The October Horror Movie Challenge Continued…

I made it to the end with no room for error. Here’s how I finished up (new viewings in red):

October 27

Spider Forest (2004, d. Il-gon Song). Another mindbending, genre-busting Korean production. Confusing in parts. Impeccably well made. I suspect this is a love it or hate it kind of movie. I’m going to need another viewing of this one to fully appreciate what the hell I’m seeing.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974, d. Tobe Hooper). Seen on the big screen at a crumbling old movie palace. This was a swell time, but the “gimmick” behind this showing was a new score performed live with the film. Which begs the question, why does TCM NEED a new score?

October 28

The Kiss of the Vampire (1963, d. Don Sharp). Hammer’s non-Dracula vampire films were often more adventurous. Case in point, this tale of a vampire cult. This has a place in my affections as the “inspiration” for Polanski’s Fearless Vampire Killers (right down to the dress Sharon Tate wears to the ball). In spite of some nice elements, the cheapness of the film shows–particularly in the casting budget. Successfully dodges a lot of the cliches of the subgenre. Dynamite opening scene. Deranged closing scene.

Nightmare (1964, d. Freddie Francis). Is this Freddie Francis’s finest hour as a director? It might be, though that’s faint praise. The story is transparent from the get-go. Unusual for Hammer: this has a contemporary setting (in 1964) and is shot in a beautiful black and white.

October 29

The Night Strangler (1973, d. Dan Curtis). The second outing of reporter Carl Kolchak finds him in Seattle on the trail of an undead doctor who is killing his way to his elixir of life. Superb supporting cast featuring the indefatiguable Simon Oakland, Scott Brady, Wally Cox, John Carradine, Al Lewis, and Richard Anderson. Like Session 9 many years later, the setting came first. Screenwriter Richard Matheson saw Seattle’s underground city whilst on vacation and wrote the story around it. Great fun. Best line: “You grovel nicely, Mr. Kolchack.”

October 30

The Phantom of the Opera (1962, d. Terence Fisher). Yet another Hammer film that seems rushed at the end. Would it have KILLED them to run the film to an hour and forty-five minutes? Some nice sets and photography in this one, but I hate the mask The Phantom wears, and I hate the dwarf who does all the killing (relieving The Phantom of the Mark of Cain). On the plus side, Michael Gough is positively loathesome as the villain of the piece. Herbert Lom was a more entertaining Phantom in The Pink Panther Strikes Again, though he’s not bad here.

Burn, Witch, Burn (1962, d. Sidney Hayers). The best screen adaptation of Fritz Leiber’s oft-filmed Conjure Wife. Peter Wyngarde is superb as a rational college professor whose grip on reality is unravelling after discovering that, not only is witchcraft very real, but his wife is herself a witch. Credit Charles Beaumont and Richard Matheson with a crackerjack screenplay.

October 31–Halloween

I suppose this is appropriate:

Halloween (1978, d. John Carpenter). A machine of a movie designed to say “Boo!” I’ve written about this film at length in the past. I don’t have anything new to say this time out. If you want a full recap, I would direct you here.

The Thing from Another World (1951, d. Christian Nyby and Howard Hawks). Always a great pleasure, this film. It’s been superceded in the hearts of many horror fans by John Carpenter’s remake, but this one has pleasures the remake doesn’t even come near. Prime among those pleasures are both the Hawksian dialogue and the way the characters are arranged in the film frame. Nyby takes the screen credit, but they aren’t fooling anyone. Replace Kenneth Tobey with Cary Grant and you have Only Angels Have Wings in the arctic. The scenes on the ice are still fantastic, and the scene with Dr. Carrington and the baby things is unexpectedly creepy even now. Keep watching the skies, indeed!

The end. I made it!� 31 movies in 31 days, with 16 new to me! Woot!

Happy Halloween.

So you want to be my friend, eh….?

Here’s the deal. If you’ve “friended” me and I haven’t shown up in your friends roster, one of three things has happened:

First: Yahoo’s screwy beta version of this service is screwing with me. I’ve pressed the “accept” button and nothing happened. This particular glich happens a lot.

Second: You have nothing in your profile. I mean, NOTHING. The simple fact of the matter is, I have no motive to link to someone who is a complete unknown to me.

Third: something on your profile has put me off. Whether it’s a girl sucking off a donkey or the man with the elastic anus in Pink Flamingos, something on your 360 page has made me say “Eeeewwww!” I have to keep in mind that this page is not a secret to my everyday friends, and I don’t want to be responsible for them clicking a link from my page and  having that show up on their screen, or worse, thinking I’m into sucking off donkeys. If that’s your kink, fine. I don’t even mind you showing it to the world, but I don’t want to see it. I’m exercising my right to change the channel. It takes a LOT to offend me, too, so congratulations.

To anyone who is thinking of “friending” me to get to my naughty “friends-0nly” pictures, where I let my school-marmish exterior slip (hah!) and get my freak on with a team of well-hung leather men, I’m sorry to say that you’ll be disappointed. Everything on my page is open to the public, no secret handshake required. Mind you, if you happen to BE a team of hung leather men in the mid-Missouri vicinity searching for a hot tgirl on whom to get your freak, feel free to get in touch

The October Horror Movie Challenge

I’ve been competing in a “horror movie challenge” this October. The goal of the challenge is to watch 31 horror movies in 31 days. The kicker is that at least 16 of them have to be new viewings. I was convinced that the 16 new viewings would be my own stumbling block, but that hasn’t turned out to be the case. In any event, here’s my progress so far:

I am WAY behind the pace. Ah, well. I might make the 16 “new viewings” but I doubt I’m finishing in the clover.

Current tally: 22 films. 14 first-time viewings. First-time viewings noted in red.

For the record:

October 3: Constantine (2005, d. Francis Lawrence)–better than expected, though a disappointment none the less. Things to like: Tilda Swinton in full-swing androgyny (hubba hubba), Rachel Weisz. Keanu Reeves (no, really). Things to dislike: the movie was edited with a chainsaw. Lame plot (at second-hand, no less). Ah, well…the shelf at the video store is still stocked with movies I’m SURE will be much, much worse than this one.

October 4: House of Usher (1960, d. Roger Corman). The first of Corman’s Poe adaptations. Elegant. Moody. Kind of boring, actually. Not much actually HAPPENS in this movie. But it sure looks nice. Roger began a long tradition of weird hippie-sh t dream sequences in this movie. The burning barn Corman filmed for this film was fresh and new. Opulence on a budget.

October 6: Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter (1972, d. Brian Clemens). Late Hammer weirdness. Can’t for the life of me figure out why there are no scenes at night in this movie. Cheaper to film during the day, I guess. Maybe some of the daytime scenes were supposed to be day for night shots. If so, they needed to adjust their filters.

October 7: Acacia (2003, Ki-Hyung Park). Beautifully shot horror movie from Korea. Plot’s a bit of a muddle, but it’s creepy throughout. One or two of the setpieces in the middle of the movie don’t work, but the endgame is pretty good.

October 8: The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963, d. Mario Bava). Interesting proto-giallo from Bava. It’s a shame he abandoned black and white for color around the time of this movie. He had a talent for it. Alas.

October 14: The Fog (2005, d. Rupert Wainwright). A disaster. Selma Blair is the only reason to see this, and she’s not on screen nearly long enough.

The Haunted Castle (1921, d. F. W. Murnau). A bit of a stretch, this one. An “Old Dark House” mystery a la The Cat and the Canary (it even has the clutching hand). But hopelessly stagebound. Is this the same director who made the deliriously cinematic Sunrise? Go figure.

October 15: Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005, d. Nick Park and Steve Box). A pure delight, especially sure to please horror fans. An old-style monster movie, done in clay. Gromit is the most expressive silent comedian since Buster Keaton.

Nang Nak (1999, d. Nonzee Nimibutr). The premise of this Thai film reminds me of Ugetsu, which gets me wondering whether or not this is a pan-Asian archetype. The execution is about as far away from Mizoguchi as you can get. Edited faster than I expected, and beautifully shot. Strange, strange film.

October 16:

The Corpse Bride (2005, d. Tim Burton and Mike Johnson). A lot of reviewers have called this The Nightmare Before Christmas Redux, but what they have neglected to mention is that this movie is enormously better than Nightmare. The romanticism of this film is what makes it, in the end, as well as that delicious undercurrent of necrophilia–The Bride herself is hotter than any corpse has a right to be…Strange, and magical in the end.

October 18:

Toolbox Murders (2004, d. Tobe Hooper). Much better than expected. Better than anything Hooper has done since the 1980s. It ain’t TCM, but then, what is? Refreshingly mean-spirited. Love the circular saw scene.

October 19:

Vampyros Lesbos (1970, d. Jess Franco). Ooooh…I knew I was going to regret this from the get go. How, I ask you…HOW does a movie with a score THAT cool and with copious vampire lesbian nudity wind up being SO boring? Oh, wait…it was directed by Jess Franco, that’s how. Sheesh.

October 20:

Seance (2002, d. Kiyoshi Kurosawa). Made for television, but that doesn’t matter. Creepy and philosophical reworking of Seance on a Wet Afternoon acts as a kind of dry run for Kurosawa’s recent cinematic offerings. It trumps those for chills. Kurosawa’s films get under my skin for some reason.

October 21:

Blackenstein (1973, d. William A. Levey). I knew I was going to be bottom-feeding during this exercise, but little did I know just how far down the scale of cinema I would be travelling. First Jess Franco, now THIS! I’m counting this as a new viewing, even though I saw this many years ago. I remembered absolutely nothing about it. Turns out that selective amnesia was a defense mechanism. The horror…oh, the horror.

October 22:

The Island of Lost Souls (1933, d. Erle C. Kenton). The first screen version of The Island of Dr. Moreau, with Bela Lugosi as The Sayer of the Law and Charles Laughton as Moreau. Laughton is my favorite Moreau, possibly my favorite scientist from the 1930s because I see in him an impish delight in dissecting animals to discover their inner workings. He gives the audience a wink at one point. Show me another “mad” scientist with that kind of delight in his work…

Throne of Blood (1957, d. Akira Kurosawa). Kurosawa gets to the core of MacBeth as primal myth. The scene where Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane is one of the greatest phantasmagorias on film. A fever dream of a movie.

October 23:

Street of Crododiles (1986, d. The Brothers Quay). Man…puppets are creepy. This is the raw stuff of nightmares, uncut by the limitations of literal reality. Disturbing.

October 24:

Fait d’hiver (2001, d. Dirk Beli��n). The IMDB has this Belgian short subject listed as a “Comedy,” which isn’t necessarily wrong so much as it is disingenuous. This is as black a comedy as you are likely to see, in which a man stuck in traffic calls home and gets some bad news from the child that answers the phone. Deeply twisted, palpably horrific, and absolutely satisfying. It’s the kind of comical horror story that might have been written by John Collier or Fredric Brown. Highly recommended.

October 25:

The Brides of Dracula (1960, d. Terence Fisher). Arguably the most accomplished of Hammer’s Dracula movies. Peter Cushing is great as usual as Van Helsing. Personally, I miss Christopher Lee; David Peel is not in Lee’s league. By contrast, the next film, Dracula: Prince of Darkness omits Cushing in favor of Lee, and Andrew Kier is more than up to filling in for Cushing. The sets, held over from Horror of Dracula, are a bit over-familiar now, but the movie does look nice. Plays fast and loose with Hammer’s established vampire mythology, which is annoying, and it’s a bit on the short side at a mere 86 minutes.

The Curse of the Werewolf (1961, d. Terence Fisher). Allegedly “based” on Guy Endore’s The Werewolf of Paris, this film is conspicuous for NOT being set in Paris, nor ever setting foot in France. It takes precious little else from its supposed source novel, too. Still, a pretty good movie. The most richly textured of Terence Fisher’s horror movies, this has mood to burn. It’s nice to see a werewolf that becomes a werewolf in the old-fashioned way (i.e. not by getting bit by one). One wishes that the cheapskates in Hammer’s production office would have funded more werewolf mayhem. The title character gets precious little screen time. Also seems too short for what it wants to do.

October 26:

Night Creatures (aka: Captain Clegg, 1962, d. Peter Graham Scott). This was completely new to me–I’ve never even read a description of this film. To my immense surprise, this was another version of The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh, with Peter Cushing in the role of Dr. Syn (renamed “Dr. Blyss” for legal reasons–pesky Disney lawyers). It’s a pretty good version, too, and gives Cushing the chance to stretch his acting legs. The usual Hammer cast of supporting characters get props, too, especially Michael Ripper and Oliver Reed. Great fun.

The Evil of Frankenstein (1964, d. Freddie Francis). An anomaly in Hammer’s Frankenstein series. Peter Cushing returns, again, as the good doctor, but this ignores the chronology of the rest of the series. Universal is to blame for this. Universal barred Hammer from referencing its classic Frankenstein films in Hammer’s other outings. THIS film, though, was distributed by Universal, so alone of Hammer’s Frankenstein films, this one looks and feels like the classic (and not so classic) Frankenstein films from the 1930s and 40s. The cinematography is nice–as would be expected in a film directed by Freddie Francis–but the story is a mess. More in line with The Ghost of Frankenstein than with The Bride of Frankenstein. Hammer’s make-up department never did get the look of the creature “right” after the first film in the series. They REALLY blew it this time.

I’m going to have to hump it this weekend to make it to 31. 16 new viewings should be a piece of cake, though. I’ve got the balance of those on hand as it is.

The Myth of Tiresias

Greek Theater can be said to be the forerunner of narrative media in Western Civilization. Greek Drama, it seems, had an opinion on most elements of the human experience, including transgenderism. One of the recurring characters in Greek narrative and drama is Tiresias, who you may remember as the prophet in Oedipus Rex when you read it in high school. Tiresias was transgendered after a fashion.

The most famous account of the origin of his blindness and his prophetic talent is as follows. When Tiresias was walking in the woods one day, he came upon two great serpents copulating; he struck them with his staff, and was thereupon transformed into a woman. Seven years later, she/he passed by the same place and came upon the same two serpents copulating; she/he struck them again with the staff and was turned back into a man. Some time later, Zeus and  Hera were arguing over who had more pleasure in sex, the man or the woman: Zeus said it was the woman, while Hera claimed men got more pleasure from the act. To settle the argument, they consulted Tiresias, since he had experienced life as both sexes, and Tiresias sided with Zeus. In her anger, Hera struck Tiresias blind. Since Zeus could not undo the act of another deity, he gave Tiresias the gift of prophecy.

I had a long conversation about sex with a post-op transexual at SCC this year (I’ve been gathering information because I’m leaning that way myself right now, so I wound up talking at length with a number of post-op TS’s this year). According to her, men “really get the short end of the stick” when it comes to sex. This tidbit is encouraging, because one of the main drawbacks of transition has traditionally been the loss of sexual function. Fortunately, the state of the art has moved on…

Somewhere, the nameless author of the myth of Tiresias is smiling. Heh.

October Country

src=\”http://dunyazad.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/1129868852-hr-1051.jpg\”

It looks as if we are going to have a beautiful autumn here after all. I\’ve been skeptical. The first leaves to turn all went brown. We had drought this year, which usually mutes the colors of fall. The last couple of days, though, have seen the trees between Centralia and Columbia explode in a riot of colors, from harvest gold to a rusty purple. It was raining today. I hope the sun comes out before the rain knocks all the leaves from the trees. Late afternoon in late October provides my favorite light, an amber light scattered by a myriad of leaves and blades of grass. October light is fleeting, too, which is appropriate when it\’s getting late in the year. It\’s no lux aeturna. It\’s the light of time slipping away, it\’s the light of days where dusks linger as the world spins into the midnight of winter. It\’s the light of of jack-o-lanterns. It\’s the light of Halloween.

I walked out of my house the other day to the smell of burning leaves. You couldn\’t burn leaves in Columbia, but you can burn them here, it seems. I need to buy a rake.

October Country

src=\”http://dunyazad.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/1129868852-hr-105.jpg\”

It looks as if we are going to have a beautiful autumn here after all. I\’ve been skeptical. The first leaves to turn all went brown. We had drought this year, which usually mutes the colors of fall. The last couple of days, though, have seen the trees between Centralia and Columbia explode in a riot of colors, from harvest gold to a rusty purple. It was raining today. I hope the sun comes out before the rain knocks all the leaves from the trees. Late afternoon in late October provides my favorite light, an amber light scattered by a myriad of leaves and blades of grass. October light is fleeting, too, which is appropriate when it\’s getting late in the year. It\’s no lux aeturna. It\’s the light of time slipping away, it\’s the light of days where dusks linger as the world spins into the midnight of winter. It\’s the light of of jack-o-lanterns. It\’s the light of Halloween.

I walked out of my house the other day to the smell of burning leaves. You couldn\’t burn leaves in Columbia, but you can burn them here, it seems. I need to buy a rake.

Heavy Rotation

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On the off chance that someone cares, this is what I\’m listening to these days.

Johnny Cash–American IV: The Man Comes Around. Downright apocalyptic, this disc.
Big Star–#1 Record/Radio City
PJ Harvey–Songs from the City, Songs from the Sea (if To Bring You My Love was her Let it Bleed, this is her Abbey Road)
Cyndi Lauper–She\’s So Unusual. This sounds great twenty years on. \”Money Changes Everything\” is amazing.
Bloodshot Eyes: The Best of Wynonie Harris. R&B/proto-Rock and Roll. Those songs they used to put on \”race record\” labels sure were dirty. Favorite song title: \”Keep On Churnin\’ \’til the Butter Comes.\” Heh.
The Mekons–Rock \’n\’ Roll. They slum the spelling, but it\’s a great disc anyway. \”Destroy your safe and happy lives before it is too late!\”
Funkadelic–One Nation Under a Groove. \”Fried ice cream IS a reality.\”
Loretta Lynn–Van Lear Rose. Jack White producing Loretta Lynn seemed like a stunt. It wasn\’t. The best disc anyone in any genre released last year.
The Astronauts–Rarities. What do you get when you cross Dick Dale and The Monkees? This terrific surf band from Colorado, that\’s what. \”Ride the Wild Surf\” is the best surf anthem this side of the Ventures.
The Buck Owens Collection. The Beatles used to have spies in Owens\’s studio (they covered \”Act Naturally\” at the urging of one of their spies). There\’s a good reason for this. This is great, great music. Current favorites: \”Mental Cruelty\” and \”Buckaroo\”
Madder Rose–Panic On. One of the great indie bands from the mid-nineties. Never broke out, which is too bad. Terrific disc.
The Clash–London Calling. This seems like it\’s been in heavy rotation for me for the last twenty years. God, I feel old.

Heavy Rotation

src=\”http://dunyazad.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/1129699176-sc-101.jpg\”

On the off chance that someone cares, this is what I\’m listening to these days.

Johnny Cash–American IV: The Man Comes Around. Downright apocalyptic, this disc.
Big Star–#1 Record/Radio City
PJ Harvey–Songs from the City, Songs from the Sea (if To Bring You My Love was her Let it Bleed, this is her Abbey Road)
Cyndi Lauper–She\’s So Unusual. This sounds great twenty years on. \”Money Changes Everything\” is amazing.
Bloodshot Eyes: The Best of Wynonie Harris. R&B/proto-Rock and Roll. Those songs they used to put on \”race record\” labels sure were dirty. Favorite song title: \”Keep On Churnin\’ \’til the Butter Comes.\” Heh.
The Mekons–Rock \’n\’ Roll. They slum the spelling, but it\’s a great disc anyway. \”Destroy your safe and happy lives before it is too late!\”
Funkadelic–One Nation Under a Groove. \”Fried ice cream IS a reality.\”
Loretta Lynn–Van Lear Rose. Jack White producing Loretta Lynn seemed like a stunt. It wasn\’t. The best disc anyone in any genre released last year.
The Astronauts–Rarities. What do you get when you cross Dick Dale and The Monkees? This terrific surf band from Colorado, that\’s what. \”Ride the Wild Surf\” is the best surf anthem this side of the Ventures.
The Buck Owens Collection. The Beatles used to have spies in Owens\’s studio (they covered \”Act Naturally\” at the urging of one of their spies). There\’s a good reason for this. This is great, great music. Current favorites: \”Mental Cruelty\” and \”Buckaroo\”
Madder Rose–Panic On. One of the great indie bands from the mid-nineties. Never broke out, which is too bad. Terrific disc.
The Clash–London Calling. This seems like it\’s been in heavy rotation for me for the last twenty years. God, I feel old.

What’s in a name?

I don’t know about you all, but I get a lot of invitations and IMs from people with names like “trannycumslut69″ and “tvwhore4U” and what not (note, these are completely invented, but fairly representative). These screen names make me wonder, almost as much as what these people list as their desires and fantasies. In truth, I almost prefer the guys who send me a picture of their (ahem) inadequacies hoping that I’ll be impressed.

I suppose I should back up here for a moment. I’m not exactly a prude, nor a chaste matronly tranny. I’m very adventurous with my sexuality. I love kinky sex with a creative and loving partner (or partners). If you were to make a list of kinks that don’t involve blood, scat, children, or animals, I have probably tried most of them. But in spite of all this, I’ve never felt degraded or humiliated by what I’ve done. Disappointed, yes. Unsatisfied, undoubtedly. But never humilated and degraded.

I don’t get into the mindset of coersion when it comes to sexuality. I’ve play-acted “coerced” scenarios with my partners in the past, though I’ve never gone anywhere that I wasn’t willing to go in the first place, nor forced anyone else to go where they didn’t want to go. But “force” seems to be a driving motive in the fantasies of the people who attach those screen names to themselves. Is transgenderism so taboo that those who manifest it demand to be punished for it? Is there a specific streak of masochism among the transgendered that demands degradation? I suspect that there is.

I had the chance to talk with Kate Bornstein  several years ago when she was visiting the University of Missouri. Bornstein’s lectures are very theatrical. She describes them as performance art, which is apt. One of the keys to the lecture she had given was the notion that “in the literature of my people, we are always forced.” She meant that globally, because the dominant culture “forces” a gender identity upon us whether we like it or not, but she also meant that personally, too. After the lecture, I discussed with her the apparent need of some transvestites to be forced into crossdressing, and she pointed to the vast body of TG slash fiction as evidence of the impulse. Go to fictionmania.com  and throw a rock. You’re bound to hit some variant of “forced feminization.” This is written not by the dominant culture, but by TGs themselves. Do we WANT to be forced into this life? Are we so timid that we can’t embrace this life on our own, even though it’s our heart’s desire? Are we so weak? Is the dominant culture so strong and so terrifying that we will not follow our true selves without coersion? And does this cultural weakness (for want of a better phrase) so fill us with self-loathing that we must be punished and degraded for our desires? I know that, for myself, the answer is no, but I have a very strong ego, a very strong sense of my own self-worth. For all of these people who aim to degrade themselves with their screen names and with annonymous S&M couplings, I suspect that the answer is yes. These people do not love themselves. These people do not want to take their own lives by the horns.

I want to tell these people that they need to love themselves. They absolutely need it. Because if they don’t love themselves, they will be incapable of receiving love, and all the kinky sex in the world will be so much abuse heaped upon them.

Self-worth is a powerful thing. As you may know, the incidence of violence and murder against the transgendered is significantly higher than the incidence of murder and violence against the rest of the population. As a transgendered woman, I am 17 times more likely to be murdered than a white male. That’s three times as likely as a black male, the next most at-risk group. Why is that? Self-worth, or the lack there-of. Many transgendered individuals think their only worth in the marketplace is as sex-workers. This puts them at risk. Some transgendered individuals seek validation of their worth by passing as women to attract “straight” sex partners. This also puts them at risk. Some transgendered individuals lack the confidence in themselves when they are out in the world. This makes them look like victims, and looking like a victim attracts predators as surely as a lame antelope attracts lions. A modicum of self-worth would prevent some of this violence. I am not so naive to think that it would stop all of it, but it might…just might…stop some of it. What does this have to do with those pesky screen names? Only this: self-worth is cultural as well as individual. If, as a culture, we transgendered present a lack of self-worth as a public image, the dominant culture will only abuse us further. Those screen names are a symptom. I wish that the people who create them would take a hard look at what they think of themselves before they author them. If it’s something they genuinely need, well, more power to them. Far be it for me to belittle someone else’s kinks. But if they DO need it, they might take the next step and ask themselves “Why?”

Christi\’s Movie Pick Du Jour for October 11, 2005

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Once upon a time, the ghost story was a serious literary pursuit. The golden age of the ghost story saw writers as diverse as Charles Dickens, Lord Byron, Edith Wharton, and Wilkie Collins turning their pen to the form. The most elegant ghost stories were written around the turn of the 20th century, and the most elegant of them was arguably Henry James\’s sinister \”The Turn of the Screw.\” It\’s no accident that one of the most elegant of all horror movies is an adaptation of James. The talent behind the film version, retitled The Innocents (1961, directed by Jack Clayton), is formidable. The screenplay was written by Truman Capote, the cinematography was by Freddie Francis, and Deborah Kerr has rarely been better. For all that, the film belongs to young Martin Stephens and Pamela Franklin, who gives perhaps the best performances by child actors in all of film. (By contrast, Stephens is nowhere near as good in Village of the Damned.)

The story follows Kerr as Miss Giddens, the newly hired governess for Miles and Flora Bly, the neglected nephew and neice of a rich man with no interest in . Miss Giddens is somewhat repressed. She\’s attracted to her employer, but she\’s high strung enough to suspect her young charges of ghastly crimes when she probes the mystery of what happened to her predecessor. The ambiguity of James\’s story is mitgated somewhat by literalizing things on film, and the film has an o\’erweening Freudian point of view, but none of that matters much. The movie is so thoroughly creepy that most other concerns are irrelevant. This gets under the skin.

Ideally, this is a film that should be watched late at night, preferably while a storm rages outside and perhaps by candlelight. It\’s not a film constructed from cheap jump scares or gratuitous violence. It\’s subtle. It\’s quiet. It whispers dark things in your ear rather than clubbing you over the head with them. This approach can be very effective in the right hands, and this film is very much in the right hands. This is an Octobery sort of film: austere, chilly, and absolutely intent on unfolding a tale to chill the bones…