the other stories. The second vignette derives its chills from more quietly shuddersome moments, like when the veiled and white-faced Emily stalks over Diana Dors as she sleeps, a gleaming knife in her hand. Angela Pleasence is wonderful here, even outshining her father a bit as the waifish girl whose toothy smile can inspire warmth and cold-blooded terror equally. “An Act of Kindness” feels more substantial for its tragic arc of events as well; when we see Bannen, we see the insignificant worker ant who only wishes to have some kind of importance to his fellow humans, so much so that he’s willing to lie about who he really is. He sees his own life as having so little merit that he must build up an alternate, more heroic personality just to receive some kind of warmth. He’s not trying to scam Cushing out of one of his antiquities just for the sake of material possession like the others. He needs the medal to become important. It’s this that makes his ultimate fate seem harsh. He was merely a stooge, a means to an end. Just as he was in life.

“The Elemental” makes it evident from its opening prologue that this segment is going to be the oft-dreaded (but generally not too terrible) “funny” one. Think “Golf Story” from DEAD OF NIGHT (1945) or “The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill” from CREEPSHOW (1982). Cushing indulges in a little humor himself when he tells customer Reginald Warren (Ian Carmichael) upon making his purchase “I hope you enjoy snuffing it.” Because Warren has bought a snuff box, you see. Apparently the little case is bedeviled, as Warren finds out when he is pestered by a spiritualist named Madame Orloff (Margaret Leighton, channeling Aunt Bedelia) on the train ride home. The woman claims that Warren has an elemental perched on his shoulder, a mischievous demon that proceeds to make his life a living hell. Fairly stumped by his supernatural quandary, Warren calls on Orloff to help him exterminate the pest.

Most of this story’s humor stems from Leighton’s fruity turn as the cat-lady-as-exorcist Orloff. Her wavering, eccentric tone is matched by her brassy expletives such as when she commands the elemental to “Get out, ya bastard!” Leighton has quite a few lines that tickle the ribs due to the earnestness with which she delivers them, like when she describes the demon feeding off its victims’ energy (“Sucking up the fluids like a babe at his mother’s breast”) or the evil’s magnetism to Warren’s wife Susan (“She’ll attract them like flies to a dung heap!”). A disquieting moment occurs in the middle of the program when Warren’s familiar coyishly tickles Susan in bed only to start strangling her. The scene is rather unsettling in its own small way, though the sight of Nyree Dawn Porter struggling with her invisible attacker and her race to the bathroom as she retches at the poltergeist’s awful stench will certainly provoke some laughter. The exorcism finale is a pretty crackerjack set piece, as Orloff bellows her commands as pillows burst in an eruption of goose-feathers and a ghostly wind nearly tears the house right out of the ground. Its played-for-cereal ending is just a tad ludicrous though, as we see the now-possessed Porter strike down her hubby with a poker (déjà vu…) only to break down the front door with superhero flair as she exits into the night. “The Elemental” has such an odd mixture of terror and triviality that the moments when it plays for laughs feel more and more off-kilter and weird the more you think about them. This is perhaps epitomized no more succinctly than in another “context is everything” chestnut that Orloff offers on par with the Face’s orders from “The Gate Crasher”: “His main objective is to get inside you.”

Our final selection for the evening is pretty much simplicity personified in both title and content. It’s a weird fairy tale called “The Door” in which happy couple William and Rosemary Seaton (Ian Ogilvy and Lesley Ann-Down) acquire an ornate, Gothic stone door from Cushing’s shop to use it as the entryway to a pantry (!) in their home. When Rosemary fancifully imagines the door opening to a more dramatic space, William discovers that it does just that, as his meagre shelves are replaced with a sapphire-hued parlor of the previous century. Not only that, but it is the room of the dreaded Sir Michael Sinclair (Jack Watson), a depraved aristocrat who spent his sordid life immersing himself in the study of evil. And you can bet your ascot that Sir Michael is not resting easily now that the portal to his realm has been opened.

You were correct in your guesstimation that my earlier comment about the interchangeable stories was referring to “The Gate Crasher” and “The Door,” seeing as how they both deal with two different kinds of gateways that grant access to vampiric men of the past who terrorize the modern worlds of their young protagonists. They act as interesting companion pieces though, as the former shows our hero giving in to the power of darkness where the character from the latter tale hacks it to pieces with a battle axe. As pale as it might be as a reworking of the Bluebeard tale, “The Door” certainly grabs one’s attention with more adept technical skill and bombast. Light and darkness are used to good effect when William reads Sinclair’s journal, the implications of his sacrilegious acts made by the dancing shadow of a crucifix on the wall, and Sinclair’s own entrance is quite creepy as we initially see him only as a raggedly-breathing shadow before he is revealed for the bewigged bogey that he is. Once in the light, Sinclair becomes a regular cackling villain when he sweeps the fainted Rosemary off her feet, snickering to William as the lad tries to stop him “Two souls are better than one!” Enthusiasts of performers such as Tod Slaughter will surely get a kick out of that. And the segment ends on a real blood-and-thunder note as William lays waste to the evil door, the carvings oozing plasma and causing Sinclair to collapse like a heap of sticks. I especially liked how William’s blows on the door’s hinges apparently caused Sinclair’s spine to break in two! A small amount of cleverness and a rarely-seen happy ending make “The Door” stand out, but amongst its fellows it may seem like it’s retreading ground we’ve literally just seen. But, to be fair, typing all my thoughts out has actually made this story rise in my estimation. What’s up with that? Maybe I just have a thing for bloodsuckers in curly period wigs.

Okay, I think somebody better bash my head with a poker before I babble on any more than I have. Even this little sprite on my shoulder is pissed off at me now.

NT: If only that little gremlin had stopped you sooner: For the most part, you’ve summed up my exact feelings about each of these witchy tales. I could stare long and hard into the blue candle flame and try to drudge up some further interpretations from the beyond, but why bother? Amicus anthology tales are slight by design. All I shall offer are a few stray observations about these tales before moving on to place the final nail in this flick’s coffin.

I find “The Gate Crasher” to be a rather wonderful witch’s brew of horror subgenres. Part psycho-slasher (David Warner’s murder of prostitutes brings us into seedier territory than we’re used to); part ghost story (a séance and a haunted mirror, even if this mirror doesn’t give the ones from THE BOOGEYMAN (1980) or OCULUS (2014) much competition); part LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS (1960) master/slave dynamic (yes, to Warner the ghost mirror commands, “Feed me!”); and part Lovercraftian tale of cosmic coercion (we learn that the mirror leads to a shadowy beyond of immortality and ultimate power, and that those who occupy this nether realm “are Legion.” The implication may be Satanic, but the details seem to point towards a horror far grander). I think the problematic homosexual undertones you’ve picked up on are on point: sure, the mirror man tries out the blood of women, but it’s ultimately the blood of Warner and his effeminate, cat-toting downstairs neighbor that return him to a corporeal state. Warner himself seems to be dealing with similar feelings of sexual confusion (recall, he’s unwilling to get all pointed and thrusty with his presumed galpal, Pamela). We can only hope that one day the masses become a little more understanding of other people’s lifestyles, enabling Warner and his extra-dimensional pals to come out of the ghost mirror.

“An Act of Kindness” is certainly the film’s best tale, for all the reasons you’ve mentioned. The segment captures in its characterization of Christopher Lowe (Ian Bannen) a depth, subtlety, and pathos rarely angled for in these roughly twenty minute long Amicus short films. But, yes, every scene is enlivened by the waifish, ghostly presence of Angela Pleasence. Her filmography is sparse, but those who have witnessed her in films like this and Jose Ramon Larraz’s SYMPTOMS (1974) aren’t soon to forget her. Her unsettling, improvised, nearly tuneless rendition of a creepy lullaby (which includes the charming and reassuring line, “eaten by worms in the cold wet earth”) while doing absent-minded chores around the house is going to rear up in one of my nightmares someday, I just know it.

When considered among to the other (quote unquote) funny episodes of prior Amicus anthologies (I’m thinking “Voodoo” from DR. TERROR or “Bargain in Death” from VAULT OF HORROR),  “The Elemental” is assuredly a cut or two above. I believe I chuckled a few times, thanks to the insuppressible Madame Orloff (Margaret Leighton), so that’s something. For me, the ultimate success of this segment rests upon its POLTERGEIST-y climax, all sound, fury, and living room windstorms. The image of a possessed Susan (Nyree Dawn Porter) bursting out through the front door like She-Hulk in the final shot will never cease to strike a spark of amusement in me. Or perhaps that’s just the elemental perched on my shoulder pulling at my cheeks?

And despite its niggling impression of “been-there-done-that-literally-half-an-hour-ago,” I quite love “The Door.” Allow me to count the reasons: 1.) the absurdity of a grandiose antique door being installed on the hinges of a stationary pantry, 2.) said stationary pantry (who has ever even heard of such a superfluous thing?) doubling as a time travel portal, 3.) the sheer brutality of the drawn out final conflict in which the door and its demon get the butt of an ax handed to them, and 4.) the revised ending in which one of our victims is allowed to escape through good behavior, producing the cleverest sting in the tail we’ve had yet.

Again, if you average them out, I’d have no hesitation placing FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE near the very top of the Amicus canon. It’s lively, creative, provocative, well-acted, well-shot: a real devil of an anthology. I still wonder, then, why it so quickly faded from my memory. If I were to disregard the influence of its supremely unmemorable title, I might hazard that part of the reason is portmanteau fatigue. When I first viewed the Amicus anthologies several years ago, I tackled them all in short succession. By the time I arrived at this, their seventh anthology, I suppose I’d had enough of anthologies altogether. During our Shepperton Screams series, I’ve again made short order of them due to our schedule, and, believe me, I’ve felt the effects of this bombardment. I think there’s only so much anthologizing a poor elemental soul can take. Let’s agree to move on to redder pastures, shall we? Let’s see that if it’s at this late point in Amicus’s brief life that the screaming truly starts…

Next week: And Now the Screaming Starts (1973)