The possessed/possessing House-a horror perennial!
I love that it has escalated into a scaaary lawsuit!
(If only I had tried this strategy with our New Rochelle home!)
*The images above are from my installation and video-in-progress, Il Giallo Della Paine! (The Yellow of Paine) (2011) 8 min.
A “scary” montage of a vanished space --our home of 40 years in New Rochelle, NY--that playfully uses the visual tropes and aural cues of 1970s, American and British horror and of the Italian thriller films known as "Giallo" (Yellow).
Music video by Rockwell performing Somebody's Watching Me. (C) 2004 Motown Records, a Division of UMG Recordings, Inc.
Murder, vampirism, cannibalism, drug addiction, alcoholism, sadism, mutilation...You, me, that girl, Lionel, all together, naked, drunk, clutching, sweating, biting...
Besides numerous intriguing lists, The Legend of Hell House (1973) has one, no two! of my favorite scenes in all of horror-dom! Gayle Hunnicutt's line reading here is...well...Legend!
Been there, done that, am I right Ladies?
And there's a fantastic cat fight that I wanted to add to the Cats category of my blog.
But when I saw it on TV while I was packing the other day I experienced a feeling of Real Horror, frustration and sadness recalling the shut down of posterous and the loss of my Ina's '70s Horror Blog that I began for my Horror class in 2010.
THE HORROR
OH THE HORROR!!
Consequently, while I was at the Headlands in spring of 2013 working on my horror installation, I was also frantically and ignorantly trying to archive the horror blog (as well as my class blogs from my teaching at Parsons) I thought without success.
But! In a mad moment today I began searching around and found the .zip file with the archive. Now all I have to do is to figure out how to reconstitute it. And clean and pack my whole house and move and, and , and...making a list...
There is still lots of text missing. And then there are all the dead links to try to restore-- but as I head off to the MIAS maybe I'll pay as much attention to the preservation and archiving of my own work as I anticipate paying to the vast materials I'll encounter in my time and beyond at UCLA.
Here's the long trailer (basically all the best scenes in the movie) for LOHH-don't miss the awesome cat attack!:
It's streaming on Amazon so check it out. There's much to love in the movie-Roddy MacDowell's big Calico the Cat eyes and goofball aviators (and performance), the electronic score, the decor that's determined to kill and Pamela Franklin's exquisite Mary Quant ensembles and excellent jewelry!
And that DARN Cat!
The Legend of Hell House (1973) d. John Hough starring Pamela Franklin, Roddy McDowall, Clive Revill, and Gayle Hunnicutt.
You'll LOVE "La casa dalle finestre che ridono" (1975) D. Pupi Avati
I was reminded of this movie, which I saw in my British and Italian Horror class, when I heard the news that the Pope had excommunicated the Mafia. La Casa is a somewhat non-traditional giallo, a 20s/30s period production that takes place in in a rural community rather than in the fashion/tourist/modernist worlds that we're accustomed to in Bava and Argento. Further, the film seems to touch upon social issues within its small, insular, and secretive southern (italian) town (like the southern-feeling New England town in Let's Scare Jessica To Death) where the protagonist feels estranged, and that is controlled by a tiny mayor and cabal dressed in gangsterish 30's garb. Are they the Black Hand? I have to revisit it but here's a completely different take on the movie in an article from Bright Lights Film Journal that focuses on the image of St. Sebastian revealed through the restoration of a religious artifact. (btw--this is the same job that lands Donald Sutherland in Venice in Don't Look Now...)