Ina's Horror Blog

Häxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages (1922) d. Benjamin Christensen

Häxan(1922) was completely crazy but it was fascinating to see. The scariest things about the movie were the hipster couple in front of me who talked the whole while except for the time when Hip-her fell asleep for a few scenes.
Meanwhile, the guy behind me ate throughout the film. Apparently, every bite of food was individually wrapped in super crinkly cellophane. He had a popcorn appetizer and then a something smelly entree in a little takeout container that it took him several sequences to break through the welded plastic seal. Next was something else entombed in cellophane then a bag of chips - crunchy AND clustered in the very bottom of an even crunchier bag. Finally(?)dessert was of single-wrapped hard candies further encased in a plastic sack. After he snarfled and smacked through all of that, gulping it down with some sort of vacuum-sealed bottled drink that he kept picking up and setting down on top of what sounded like a pile of brittle newspapers inside yet an other plastic bag, he promptly fell asleep and snored throughout the finale. Each time I turned my head Linda Blair-style hoping to silence him with a look, he was raptly attentive to the screen, contentedly providing a soundtrack for the film. Problem is, there was already a soundtrack being played by a live accompanist on the piano!

Please, I beg you to finish eating!

Witches'Brew @ BAM

 

Two Thousand Maniacs! (1964) d. Herschell Gordon Lewis

* “Brigadoon For Crackers”

I’ve been thinking about this Herschell Gordon Lewis movie a lot with the current reawakened attention (for black folks it never went away) to the terrors represented by the Rebel flag. It’s one of my favorite rural/hillbilly horrors (ie: Deliverance, Wendigo or Let’s Scare Jessica To Death – or any movie where lost city folks run up against their scary country brethren) as well as gory Civil Rights/race horror –if that is indeed a horror category—and in fact, I first saw 2K in the fantastic programming for A Time for Burning: Cinema of the Civil Rights Movement at Brooklyn Academy of Music.

From the program notes:

At the height of national tension over the civil rights movement, the godfather of gore released a movie of questionable taste and strong conviction that exposed the growing hostility between North and South like a raw nerve. A Confederate brigadoon emerges 100 years after being massacred by Union and gears up to torture and kill any Yankees that happen to ride through town.

What’s particularly effective in the film, for once, is the absence of black characters. So, no violence to or abjection of black bodies is seen on screen and white people, “Yankees” are the sole victims of other white people. Unlike many fictional civil rights era-set films (like the TRULY TERRIFYING The Help, say)

"You is SCARY"

there are no white saviors or fellow travelers or allies.  

And, as you know, traditionally horror scenarios the black man is always the first one to go. So, Two Thousand Maniacs is kinda refreshing!

 

Two Thousand Maniacs Directed by Herschell Gordon Lewis (1964) With William Kerwin, Connie Mason, Jeffrey Allen, Ben Moore, Gary Bakeman

And what about the theme song  which I cannot get out of my head:“Yeee HAW!  The south is gonna rise AGIN!”

And as we see from current events, agin and agin and agin if we don’t #staywoke.

(More about flags in a few days-- I'll post my installation project;UNION.)

*(I can’t take full credit for that bon mot though the horror/musical correspondences are of particular interest to me)

happy halloween!

via: Nightmares Fear Factory Flickr

This digital slip up story ("Instead of comedy cartoon, projectionists put on terrifying horror movie") is not funny--and yet it SO is!!

 Gorgeous "Horror of Dracula" in New Jersey (Yiiikkes!) post coming soon but meanwhile happy halloween from a lucky brooklynite after scary Sandy!

In this clip from Hollywood Revue of 1929 what's frightening are the "ethnic" types monsters loosed upon the chorines!

 

Lon Chaney's gonna getcha if you don't watch out!