25 Years Ago: Buffy the Vampire Slayer: "Once More With Feeling" (November 6, 2001)

Although there are many outstanding episodes of Buffy, it is "Once More With Feeling," the all-singing, all-dancing musical episode, that shines today as something truly amazing, and transcends the both its genre and the medium. Critic David Klein called this 2001 installment "absolutely captivating," and "like nothing" he'd seen on regular series television, which he's watched and written about for more than twenty years. (Electronic Media, July 9, 2002, page 6.) He wasn’t exaggerating.

 

Buffy the Vampire Slayer has been called a "post-feminist parable on the challenge of balancing one's personal and work life," (Time Magazine, December 29, 1997, page 137), and a "literal scream and always a hoot," (TV Guide, January 2-8, 1999, page 23). "Just about the best horror show on television" according to Cinefantasique (October 1997, page 137), Buffy has also been praised for the fact that "no other show balances so many elements as deftly, without a trace of corniness or melodrama" (Ken Tucker, Entertainment Weekly: "Oujia Broads," November 6, 1998). "Once More with Feeling" boasts all those strengths, and more.

 

Some background: for its sixth season, Buffy the Vampire Slayer moved from its long-time home at the WB to UPN. In the fifth season finale, Buffy died while saving the world from an evil God named Glory, and for the sixth season she was resurrected by her friends (including Willow and Xander), but something went terribly wrong. Our stalwart slayer had been pulled out of a heavenly after-life -- not a hell dimension, as her friends feared -- and now our mortal coil was all pain and suffering for Buffy. She felt disconnected, alone, and out-of-touch, but the gallant Chosen One just couldn't express these uncomfortable emotions to her friends, and so she bore the pain in silence and isolation. At least until, that is, "Once More with Feeling," a musical treatise about communication, about the songs we sing to ourselves, about the secrets we hide and yearn to share.  So if “Hush” was a dissertation on non-verbal communication, “Once More with Feeling” was about how we song and dance can also reveal character.

 

"Once More with Feeling" features original music and lyrics by this Joss Whedon, with songs produced and arranged by Jesse Tobias and Christopher Beck. Choreographer Adam Shankman was responsible for not just fight scenes in graveyards, but the dance numbers too. 

 

The episode's action starts when a demon called Sweet (Hinton Battle) arrives in Sunnydale, summoned by someone close to Buffy. He casts a spell on the town that makes every inhabitant sing and dance about their innermost emotional issues. That doesn't sound so bad, except that the urge to release the singing and dancing also happens to cause murderous spontaneous combustion, and consequently townies are dropping like flies. Buffy and her friends -- including the lovelorn vampire Spike -- investigate the crisis, but all the while sing their own tunes. Spike sings "Rest in Peace," imploring Buffy to stop toying with his emotions, or leave him alone. Buffy sings "Going through the Motions," about her detachment from the world. Giles (Anthony Stewart Head) croons about holding Buffy back ("Standing"), and Xander and Anya sing a duet, a 1930s-style "pastiche" called "I'll Never Tell," that reveals their fears about their romantic relationship and marriage plans. 

 

In the end, Buffy's secret emotions about being brought back to life are revealed in the final confrontation with Sweet, and her friends know, at last, what is up with the Slayer. The honesty and hurt evidenced in this crescendo is practically jaw-dropping. It's devastating, but in the style of the old-fashioned movie musical, the episode climaxes not with psychology, but with a kiss and curtain dropping. "Where do we go from here?" The cast sings, and as viewers of this fascinating series, we are aware that, again, the characters are headed to new and dangerous places. Nothing on Buffy remains static; everything changes, and "Once More with Feeling" is a turning point not only in the continuity, but in the series’ legacy, as viewed nearly two decades later.

"The thing about musicals," Joss Whedon told me in an interview for my 2004 book, Singing a New Tune: The Re-birth of the Modern Film Musical (which features a chapter on "Once More with Feeling"), "is you sing what you can't say. In the same way as shutting up [in "Hush"] caused everybody to open up in ways they hadn't before, singing did the same thing...The heart of the matter - what the person is feeling, what the person needs to communicate, the great revelation, the denouement, whatever it is - all of this should be expressed through song."

 

Buffy the Vampire Slayer has always concerned language, and how characters use it to conceal, dissemble, reveal, lie, deny or express love. How the Scoobies sometimes look at Buffy (as a superhero) and themselves (as sidekicks) in dialogue ("Avengers Assemble!" Xander quips in one episode) is one of the perpetual joys of the program, and "Once More With Feeling" takes the characters in exciting new directions and lays bare their emotions in another manner of communication - not psychologically-adroit patter, but the simplicity and elegance of song. It's a bit amazing that a show this good -- boasting a dozen full-fledged musical numbers -- could be made on a TV budget and within TV time limitations. Yet every single song in "Once More with Feeling" brings out new facets of the characters, and gives the series a wind behind its back for the remainder of the sixth season; one of my personal favorites. The sixth season remains controversial because of the sometimes degrading, perverse nature of Buffy and Spike’s sexual relationship, but it is an ambitious season too, in which “Life,” not some made-up demon, is the “Big Bad.”

The musical is a form that's perpetually out-of-fashion in the twenty-first century but Joss Whedon did the seemingly impossible here. He made the artificial, theatrical form not just palatable to an increasingly "reality" obsessed world, but actually irresistible - especially to genre fans  "Once More with Feeling" is not only the finest and most involving episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, it's one of the great hours in TV history, with a brilliant soundtrack to match the action on screen.

 

"It's such an alchemy, Whedon explained to me "It's so hard to get it right, but if a musical really does hit people, they'll love it more than any damn thing in the world. Because music speaks to people more than anything else does...When you put in exciting lyrics, characters you love, and all that good stuff, everything heightens. It takes you to another level of existence."  Fortunately, the cast was up to the challenge and took on the difficult challenge of singing.

 

“I knew Tony was my ballad guy. I knew James was my rock-and-roll singer, and Michelle wanted to dance a little. I knew what everybody’s strength was,” Whedon told me. “What I didn’t know was how good Emma was going to be. That was a revelation, but I knew she was my musical-comedy girl.”

 

"Once More with Feeling" proves Whedon's thesis in spades. It is an installment of Buffy and genre television that transcends standard episodic television, and just about everything else out there too. Of course, just because Buffy was a success as a musical, that did not mean Whedon wanted to apply the genre formula to his other TV series. 

 

“I was asked, 'Do you want to do a musical episode of Angel or Firefly?' And I said, 'Not in a million years.' Those shows don't lend themselves to it.  The thing about Buffy is that you do the musical episode without violating the reality of Buffy.  That's the most important thing to me.  What's hilarious about working in fantasy is that you can say 'The evil twin thing? That's not reality, that's bullshit! Who buys that? But the dwarf going out of someone's head is fine.'...You have this seemingly arbitrary, but in fact very strict sense of what can go on in this world.  And Buffy is so sophomoric, romantic, colorful, tense, sexual...I think half the episodes feel like they're about to burst into song anyway...So to say a demon has come [to Sunnydale] who causes musicals makes perfect sense in that world.  It doesn't make sense in the Angel world to me.  It definitely makes no sense in the Firefly world.  It's a different kind of choice."

 

One might note that Angel is Whedon’s neo-noir, and Firefly his neo-Western. If that’s the case, then Buffy is his neo-musical: a series characterized by big emotions, colorful performances, and carefully choreographed action. If this is so, then “Once More, with Feeling” represents, actually, Buffy’s great act of “becoming” what it was always meant to be.

Abnormal Fixation Teaser

 

90 Years Ago: Tarzan Escapes (1936)

The cousins of Jane Parker (Maureen O’Sullivan) -- Rita (Benita Hume) and Eric (William Henry) -- are brought to the Great Escarpment by safari master Captain Fry (John Buckler). 

Their mission is to convince Jane to return to England with them, so that she can claim a vast financial inheritance on all their behalf.

Jane is happy to see her cousins, but Tarzan is deeply disturbed by the fact that Jane will have to leave the jungle, even for a while. 

Fry sews further discontent, claiming that Jane has grown tired of Tarzan and that if he loves her, he should let her leave.

Fry then arranges to capture Tarzan in a cage, and put him on display in England.  At the same time, he plans to sell Rita, Eric and Jane into slavery to a local tribe.

With Cheetah’s help, Tarzan escapes, and attempts to rescue Jane and her cousins.  Fry, meanwhile, meets an unpleasant end in a bog…

The domestication of Tarzan begins in earnest with Tarzan Escapes (1936), an enjoyable and solid entry in the MGM franchise. Not only is Jane wearing a much less revealing dress in this film, she and Tarzan are now playing ‘house.’

We see, early in the film, a vast tree-house compound that Tarzan has constructed for the family.  There’s an elephant-powered elevator to the house, for example, a water-wheel pumping pond water up to the kitchen area, and even a ceiling fan. Tarzan and Jane’s bedroom is reachable by a suspension bridge.

Home sweet home...in the jungle.

Clearly, the film series is moving towards the ideal of a “nuclear family,” and the next film in the cycle, Tarzan Finds a Son (1939) goes further down this road.

Alas, at the same time that Tarzan Escapes makes a Tarzan a family man with a family home (and an honest woman, I suppose, of Jane), it succumbs to formula.  

By now, many ingredients featured here have become quite familiar. 

For example, in all three of the Tarzan movies produced thus far, a character falls from the Great Escarpment’s mountains, and dies. In all three movies thus far, we hear Tarzan’s yell before we see him. 

And in all three films, we get a climactic encounter with a hostile/dangerous tribe. The creative formula or equation is locked in cement.

Unfortunately, Tarzan Escapes also features much stock footage, as though the production could not afford new animal encounter scenes.  Exhibit A is Tarzan’s battle with the crocodile in the river, from Tarzan and His Mate (1934). It is rerun in its entirety here.

Similarly, the footage of Tarzan killing an animal and cutting it for purposes of cooking meat, is also rerun footage, but from Tarzan the Ape Man.

Like all the MGM Tarzan movies, Tarzan Escapes also involves duplicitous white civilization. 

In this case, Eric and Rita are both liars. Although they are pursuing their acquisition of wealth (as was the case with Arlington in the previous film), Jane need not return home with them, as they claim.  

Fry is also duplicitous, seeking personal wealth. He tries to trap Tarzan and rid himself of Rita, Eric and Jane in the nastiest way imaginable; selling them into slavery to a local tribe.

Needless to say, the events of Tarzan Escapes probably don’t make Tarzan feel particularly good about white civilization. 

On every occasion of intersect, the white people try to trick Jane into leaving Tarzan, and kill or capture him so as to acquire that elusive and invisible thing they term “wealth.” It is no wonder that, at first, Tarzan forbids Jane to see the white people.  

They universally bring strife.

Some aspects of Tarzan Escapes are authentically impressive. I love the shot, for instance, that introduces Tarzan to the movie.  We move back, beyond a high tree branch, and see him silhouetted there, watching Eric, Rita and Fry from above. 

He has been there all along, observing their actions, but has remained silent. This shot beautifully captures his stealth, intelligence, and also his status as outsider.

I also love that shot of Fry dying in the bog, his hand slowly sinking below the surface.

Tarzan Escapes is still a top-flight adventure film, but one can't help but to long for a bit more of the Tarzan and Jane dynamic, and some fresh plot lines.

My favorite scene here is the one in which Jason and Tarzan reckon with saying goodbye, and Jane informs him exactly how many passages of the moon will occur in the sky before her return. Weismuller and O'Sullivan still make magic together.

Deep Focus Episode 6: The Man Trap (Star Trek)

 

60 Years Ago: Star Trek: "Dagger of the Mind" (November 3, 1966)

Stardate: 2715.1

On a routine mission beaming down supplies to the penal colony on Tantalus V, the Enterprise becomes embroiled in an unexpected crisis.

A mad-man, Simon Van Gelder (Morgan Woodward) -- formerly a doctor at the facility -- has smuggled himself aboard the starship during the cargo transfer, thus escaping the penal colony’s security force field.

Van Gelder is captured quickly, but the incident requires Captain Kirk (William Shatner) to conduct an investigation of the colony. He is sheepish about doing so, because he deeply respects the director of the Tantalus Colony: Dr. Tristan Adams (James Gregory), and his life’s work.

In particular, Adams has “revolutionized and humanized” the treatment of prisoners in the Federation, transforming prisons into “clean, decent hospitals for sick minds.”

While Mr. Spock attempts the Vulcan mind-meld on Van Gelder, to learn what happened to him on Tantalus.

Meanwhile, Kirk and ship’s psychiatrist, Dr. Helen Noel (Marianna Hill), beam down to the facility for an extended tour.

There, they learn from Adams that he has been experimenting with a rehabilitation beam -- “a neural neutralizer” that is supposed to help “incorrigibles.”

In fact, as Captain Kirk learns the hard way, the neural neutralizer is a method of control, and even torture.

The creative template for “Dagger of the Mind,” is rather obviously, and disappointingly, an installment from two weeks back: “What are Little Girls Made Of.”  

Consider: in both narratives, Kirk beams down to an isolated planetary location with a beautiful female medical practitioner at his side, and is experimented upon there by a deeply-respected individual who is using new technology to bend others to his will.  Kirk's idealism is shattered as he realizes that his idol is no paragon at all.

In “What are Little Girls Made Of,” Kirk and Nurse Christine Chapel visit the treacherous caves of Exo III, where the “Pasteur of Archaeological Medicine,” Dr. Roger Korby, is working on a plan to have androids infiltrate the highest levels of the Federation. Korby experiments on Kirk, making an android duplicate.  Fortunately, Kirk is able -- from the planet surface -- to send a message to Spock, so that the half-Vulcan first officer can intervene and save the day.

In “Dagger of the Mind,” Kirk and Dr. Helen Noel beam down to a penal colony protected by a force field, where a great humanitarian, Dr. Tristan Adams is controlling minds using the neural neutralizer. Kirk is forced to submit to the device. Meanwhile, on board the Enterprise, Spock uses the Vulcan mind-meld to determine what is happening on the surface, intervenes, and saves the day.

Sound familiar?

In both cases, deeply respected professional men go off the rails, and become monsters. Yet “What Are Little Girls Made Of” is a much superior episode because Korby possesses a reason to go off the rails. His consciousness has been transferred to an android body and his “humanity” didn’t survive the transfer.  He is no longer himself, and the message that viewers glean is that man is not meant for immortality, or mechanical bodies  Something vital -- something compassionate and beautiful -- is sacrificed.

There is a reason, or motivation, in other words for Korby's anti-social behavior. We pity him, because we understand he is not really evil, and not really,  even, at fault.

And Dr. Adams in "Dagger of the Mind?" 

There is no reason or motivation even suggested in the episode that such a deeply-respected humanist would change his nature, jeopardize and his reputation and life’s work, to act as the monster we encounter.  

His plan doesn’t even make sense, when one considers it. 

Dr Adams is going to experiment on Kirk and torture Kirk, a starship captain? 

Well, Dr. Noel will be able to testify what happened to him, even if Kirk can’t.  Or is Adams planning on keeping her prisoner...an act which would the Enterprise would surely respond to. 

If not, let’s assume Adams takes the extra step and tortures and plays with Noel’s memory too.  If this is his plan, he’s still taking an enormous risk that the Enterprise crew will discover the truth.  After all, even while in orbit of Tantalus for just a few hours, the crew has determined the identity and history of Van Gelder.  

Why on Earth would Adams not believe that the crew, especially with a Vulcan involved, could not discover what happened to its beloved captain?

The truth would come out, sooner rather than later.

More so, it simply isn’t clear what Adams has to gain by torturing people, particularly a starship captain. There is no plan in place here to take the neutralizer out into the universe and turn people into zombies, so it is difficult to understand, exactly what Adams’ agenda really is, besides being purely and simply evil.

Even assuming Adams is purely and simply evil -- that he has cracked under the pressure of his difficult vocation -- why would he torture and abuse his biggest fan? 

Captain Kirk treats him with tremendous deference and respect. He's looking for a reason, any reason, to exonerate a man he admires. And so what does Adams do?  He makes a friend and a supporter into an enemy.  

Instead of torturing Kirk under the neural neutralizer, Adams could have stuck with his story that the device is a failure, and the room is closed down.  He would simply not use it again, until Kirk left. Then, with the Enterprise long gone and the investigation closed, he could resume torturing the inmates at his leisure.

The character’s lack of real motivation makes Adams a poor guest start, and a poor villain.  Usually on Star Trek, when a character commits what is considered an evil act, his or her motives are examined. The agenda is understood, even if we don’t agree with it.  “Dagger of the Mind” fails that benchmark rather egregiously. Even assuming Adams is purely and simply nuts, his behavior makes no sense. It’s silly and self-destructive.

So not only is "Dagger of the Mind" structurally a rehash of “What are Little Girls Made Of,” it is an inferior one, in terms of the details.  

In a three week period, essentially, Star Trek has twice proposed that great, respected leaders in their field actually possess feet of clay, and can be transformed into monsters by their quest to push the limits of science. 

Again -- and I make no moral judgment or political preference about this -- the message is undoubtedly conservative in nature.  It is better not to broach a new frontier -- like the creation of androids or an experimental beam -- because doing so will make slaves or inferiors of the human race. 

Progress, in both cases, is arrested so that the status quo remains in effect.  I find it odd not that Star Trek would (wisely) question the pace of new technological development or the impact it might have on humanity, but that it would repeat this same idea over three episodes in three weeks.  "Miri" had the same theme of over-reaching scientists causing havoc.

If scientists are such dangerous, irresponsible folk, how did the Federation ever get to this point of space exploration? Isn't some advancement good?  Doesn't it sometimes improve the human condition?

I guess I'm saying it would be nice to see a little variation in the messaging. Let's have some conservative wisdom, but let's also talk about pushing boundaries too, occasionally.  Fortunately, next week's episode ("The Corbomite Maneuver") adopts that approach so Star Trek's message doesn't feel so consistently in favor of the status quo.

Sadly, “Dagger of the Mind’ is not made any more effective through its visualization. 

If you were Dr. Adams, hoping to keep your real work a secret, would you house your prisoners in a room with a giant vent shaft leading right to the power generator controls that feed into your security field?  

Again, you can’t assume there’s nowhere else to house Kirk and Noel, because this is a penal colony, presumably with housing units (cells?) for all the inmates.

But let's assume, for argument’s sake, that there is no other room to use but the one with the biggest vent shaft opening in cult-TV history.  

Would you not attempt to seal it off so your prisoners can’t use it?

I mean, it’s not like a starship captain and his psychiatrist aren’t going to notice a gigantic vent shaft right there, at eye level, in their quarters.

Although “Dagger of the Mind” makes no sense from a story or character perspective, and opts for easy ways out, in terms of narrative solutions (see: the giant vent shaft), it nonetheless does boast some strengths that should be note.

I like the idea, for instance of the “Devil’s Island” setting; a realm reachable only by elevator, and once a shield is de-activated.  In concept (but not design; again see: vent shaft) Tantalus should be an inescapable prison.  It is always fascinating to have characters cut off from the power and technology of the Enterprise, forced to manage their own escape.

Also, I admire the performances of Morgan Woodward and Marianna Hill. Both Van Gelder and Helen Noel are welcome additions to the Star Trek universe. Van Gelder must overcome his own mental demons to help the Enterprise crew, and Noel is truly ‘tantalizing,’ a gorgeous and smart love interest for Kirk.

Most notably, “Dagger of the Mind” introduces the Vulcan mind-meld to Star Trek, and for that development the episode deserves, certainly, to be remembered and lauded. Star Trek’s first season is such a great time of invention, especially for Vulcan culture, given that we see the nerve pinch in “The Enemy Within” and the mind-meld here.

It’s just a shame that Spock’s ability to mind-fuse with other beings is featured in a rehash story notably lacking in any other brand of invention.  

Also, it's intriguing to note how the concept of the Vulcan mind-meld being a very private, intimate matter falls by the wayside in franchise history. By the time of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991), Spock performs, without hesitation, a mind-meld on Valeris (Kim Cattrall) in front of the entire bridge crew!

50 Years Ago: Carrie (1976)

Although he had directed many fine feature films before this 1976 thriller (including the exquisite Sisters [1973] and Phantom of the Paradise [1974]), it was Carrie that truly landed Brian De Palma on the cinematic A list.

The director's critically and financially successful adaptation of the Stephen King novel not only assured De Palma a long and storied career in Hollywood, it also set off a virtual blizzard of celluloid King adaptations vetted by high-profile film directors (Tobe Hooper and Salem's Lot [1978], Stanley Kubrick and The Shining [1980], David Cronenberg and The Dead Zone [1981], George Romero and Creepshow [1982], John Carpenter and Christine [1983], Rob Reiner and Misery, etc.). This is a horror trend that endured well into the 1990s, and even to into this decade, though to perhaps a less-significant degree.

Carrie proved so resonant as a horror genre initiative, in fact, that it spawned a fad, a significant  number of B movie imitations. These were films about wronged, lonely teens seeking bloody vengeance against their cruel school mates. These films had titles such as Ruby (1977), Jennifer (1978), Laserblast (1978) and Evilspeak (1981)

With his keen and accomplished visual sense, De Palma creates an intimate portrait in Carrie of this aforementioned adolescent, high-school cruelty. It's Lord of the Flies in a locker room...only with mean girls instead of wild boys. In her review of the film for New Yorker, critic Pauline Kael noted that prior to De Palma's film, "no one else has ever caught the thrill that teenagers get from a dirty joke and sustained it for a whole picture," terming Carrie a "terrifyingly lyrical thriller."

Most critics strongly agreed with the assessment that King's novel found perfect expression in De Palma's capable hands. Film Quarterly, Volume XXI (page 32) in 1977 noted that "De Palma develops his familiar motifs of exploitation, guilt and sexual repression with a sure hand, so that his visual fireworks for the first time do not seem themselves obsessional and out of control."

Roger Ebert wrote in his review of January 1, 1976 that: Brian De Palma's Carrie is an absolutely spellbinding horror movie, with a shock at the end that's the best thing along those lines since the shark leaped aboard in Jaws. It's also (and this is what makes it so good) an observant human portrait. This girl Carrie isn't another stereotyped product of the horror production line; she's a shy, pretty, and complicated high school senior who's a lot like kids we once knew."

Today, no less than three major sequences in Carrie have entered the pop-culture lexicon (and endured there for over thirty years.) These three sequences are so well-directed, so brilliantly-staged that they jump immediately to mind when considering the film. More importantly, they visually support the film's narrative: forging an understanding of Carrie's world and what it means, in some cases, to "grow up." Those scenes are set in a girl's locker room, at the senior prom, and finally, (ominously...) grave side.

We're All Very Sorry For This Incident: The Curse of Blood

In part, Carrie works so splendidly, because of the universality of the high school experience. Sometimes it feels like high school is a realm where cruelty -- along with apathy -- has become institutionalized.

Teenagers often seem to boast a sixth sense (or is it a killer instinct?) about those students who are less well-adjusted, who come from bad homes, or who are just more sensitive...and therefore vulnerable. And then those kids are ridiculed, teased, shunned and mocked sometimes, to the point of sadism.

Probably nothing could expose this milieu more clearly (or more artfully) than the locker room scene that opens Carrie. After a game of volleyball (shot from a high angle, as if to clue in the audience to the fact that something terrible is soon to occur...), De Palma cuts to the gym locker room. The steam from the showers softens the image on screen, providing the impression of a lulling dream, or even a sexual fantasy. Immediately, we start to understand how high school represents a time of sexual awakening.

As the camera pans right, accompanied by the romantic strains of Pino Donaggio's score, the audience sees gorgeous young women frolicking, nude or half-nude after their exertions on the court. As I wrote in Horror Films of the 1970s, this is an "erotic image of wood nymphs at play," one intended to arouse, titillate and stimulate. But as the camera moves past this fanciful action in a forward motion, we soon spy Carrie White (Sissy Spacek) alone in a shower. It's a strangely solitary, personal and erotic moment too. The young woman caresses herself in slow-motion. Glistening water drops decorate her euphoric face. A phallic-shaped shower-head sprays water down upon her.

Carrie's hands wander innocently down to her stomach, then her legs -- and, as curious viewers -- we wonder how far this scene is going to go. As Carrie's hands continue to spiral downwards to her legs, scarlet blood suddenly stains her skin, mixing with the pounding water. It's menstrual blood. On her fingers, on her legs. On the floor.

This is a typical De Palma bait-and-switch, a deliberate reversal or undoing of expectations. Those males in the audience aroused by the sight of female nudity are no doubt -- much like the disturbed school principal featured in the next scene -- not at all aroused by the visual of a high school girl getting her period. A sexy fantasy has given way to common reality

The dream-like nature of this sequence dissipates quickly now, giving way to abject horror. Carrie does not know or understanding what is happening to her. She believes she is dying. From a subjective point-of-view shot, we now see harsh reality: the other high school girls categorically reject Carries' entreaties for help and the "misty" look of the scene has evaporated. With startling cruelty, the girls even toss tampons at the desperate Carrie. We get close-ups of taunting, ugly faces, and hear the girls' mean chants. Those beautiful bodies in the slow-motion dream have given way to the cruel reality of high school. Mocking, teasing, the mob mentality. Like pack animals, the teen girls can smell the weak number in their pack...and go in for the kill.

This scene serves a few important narrative functions. First, the visual obsession on young, sexy bodies (and Carrie's body, in particular...) serve to note the full extent of this character's burgeoning womanhood. Though shy and awkward, Carrie is also beautiful in an innocent way...stepping into the realm of sexual maturity with awkwardness.

Secondly, the hurling of the tampons and the close-ups of twisted, evil faces mocking Carrie help to dramatize what a delicate, uncomfortable, embarrassing time this can be for those undergoing puberty. Through the cruelty of the girls in the locker room, we comes to sympathize for Carrie's feelings of isolation and separation. In addition to her sexual maturation, this scene charts Carrie's first steps into "psychic" maturity as well. Her outrage at the cruel treatment causes a telekinetic burst: the shattering of a lamp bulb over the shower enclosure. This is clear foreshadowing...

Another scene -- less showy and far less notorious than the locker room sequence -- also reveals much about Carrie's school life and builds on our compassion. The only bright light in Carrie White's world is her quiet, heretofore secret affection for classmate Tommy Ross (William Katt). De Palma finds a unique way to connect these characters visually the first time that they share a scene. In English Class, Tommy is highlighted in the foreground of one shot, in an extreme close-up. Meanwhile, Carrie is depicted as diminutive and tiny, in the background of the self-same shot. Interpreting what our eyes see, he is thus paramount -- a towering paragon -- and she is literally almost a midget, an after-thought in distant orbit of his "star." Yet importantly, the characters share the same frame. De Palma's choice of shots here expresses Carrie's own (insecure) view of self. To her, Tommy is "big" and "shiny," at center stage, while she is "small" and far from attention. Almost unseen.

In Horror and Science Fiction Films II (Scarecrow Press, 1982, page 52), critic Donald C Willis noted that "it's debatable who's meaner to Carrie - her fellow students or her director, who draws out their elaborate prank for 90 minutes, then lovingly shoots its penultimate moments...in slow motion."

I understand his point, but, as always, we should ask the question "why?" I submit that that De Palma makes much of the film a torturous build-up to Carrie's moment of explosive rage not so we can mock her; but so we sympathize with her. The film spends much time on Carrie's home life with her stark-raving-crazy mother (Piper Laurie), a zealous, Christian, fundamentalist freak. Between these harrowing home sequences and those set in high school, the audience rightly wonders how much this poor girl can endure Then, De Palma grants us that gleaming moment of hope as Tommy and Carrie appear to develop a meaningful relationship. De Palma again pulls a bait-and-switch (with his lying camera, dammit!), letting the hope linger in our minds that perhaps, just perhaps, Carrie has found the very kindred spirit who will allow her to join the rest of the world and vanquish her intense loneliness and awkwardness. Of course, this is not to be...

Split-Screen Prom Queen

De Palma is renowned for the cleverness of his climactic set-pieces, and Carrie gives us one of his most terrifying, and his most accomplished. His camera prowls the prom as Carrie and Tommy attend the dance and Carrie -- for the first time in the movie -- is all smiles. She is still tender, vulnerable, but her hopes have been raised (as have ours). The gym coach, Mrs. Collins (Buckley) even shares a tender story with Carrie about her own prom.

This is the brand of personal, human story another horror film might not pause to record with such meticulous attention, but again, De Palma pulls the rug right out from under us (and his characters). Mrs. Collins' anecdote -- like the dream-like moment in the shower, or like the hope of a relationship with Tommy -- encourages us in the hope that Carrie is going to have a beautiful experience too. To that end, De Palma's camera dizzily revolves around the happy couple (Carrie and Tommy) as they dance together.

At first, these camera revolutions are euphoric and romantic, an intoxicating moment of hope realized, dreams come true. But then the rotating accelerates, out of control, faster and faster. Because of the off-kilter, fast-moving camera, we just know things are not going to go well. When De Palma's camera then tracks one of the mean girls, P.J. Soles, onto the stage, and the camera determinedly banks up to the rafters, to a shaky pail filled with pig's blood, our hearts sink.

The trap is set.

And again, De Palma gives us a happy moment. Carrie and Tommy are crowned king and queen of the prom, and this revelation is shot using triumphant slow-motion photography. Only this time, we don't feel dreamy or intoxicated...or even triumphant. On the contrary, we're agonized. We know what is coming now, and the slow-motion victory lap drags out our tight-throated feelings of anticipation and dread to an almost unbearable degree. We see what is going to happen but we can't stop it. Now the film marches inexorably towards terror, and the explosion of Carrie's monstrous rage; the force of her anger.

When Carrie is finally "crowned" in pig's blood on stage, the horrifying moment is a specific reflection of the locker-room/shower debacle at the beginning of the film, wherein Carrie first confronted the flowing of her vaginal blood; her messy, confusing entrance into adulthood. Her mother has told her that blood represents sin ("First comes the blood, then comes the sin,") so imagine poor Carrie's terror at being covered in such blood in public; worse -- on stage. By loving Tommy, she must fear, she has again brought the flowing of blood.

Carrie's climactic psychic outburst is depicted utilizing one of De Palma's favorite techniques: the split screen. In this case, the split-screen connotes the instantaneous, light speed transmission of telekinesis; the cause-and-effect relationship of the psychic power. Visualized in one side of the frame, Carrie turns her head, widens her eyes, and casts her gaze upon a specific tormentor. In the other side of the frame, we see the simultaneous psychic effect of the murderous gaze. Someone falls down, someone catches fire, or there is an explosion.

The prom apocalypse also flashily reflects the film's themes. Adults in Carrie are depicted in various shades of negativity. They are colored as uncaring (the principal, who can't remember Carrie's name), utterly mad (Mrs. White), sedated and drunk (Mrs. Snell), or heartless and bitter (Carrie's mocking English teacher). At their very best, the adults might come off as capricious, like Mrs. Collins, whose draconian punishment of the mean girls spawns the revenge against Carrie.

But now that Carrie is an adult -- covered in blood -- we can therefore no longer sympathize with her. Accordingly, she goes beyond the bounds of the "sane" during her incredible telekinetic attack, killing friends (Mrs. Collins) and foes without distinguishing between them. The innocent and the guilty both fall to her wrath and in the end, that's what makes Carrie a monster here...an adult monster like all those around her. De Palma has proven successful at making Carrie sympathetic until this point, until Carrie's "real" entrance into adulthood. The world has taught Carrie to be cruel, and at the Prom, she learns that lesson too well.

Carrie White Burns in Hell. Or, Did You Ever Stop to think that Carrie White Has Feelings?

The third "famous" moment in Carrie arrives at film's end. It's possibly the best sting-in-the-tail/tale ending ever captured on film. It's certainly the most-imitated. Shot in misty slow-motion (again like the locker room sequence preamble...), Sue Snell (Amy Irving) lovingly deposits flowers on Carrie's grave. Her intentions had been good; and despite all the horror Carrie wrought, Sue still has some residual feelings of compassion for the girl who everybody teased. But then, without warning, Sue is pulled down into the grave by Carrie's groping, burned claw. The message: even the innocent must fear Carrie, because she has lost control of her hate.

Sue awakens from the nightmare, traumatized and terrified, and the movie ends with heart-pumping, breathless intensity. We understand that Sue will never be the same; will never view the world the same way. If Carrie has moved into adulthood in the film; so has Sue. She has learned that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Carrie is a terrifying film dominated by the three memorable scenes I have outlined in this review (the locker room opening; the prom set-piece, and the terrifying coda). But it is more than that too.

Again, as I wrote in Horror Films of the 1970s, what you ultimately take away from Brian De Palma's adaptation is a sense of growing frustration with a world that allows good people to be tormented and then turned into monsters themselves. Carrie was so harried, so abused by everyone in her life that she finally retaliated with the very force of hatred she despised so much in others. In charting this story, Stephen King and Brian De Palma chart a cycle of violence. They remind us how children turn to us -- adults -- for guidance and compassion. How they turn to us as role models, and how they sometimes fall through the cracks and find themselves lost, rudderless..emulating only the worst angels of human nature.

De Palma executes Carrie like a perfectly-realized cruel practical joke indeed; but not to debauch us; not to make us gawk or laugh at lonely Carrie White. On the contrary, De Palma victimizes the audience, much as Carrie is herself victimized throughout this harrowing film. He reminds us that in youth (and indeed, adulthood) we've all had to contend with our own Chris Hargensons and Billly Nolans: people who are cruel simply for the sake of cruelty. With his dream visions shattered by harsh reality, with his dazzling split screens, even with his anticipatory, anxiety-provoking slow-motion photography, De Palma reminds us to stop and remember that other people have feelings too. 

Carrie White burned in Hell all right. But that Hell was called high school. And the real thing could hardly have been worse than gym class.

40 Years Ago Today: Link (1986)

Although relegated to limited theatrical release and near obscurity afterwards, director Richard Franklin’s Link (1986) is an effectively made and ingenious horror film that deserves to be better-remembered and, indeed, championed.  

The film depicts a tense battle for superiority, pitting man (or woman…) against ape in a remote English estate.  A sort of simian version of Psycho (1960), Link ponders a very specific question:  Does possessing “civilization” make man inherently superior to apes? 

Or, contrarily, is civilization a mere construct that can be picked up or put down as easily as one takes off a dinner jacket? 

Is civilization a strength, or a weakness?

Throughout the Franklin film, when the titular chimp (played by an orangutan…) prepares to commit murder, he removes his tasteful jacket, as though noting that, simply, civilization has its limitations, and therefore, at times, must be ignored. 

Link the ape wears civilization as if is a suit, but does not internalize its value.

Cleverly, Link presents three important “rules” that -- according to Terence Stamp’s anthropologist, Dr. Phillips -- must dominate man’s interaction with chimpanzees.  But then the film diagrams, in harrowing detail, what problems those rules can cause for both man and beast.  

After all, rules or laws are part and parcel of “civilization.” And yet by the same token rules, to some degree, establish boundaries that demand testing. Link tests those boundaries in his human “friends” and masters, and possesses a tactical advantage in the sense that he can avoid civilization all together simply by taking off the aforementioned jacket.

Humans, it seems, have a much more difficult time shedding this construct.

Buttressed by a superb final act which features a climax (and chase) of virtually unbearable suspense, Link explores man’s perpetual fascination or obsession with simians, and at the same time notes that civilization is both man’s greatest handicap and greatest virtue.

“The little monster’s been getting out at night…”

A zoology student in London named Jane (Elisabeth Shue) petitions Professor Phillips (Stamp), a prominent anthropologist, to serve as his assistant. With a semester break coming up, Phillips agrees that Jane can work at his remote estate, on the sea, as his assistant.  

There -- over the objections of her boyfriend, David -- she will prepare his meals, clean the house, and help him look after his chimps, including old Voodoo, baby Imp, and the intelligent “domestic,” Link.

Upon her arrival at the house in the country, Jane is unprepared for Phillips’ hostility and cruelty towards the animals. He plans to euthanize both Voodoo and Link, and tells Jane the hard and fast rules for dealing with the apes.  

However, Link soon turns the tables on Professor Phillips.

While Jane attempts to understand, precisely, the simian politics of the house, Link goes on a killing spree, and lays siege to the house and its occupants.

“You just have to let them know that they are forgiven…”

Writer Everett De Roche, Richard Franklin’s frequent creative collaborator, sets down three rules for man/ape interaction in Link.  

These are: 

1. Man is the dominant species, so he must never treat the apes as equals.

2. Man’s anger must never escalate. He must always forgive the apes, no matter what they do. The apes must know that they are forgiven.

And, finally…

3 Man must not get involved in inter-ape squabbles, instead letting them work matters out for themselves.

Notice that, in a curious way, all three rules establish the same thing: man is in charge, and ape is subservient, inferior. 

Rule one establishes dominance, but so does rule two, in more nuanced terms, because it is man who has the capacity (and responsibility) to forgive, not the apes. 

The third rule, meanwhile, establishes that ape matters are beneath the interest of man and therefore to be ignored. Their affairs are not man’s concern.

Phillip’s Laws as we might call them overrule the law of the jungle, and demand that man act, constantly, as a deliberate superior to his ape friends.  

Amazingly, clever Link develops a way around these rules. He kills Voodoo (settling a squabble his own way), and is constantly seen demanding forgiveness, no matter how radically he transgresses, or what crimes he commits.  

If humans must always forgive, then Link can always simply extend his hand in supplication, no matter his trespass. Link realizes he has an out for any act that could get him in trouble: Rule #2.  He doesn’t realize that Dr. Phillip can break his own rule by offering not forgiveness, but a final solution: murder of the transgressor.

Yet if Link sees a way around the rules, he is not exactly deceitful in nature. By contrast, Phillips’ stock and trade is cruelty, and he plans to kill Link essentially because the animal has grown too smart; too knowing. 

At least Link has the decency to remove his jacket when he gets down to murder, an affectation that Phillips doesn’t observe. He never casts off the face of civilization, though his act (homicide) qualifies as barbaric.

But Link is a clever movie, in part, because it establishes a film-long conflict between man and ape on all fronts. One early scene sees Jane pitted against Imp in an IQ test, and she nearly loses. The message is that intelligence is not the sole purview of man.  Intelligence is not the thing that separates us, then, and Link’s dialogue informs us that some apes have IQs as high as 85.

Another scene suggests that man is separated from ape by his capacity to make war. The movie undercuts that notion as well, and tells a story of a chimp “war” in Tanzania in 1979.

In the finale, Jane realizes that the only way to defeat Link is to trick him, and she does so by exploiting his understanding of Phillip’s Laws…of civilization itself. Link knows that he will be forgiven for his trespasses, including smoking.  

So Jane starts to discipline him, pre-emptively, for smoking a cigar near a lit gas pilot light in the kitchen.  Knowing he won’t face permanent anger or discipline, Link lights up the cigar, demonstrating his belief in his own superiority.  

Instead, he blows up the house and loses the war.

Watching Link again for the first time since 2005, I was struck by how similar the film is, in a sense, to Hitchcock’s Psycho.  

The setting is an isolated house with a very similar interior on the first floor, and the murderous individual (in this case Link, not Norman Bates) has an established routine for disposing of visitors (dumping cars not in a swamp, but over a rocky cliff, Oceanside).  

Furthermore, the villain is psychotic, one might surmise, due to a betrayal from a parental figure. Norman poisoned and killed his own Mother when she turned her affection away from him.  Link kills his father when he recognizes Phillip’s betrayal.  There’s even a bathroom scene here, with Link peeping at Jane as she is about to take a bath.

Link is more straightforward a film than Psycho is, in many respects, but both films trade on the notion that not everything is what it seems on the surface.  Phillips boasts a darkness to him that seems to bring about Link’s violent fit, and so a key question remains: is Link acting out of self-defense, or out of blood-thirstiness when he commits murder?  Norman’s activities, likewise, come out of the need and desire to emotionally protect himself from his mother’s death.  His murders are a form of mental self-defense, you might say.

One innocent figure in Link is the baby chimp, Imp. He is carried about on Shue’s shoulders throughout the film.  She reads him bedtime stories, and he is treated, essentially, like a human baby.  

This innocent is unencumbered by rules or knowledge of them, and suggests a blunt course of action.  “Kill Link,” Imp types into a computer.  

Jane responds that murder is “is not the way civilized people behave,” but ultimately, Imp is right.  Imp suggests the same course of action as Dr. Phillips does, but Imp gains audience sympathy because of his innocence, and because of his nature as an animal…one who understands instinctively what Link is capable of. Link, who has figured out how to game the rules, must die, because he keeps crossing lines of decorum or civilized behavior (murder, primarily). 

Link is a great horror film, dominated by a number of great, almost sub-textual touches.  Early on, the film Blonde Venus (1932) is seen on a television, and shows footage of humans dancing with a gorilla (or a person in a gorilla suit).  Underneath the suit, Marlene Dietrich is revealed at one point.  So Dietrich removes her “costume” as a beast to reveal her civilized, human self.  This act is the precise opposite of Link’s in the film. He takes off his human suit to reveal his murderous, uncivilized, animal side.

Similarly, the lead character here is named “Jane,” and we associate that name explicitly with Jane in the Tarzan stories, and Jane Goodall, a famous primatologist and anthropologist.  In all these cases, Jane is a figure who is something of a go-between, moving between the human world and the ape world.  That is, not coincidentally, the role that Shue’s Jane plays here.

Finally, I love that Jane reads Imp the story of The Three Little Pigs in the film, because the last act literalizes the story, with Link as the Big Bad Wolf outside, trying very hard to make his way inside the house.  

A formalist like Hitchcock, Franklin surpasses his earlier film work in Link by staging some remarkable and expressive shots during the movie’s final battle. After Jane picks up a shot-gun and shoots at Link, Franklin stages a gorgeous shot through the bullet hole in the kitchen door.  

Later, he stages an extreme high-angle shot from above the second floor balcony, and follows Link’s pursuit of Jane, Imp and David up the stairs, around the ledge, and into a locked room.  The effect is exhilarating, as the long-shot provides viewers the full terrain of the battle, and offers no fakery or trickery.  A sense of space and time -- and therefore danger -- is brilliantly preserved. While so many films sort of wind-down or creatively peter out in the third act (see: Explorers [1985]), Link delivers the thrills.

For some reason, audiences got a lot of “ape”-based horror movies in the late 1980s and early 1990s, including Link, Monkey Shines (1988), and Shakma (1990).  

I’m a big fan of Romero’s Monkey Shines, but even so Link remains, in my eyes, top banana.