Horror thrives on explicit shock, terror on lingering disquiet and dread.
This in essence is Ann Radcliffe’s famous distinction between fright and fear. Mrs. Radcliffe was the undisputed mistress of Gothic fiction- when it comes to spooky and scary, I consider her an expert.
The Haunting, Dead of Night and Cat People have a few things in common. They are all in black and white. They all succeeded in unsettling, if not outright frightening me. And they are all horror films that are more concerned with terror.
“The house- it’s alive.”
The Haunting opens on a silhouette of the proverbial old, dark house as an unseen narrator intones: “Hill House had stood for ninety years and might stand for ninety more. Silence lay steadily against the wood and stone…and whatever walked there, walked alone.” Welcome to the architectural equivalent of your worst nightmare: enjoy your stay! Wealthy misanthrope Hugh Crain builds Hill House in a remote corner of New England. Over the decades it earns an infamous reputation, its history littered with sudden, inexplicable and yes, unnatural deaths. Psychic researcher and anthropologist Dr. Markway (Richard Johnson) decides the house is ripe for study and assembles a team to explore it: Eleanor (Julie Harris), timid, tense, fraying at the edges; Theo (Claire Bloom), self-assured and supposedly gifted with ESP; and Luke (Russ Tamblyn), heir to the house and a committed sceptic. A good time is not had by all.
To those of you who have only seen the remake, please do not be put off. Liam Neeson, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Owen Wilson competing with clunky special effects is not scary. This film is. A sense of dread is imbedded in the very fabric of Hill House. You cannot help but feel uneasy because everything is slightly off. Doors hang permanently askew; clever camera angles ensure there are no square corners in the house. A superabundance of mirrors means the place is eerily crowded: there often seem to be more people in a room than there ought to be. Director Robert Wise is not afraid of leaving much to the audience’s imagination and this is the film’s greatest strength. Convincing performances draw you in; your own mind does the rest. (I promise you will never look at floral wallpaper the same way again.)
The evil which permeates Hill House may defy explanation, but a need to unravel mysteries is central to Dead of Night. An architect arrives at a country house and experiences a serious case of déjà vu: he predicts what his host will say before he says it; he knows his way around a house he has never visited; and everyone that awaits him in the living room is straight out of his recurring dream. Intrigued, the other guests start swapping their own supernatural stories, creating an anthology film of the sort popular in the 1960s and 70s- think Twice Told Tales or From Beyond the Grave, but with less gore. As with all anthologies some stories work better than others. “The Hearse Driver” does wonders with long pauses and a dead silence. “Christmas Party” is melancholy and atmospheric, while “Golfing Story” tries to be funny and ends up the least successful of the bunch- ironic considering Ealing Studios is famous for its comedies. The star attraction is “Ventriloquist’s Dummy”, featuring the great Michael Redgrave as a demented cabaret entertainer. The idea of a malevolent dummy with a life of its own isn’t new, but Redgrave is so compelling he dominates the entire film.
I enjoyed Dead of Night and The Haunting so much it’s a pity I can’t say the same about Cat People. Shot on a shoestring budget, it is celebrated for its ‘less is more’ approach to terror. Alas, it wasn’t that satisfying. The opening quotation about ancient sin was doubtless designed to confer a sense of gravitas on proceedings. It doesn’t and it’s all downhill from there. Simone Simon might as well have had a neon sign flashing above her declaring ‘mysterious and exotic’ and none of the other characters are particularly subtle or involving either. If a film is going to scare me I ought to care about its protagonists- or else what’s the point? Nevertheless one moment did catch my eye: Irena (Simon) following Alice (Jane Randolph) down the street. Darkness, save the light from occasional streetlamps. The clatter of heels on pavement. Alice walks out of the frame but Irena doesn’t appear behind her– just where did she go? It’s a superior sequence in a largely disappointing movie.
Writing this post reminded me of Catherine Morland- Jane Austen heroine and Ann Radcliffe devotee- clutching a list of recommended Gothic novels in Northanger Abbey: ‘But are you sure they are all horrid?’ Are these tales of terror actually frightening? Yes, they (mostly) are.
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