Castro...

From a certain slant, the character of Old Castro in HPL’s “The Call of Cthulhu” looks like it was named after an associate of Lovecraft’s whom he met during his stay in New York. I say that it looks that way but there’s a bunch of textual (and contextual) evidence that works against this idea which even HPL’s biographer L. Sprague de Camp overlooked. It’s likely – on balance - that Adolphe Danziger de Castro was not the inspiration behind the character (or, at least, its name), but from where, having eliminated this option, might it have sprung?

The name Castro is a very old one, originating in Spain. It literally means “castle” and was assigned in its early iterations to those who lived in, built or maintained such edifices. There are Italian, French and Portuguese versions of the name and variants in other associated dialects as well. Additionally, it’s one of the oldest Spanish immigrant names in mainland USA, being first recorded in Santa Barbara, California, in 1794. These days, genealogical sources for the history of the Castro clan are concentrated in Spain and along the Western seaboard of North America, Hawaii, and the Philippines. Of course, there are Castros all over the planet, and evidence of their multitudinous existences can be found alongside them; but evidential historical material for the various branches of the clan are singularly to be found in these areas. As Spanish names go, it’s probably not exactly the equivalent of “Smith” in English, in terms of being as common as muck, but it’s certainly close.

Lovecraft was probably looking for a fairly standard Spanish name for this fellow in his narrative; he was probably wanting to create a character who was an immigrant of some kind, an outsider from somewhere else, and the logical options for a place of origin were all the homes of Spanish-speaking communities – Mexico; Central or South America; the Caribbean, or Cuba. This last country might have been floating high in HPL’s thoughts.

Cuba was going through various ructions in the early part of last century. It went from being a protectorate of the US, to an independent state (with heavy US oversight), to a Republic, across the first 40 or so years of the Twentieth Century and there was a heavy cross-pollination of people and ideas between the two countries. Cuba was a key place for Americans to visit after the introduction of Prohibition, and the illicit importation of rum and other alcohol from Cuba and the rest of the Caribbean was a giant money-spinner for the US criminal community. After the stock-market crash in 1929, New York was reported to have been overrun with Cuban bartenders looking for work – obviously, these last events post-date Lovecraft’s crafting of his tale, but it shows the links that existed between the two countries at the time.

Fidel Castro and his socialist power-plays were decades away from Lovecraft in time when he was putting together this story; however, the name was common enough in the Spanish-speaking world that it would have made sense to him to use it for this particular character, underpinning his creation’s low social standing and status. As a name for a lowly commoner, a humble labourer or drifter, it’s more than suitable; but what inclined him towards the name as appropriate for someone steeped in illegality, or criminality? It’s clear from his correspondence that, for most of his life, HPL looked down upon anyone ‘foreign’ to US society, or existing outside of his own bubble of genteel, white, Anglo-Saxon refinement; so combining notions of the ‘commoner’ alongside those of the ‘criminal’ in the creation of Old Castro was probably just instinctual as far as he was concerned. However, there was a very famous Nineteenth Century criminal incident involving a person with the name “Castro” that might just have tipped the balance for Lovecraft as to whether or not to use the name in this instance.

We know, just to get this out of the way right from the start, that Lovecraft considered himself a ‘man out of time’; that he would have liked to have time-travelled back to the Nineteenth Century – or earlier – to an era when he felt his nature and capabilities were more suited to the life which he would liked to have led. It’s not unreasonable therefore, to infer that he would have read up on those periods where he felt himself to be more spiritually at ease. If he did – and most of us think he did - it’s highly likely that he would have stumbled across the kerfuffle that was the case of the Tichborne Claimant.

*****

While few nowadays might have heard of this Nineteenth Century scandal, at the time it was a huge affair and its ramifications – both social and legal - were serious and wide-ranging. British society was sharply divided on the question and a small industry of publishing and other forms of income generation to fund legal challenges coloured society at all levels. It spawned fraternal organisations working both for and against the claims of those involved and influenced media and governmental discussions within England and throughout the Colonies. Essentially, it was the tale of an incidence of fraudulent impersonation.

In April of 1854, Roger Tichborne, heir to the ancient and highly lucrative Tichborne title and estates, went missing when the ship in which he was travelling was wrecked soon after leaving Valparaiso. His mother – French and living in Paris – was beside herself with grief, refused to acknowledge that her son had died, and sent out notices across the globe asking for information as to his whereabouts. Her prime motivation was that some of the people aboard the foundered ship were rescued by another passing vessel which later offloaded these survivors in Sydney. It was assumed that Roger Tichborne was one of these and, for reasons unknown, had decided to lie low and to not notify his relatives of his status. In the meantime, the title passed on to another Tichborne, who proceeded to drink himself into oblivion.

In Australia, eager opportunists were on the alert for anyone who might fit the description of the blue-eyed, slightly-built, dark-haired young man, and a reputable lawyer thought he’d found the fellow working as a butcher in Wagga Wagga. He wrote to the Dowager and told her of his discovery, keen for her to forward funds which would help her putative son pull himself together and get back home. Eventually, she agreed to do so and - after a wild period of partying in Sydney, funded by the promise of the soon-to-be-gained inheritance – the so-called "Tichborne Claimant" went to London, prior to journeying on to France, there to confront his mother and be accepted as the rightful heir. It couldn’t fail; after all there was little to differentiate the two men:

Some of you might have spotted the obvious error. Roger Tichborne had been a willowy, dewy-eyed sort of a lad, while the Claimant was 25-stone (160kgs) of work-hardened muscle, running swiftly to fat, with reddish hair and grey eyes. Roger had been raised in Paris and spoke French fluently (and spoke heavily French-accented English); the Claimant knew not a word of the language. Further, he could never remember the first name of his supposedly beloved mother. Incredibly though - and probably driven to do so through grief - at their first meeting, she claimed vehemently that he was her son, returned miraculously from the sea.

Inevitably, the matter went before the courts. Both sides in the debate plundered the list of Roger Tichborne’s known associates looking for those who were prepared to sign affidavits as to the true identity of the Claimant (and paying exorbitant bribes to get the right responses). Meanwhile, the Claimant’s movements and activities in Australia were examined with a fine tooth-comb and it swiftly turned out that he’d shot himself in the foot almost before the swindle had even begun: upon arriving back in London, the first thing he did after disembarking was to contact his old family, the Ortons, and he was eventually unmasked as Arthur Orton, butcher, from a long line of English butchers. The trial lasted two years from 1873 to 1874 and the jurors found against Orton, who was sentenced to seven years in gaol for fraud, concurrent with a seven year sentence for perjury (he had, during the trial, defamed Lady Radcliffe, Roger’s ex-fiancée by claiming to have slept with her; turns out, Roger had an unfortunate deformation of his penis which meant that this was highly unlikely). Orton saw out his sentence, then wrote a book explaining why he’d done what he did. This led to a career on vaudeville stages in England and the US where, after getting up and telling everyone who he was, the audience was invited to pelt him with rotten fruit. He died in 1898.

*****

So, what does this have to do with HPL and his character from “The Call of Cthulhu”? Interestingly, after Orton first fled England, he tried to lay low in various occupations, all of which failed, including a stint as a sheep rustler. Because of this last career choice, he had to keep a low profile, moving to the (then) remote town of Wagga Wagga and changing his name to “Thomas Castro”. Until presented with the temptation to ride the Claimant ticket as far as it would take him, he was content with this assumed name and, even after his association with the Ortons was revealed during the trial, tried reverting to this assumed identity rather than be exposed as a member of his own opportunistic clan (it was his own brother who shopped him to the Tichbornes for a large pay-day).

Despite the outcome of the trial, the case resonated long afterwards through British society. In legal circles, the matter of his sentencing was considered contentious, the concurrent sentences being seen as a watering-down of the Might of the Law and the arguments about whether or not it was appropriate went on interminably. Tichborne Claimant memorabilia had been selling like hotcakes and, even today, fetches good money (a Tichborne Claimant legal defense bond sells for about $150 these days, and his cartes-de-visite are to be found everywhere). The idea of a lower class man risking everything on the throw of a dice just to blacken the eye of the nobility stoked a fire throughout working class England and cries of “Justice” for the "deprived" Claimant were heard right through to the next century. For the Tichbornes, it was a hollow victory, as all of their cash had been squandered to pay for bribes and legal costs.

I’m not certain as to which side of the debate Lovecraft would have weighed in on, but I’m fairly sure – as conservative as he was – that he would have deplored the actions of "Castro". For HPL, social class was a fait accompli, and someone trying to better themselves through the tawdry involvement of the courts and an assumed persona would have been something that would not have sat right with him. Noble bloodlines, familial inheritance and long genealogies are things that Lovecraft would have championed; not for him the “rags-to-riches” Hollywood happy ending of a Preston Sturges melodrama. Further, this was a tale of attempted corruption, of an assault upon the pure lineage of a genteel line of descent. The whole issue smacks of the type of hated miscegenation which, before New York, would have made Lovecraft’s blood boil. And it would have informed the character of “Old Castro” to a tee.

Did HPL know about the Tichborne Claimant affair? We’ll probably never know (although I’m sure someone out there with an intimate knowledge of his correspondence will tell me!). However, the scandal was huge and occupied almost sixty years’ worth of broadside real estate, even following "Castro’s" death, after he returned, broken and humiliated, from his tours of America. But there’s another reason why the matter might have leapt on to Lovecraft’s radar: the Tichborne family line was haunted:

In the Thirteenth Century, Lady Mabella Tichborne lay dying. As her time drew near, she implored her husband to instigate a tradition whereby, each Lady Day (March 25th), loaves of bread would be given freely to whomsoever showed up to the estate to claim them. This would come to be called the “Tichborne Dole”. Lord Tichborne, grumpy old bugger that he was, said that he would allocate grain for this purpose from as many fields as she could walk around carrying a burning torch. She managed to drag herself off her deathbed and crawl around a 23-acre field north of Tichborne Park which, to this day, is still known as “The Crawls”. Afterwards, she cursed the family line before dying, saying that, if the Dole were ever discontinued, thereafter the family would produce seven sons who would themselves only produce daughters, thus destroying the clear line of familial descent. The Dole was interrupted in 1821, supposedly activating the curse, which led directly, some say, to the ruination of the family that took place thereafter. You don’t have to have read “The Rats in the Walls” to know that this sort of thing was grist for Lovecraft’s mill and that, if he’d caught wind of it, he would have followed it up.

*****

This is all just supposition because, as I’ve already said, there’s no way to prove any of it. Most likely, HPL picked the name 'Castro' randomly from the ‘phone book and just liked the sound of it. It just seems odd to me that the character has a name at all, when the story would have sailed on equally as well if he’d been nameless. I like to think that Lovecraft was a little less arbitrary than that. This is a writer, remember, who took the time to research what publications were being printed in Sydney in 1925 (The Bulletin wasn’t quite the sort of journal that HPL thought it was but, whatever) and where the Australian Museum was located in the same city while putting together the exact same story. He named this guy for a reason; we might never know what that reason was, but we can still speculate.

All we do know is that it wasn’t – apparently – Danziger.

Review: "The Witch"

 

EGGERS, Robert, “The Witch – A New England Folktale”, A24/Parts & Labor/RT Features/Rooks Nest Entertainment/Maiden Voyage & Motte Street Pictures/Code Red Productions/Scythia Films/Special Projects, 2015.

An ongoing complaint that I have with horror movies of late is that they don’t really say anything new. There’s a lot of pretty photography, some swell acting and interesting use of special effects (both digital and otherwise), but on the whole it’s all in support of material which is pretty lacklustre. The recent version of “The Colour Out of Space” springs to mind as does “Midsommar” – very nice to look at but nothing we haven’t seen before. Here too, we have the same notion – this is a very attractive piece of work but the story, the issues it wrestles with, the themes and subtext, are all tired old notions and tropes that offer nothing new to what has been done elewhere. It interests me to note that the production house A24 helped make this thing (along with a mind-boggling slew of other companies) and that they also had a hand in making “Midsommar” as well as Eggers’s next offering “The Lighthouse”. Is the creation of cinematic white bread fare (“Lighthouse” excepted) their raison d’être I wonder?

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing from a certain point of view. Many old-time film staples are no longer available, in any kind of format. Old ground-breaking movies are referenced as seminal but aren’t screening anywhere, able to be purchased on disc or tape, or streaming on any platform, even YouTube (although what IS available on YouTube is pretty amazing). Taking these old horror stand-bys and putting them through a 21^st Century production routine is one way of ensuring that the old ideas don’t disappear into the haze of current blockbuster fare – there’s a reason we have radio stations that play Golden Oldies. However, it seems to me that these “new” films rarely take the time to acknowledge their roots and to tip their hats to the masters of yore. Memories are long however, and there are those of us who are simply left scratching our heads and saying “and…?”.

Basically, if you’ve seen “Children of the Corn” or “The Wicker Man”, you’ve seen “Midsommar”; if you’ve seen “Creepshow” or “The Thing from Another Planet”, you’ve seen “The Colour Out of Space”. Here, if you’ve seen “The Crucible” by Arthur Miller, then you’ve seen “The Witch”. It’s not as if the storylines are necessarily the same – if fact they’re suitably different – but the issues, the tropes, the way the plots unfold, the issues which they dangle from, are all standard and well-thumbed. In fact, they’re expected, to such a degree that these films must only be considered pastiche versions of earlier material, with an unacknowledged fealty to what has gone before.

There’re are some caveats with this movie. The long list of production companies that starts the film is a clear indicator that this is a first feature from an upcoming director. When you’re new, you have to hustle a lot to get funds for your project, and here it’s clear that Eggers spent a long time schmoozing before his film got green lit. A common feature of this practice is that you don’t want to scare away the money by doing something that’s too ‘out there’, that’s untried and which may not induce a return on investment by attracting viewers. Therefore, it’s not surprising that Eggers’s first feature is somewhat comfortable; that it’s a safe option in many respects: we have to acknowledge that there would be no “Lighthouse” without the “Witch” paving the way.

That being said, Eggers does work hard to make his piece seem a little bit above the herd. He is a stickler for period detail and there’s plenty to enjoy here. The language especially rings true here, taken as it is from old journals and court case transcriptions: if you’re going to build characters from their dialogue you can do worse than use the actual words of those who lived when your story is set. The result is very satisfying and works better than just having the actors bung on a cod-Brit accent and tossing in handfuls of “thees” and “thous”. Of course, using actual Brits to portray your nascent Americans is a smart step also. There are nice period details outside of the language too – the wardrobe and set design has all been obviously well-researched and the functioning of this stuff is nicely established.

Eggers likes having animals act in his flicks and this caused me huge problems during “The Lightouse”. I had to stop the film at the point when Young Thomas thrashes the seagull to death and I spent a long time checking up whether or not they had actually killed a bird on film – thankfully they did not. Here in “The Witch” there are a lot of animals involved – several goats, a horse, a dog and some ravens – and I was bit leery of some of it. There are at the end, several goat carcases lying about which always gives me pause – the sophistry that “these are animals which will probably be killed anyway so let’s record it for posterity”, is a thin and nasty one as far as I’m concerned and needs to be stopped, otherwise we should just go all Michael Cimino on our movies and kill anything that moves for the sake of cinema verité (I don’t think). This is cinema people, not snuff video production. There are standards. There are actually moments in “the Witch” where it’s clear that no animals are involved in some of the scenes where they are crucial, and that their involvement is implied rather than shown. Black Phillip’s attack on William is revealed as a jump-cut and the resulting collapse of the burgeoning log pile is filmed so that neither the actor or the animal – it’s clear – are anywhere near the potential danger. It’s nowhere near as bad as the fact that Barry Lyndon’s leg is actually stuck through the bed he’s lying on at the end of the eponymous film, but it’s ballpark.

Along with this there’s a confusing moment after Thomasin and Caleb are lost in the forest and their horse – Bert – is scared off. Caleb tries to re-locate it and only finds a mutilated body fallen into a thicket at a later stage. I had to stop the film at his point because it wasn’t clear if the body was that of the horse or of the dog (which had also fled from the witch’s assault): it was far in the background, fuzzy and indistinct. Kudos for sparing us the trauma of a dying animal but points off for nebulosity.

The atmosphere of the film is suitably moody and dark, in line with the tempestuous emotions of the players. Eggers’s film crew, under the guidance of Jarin Blashcke, are top notch and really deliver the goods here, while offering a promise of what was to come in their next project. The supernatural elements are all nicely low-key, allowing an equivocal perspective on the events while also delivering some good shocks. The apple was a particularly nice touch, I thought. The ending felt a little twee to me – if the reveal that (*gasp!*) the witches are real was supposed to be startling, then it was killed at birth (much like the infant Samuel at the start, which was genuinely alarming and which actually de-bags the cats that the ending was relying upon). I was left wondering why we were being asked to be shocked by something which, from the beginning, was a fait accompli.

All of this aside, this is an entertaining work but, if you’re the sort of person who gets stressed by the tangles of bigoted religious distrust upon which “The Crucible” is built, then you might want to steel yourself. Eggers takes old cloth and makes new jackets from it – not as ineptly as in that despicable version of the “The Scarlet Letter” that starred Demi More and Gary Oldman (shudder!) – in fact, it’s quite an engaging piece. But nevertheless, it’s still old ground being covered.

Three-and-a-half Tentacled Horrors.

*****

Postscript: The marketing for this film is really annoying. If you look it up online you’ll see a cool image of a goat’s head (Black Phillip) and the standard title and tagline. But when I bought the DVD, the cover here in Australia is a cheesy shot of a naked chick walking through the woods under a full moon (as seen above). I mean, who makes these shit decisions? I’d rather have the goat’s head image than yet another cheesecake-y soft-porn shot that makes me uncomfortable when I front up to the cash register. All I can say is that marketing types have filthy, dirty little minds that inevitably run to lowest denominator thinking. This film is not about naked chicks walking through forests; it’s about something else. I refuse to even consider the possibility that the promoters of this DVD actually watched the thing – they just looked at some screen grabs and said, “that’ll do it – the shot with the naked chick”. Sheesh!

The other point that bothers me is the amount of flak the title gets for printing the word “witch” with two V’s rather than a W. Lots of commentators bitch about how, by the time this film is set, W’s were in common parlance and no longer cobbled together from unused V’s. Now, that might be true, but when you’re pilgrim settlers on uncharted shores, your available stocks of movable type are limited and, if you’ve lost your W, then two Vs will do it. Cut these guys some slack!

Hobo Signs...

In the aftermath of the Civil War in America, many displaced people – some the victims of war; some freed slaves, or those seeking freedom - took to the roads looking for places to live, to lay low, or to start new lives. Much of the movement of these displaced people coincided with the expansion of railroad networks and the growth of industry in the post-War era; the homeless wanderers made their way across the country by means of hopping illegally onto railcars and “riding the rails” to wherever the trains were headed. As a group, this itinerant underclass became known as “Hobos” and they were a feature of the American landscape right up until the end of the 1930s.

In line with the pioneering literature of the country – from dime store cowboy novels to the loftier heights of such works as Huckleberry Finn – the lifestyle of the hobos became suffused with romantic notions of freedom and of being footloose – not tied down by the tiresome exigencies of a tedious workaday lifestyle. Hobos took on the sheen and romance of the European Troubadours, becoming a gypsy race free to roam and do as they pleased, without having to answer to any higher power. Of course, there was the downside to this lifestyle, in that it was based on a certain level of illegality – flouting carriage laws as they pertained to rail networks, and some petty larceny in order to avoid starvation – and a degree of danger – of being run over by a train, or of being beaten up by zealous law enforcement agents – but this was considered a fair exchange for being free to do as one chose.

In cinematic circles, this romantic sheen was all too clear - performers such as Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, Buster Keaton and W.C. Fields, along with many others, created characters and made films glorifying the gleefully shambolic lifestyle of the hobo. In fact, the down-at-heel, hardscrabble homeless clown became an entertainment staple informing all kinds of media representation from blockbuster movies to Disney comics.

Hobos were said to have their own codes of governance – particular rail networks were jealously guarded by hobo factions who prevented others from using them – and to have their own argot in order to speak without the uninitiated overhearing what was being discussed. Such notions have been the tradition in many underworld societies across the planet from the earliest times and finding these associations within hobo lore is hardly surprising. Along with a vocabulary of jargonistic terms however, hobos are almost unique in having their own written form of secret communication, a system called “Hobo Signs”.

These signs were a collection of symbols that could be quickly and easily scrawled in chalk, or scratched, on walls, telegraph poles, fences and other community features so as to impart information about the locality to the initiated. A short search online will bring up many complex syllabaries of these signs collected from many sources and a facility in using them can be gained in fairly short order. Using the symbols, hobos could warn each other of the presence and temperament of dogs or other building occupants; could point the way to local campsites; and could identify good places where trains could be jumped, amongst other crucial information.

Some commentators claim that the system was merely a simple and useful means whereby wandering individuals - down on their luck and just looking to get by - could help keep each other from harm. However, as with most things of this nature, some factions could turn the benign system to dark ends and, as a result, many symbols arose which were of benefit to that subset of hobo-kind referred to as “yeggs”, or hobos who survived by means of breaking and entering buildings and from thievery. Ultimately, a dark tone of criminality suffused the code system.

The symbols were made available to young people through the American scouting movement who included the syllabary in their guide-books as a way of identifying local hobo activity: such codes were often thought to be educational to young minds who were also taught other code systems from semaphore, to Native American pictograms to Sherlock Holmes’s “Dancing Man” cipher. But here’s the kicker: the Hobo Sign code was not real.

*****

Many people in American history spent time on the road, living rootless lives and freewheeling their way across the country, illegally riding the trains. Among them were full-time hobos such as Jack Black (not THAT Jack Black), Joe Hill (not THAT Joe Hill), Bertha “Boxcar Bertha” Thompson and writer, Jim Tully; and other part-time hobos such as Woodie Guthrie, Jack London, Harry Partch, Louis l’Amour, Jack Kerouac and Robert Mitchum, among many others. None of these people mentioned, or recorded in their memoirs, ever having encountered a system of information transmission which helped them make their way across the country. In fact, the closest they come to it is Jack London’s memory about “monicas” (aka, monikers) being used:

“Water-tanks are tramp directories. Not all in idle wantonness do tramps carve their monicas, dates, and courses. Often and often have I met hoboes earnestly inquiring if I had seen anywhere such and such a ‘stiff’ or his monica. And more than once I have been able to give the monica of recent date, the water-tank, and the direction in which he was then bound. And promptly the hobo to whom I gave the information lit out after his pal. I have met hoboes who, in trying to catch a pal, had pursued clear across the continent and back again, and were still going.”

In this sense, the “monica” is the equivalent of the modern graffiti artists’ “tag”, but with the more prosaic function of simply letting others know about who had passed through, when, and to where they were headed.

From the 1890s (when the term “hobo” arose in California) through to the end of the 1930s, newspapers reported sightings of hobo signs in local communities and even printed photos of hobos drawing the signs on walls and telephone poles – these were invariably staged by journalists filling a slow news day. Oftentimes partial syllabaries were published along with such fare in an attempt to instill local fear of the homeless within the community.

Ultimately, this is why the notion of a hobo sign language arose: America is a place which prides itself on the idea of everyone having a fair go, of everyone being able to achieve their goals by means of determination and hard work; an underclass of freedom-loving iconoclasts who flip the bird to this notion of the American Dream is undesirable to the status quo. A sign language which reveals just how the hobo community supposedly dupes and cons the average householder in order to slack off from responsible productivity is an object lesson to the citizens. This false cipher gives license, on some level, to the average American to despise the homeless and unemployed outsiders amongst them and, with impunity and justification, treat them with harsh – even brutal - disrespect. As sinister as the Hobo Signs might seem themselves, their purpose in being made is far more sinister again. Protocols of the Elders of Zion, anyone?

The American Boy Scouts were given this information as a spur to keep them from dropping out and deciding to jump off the Capitalist treadmill, instead adopting a slacker lifestyle (as we would term it nowadays) forged by sponging off others in the glamorously cool way depicted by Chaplin and others in liberal Hollywood. It’s highly likely that the Hobo Signs were derived by their conservative creators from Native American pictogram forms that proliferated among the Plains and Pueblo Indians (and other nations): this is in itself ‘marginalization by association’ and adds extra layers of wickedness onto the whole process. In fact, since to create the symbols and their meanings their originators would have to have had a level of understanding about hobos, the homeless, and their lifestyle, the stunning lack of empathy towards this subsection of the community that they reveal is truly gob-smacking in its cruelty.

*****

So, what does this have to do with Call of Cthulhu and the idea of a world infested by the Lovecraft Mythos? Well, as much as tentacular horrors from outer space don’t really exist in the world (as far as we know), other unreal things might also inhabit our roleplaying worlds with impunity. In a fantasy world – or a fictional recreation of the factual one – such things as the Hobo Signs might be real, and function as their creators had intended. A tale of Mythos horror might well be revealed by the Investigators stumbling upon a cryptic communication being passed by itinerant drifters. The symbols indicate that there is “bad water” at a particular campsite: in what way is the water “bad” exactly? Investigators might follow directions given them by a dubious character only to encounter a hobo sign telling them to “run away!”: what do they do? A party might even adopt the symbols as a means of covertly discussing logistical or other issues in the course of their adventures. And what if the Hobo Signs were not in fact being used by hobos at all, but by some other, darker, malign and not-quite-human element of society…?

It’s a bit disillusioning to discover that something I read years ago in my Childcraft Encyclopedia - and which I took as gospel – turns out to be so much horse-pucky; however, the true nature of the phenomenon is illuminating and, on balance, hardly surprising. That being said, other aspects of the hobo lifestyle – their code of conduct and ethos, their jargon (much of which has passed into vernacular American English) and the lives of the famous among them – are true, and they throw illuminating spotlights onto the world in the times during which Lovecraft wrote and in which Lovecraftian stories are set. As usual, it’s an object lesson in learning to sift the evidence of history wisely…

Review: "The Lighthouse"

EGGERS, Robert, “The Lighthouse”, A24 Films LLC/Regency Enterprises/RT Features/Parts & Labor Productions, 2019.

Now, this is more like it.

I was beginning to think that the horror genre, at least in terms of cinema, was becoming a pre-chewed slab of James Wan-styled inconsequence. Everything was turning on sinister poppets and dead nuns set in pastiche previous decades trying too hard to be authentic. There didn’t seem to be a genuine vision out there, trying to find its own way through the morass. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, there is a fair deal of interest out there in the genre and in taking it in new directions; none of it seems to be making it to the big screen, however. How good then, to discover something like this.

“The Lighthouse” is Eggers’s second full-length feature and is also (as was his first film) set in the New England area of America’s East Coast (I feel I need to be specific about this – most places where the British established colonies have regions named ‘New England’; Americans seem to think they are unique in this regard when they quite patently are not - the southern coastal region of New South Wales, for example, is also called “New England”). The scene is a lonely lighthouse on a rugged shoreline and the characters consist of two dour and weathered men both named Thomas (although initially, we are introduced to the younger of them as “Ephraim”). This set-up is hugely claustrophobic and lends itself immediately to all kinds of psychological distortion, since it turns out that at least one - or both - of them go quite loopy.

Adding to this closed-in feeling, the entire film is shot in monochrome, in a ratio of 1.19:1 (making each shot almost square) and using special lenses which modify red tones, causing them to darken significantly. This means that all imperfections in the actors’ skins are highlighted, giving them a craggy, beaten and slovenly look – perfect for two blokes living in hard weather on the far backside of the world. Every frame of this film feels like an old-time photograph come to life and this is a revelation. Adding to this, the dialogue is all taken from original sources, patterned after actual logs and accounts written by people of the period. It sounds a bit cod-pirate initially, but once you’re in the swing of it, it works beautifully.

In terms of casting, two better actors couldn’t have been chosen. “Old” Thomas is played by Willem Defoe who inhabits the role of the Ancient Mariner to perfection, while “Young” Thomas is portrayed by Robert Pattinson. Now, Pattinson is not my go-to guy for anything, really - he irritates the be-jeezus out of me more often than he doesn’t – but here, he’s perfect. He looks right; he sounds right; he’s just right for the part, as much as it pains me to say it. Of course, I watched all of the special features on the disc and the interviews with him talking about the role were just as I imagined they would be – affected; bored; self-obsessed – so it just goes to show that, when pressed, he’s a better actor than he claims not to be (he’s spent a bunch of time in the media recently claiming that he “doesn’t know how to act” – he’s lying, folks, and here’s the proof).

Defoe has that tried and tested ability to go from disdainful patriarch to grinning maniac in a heartbeat which has worked for him time and again across his career and here it not only works a treat but it feels real; multi-dimensional. Nothing rings false and both of these guys pitch to the back row in terms of their performances. Just watching them both chew up the gorgeous, weather-beaten scenery is worth the price of admission.

The narrative arc of this film is taken from a real historical event which happened in Pembrokeshire in Wales, in 1800-1801. Two lighthouse-keepers (or “wickies” as they called themselves), both named Thomas – Howell and Griffith - began a four-week stint at the Smalls Lighthouse situated 32 kilometres off the coast. The two were known to harbour animosity towards each other, inevitably falling to violent argument whenever they found themselves in each other’s company. A short illness affected the older Thomas after their arrival and, in the teeth of a rising gale, forced him to succumb. The younger man, fearing that investigation would mark him as the man’s murderer, kept the body in a box and lit the emergency beacon, signaling for help. Unfortunately, a savage storm prevented all boats from mounting such a rescue and, after the rotting body became unbearable to co-habit with, the remaining wickie lashed the box to the companionway railing surrounding the light and the elements took their toll upon it. At one point, the dead man’s arm protruded from its makeshift coffin, flailing around in the wind and causing a nearby ship to halt its rescue attempt – despite the emergency beacon – because they interpreted the waving arm as a sign that all, in fact, was well. The pounding of this same dead hand against the lighthouse window drove the remaining Thomas to the brink of madness and he was later rescued, after the storm abated, white-haired and gibbering. The event altered lighthouse-keeping policy from that point forward, ensuring that three men, rather than two, were assigned to each beacon from then on.

Much of this scenario has made its way into this film: the embittered and angry Thomases; the paired wickies; the monumental storm preventing rescue – it’s all here. Added to this is the almost unbearable confinement suffered by both men as they try to navigate the enclosed space which houses them. The Older Thomas is high-handed and imperious, citing his longer period of employment as evidence of his higher status, and careless about his personal habits and their effect upon the Younger Thomas (there is much farting and other noxious forms of scatology on offer here). Young Thomas has a dark secret which is slowly revealed as things progress and with which he wrestles guiltily, eventually coming to a kind of confession which seals the older man’s doom (Old Thomas treats the issue trivially and uses it rather rashly against the younger man). Young Thomas becomes obsessed with the light, access to which is denied him by the older man as a symbol of his experience and privilege, and his usurpation of power and claiming of ownership forms the bulk of the second half of the tale. There is some playing around with the notion that Older Thomas represents Proteus, the sea god, from Greek mythology, while Younger Thomas symbolizes Prometheus, the notorious stealer of holy fire: there are nods to all of this, but none of it is heavy-handed. Most of the more outré elements can be interpreted as Younger Thomas simply losing his mind and the carefully orchestrated equivocation of this material gives the piece extra strength and punch.

In the lead-up to this film’s launch I was hearing all sorts of Lovecraftian whispers that it was tied-in somehow to the Mythos. Sure, there are some tentacles and a pelagean creature (again, probably only in Young Thomas’s head) but, along with the New English association, much of this turned out to be – thankfully! – just some eager fan-boy’s hopefulness. If there’s a bit of this film to which I took exception, it’s the killing of the seagull, which is horrific, and I was truly thankful to learn that it was done using special effects – despite there being no “No Animals Were Harmed…” disclaimers in the credits, which was a bit disturbing to note.

In the final analysis, this is an excellent and stylish piece of work that is very much worth your time in checking out. It has nothing to do with Lovecraft and the Mythos - despite what the breathless hordes are panting - but don’t let that put you off: it's its own beast and a deliciously horrid one at that.

Five Tentacled Horrors from me.

Review: "Midsommar"

 

ASTER, Ari (Dir.), “Midsommar”, A24/BR.F/Square Peg/Lionsgate, 2019.

Have you ever heard an instance of glossolalia? The so called “speaking in tongues” has quite a musical quality to it, with rising and falling intonations and cadences and mild interweaving musical themes. Some people find it strangely thrilling and soothing – either because of its mysterious origin (as an instance of supposedly divine inspiration and contact), or because its mere presence is interpreted as a manifestation of The Beyond. Personally, I find it quite grating to listen to. It wanders; it never seems to know where it’s headed; it’s endlessly reiterative and tentative-sounding – like someone trying half-heartedly to pick out a Philip Glass piece on a piano. It sounds as though each individual performer is not totally committing to it and is sure that, at any moment, the whole thing might suddenly stop and so they’re trying their damnedest to not be the last one left crooning when that happens.

I bring this up because most of the soundtrack in this movie resembles glossolalia, albeit it is mostly instrumental, not vocal. At various points there are fiddles and flutes making endless glissandi and arpeggios in the background and – while at times it’s quite lovely to hear – it eventually becomes fairly drone-like and annoying. I think this is intentional. The people in this story are, for the most part, quite mad, and this soundtrack is certainly emblematic of what must be passing through their heads.

Horror fare, especially in the UK, has taken a sharp turn toward the Folk Department of late and these kinds of narratives – of bloodthirsty rural traditions irrupting out into the modern sunshine – are definitely seeing a revival. Magazines such as “The Ghastling” and “Hellebore” are attempting to breathe new life into the concept that was crystallized by such movies as “The Wicker Man” and “Witch-Finder General”; Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery”; almost anything by Alan Garner; and 80s slasher flicks like “Children of the Corn”. The focus of this material is upon long-standing – supposedly, millennially-old – traditions linked to nature and the surrounding environment and the accompanying ritual behaviour designed to appease, or entice, natural forces, or to bring the community closer to some perceived natural, cyclical way of being. Sometimes, there is an actual supernatural entity in the background of all this activity; other times, it’s just crazy people who should know better.

Such it is with this present example. We meet Dani, a university-level psychology student who has just suffered the loss of her entire family at the hands of her schizophrenic sister, who gassed herself to death along with her parents. Dani’s grief and outrage is barely handled by her oxygen-thief boyfriend, Christian, who is meandering through an anthropology degree – mainly because of the opportunities for sex and drugs – along with his best buddies, Josh and Mark, a useless crowd who feel that Christian is being ‘pussy-whipped’ by his ‘frigid’ girlfriend and her ‘baggage’. A visiting student from Sweden named Pelle offers to take the guys away to his home country to see the high summer festivals of his home town: the guys decide that this is the moment that they can shake Christian free of Dani and have a sex-and-drug-filled holiday together; however, due to Christian’s mealy-mouthed attitude and general incompetence, Dani winds up learning of the plan and going to Sweden with them.

From here on in, we are introduced to the rural community from which Pelle originates and we see the outwardly friendly and welcoming attitude of the community’s denizens which throws into stark relief the bitchiness, shallowness and craven attitudes of entitlement displayed by Christian and his friends. This is a truly abhorrent bunch of people, driven by narrow impulses and expectations and firmly reliant on a belief that – being American – everyone will cut them some slack; even our heroine Dani has elements of this in her character. Well, the local villagers certainly cut them, I’ll give them that.

After showing up at the village, our crew is combined with an engaged British couple – Simon and Connie – brought to the festivities by Pelle’s brother Ingeborg. We don’t see much of them, but, on the whole, they are far better behaved and more perceptive than our Yanks, who fail repeatedly to see beyond themselves and their own desires. Consequently, these are the first two to ‘disappear’. After this, as the nine-days’ Summer festival rolls on its course, our group of visitors gets picked off one-by-one in an escalating series of horrific, brutal encounters, which our self-involved victims fail to see coming or deflect, so far up their own arses have they shoved their heads.

I was a bit conflicted about this. On the one hand, as a viewer of the movie, you can see the enfolding net of the villagers slowly enmeshing our party of adventurers, and it is truly calculated and chilling in its ramifications and effects. On the other hand, I couldn’t imagine it happening to a more deserving group of people. My sympathies were nowhere: I disliked Pelle and Ingeborg for being the mendacious procurers that they become rewarded for being; I disliked the Elders with their casual brutality and twisted rationales; but I was also furiously annoyed with Mark for his hide-bound cultural insensitivity, and also the petty pissing match that takes place between Josh – who came to the village specifically to study its traditions for his thesis – and Christian who decides after that fact that he wants to write about the place as well. No-one is likable in this film; there’s no-one really to relate to. Dani is given our sympathy due to her horrific family troubles and the fact that she’s roped to a thoroughly despicable partner, but she gets railroaded along with everyone else and even her ‘shocking’ decision at the end has very little sting. It’s like the world just made a little garbage can for a select group of nasty humans to go and die in. Go planet!

Like a lot of these types of narratives, it’s not so much what happens to our victims but how. The village in this film is entirely constructed as a map into which our story falls, once we’ve left America and the populated bits of Sweden behind. Much of the village’s architecture is covered with drawing and murals which give hints to the viewer (certainly, none of our victims ever pick up on these tidbits) as to what might be coming next. The gateway into the village is a huge circular representation of the Sun; standing directly opposite this at the other end of the settlement is a yellow triangular house which, we’re told, is “off limits”: our narrative winds its way inevitably from one to the other. The villagers deflect curiosity and nosiness, and set up the demises of our characters with studied ease; in fact with an ease that is immediately apparent to the viewer and which has them yelling at the screen (in my case, at least) for these useless boneheads to wake up and smell the goddam coffee. Subtle, it ain’t. The two Brits are the only ones who sense that something is definitely stinky in Denmark and who make efforts to escape: their captures and deaths are the only moments when the villagers have to take extreme steps to avoid complete exposure. Our Americans, on the other hand, are completely fooled and grab what’s offered with both hands and little regard. Irritating.

Given the architectural and cultural detailing on display in this film, it’s clear that the director wanted to capture as much of it as possible for posterity. The sets and costumes, the set dressing, the landscape – it’s all lush and wonderful and the camerawork is just amazing to see. That being said, Aster treats it all like it’s a doll’s house, tiny figures moving in a constructed world, and this might be a deliberate choice. What it does though, is it puts all the characters into the middle- or far distance in each scene. There are close-up moments – mainly of Dani, and certainly ‘hero shots’ of each village Elder as they take their evil moment to shine – but the cast is mainly viewed as diminutive players on a vast stage, to the point where they become unidentifiable. As a particular case, Simon is only ever seen close up after he’s been horribly killed; for most of the proceedings otherwise, he’s a distant brown figure and an accent. Even dead, he’s had his lungs ripped out through his back and his eyes masked by flowers, so it wasn’t even initially clear that this was him. The same with Connie: at the finale a grey corpse on a wheelbarrow turns out to be hers but it’s not immediately obvious that it is, and it has to be inferred from context. (You will suffer if you don’t pay attention with this, folks!)

Finally, there’s the violence. This is harsh. The R-rating here is for the gruesome detail of bodily injuries and the lingering camera shots that display them. If hyper-realistic trauma damage is something that you’re not capable of easily withstanding, you might want to look elsewhere. The brutality here is casual and grotesque: no-one gets whacked on the head with a mallet where two or three well-aimed thumps will make sure. It’s all in stark contrast to the pretty white blouses and sunny countryside, which definitely ramps up the impact and drives the ugliness of it home. For the keen-eyed however, there are warnings in the wall murals and embroidered decorations, so you’ll at least have a slight chance to anticipate the worst of it.

For Mythos devotees, especially those with a yen for Ramsey Campbell’s works in that regard, there’s a nice nod to The Revelations of Gla’aki – the holy book of the Village Elders is a stream of consciousness rambling by a deliberately-generated inbred savant, created to keep the volume going into the future. It’s one of very many moments of extreme ickiness in this movie.

In the final analysis, what’s to like? This is a very well made and put together movie; the photography, the casting, the locations – it’s all a treat. The characters are all vibrant and well-realised, and their interactions and individual arcs – while not surprising – are believable and well-portrayed. It’s a very attractive vehicle. It will hardly surprise the viewer, however; there are no challenges to expectation at all: we know, going in, what to expect, and all of those things happen. It’s murky too (despite all of the bright sunshine): everything is shot too far away from the screen and we never really get a visual sense of the characters as anything other than distant puppets, highlighted by variations in colour. No-one here is a sympathetic person and I wasn’t even left wondering what might happen to Dani afterwards. This is a very long film that leaves no firm impression, apart from its stark gore and idiosyncratic soundtrack.

If folk horror is your bag, there are lots of interesting things happening online and in the world of print media at the moment. I suspect that, as far as cinematic versions of the form go, what's been done already will stand up as well, or even better, against what might turn up in the next few years. If you've seen "The Wicker Man" (the 1973 version with Edward Woodward, Britt Ekland, Ingrid Pitt and Christopher Lee; not the 2006 dreck with Nicolas Cage), or "Blood on Satan's Claw", then you've seen this film; it's definitely a love-note to those movies. It doesn't really add much that's new to the genre though.

Three-and-a-Half Tentacled Horrors (with flowers in their hair) from me.

Player Handouts: Spawn of Azathoth, Part 1 – “A Ghostly Presence”

I was going to be concluding my series of module handouts from the CoC version 6 rulebook by doing the resources for “Dead Man’s Stomp”; however, they have proven to be fairly tricky and time-consuming, so I thought I would jump into the “Spawn of Azathoth” campaign in the interim. “Stomp” has handouts which are vastly more interpretive than the usual scenario – the information is left largely in the hands of the Keeper - whereas “Spawn” has information which is more-or-less cut and dried… although the sheer quantity is terrifying! This is a beast of an undertaking, but it has the virtue of being able to be broken down into bite-sized chunks, making my workload a little less Sisyphean. The clear parallels between these two projects is that they are both incredibly well-written – the first by Mark Morrison and the second by Keith Herber – and I don’t want to get them wrong.

*****

The introduction to “Spawn” is called “A Ghostly Presence” and embroils the party with questions surrounding the death of a former teacher and mentor, Dr. Philip A. Baxter. One party member receives a horrible visitation in the night prompting them to try and contact their old teacher: they are informed by the housekeeper that the Professor died just the day before. A death notice in the morning newspaper supports her statement, and provides details about the resulting funeral:

Azathoth Papers #1

Players attend the funeral and meet all of the NPCs pertinent to the ensuing saga. They respond with varying degrees of friendliness: Emmett Baxter, one of the professor’s two sons, is quite abrupt and offers the players only his marked business card and a request to “make an appointment”:

Azathoth Papers #3

After the funeral is over and everyone has gone their separate ways, the players arrive back at their base to find that a telegram has been delivered, inviting them to the reading of the Professor’s will, at the offices of Baxter’s lawyer, Judge Braddock:

Azathoth Papers #2

The will reading is a fraught session of grief, anger and recrimination – as is usual for these kinds of things – and many interesting nuggets of information can be found. During the proceedings, the party is given a manila envelope, prepared for them by Baxter. It is noteworthy that a second envelope is also present, for an un-named individual not able to be there.

Azathoth Papers #4A

Azathoth Papers #4B

In the original text, this dream journal is presented all as one document; however, for the purposes of adding colour and legibility, I have broken it up into several images. There is also a map:

Azathoth Papers #4C

*****

That’s all for the set-up – from here the players need to get to Providence in Rhode Island and start poking about in the dead Professor’s affairs. What they’ll discover might unnerve them completely… 

(All material presented here is copyright Chaosium Inc., Hayward CA., 1986, 2005.)

Review: “Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark”

 

ØVREDAL, André, “Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark”, CBS Films/Entertainment One, 2020.

The ongoing pandemic is clearly continuing to be a dumping-ground for film studios’ misbegotten creations which they seek to disavow. This horror is a prime example. This movie was released in the US in 2019 and got a fair reception; it’s obvious to me however, why it has been snuck into this country on DVD while everyone – it’s assumed – is looking the other way.

I wasn’t at all interested in this when I saw it at the supermarket; but I was buying something else and the deal of the day was “two for $20”, so I grabbed this to score the discount. The two things that clinched the deal for me were the picture of Dean Norris on the back of the packaging (I quite liked his work in “Breaking Bad”) and the fact that Guillermo del Toro was listed as the producer. Turns out, M. Norris is a trivial element of the tale and del Toro’s input was lacklustre at best… or farcical at worst.

As I started watching this, I had this weird sensation: something didn’t click. The further I got into it, the more I felt that I wasn’t working with all of the required information; that there was something going on I wasn’t privy to. This started to irk me but, before I could examine it, I got distracted by the scarecrow:

When I was a kid, I watched a Disney film about a guy called Dr. Syn who dressed up as a scarecrow and rode out into the night to do stuff. I wasn’t sure exactly what he was doing, or why – I was only eight or so, so the intricacies of the plot eluded me - but there was this cool dude, dressed as a scarecrow and frightening the living daylights out of the bad guys! I was hooked. Later on, I discovered that the film was called “The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh” and was based on a series of novels by British actor and writer Russell Thorndyke, written from 1915 to 1944. Patrick McGoohan was the actor who played him in the Disney film (which you can watch on YouTube). Ever since that time, scarecrows have always ranked high in the creepy-cool stakes for me, even making me a little leery about “The Wizard of Oz” and those broomsticks in “Fantasia”. Here though, there was a problem:

Is this how scarecrows are made? I’ll admit, I’ve made several of these things in my lifetime and I’ve even dressed up as one for Hallowe’en, and this one looked wrong. As the main villain in the first story of this portmanteau film, he had a chilling enough face (with extra beetles) and the huge hole in his midriff was also cool: it was just his stance that threw me off. Slumping forward from his supporting stick, his arms hang loosely at his sides and his legs are splayed out wide to either side like he’s trying to mark each side of the mouth of a football (ie. soccer) goal. Weird. I was thinking that it’s a good thing that the hole in his tummy was there, otherwise it would look as though that pole he was hanging from had been rammed determinedly up his jacksy. Where I come from, scarecrows are positioned much as you would a person about to be crucified; given the director’s country of origin - or del Toro’s for that matter – is the position of this guy typical of Norwegian, or Mexican, scarecrows? I’m just saying, wherever this pose originates from, it’s got to be a minority expectation, surely.

So, being thrown for a loop by the ludicrous positioning of the straw man, I began to tune in once more to the plot. As stated, this is a collection of separate stories tied together with some tenuous connective thread. That’s fine; I’ve seen “Creepshow” and its associated ilk since back in the 80s – I’m down with that. This time however, it was the clunkiest stitching together of unconnected narratives I think I’ve ever seen. Three of the stories are based upon a clumsy info-dump issued by the targeted characters shortly before the horrors manifest to claim them and, to add insult to injury, make no sense, or fracture the exact logic that they try to create. In “The Big Toe” – why would anyone, having just discovered a human toe in their backyard, put that item into a stew that they were intending to serve to their family as an evening meal? And who, having been served such a meal, would eat it? I was bewildered. Then, another character claims to have been experiencing a bizarre dream about meeting a pale woman in a red room. He does meet said woman immediately thereafter, but in a series of white corridors under flashing red lights. So, no red room; not so much. And the Latino lad hears a nonsensical string of verbiage (“me tie dough-ty walker”) and immediately remembers – at length - a campfire story about another horrific entity and neither he nor the ensuing “Jangly-Man” explain, at all, what this piece of doggerel means. Deeply unsatisfying…

So, I watched while the film ran to the end of its train-ride. Nothing was unexpected and nothing was explained and certainly nothing was particularly horrifying. I was thinking: has del Toro completely lost his touch? I mean, this is what he’s coming to, off of winning an Oscar for “The Shape of Water”? This is a low bar, possibly even lower than “Crimson Peak”: a complete non-event B-grade waste of film stock with a hyper-inflated special effects budget. In desperation I turned to the special features on the DVD and finally received enlightenment: this is based on a book! In fact, it’s based on a three-book series of collected horror stories that apparently were a bit of a cause célèbre in the US in the 90s:

Collected and re-told by Alvin Schwartz starting in 1981, the books were a young adult publishing sensation in America, since they gathered together all of the campfire yarns and urban legends prevalent in youth culture at the time, beefing them up with some lesser known Poe trifles and other odds-and-ends of folklore. Highlighting the creepy stories were a series of gruesome monochrome images by Stephen Gammell which became integral to the overall tone of the books (a reprint in 2011 with art by Brett Helquist met with strong opposition and forced a further re-issue with the original art restored). In 1984, another collection – More Scary Stories to tell in the Dark – was released, and a third compilation – Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones – was produced in 1991. Other titles have appeared, but these were not written by Schwartz who had died by that time. In the background of the censorious rumblings that led to “Parental Advisory” stickers being stamped onto popular music of the time, these books were denounced and burned, banned and then liberated from banning, in repeated waves of attempted libricide by the morally self-appointed religious bigots of the US, seeking to “protect the youth” of that country, a collective youth who, like Charlton Heston, would only see their beloved scary stories prised from their cold, dead hands. From what I can tell (not being au fait with the books), the stories reproduced in this film are the following:

“Harold”

“The Big Toe”

“The Red Spot”

“The Dream”

“Me Tie Dough-ty Walker”

“The Haunted House”

…with other stories hinted at during the run-time. All of these tales come from either the first book by Schwartz or the last: did del Toro not like the second book, one wonders? It’s clear that what he does like is Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle, which provides much of the framing device for these lacklustre re-tellings, along with the main character Stella. So, my reading experience was of some use after all...

This is what is missing from this film. For someone like me who, until I Googled all of this stuff, had no idea that any of these things had occurred, this film makes absolutely no sense. This is a love note to a treasured literary series that automatically alienates itself from everyone unfamiliar with its source material. I guess that CBS and Entertainment One were figuring on only distributing this film in the US and that everyone else could go jump up a rope. This is narrow thinking and piss-poor marketing, allowing lazy screen-writing and bad execution. Dumb.

As someone who never grew up with campfire tales (or the sort of camps at which they are a feature), I would have welcomed the opportunity to become familiar with the source code of this phenomenon; to be made aware of this cultural icon; to be welcomed into this fold of fandom. But no, I was simply told “if you don’t know, then screw you!” and fobbed of with this lazy, ill-conceived shit. Thanks for nothing; and you can take my $10 and add it to your Scrooge McDuck money bin.

As far as it goes (and it doesn’t strive to go that far, or with any effort) this will fill an empty night but will – for people in the same position as myself – be more annoying than satisfying. It relies on sloppy narrative tropes – because that’s what the books were highlighting: “have you checked the children?”; the killer’s hook hand is stuck to the car-door handle – and it doesn’t struggle very hard, or with any finesse, to work these into its narrative frame. The Hollywood Playbook ensures that all irritating characters get whacked so that only the attractive ones and the ones “in lerv!” survive, and it tries wa-a-a-a-ay too hard to convince us that it’s 1968 for no real reason whatsoever (seriously - what was the point?). And Dean "blink and you'll miss him" Norris is completely wasted.

My one heartfelt takeaway from this is that all the Americans who watch this will take one look at Harold the Scarecrow and go… WTF?

Two-and-a-Half Tentacled Horrors.

*****

Postscript: So here's a picture of "Harold" by Stephen Gammell from the book:

It seems that the makers of this flick were just being doggedly faithful to the source material. Still looks dumb. Maybe they should have just let it go...