20 Years/Top 10 Posts #2: Walkabout (1971)

[This review is the second-most read blog in its first twenty years, with 45,000 (45K views) It was originally posted on February 15, 2011.]

Before director Nicolas Roeg gave the world one of the finest and most disturbing horror films ever made, Don't Look Now, in 1973, he crafted an equally brilliant but very different film set in the Australian Outback, 1971's Walkabout.  

Based loosely on a 1959 adventure novel by James Vance Marshall, Walkabout amply displays the director's unfettered, prodigious talent for crafting symbolic visuals. Roeg's considerable efforts here remind the engaged viewer that film -- in the final analysis -- is truly a visual art form.  

To wit, Walkabout is a film consisting of very little dialogue, and the shooting script was reportedly just fourteen pages long.  And yet there isn't a moment of "emptiness" to be found anywhere in Walkabout.  Rather, through the repeating motif of cross-cuts, director Roeg encourages audiences to consider a story about innocence, and perhaps more specifically, the death of innocence.

With the Outback serving as both a backdrop and character in the film's narrative, and by marshaling a voice-over poem at just the right moment (from Alfred Edward Housman's 1896 work "A Shropshire Lad,") Roeg crafts an immensely emotional film; one that will deeply affect you for days after a screening.  This is even more the case now, since Roeg's director's cut is featured on the blu ray edition rather than the original theatrical release (which trimmed much of the film's full frontal nudity).

When Walkabout was released in 1971, Roger Ebert awarded the film four stars but sheepishly discouraged reading too much into the film's overwhelming symbolism.   Other critics have generally been more willing to engage the film on its own terms.  Writing in The San Francisco Chronicle, critic Edward Guthmann (in 1997) wrote that Walkabout is a "a film that's part anthem to the primitive world and part rebuke to the dull, overinsulated selfishness of contemporary man."  

Sight and Sound's James Bell calls the movie "a piece of ‘pure’ cinema through the use of mesmerising images of the landscape, dramatic shifts to the subjective points of view of its characters, and the jarring juxtapositions in editing for which he [Roeg] would become well known."

Dominated by dazzling photography, gorgeous images and a lush John Barry score, Walkabout ably serves up a side-by-side comparison between disparate worlds: city life in modern Adelaide (though it looks like Sydney) and the wild, untamed life of the Outback.  

Unexpectedly, the crueler, more savage  and difficult world, according to the film, is that of the modern and "civilized" man. In the desert, at least, you can understand your enemies.

"I don't suppose it matters which way we go..."

In Walkabout, a teenage girl (Jenny Agutter) and her pre-adolescent brother (Lucien John) are transported out into the desert by their emotionally-distant father, a "structural geologist."  While the girl prepares a picnic in the desert and the boy plays with a toy airplane, the father -- seen rifling through work papers -- unexpectedly snaps.  Taking out a gun, he begins shooting at his own children.

The girl and the boy escape the surprising homicide attempt, and only the girl witnesses her father kill himself.  While their Volkswagen burns in the desert, the forsaken girl and boy begin a long, lonely trek through the desert, hoping to find their way home.  

This 1970s equivalent of Hansel & Gretel, the boy and girl, walk for days until coming upon a miraculous oasis: a small pond and a fruit-bearing tree.  After a few days, however, they have used it  all up and the slice of paradise becomes a haven for serpents; for snakes.

Soon, the girl and boy encounter an Aborigine teenager (David Gulpilil) on a "walkabout," a rite of passage in which young men trace the heritage of their ancestors on the land.  

This kindly Aborigine leads the boy and girl through the desert safely, provides for their survival needs (by kangaroo hunting and fishing...) and teaches them his ways.  The white boy even picks up his language.  After a time, these three youngsters cohere like a true family, and the Aborigine develops an unspoken -- and forbidden -- romantic love for the girl.

After some time in the desert, the Aborigine young man gets the lost youngsters to an abandoned farm, another safe haven for this "family" to play house. But when the lovestruck Aborigine launches into a courtship dance before the English girl, she coolly and silently rejects him.  

The next day, the girl and the boy find out exactly what that rejection has meant to their generous friend, and then head on...down the road, in hopes of returning to civilization.

Some years later, the grown girl -- now a bored housewife in Sydney -- tunes out her dullard husband's vacuous talk of office politics and remembers those long-gone days in the Outback; her days with the Aborigine boy and her brother...  

A final voice over ends the film on a melancholy and wistful note.  "That is the land of lost content/I see it shining plain/The happy highways where I went/And cannot come again."

"Every man, every woman, is a star."

As noted above, Walkabout is a comparison of disparate worlds. To achieve that comparison, Nicolas Roeg uses a variety of visual symbols in Walkabout to suggest the corruption -- or at least strangeness -- of the so-called "civilized world." 

Early in the film, for example, we see Agutter's character setting-up a blanket and picnic lunch out in harsh desert; clearly a misguided attempt to tame the unspoiled Earth. While she imposes mankind's sense of order on the desert, the film cross-cuts to views of lizards and other inhabitants, going about their business, oblivious to her attempts. 

In the same scene, the girl's father goes crazy after Roeg cuts to insert shots of work papers: seemingly endless alphabetical lists of minerals and sheets of byzantine maps. The visual implication set up by the editing is that the father's madness is caused by his job; that the pressure (represented by his work papers) makes him irrevocably snap. The civilized world has made him deranged. 

This critique of civilization recurs throughout the film.  For instance, as mentioned above, the boy and the girl find an oasis of life in the desert -- water and food -- and without thought of consequences, use it up in a matter of days.  When they leave, the land is dry; the fruit is stale and only snakes inhabit the tree.  

It wouldn't be a stretch to suggest that this image is a veiled reference to the Garden of Eden parable; and the idea of man expelled from paradise.  

Perhaps more plainly, the destruction of the desert oasis and its resources is referenced late in the film when the boy and the girl come across a similar setting, writ large: a virtually abandoned mining town.  

The town is now nothing but a scrap heap, a garbage junk in the middle of the Outback.  Everything of value has been taken from it (as was the case at the desert oasis) and man has left behind only his garbage and detritus; mountains of twisted steel and rubber.

Another scene, mid-way through the film, also deliberately critiques modern man.  The Aborigine, the boy and the girl come in close proximity to a plantation where a white man is exploiting the local Aborigine youth to create cheap plaster statues of kangaroos and the like.  Again, the idea here is one of taking a resource (in this case, a human resource) and using it for self-interest; to line one's own pockets.

Later in the film, Gulpilil's character spies  white hunters shooting game near the abandoned farm.  We see an animal die in slow motion, struck by bullets.  The sight of this deeply upsets the Aborigine, a hunter himself.  And the reason, I suspect is that the hunters have evidenced no respect for their quarry.  Their technology (their guns and their jeeps) gives them an unfair advantage over the land, and a distance from their behavior.  Skill does not come into the picture.  

By contrast, the Aborigine boy hunts to provide for his new family; and and does not kill more than the family can eat.  He survives based on his skill; not based on the technology he possesses. To express this point, Roeg again crosscuts between images of the Aborigine boy cutting up a kangaroo and images of a city butcher chopping up meat in his store.  The idea implicit here, again, is that one culture is interested in survival, the other in commerce; in making money off the land

Eventually, even the heroic Aborigine boy played by Gulpilil is contextualized as a resource to be used up.  He rescues the boy and the girl, even leading them safely to a highway and a home of sorts.  But when he seeks a deeper meaning -- an emotional connection with the English girl -- she shuts him down.  She ignores him.  He has crossed a barrier she will not tread across and she essentially ignores him and spurns him for it.  Her attitude, now that  personal survival safety has been established, seems to be "what have you done for me lately?"  

Only in the film's last scene, do we see an older, reflective woman consider the Aborigine boy; and what he meant in her life; and what he gave to  her.  She imagines a scene right out of Paradise: the three wanderers in the desert frolicking in the water; on a rock.  It is an image of lost innocence, and it is the image we leave on in Walkabout.

In toto, the image of civilized man in Walkabout is not at all positive.  He is a creature who uses the land, rather than living off it in harmony, and he is obsessed with things that -- in the context of the desert -- have no significant meaning (consider the read weather balloons set loose in the wild by a group of horny European scientists in one scene...what purpose do they serve?).

Roeg's point isn't so much that we should all live in the wild and hunt for our own food.  The point is that in the vast desert, commerce, alphabetical lists of minerals, weather balloons and society's rules concerning miscegenation serve no useful or meaningful purpose.  Rather, torn from their context in city life, they actually go against nature, even human nature.

Although it is uncomfortable to write about this in our morally judgmental society today -- especially given that both Jenny Agutter's and David Gulpilil's characters are minors in Walkabout -- the plain fact of the matter is that as the film plays out, the Aborigine boy and the English girl become very much aware of each other's sexuality.  An attraction forms, and in this environment who can say it would be wrong for them to act on it?  They are, essentially, the only inhabitants of this vast desert, and also the mother and father figure in the ad hoc family.

Gulpilil's character -- a man of nature -- understands that this is a relationship that could and should happen, given the circumstances.  

But returned to modern civilization (and bred to that civilization), Agutter's character cannot make the same leap.  Instead, she denies any feeling she might have for the Aborigine boy and falls back on the "etiquette" of her culture.  Early in Walkabout we see her practicing etiquette lessons while listening to a program on the radio; and that's the very world the English girl retreats to at film's end.

One of the best sequences in Walkabout (and one trimmed upon theatrical release) finds Roeg  again cross-cutting, this time between the Aborigine boy hunting with the English boy, and Agutter's young girl swimming sensuously in a desert pool, nude.  The feeling evoked here is of total freedom and innocence; of doing what comes naturally to survive. Of just living --and enjoying life -- in such an unforgiving, chaotic terrain.

Walkabout suggests that living off a harsh, natural land is tough work.  You have scorpions, ants, dehydration and other challenges to overcome.  You have to find water and hunt for your supper.  But I believe the film's ultimate point is that there is nothing harsher and more difficult than living a life that goes against your very nature.  

I submit that's the unhappy destination where Agutter's character finds herself at film's end.  A caged bird in an antiseptic high-rise apartment building, with only her memories of freedom to sustain her.  Certainly, the wistful nature of the final voice over suggests the idea of a paradise lost.

Walkabout's ending diagrams the death of innocence.  Gulpilil's character has learned that he cannot adapt  to the strange rules of  modern "civilization."  And in that coda -- set years after his demise - Agutter's sense of hoplessness is tangible.  It reflects, purposefully, the little boy's sense of defeat early in the film, upon reckoning with the unending desert, one stretching to unknown horizons.

"We're lost, aren't we?"

Abnormal Fixation, Season One, Now Streaming Free on Fawesome

Our award-winning, indie (low budget) series, Abnormal Fixation, is now streaming for free on Fawesome. All six episodes of the first year are available.  I hope you will check us out.

Abnormal Fixation at Fawesome,

The X-Cast: "Familiar"

I loved getting to discuss an iconic X-Files monster, Mr. Chuckleteeth and the episode "Familiar" on The X-Cast! 

Check the episode out, below!

Small Talk Appearance: "Best Horror Films to Watch on Halloween"

I had a great time with Jon on Small Talk yesterday discussion horror films (particularly slasher films) of the 1980s

Check out the episode at the link below.

"The Best Horror Films to Watch This Halloween" by Jonathan Small

Watch the latest episode of Small Talk.

Read on Substack

The "Shape" of Things; An Ode to Michael Myers

Nearly fifty years ago, John Carpenter created a masterpiece of the horror genre, Halloween (1978). Although the “slasher” trend has come and gone (and come back and gone again, in the 1990’s), the villain of Carpenter’s film, Michael Myers -- the Shape -- remains a potent terror in 2025.

So the question becomes: what is it, precisely, about John Carpenter's Halloween and its iconic “monster” that stands up to --- and actually encourages – continued study and fascination?

Understand, it’s not just the scrutiny of scholars, authors, bloggers, list-makers and admirers the globe around. Forty-four years after the film's release, Halloween's reputation only continues to grow, a fact evidenced by the premiere of yet another sequel later this week.  

Mainstream audiences feel the same way about Michael. 

Specifically, viewers of Halloween gaze intently at that blank, white, featureless (William Shatner) mask of "The Shape,” and then immediately recognize, at least subconsciously, that in terms of Michael, everyone is missing some crucial aspect of understanding.

Michael's true motives -- just like his concealing, ivory face-mask -- are not entirely filled in; not fully circumscribed. His personality and purpose seems oddly incomplete, and thus the shadowy, featureless mask fully and trenchantly reflects the inability to conceptualize or understand the thing that he represents. 

From this lack of understanding grows the seeds of terror. 

Why does Michael kill? 

Is he the Boogeyman? 

What drives him? How does he survive point-blank bullet strikes? 

As in life itself, Halloween provides no easily digestible answer to myriad questions about mortality and murder, destiny, choice, and chance.  The film itself note this, at least tangentially, in the scene set in Laurie’s high school English class.  The teacher discusses there the concept of fate. Some people just cannot escape their fate, she insists. It is Laurie’s fate to become intertwined, forever, with Michael’s spree.

But even the idea of fate does not explain perfectly Michael’s existence or nature.

Yet Halloween does brilliantly provide the attentive viewers some intriguing clues about Michael Myers and the things he signifies. Some of these hints actually seem to conflict with one another; and some are just barely enunciated. But again, this very facet of ambiguity makes the film and the iconic character himself  resonate more powerfully in the mind of the viewers. 

Stated simply, Halloween permits the imagination to fill in the narrative, explanatory gaps, and again, a sense of terror takes hold. Audiences see reflected in that blank, chilling mask all the things it fears -- all the things it doesn't understand -- about our lives in this mortal coil.

To boil this down Halloween provides us at least four important "leads" about Michael Myers true and highly unusual nature.  And it is important to remember that all of these clues don't take into account the "Laurie is his sister"-revisionism of the sequels. and the Zombie remakes).

These clues are, in no specific order:

1. Michael Myers is a Physical Representation of Laurie's Id.

This is the Freudian interpretation of John Carpenter's Halloween.  The Id is a component of Freud's so-called "psychic apparatus" or "structural model for the human psyche,” and basically, it houses the unconscious, basic drives, and instincts of the human animal. It controls the desire for sex and our other appetites too. It is amoral, chaotic, and egocentric.

Consider now the buttoned-down, Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis). She is both a good student and a responsible babysitter. She symbolizes the rationalist Ego, the part of the brain that holds the reins of control over our lives and seeks to "please" the Id in a socially and culturally acceptable fashion. The Ego represents common sense; even consciousness itself. This is the Freudian "borrowed face," the veneer of appropriateness plastered over the Id.

Accordingly, underneath the mask, Michael represents Laurie's Id, unfettered and on-the-loose, lashing out at those around her who more "honestly" contend with their drives and libidos (Annie and Linda) than does the Ego. 

Laurie even seems to "activate" Michael Myers, at least in a sense, by singing aloud a modern magical incantation (a ballad) on the day he stalks her. The lyrics to that ballad go: "I wish I had you all alone, just the two of us," and set up, rather nicely, the thrust of Michael's murderous mission on October 31st. He systematically kills all of Laurie's friends and acquaintances until it is, indeed, just the two of them. Laurie’s friends have sex (or hope to have sex), and Michael destroys them because they express what Laurie cannot.

Now, of course, some readers may rightly remind me that Michael cannot possibly be a product of Laurie's Id, since Michael was alive and killing before she was even born (back in 1963). That's correct. But do we know for certain that Laurie's mission of murder isn't the very thing imprinted upon that mentally-deranged mind behind the blank-white mask?

Horror scholar and professor Vera Dika wrote that "Carpenter openly represents Michael as Laurie's "id." This reading is supported by the inclusion of footage from Forbidden Planet (1956)...The earlier film had portrayed a situation in which the unconscious desires, or the id, of the main character became manifest and threatened to destroy him and his world. Similarly, Laurie is almost destroyed by the strength of her repressed unconscious impulses. Her battle with Michael is a substitute for the sexual act." (Vera Dika, Games of Terror: Halloween, Friday the 13th and the Films of the Stalker Cycle. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1990, page 51).

John Carpenter himself lends some credence to this Freudian interpretation of Halloween by noting that Laurie, "The one girl who is the most sexually uptight just keeps stabbing this guy with a long knife...Not because she's a virgin but because all that repressed sexual energy starts coming out. She uses all those phallic symbols on the guy...she doesn't have a boyfriend, and she finds someone -- him." (Danny Peary, Cult Movies. Delacorte Press, 1981, page 126).

This theory won't exactly find popularity with feminists or "Final Girl" proponents, since it positions Laurie as the repressed "creator" of the monster in Halloween, not a Girl-Powered heroine. In this reading, Laurie’s suppressed sexual appetite and longing is the drive that brings Michael to life as “The Shape” and even selects his victims. In this way, the noble Laurie somehow becomes responsible for Michael; or at the very least, connected to him in a very intimate, very personal way.

2. Michael Myers is Just a Developmentally Arrested Child Playing Halloween Tricks.

There's a such a thing as "psychological neoteny," the retention by adults of what are generally considered juvenile traits. In Halloween, Michael Myers seems "arrested" n an early point of childhood, acting out instances of so-called play but, because of his delayed maturity, failing to understand the true consequences of his actions.

A hallmark of childhood is the total and immersive interface with a world of make-believe play. In theory, make-believe play should teach a child to self-regulate and even learn self-discipline; a quality known as "executive function." But in Michael's specific case, nothing positive results from the fact that his mind is "frozen," essentially, in childhood. It's as though he's an overgrown kid, playing an elaborate trick-or-treat game without any acknowledgment of the harm that very game is causing to others outside himself.

It is impossible to deny the "game"-like aspects of Myers' behavior in the original Halloween. He sets a "stage" or "show "for Laurie in Lindsey's house: a prank involving the corpses of her friends and a stolen grave marking/head-stone. 

Also, at least to some extent, it seems that Michael strongly identifies with young Tommy Doyle...since he follows the boy home from school too. Halloween II and later films seem to forget that Michael actually stalked two people on October 31st, 1978: Laurie and Tommy. Perhaps this is because Michael is essentially delayed at Tommy's age, and sees Doyle as a contemporary; or surrogate. 

Michael evidences some interesting physical reactions after he kills the teenagers on Halloween night that also, if interpreted in a certain way, bolster this theory. He just stares and looks at them, tilting his head to one side. One must wonder if this Michael acts this way because the dead are -- counter to his  childish expectations -- not getting up and continuing to play. 

Michael has killed them, but doesn't really understand the finality of death. He is thus quizzical and curious over the corpses, wondering why the teens don't want to play anymore.

We can also judge that Michael is developmentally arrested at/or around 1963, the time when he committed his first murder (an action that no doubt also slowed down his formal education, another characteristic of many with delayed maturity.) 

3. Michael Myers is the Physical Embodiment of Fate

As note above, early in Halloween, there is a fascinating if brief scene set in a high school English class. Laurie is in attendance, listening only sporadically as an off-screen teacher drones on endlessly about the concept of fate in literature.

The unseen instructor then asks Laurie about her reading assignment, and Laurie answers by making a distinction between two authors, Samuels and Costaine. 

She notes that "Costaine wrote that fate was only somehow related to religion, where Samuels felt that fate was like a natural element; like Earth, Air, Fire and Water." 

The teacher further notes that Laurie is correct, that Samuels definitely "personified" fate. "It [fate[ stands" where a "man passes away."

Who else stands where a man passes away? 

Michael, of course, a character who survives stabbings and shootings and keeps on coming like a runaway freight train. He is Fate "Personified" (as Samuels dictated) and you can't kill something like Earth, Air, Fire or Water, can you?

This revelation of Michael as Agent of Fate opens up the whole "Boogeyman" Argument; that perhaps there is actually a fifth natural element, Earth, Air, Fire, Water...And Evil.  

If so, then Michael as a representative of this natural force and thus unstoppable; in kiddie slang, The Boogeyman.

The film's discussion of fate contextualizes Michael not as a supernatural avenger, but as a heightened, natural one. He is not magical, but rather a force as natural (and as essential?) as Air or Water.

So there is an order to the universe, it's not just what we had in mind, to quote another John Carpenter film.

4. Michael Myers is an Indictment of Contemporary, Rational Society: The Inexplicable and Undiagnosable Run Amok in The Scientific World

Finally,  John Carpenter’ Halloween suggests (or at least implies...) that Michael Myers represents some kind of modern-day "dragon" in a society that no longer recognizes dragons as real monsters.

As I wrote in The Films of John Carpenter, Halloween willfully "deconstructs" the technological, contemporary world so that, as viewers experiencing the film, we actually appear have more in common with ancient proto-humans huddling in caves than with our rational, 21st century brethren. In particularly, nothing in Halloween works the way it is supposed to work by our "rationalist," "daylight" standard of thinking.

From a certain standpoint, after all, Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasance) is a total and complete failure as a psychologist, unable not only to heal Michael Myers, but to understand what drives his murderous impulse. Loomis's role in Halloween is not that of a doctor, nor of a psychiatrist, but explicitly that of St. George: hunting down and slaying the dragon.

Similarly, Michael Myers suffers from no diagnosable or treatable psychological disorder. He is "purely and simply Evil." 

If you look in the DSM-V, you won't find "Evil" listed as a malady.

It is utterly unacceptable that rational, middle-class teenagers in Haddonfield should die at the knife of Michael Myers on the eve of the 21st century. That's just not supposed to happen in modern-day America. 

For one thing, there is the blanket of parental protection and love, which should shield children, right? Yet in Halloween, the parents (and most adults for that matter...) are mostly an afterthought. We see Laurie's father only briefly, never see the school teacher, and never get to meet the parents of Lynda, Annie, or even Tommy Doyle. 

Adults do not represent a positive, let alone helpful force in this horror vision.

Well, okay, if parents can't help save the children (who represent our tomorrows...), then there's modern medicine and cutting-edge science, which should not only diagnose Michael, but keep him behind bars. Right? 

Not surprisingly, it fails too. The "system" fails, and Michael escapes.

What about another important societal construct then: the law? Well, kindly Sheriff Brackett can't even protect his own daughter, let alone capture a mad-dog killer. Not a single cop on patrol even notices Michael's car parked on the street!

All the carefully-constructed traditional bureaucracies and cherished codes of justice, belief, and conduct ultimately offer Annie, Lynda and Bob zero protection. These kids are on their own. 

They are prey.

In fact, these teens have it much worse than our cave-men ancestors in pre-history. At least the cave-men knew to be afraid, knew to fear the forces in the dark that they could not comprehend. 

The characters in Halloween are thoroughly unprepared and unable to conceive of a reality that includes Michael Myers, and that's why they are such easy pickings. The movie thus indicts modern society rather fully: it is woefully unprepared to combat what may be a "natural force," Evil Itself.

J.P. Telotte wrote that "What Carpenter seems intent on demonstrating is how consistently our perceptions and our understandings of the world around us fall short...We are conditioned by our experience and culture to see less...to dismiss from our image contents those visions for which we might not be able to account..."(American Horrors: Essays on the Modern American Horror Film: "Through a Pumpkin's Eye: The Reflexive Nature of Horror." University of Illinois Press, 1987, page 122).

This reading takes on a specific relevance today, in 2018, in a world of so many school shootings, when the law, the government, and the media can’t save our children from being senselessly struck down in their classroom on a regular basis. Halloween in some way feels like a canary in the coal mine, a warning that our American institutions are failing, in no small part because they can’t or won’t reckon with a threat like Michael Myers.

Finally, one must reckon with the idea that not any one of these four interpretations above is absolutely the "right one" to come to a perfect understanding of Carpenter's film.

Rather, Halloween retains such power because the truth of Michael Myers seems to dwell in all these interpretations.

Ultimately, Halloween preserves the Shape's mystery and permits the audience to decide about the important things like meaning. 

Many of the sequels and indeed the Rob Zombie 2007 remake fail to live up to the original Carpenter film because they work diligently towards an opposite and inferior end; because they seek to diagram in details the answers about Michael for the audience's consumption and peace of mind. 

Yet peace of mind -- closure itself -- runs counter to what good horror ought to be.  Who wants to leave a horror movie content that everything is known; that everything fits into a neat little box? 

Personally, I want my slumber troubled; I want my mind bothered by the things only the genre can show me and tell me. If I desire peace of mind or resolution from ambiguity, I'll watch network television.

As a direct result of all the well-meaning but psychologically facile explanations of the sequels and the remake, the magic of Michael Myers is somehow bled away. 

When one understands that Michael is simply hunting his biological sister down, he becomes nothing but a garden variety wacko with a tough hide. 

When he is infused with supernatural powers and becomes a genetically-engineered Druid observing Samhain, he's just another easily explainable Devil, only one with an alternate religious belief system.

And finally, the magic of Michael Myers is totally squandered when viewers bear witness to the peculiarities of his abusive childhood; when they come to understand that he was raised in a violent, redneck household and is merely carrying on in the family tradition. 

Thus the later movies, and especially the re-imaginations nullify The Shape's Power. They turn it to ashes.

When considering "The Shape," it is better to ponder and speculate about Evil's True Nature than to know it all. 

Oscar Wilde once wrote that the greatest mystery in life is actually "one's self," and Halloween remains such an indelible viewing experience nearly five decades later because -- in addition to technical expertise and canny imagery – the Carpenter film leaves more than abundant psychic space for our imaginations to ponder the story, and the enigmatic man in the Shatner mask.

The Haunting (1963)

I'm delighted to introduce The Haunting (1963) to a new generation at the CPCC Levine Campus today at 3:30 pm. But I also wanted to share my thoughts about this classic of the horror genre here. It's a film that deserves to be remembered.

When first we glimpse Hill House in Robert Wise's chilling The Haunting the imposing old structure is a featureless black obelisk: a jagged silhouette carved out from brooding night sky.

Secrets dwell inside Hill House -- in the dark; in the night -- and yet the director's selection of visualization (a shadowed, blackened house with no distinguishable architectural features) purposefully confounds our desire to peer inside this monument to the unknown; to learn about the "unquiet dead" who may walk the lonely, vast hallways of this spectral monolith.

Hill House is a place "born to be bad," according to the film's opening narration, but it is something more than that too: "an undiscovered country waiting to be explored." And The Undiscovered Country, as we remember from our Shakespeare, is Death Itself.

Robert Wise structures his horror film (based on the sterling novel by Shirley Jackson) as a probe into that ultimate unknown; but more than that too, as an ambiguous probe into that unknown. 

Never in the film, for instance, is the audience 100% certain that it has actually witnessed the supernatural and the ghostly. On the contrary, our senses are heightened and tweaked by disturbing noises, by the sinister-seeming twist of a doorknob, and more. Yet certainty still eludes us; just as certainty about the paranormal eludes people in real life.

You Should Be Receptive...and Innocent: Exploring The Self in The Haunting

It is no mistake or coincidence that the four explorers countenancing the chaotic, uncertain terrain of Hill House are -- in the spirit of Hugh Crain's strange edifice itself -- a determinedly unconventional group. This is important structurally to the narrative. The sojourners reflect the sojourn.

Dr. Markway (Richard Johnson) gave up a "conventional" life and a proper upbringing (courtesy of his upper-crust English family) to prove the existence of the supernatural. 

This is his life's work, which makes him either commendably dedicated or utterly foolish. He says he wants his people "innocent and receptive" so that they will discover the secrets of Hill House. 

If someone is innocent and receptive, however, he or she is not looking for the angles that might be played; and every little noise becomes significant and meaningful. So Markway may (intentionally or unintentionally) be encouraging hallucinations or delusions (though he says, explicitly, that this must not be the case if their research is considered to be legitimate).

Theodora (Claire Bloom) also fits the bill of "unconventional." She not only boasts extra-sensory perception, but is "out" as a lesbian. To some people in traditional society in the 1960s, the latter quality would make her untrustworthy at best, abnormal at worst. And when strange handwriting appears on the wall of Hill House, Theodora is the first suspect. She's jealous of the attention Markway showers on Nell, and this spooky handwriting (which names Nell) may be her petty revenge; her game playing. She has a cruel, jealous streak that could effect the exploration of Hill House.

Then there's Luke (Russ Tamblyn), a playboy and would-be millionaire who has a frat-boy sense of humor; but also a burgeoning curiosity and conscience. Is he just a money-grubber, a dabbler, or something more? What's his angle?

And finally, we arrive at the most unconventional of the explorers: Eleanor or Nell (Julie Harris), a spinster who had a poltergeist experience as a child but who, in essence, has never truly left the confines of her home. The sheltered, inexperienced woman has spent years caring for her invalid mother (now deceased) and the chance to explore Hill House is most definitely an escape from the drudgery of her day-to-day existence. She is motivated to stay at Hill House; to "belong" to the group. 

We wonder: is Nell's subconscious somehow causing the noises that bedevil Hill House at night (as it caused the rock storm that fell upon her house in childhood?) Or is Nell hallucinating? Or, worst of all: is she so desperate for attention that she is "pretending" all the experiences with the supernatural. When Nell almost falls off a veranda at Hill House, who can adequately judge what caused her to grow dizzy? It is convenient that Markway, the object of her affection, would rush in to her to care for her, isn't it?

These idiosyncratic individuals -- who don't conform to the boundaries of society-at-large and who don't entirely fit the bill of "normal" or "trustworthy" -- investigate the home of a 19th century robber baron of sorts, Hugh Crain. He too is a kindred spirit: an unconventional person and one who didn't believe in the rules of society. He built his oddball house to reflect those beliefs. For instance, all the doors in Hill House are hung crookedly...so that -- after a time -- they slam shut, apparently of their own volition. And all the angles inside the house are off-center a bit....just like the characters in the drama. The house --as Markway reminds us -- "does have its oddities." 

In such a strange environment -- with four such anarchistic individuals in close-quarters -- the probe into the unknown is tainted by the frailties of the individual personalities. We can't rule out that one or all of the explorers is perpetrating some kind of hoax; or simply that some one's imagination has gotten out of control. Consider the moment in which Nell becomes convinced that someone is holding her hand in the dark. She believes it to be Theodora, but when the lights come up, Theodora is across the room, in her own bed. Wise's camera never leaves Nell's face during the "event." It stays on Nell, in extreme close-up throughout the purported "visitation", and thus we are left to wonder if she is hallucinating, or really countenancing something supernatural. If something were holding and crushing her hand...why don't we ever see it?

Similarly, on the night of the loud noises at their door; Theodora and Nell never actually see anything abnormal. And importantly, Luke and Markway are elsewhere in the house at the time...they could easily be responsible for the noises. Similarly, anyone could have written Nell's name on the wall. When the film's biggest scare arrives -- Mrs. Markway's (Lois Maxwell) sudden appearance from the attic -- even it is not ghostly in nature. She became lost in the attic and tried to escape, stunning Nell.

And finally, Nell's death could be suicide brought on by the fact that the attention seeker was being ostracized from the group, and on and on...

My argument vis-a-vis The Haunting is merely this: I believe Hill House is haunted and that the explorers experience paranormal or supernatural events there. However, the film retains an authentic sense of terror because Wise walks the line of ambiguity brilliantly. Nothing supernatural is ever truly seen, and we become perched on the edge of our seats by the things we don't see; but which we believe to exist. I'm not making the argument that showing ghosts in horror movies is always less effective than hiding them, only noting that The Haunting still scares -- more than 60 years after it was made -- because it exhibits this spine-tingling sense of uncertainty and ambiguity. We don't know what is making the horrible noise outside the bedroom; we don't know if that is a human face in the sculpture on the wall, or merely a trick of the light. We can't be certain if the door is bending because of a supernatural force...or someone leaning on the other side of it. But taken all together, these events are chilling and add up to something menacing. More so, they are chilling because we never get satisfactory answers about them.

Wise's exquisite camerawork in The Haunting generates genuine terror, but notice that the camera truly grows perturbed only when the dramatis personae have also grown perturbed or hysterical. Theodora and Nell are worked up to raging terror by the time Wise deploys that prowling, angling camera which circumscribes the perimeter of the bedroom door. We interpret this odd, angled movement as the search by something inimical -- on the other side of the door -- seeking an entry point. But we see nothing; and the camera's twisted perspective could simply be the perspective of two very frightened women Similarly, Nell's fainting spell on the veranda coincides with the camera lunge from the high tower; again as though something invisible is approaching...or attacking. Yet the sudden, alarming camera movement could be interpreted as a reflection of Nell's sudden, dangerous vertigo. Especially if we are to believe she is suicidal (a belief which also plays into the climax and the staircase set piece).

And by the time we see a Hill House door swell and retract (as if breathing by itself), every character -- especially Markway -- is desperate and fearful. These apparent manifestations of the supernatural could be the manifestations of the characters' out-of-control hysteria and fear.

One of The Haunting's central set-pieces involves Nell and Markway's ascent up a rickety, vast spiral staircase. The staircase is loose from the wall (again, not a danger that is supernatural in origin). But the quest to reach the top metaphorically reflects the team's overall quest. Markway and his people are climbing the tallest mountain and seeking answers on the summit. But even they cannot reach Heaven for answers about life beyond death. And again, notice that when Nell and Markway do finally achieve the top of the spiral staircase, Nell is frightened out of her mind not by a ghost...but by another desperate human, Markway's wife. In other words, Nell has reached the pinnacle of Hill House -- climbed as far as she can possibly climb -- and the terrors/answers she gets are still of the human, not supernatural variety.

The Haunting succeeds as a great horror movie because there exists enough ambiguity in the camera-work, the characters, and in the script to support multiple interpretations. 

Either the house is haunted, or Nell is a very disturbed individual responsible for the so-called haunting, or all the characters are just "innocent and receptive" to their admittedly creepy environment. 

These interpretations compete for primacy in The Haunting, and that competition results in an incredibly active viewing experience; a high-level of engagement with the material. And that engagement leads to unbearable suspense.

There are many reasons why director Martin Scorsese considers The Haunting the most frightening film ever made, and all of them hold true today.

50 Years Ago: The UFO Incident (1975)

The unsettling and inexplicable experience of Barney and Betty Hill -- of alien abduction -- was recounted meticulously in John Fuller's best-selling book, The Interrupted Journey. The same tale was also memorably adapted for American TV screens fifty years ago today, in October of 1975, by writer Hesper Anderson and frequent TV-movie director Richard Colla.

The film's title was changed to The UFO Incident, and actors James Earl Jones and Estelle Parsons were cast in the lead roles. The late Barnard Hughes co-starred as the couple's stolid psychiatrist, Dr. Simon.

The UFO Incident commences a few years after the alleged alien abduction, as a troubled Barney and Betty Hill, an interracial couple living in New England, feel a strange compulsion to re-trace their steps from the night of September 19, 1961, the nights their lives were forever altered. There are gaps in their memories that they can't explain, and this fact vexes them both.

Since September '61, The Hills have driven the same stretch of New Hampshire road eight or nine times, but on this particular occasion (an event translated directly from Fuller's book...), something unexpected occurs. The presence of a group of men on the side of the rural highway causes a usually calm Betty to fly into a spasm of hysteria and panic. We see an alarming quick cut -- as she screams in terror -- of a gloved, grey hand reaching into the car...as if to grab her.

Meanwhile, Barney is still reluctant to face the possibility that he and his wife encountered a UFO at all. He is insecure living in an all-white community with Betty, and fears ridicule and isolation should the story of flying saucers come to light. 

"Your dreams are your dreams," he tells Betty, "and reality is reality." Later, Barney angrily acknowledges "I know it happened...but I can't get myself to believe it."

The couple goes to see Dr. Simon, a psychiatrist, to aid in resolving their "anxiety problems" and "double amnesia." 

But what the Hills ultimately reveal in long, detailed hypnosis sessions is something extremely terrifying: a close encounter with the crew of an alien spaceship. 

Aliens stopped their car by moonlight, and escorted the alarmed humans aboard their flying saucer. There, these curious, inhuman creatures conducted a variety of invasive medical exams, including a pregnancy test, before sending the Hills -- with wiped memories -- on their way home.

Over time, Dr. Simon helps the Hills contextualize and accept the events of September 1961, even if it can't be fully or even adequately explained. The cloud of anxiety lifts (especially for Barney...), and some sense of normalcy returns to the Hills, despite the oddness of this weird event in their history.

The UFO Incident inter-cuts a series of tension-provoking hypnosis sessions with more routine views of Barney and Betty's domestic life, to good effect. James Earl Jones and Estelle Parsons share a number of sweet, well-written scenes together at the Hill residence, strongly registering as likable, "real" people under unusual duress. These relationship scenes purposefully contrast in tone with the horrific recitation of the fascinating, you-can't-look-away abduction details.

For the most part, the hypnoses scenes in The UFO Incident admirably eschew spectacle for intimacy. Colla's camera remains pinned to Jones' expressive face in intense, sustained close-up photography. Barney grows ever more disturbed during his account of the alien encounter, and the performance is stunning. 

Watching Jones "live through" Barney's experience, you are absolutely riveted. And when Jones breaks the carefully-staged close-up composition, suddenly lunging from frame "trying to escape," you'll feel your adrenaline kick in. This is scary, scary stuff.

There are also occasional cuts to flashbacks during the hypnosis session; to Barney worriedly studying the night sky, clutching his binoculars, for instance. 

Intermittently, the audience can make out a light shining down on forest trees, but other than that, we never actually see the UFO in flight. This is an effective technique simply because we seem to be remembering "fragments" of the experience at the same time Barney or Betty does.

The medical examination scene aboard the alien space craft is vetted with similar tact and dramatic flair. Colla's camera cuts to a variety of insert shots: close-ups of alien surgical tools and other instrumentation, for example. When these shots begin to flash by, faster and faster, we feel as though we are being overcome by a flurry of images, literally overtaken by the experience.

The UFO Incident's most chilling image, however, arises during Betty's hypnosis session. She describes (again, in committed close-up), a group of "men" appearing ahead of the car; coming out of the forest and slowly nearing. 

Here, the film flashes back to a sort of wooded glade, and at first we don't see anything distinct. Then, appearing in shadow -- in the blurry, darkened distance at first -- black-garbed creatures loom, eventually coming into plain sight. Again, it's very chilling.

Colla and Anderson rigorously and faithfully follow the events and experiences in Fuller's written account, a fact which makes this TV movie an unusual artifact in a medium that prefers to tart things up. But, The UFO Incident isn't exactly a documentary, either. Instead, the film seeks and ultimately locates the core of the Hill drama: the manner in which the encounter with the aliens plays into Barney and Betty's already-existing fears.

For instance, Barney is a pragmatist, afraid of that which is real, meaning racial prejudice, intolerance and hatred. He's also grappling with another very real fear -- his health. The men in Barney's family all died young from strokes and he fears the same fate. For Barney, acknowledging that the UFO experience is actually real proves a traumatic and difficult thing. If it's real, then he has to deal with it the same way he has to deal with bigotry or his illness.

Coming from a more privileged background, all of Betty's fears are based not in the real, but in the unknown. She's not alone; but she fears being alone (of losing Barney). She fears the "unknown" of death too. For her, the UFO experience means countenancing and accepting the unknown in her life.

The UFO Incident could have easily proven a really lurid, sensational bit of business. However, the steadfast focus on character, on performance, and on effective camera-work renders the movie not merely respectable, but actually admirable. The movie could have been an over-the-top geek show, but The UFO Incident understands it doesn't need to embellish, enhance or "stylize" the story of Barney and Betty Hill to render it attention-grabbing and suspenseful.

On the contrary, all the drama -- all the anxiety -- we can handle is abundantly present. In close-up. In the expressive, human faces of Jones and Parsons.