Halloween. Boring innit. Dressing up as the most recently deceased/shamed celebrity. Lots o’ Jimmy Saviles this year no doubt. Jangle jangle pedo jewellery.
The pumpkins are good though. Not so much the carving, as the eating. Soups. Ravioli. Pies, if you’re that way inclined (i.e. American) too.
Also it means that the tele man throws on a bunch of horror films.
That said, for an Oscar fan, there isn’t much fodder. They say that The Silence of the Lambs (1991, 5 wins, 7 noms) was a horror film, though I would venture that despite the blood, moidering, what-ever-verb-means-that-thing-that-Hannibal-Lecter-does-with-his-teeth-and-lips, unpleasantness and general horror, it isn’t a horror film.
The Sixth Sense (1999, 0 wins, 6 noms) picked up a few nominations too, including for Best Picture. And a year later, Nosferatu-inspired Shadow of the Vampire (2000, 0 wins, 2 noms) earned Willem Defoe a Best Supporting Actor nod. But since, there’s been less success than for a Trick-or-Treater dressed as a werewolf who’s had a back, sack and crack.
But there was a time when the Academy didn’t spend the running time of ghoulish films cowering behind their La-Z-Boys. In those days, they invited the folks behind them for a trip down the famous blood-red carpet.
Poltergeist (1982) 23.05 TCM (0 wins from 3 noms)
Potentially, poltergeists could be as dull as Halloween itself. An invisible specter moving household items from – and this is the good bit – one side of the room………….to the other.
But Poltergeist is a splendidly enjoyable film.
Steven Spielberg’s presence among the production and writing credits is tangible. The first twenty minutes of the film is a simple portrait of a regular family. The parents fool around (and also smoke pot which, for some reason in this wonderfully liberal decade of ours, came as rather a shock), the kids are a charming and annoying in equal measure and they all live as harmoniously as a regular nuclear family do in their classic American home.
But like all classic American homes, this one was built on an old cemetery. Ah-oh.
Cue lightning storms, paranormal activity and more skeletons than you can shake a decomposing fibular at.
The effects – both visual and audible – make the film, and that is where two of its Academy Award nominations were garnered. The visual side is particularly striking. Although it is a trope used by many cinefiles these days, it is true to say that expertly crafted effects, as opposed to plagues of CGI, are a far more effective way of creating terrifying set-pieces. Watching domestic fixtures and fittings genuinely flying across a room, seemingly on their own accord, is truly impressive.
Unexpectedly, Poltergeist also benefits from a script that is not laden with horror cliche. In particular, I refer to the ‘ghostbusters’ who visit the home to find an explanation of the peculiar goings on. Rather than a gang of fearless crackpots who talk in esoteric jargon, the trio are written as a group of interested amateurs who’s extra-curricular interests may be of some use to the terrified family. Beatrice Straight (who had been Oscar nominated six years earlier for her supporting role in Network), is particular convincing as a parapsychologist who is just as frightened by poltergeist as those people she has been brought in to help.
And, like all great horror films (as the aficionados will tell you), there appears to be at least one moral message at the centre of the film. I spotted a treatise on the dangers of television and metaphor on the fears of motherhood too.
Also, at one point (rather than at 25 points as suggested) this happens…
The Omen (1976) 20.00 Sky Movies Sci-Fi & Horror (1 wins from 2 noms)
The Omen, on the other hand, is on the eerier end of the horror spectrum. Played strictly to creep the viewer out, the only laughs to be had here are inadvertent (a spinning decapitated head being the sole example).
Unlike Poltergeist, it doesn’t embrace visual effects for striking visceral scares. It is far more cerebral, relying substantially on Jerry Goldsmith’s nominated score (he was, by the way, also nominated in the same category for Poltergeist) and the horrifying notion that one could raise as their own an ostensibly harmless – and, let’s face it, charisma-less – five-year-old boy who then develops into something altogether otherly (in this case, and we’ve all been there, be the spawn of the devil).
Some of the techniques used by Richard Donner are truly disturbing. The first death scene, for example, is particularly affecting. The dialogue used, specifically by members of the church, is highly stylised – a pyschological tool to unnerve the viewer who would naturally look to the clergy to comfort rather than confuse further. And Jerry Goldsmith’s Best Original Song winner, Ave Satani (see below). with it’s brooding tempo, foreboding death knolls and sinister choral chanting is the perfect accompaniment to a picture that is so sacred that it will never be subject to the danger of being shoddily remade for a cheap cash in on the 6th June 2006.
The Addams Family (1991) 19.05 Film 4 (0 wins from 1 nom)
The Addams Family. Ok, not strictly a horror, but a rather wonderful family film to enjoy during the season. And yes, it is as good as you remember it being (I’ve taken rather a large leap of faith there and assumed you liked it. A safe gamble though, I reckon). The jokes and visual gags come thick and fast.
The cast is excellent. Whoever cast Raul Julia as Gomez is a true genius (I’ll requisition a copy of Barry Sonnenfeld’s MENSA membership card later). He revels in a role that, now, it is difficult to picture anybody else in. The same goes for Anjelica Huston as Morticia, and their chemistry is extraodinary. That said, how long before we see Depp and Bonham Carter reprising the roles in a Tim Burton remake. Surely only a matter of time.
Christopher Lloyd is also stand-out in full glorious gurning, nutty mode as Uncle Fester (and I really don’t want to hear any “Spoiler” cries for that one). It leaves one wondering whether Jim Carrey should pay close attention to Lloyd’s work from the 80s onwards. Carrey could be a natural successor as the go-to guy for offbeat avuncular roles that result in perpetual scene-stealing. A notion worth considering for Carrey’s fast approaching twilight.
The Oscar nomination came for Ruth Myers‘s’s’s Best Costume Design, but was beaten by gangster-flick Bugsy (2 wins, 10 noms) (strong category that year, also including Hook and Barton Fink) and, in a year where Silence of the Lambs, Hopkins and Foster swept the board, it would have been ace to see their antithesis, Julia and Huston, nominated too.
Bloscars 