Guest Post: Stephen King's IT (2017)

Stephen King's IT (2017) will make all your nightmares come true.

By Jonas Schwartz

Evil oozes through Derry, Maine. Not just one evil, but a sewage of cruelty permeates the town. The decent ones face abusive dads, sadistic bullies, vile mean girls and death on every corner.  The Chamber of Commerce is worth every penny if people continue to populate this death trap. For at the center of the madness, a malevolent being tracks your worst fears and turns them to realities, feeding off dread and delighting in ripping little children to shreds.

Pennywise the Clown (Bill Skarsgård), the main incarnation of the beast, is Stephen King's brutal joke to childhood. The new film, directed by Andy Muschietti (Mama), plays the audience like a cacophony of terror. Though it could be tighter, Stephen King's IT is still a funhouse of a film.

Based on King's 1986 epic novel (at 1138 pages, it is still one of his longest books), seven adolescent outcasts form a bond while fighting brutal monsters both human and supernatural. Though the sheriff's son Henry Bowers (Nicholas Hamilton) is a psychopath, who carves his name in little kid's bodies, he's no match for the spectral creature who haunts the town. Though IT can turn into any manifestation, he takes gruesome glee in inhabiting the dancing clown, Pennywise. The de facto leader of the "losers," Bill (Jaeden Lieberher), has already suffered devastating loss when, a year before, his baby brother disappeared. Now he gathers his friends to destroy the menace who plagues their town.

Muschiette and his writers Chase Palmer, Cary Fukunaga, and Gary Dauberman, take liberties with the book, most that do not damage the substance.  Primarily, IT has been broken into two films. The first, which is currently being released, focuses on Bill and his teenage friends as they first encounter IT. The second film, to be released in a few years, will cross-cut between the children and their adult selves 27 years later. The film also forwards the timeline to 1988-89, so that the second phase will be in modern times. The novel introduced us to the kids living through the late 1950s.

The film also escalates a supporting character's death to the first section and gives victims' families no closure by keeping all the children corpses in the sewers so that no one can be sure their relative has died. That includes our hero Bill, whose brother Georgie is still considered missing, even though the audience witnessed his violent murder in the prologue.

ABC-TV produced a popular mini-series in the early nineties that followed the book's essence, but it still had the limitations of network television regarding budget and violence. In the current rendition, Muschiette smartly utilizes his big budget tools to set the movie's mood.

Visually, IT is a gripping slice-and-dice of Americana. Cinematographer Chung-hoon Chung floods the film with light, which is usually blocked by impediments, including streams of light that push through wooden barricades and a deluge of sun beating through a stain glass Jewish star in a synagogue office. The picket fences and soft focus seem more rooted in the original book's era of 1959, but the film does a good job of placing the story in the late eighties, with baggy clothes, mullets, and people already anchored to their televisions at all times.

The look for Pennywise differs greatly from the family make-up worn by Tim Curry in the original TV film. Curry was superbly horrifying in the 90s, but the current make-up artists reshape the clown's face to resemble a king cobra, with protruding teeth and a forehead the size of Montana. In the opening gutter scene, his eyes don't glow in the dark as much as shine brightly, causing a menacing effect. Some of the other creatures are less haunting, particularly the leper who frightens young asthmatic Eddie (Jack Dylan Grazer), who looks like he wandered off The Walking Dead set seeking a diet coke. The score by Benjamin Wallfisch captures the childlike innocence of being 13-years-old during summer vacation while quickly melding into creepy horror motifs on a moment's notice.

The film's weakest element is the drawn-out editing and pacing which dissipates some of the tension. Many scares are repeated. Several scenes could have been cut down. A two hour and fifteen-minute horror movie is not an issue, a two hour and fifteen-minute horror movie that felt three hours is a problem. 

Also, in horror, rules are essential. Even if characters don't know how to kill a beast, the audience must have some understanding, but in this film, the rules on injuring the ethereal monster are vague. Plus, though a character explains that IT returns to cause havoc every 27 years, it's unclear how long he can stay active. Is it exactly a year, a year and two days, etc.? Without that countdown, there's no ticking time bomb to pump up the suspense. He seems to evaporate just because the credits are ready to roll.   

Muschiette's strongest asset is his cast. Skarsgård is playful, taunting the kids as a cat would with mice, and frighteningly ferocious. The kids' chemistry is remarkable for a group of mostly newcomers. Lieberher, who had been captivating in a mostly silent role in Midnight Special, is the perfect anchor for IT, identifiable to anyone who suffered through high school as a runt of the litter. Finn Wolfhard, who won over audiences as the leader of another band of kids in Netflix's Stranger Things, is appropriately aggravating as the jokester Richie. Wyatt Oleff as the skittish Stan and Grazer as the invalid Eddie are vulnerable, making the audience fear for their safety. Jeremy Ray Taylor is heartbreaking as the heavy-set Ben, who harbors a deep love for the solo girl, Bev (Sophia Lillis). Lillis is the breakout star. Playing a sexually abused but defiant girl, who faces her fears every day, Lillis reveals layers of pain and empowerment.

Stephen King's IT will be a divisive film, particularly to the Generation X who read the book when it first came out and crawled under the covers on the Sunday night in November when Tim Curry and his red balloon first told little Georgie he'd float too. And though the film suffers from issues that a more experienced director may have reigned in, Muschiette's youthfulness perfectly sets the stage for Stephen King's ode to youth in peril. 

Jonas Schwartz is a voting member of the Los Angeles Drama Critics, and the West Coast Critic for TheaterMania. Check out his “Jonas at the Movies” reviews at Maryland Nightlife.

At Flashbak: 5 Most Underrated Stephen King Movies

Flashbak, a new spin-off of Anorak, has posted my new article, which concerns underrated films based on the canon of Stephen King.

Here's a snippet (and here's the url:  http://flashbak.com/the-5-most-underrated-stephen-king-horror-film-adaptations-16858/)

Hollywood filmmakers have been adapting the literary works of horror maestro Stephen King since 1976, and often with tremendous financial and critical success. 

De Palma’s Carrie (1976), Kubrick’s The Shining (1980), Romero’s Creepshow (1982) and Cronenberg’s The Dead Zone (1983) are just a few memorable titles from the first wave of silver screen adaptations, but other, later successes include Misery (1990) and The Mist (2008).

With a canon that includes over fifty films at this point, it’s only natural that some efforts should be forgotten or not quite given their due as works of art.

That idea in mind, below are listed, in chronological order, five of the most underrated films based on the genre works of Stephen King.

Cult-Movie Review: 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.

Movie Trailer: Carrie (1976)

Movie Trailer: Carrie (2013)

The X-Files 20th Anniversary Blogging: "Chinga" (February 8, 1998)

Although The X-Files (1993 – 2002) and Stephen King boast different creative approaches and styles, they have in common at least one crucial quality. 

Both the TV series from Chris Carter and the literary works of the "king" of horror seek to re-write or re-interpret old horror myths in terms of technological modernity. 

King’s stories possess modern settings and contemporary 20^th century-born characters -- as well as allusions to modern pop culture (usually music) -- and yet also delicately revise the vampire myth (Salem’s Lot), the haunted house paradigm (The Shining), and other “monsters” for an age of reason largely devoid of traditional Gothic elements.

And as I’ve written before, this is The X-Files’ end game as well: making relevant for the “meta” 1990s the bugaboos of old, from the werewolf (“Shapes”) and the vampire (“3”) to ghosts (“How the Ghosts Stole Christmas.”) 

The X-Files steadfastly creates a new Gothic brand or architecture, and encodes in its very lead characters the tension between the Gothic and the Rational; belief and skepticism.  Its narrative structure is often epistolary -- in the form of Mulder and Scully’s reports to the F.B.I. -- and thus deliberately reflective of the ultimate Gothic horror story -- Dracula -- -and its clash between the exotic (and “foreign”) and the very latest in scientific advancement.

We get the idea then, in The X-Files, of the ultra-modern reckoning with the romantic, or supernatural.  The tools of science -- whether forensics or behavioral psychology -- thereby replace the crucifix, garlic, villagers’ torches, and other tools of the Old World, but serve, oddly enough, roughly the same purpose....monster hunting.

Given such common ground, it’s not a surprise that Stephen King should co-write an episode of The X-Files with Chris Carter, or that it should -- like King’s best literary works -- revamp an old “monster” for modern consumption, in this case the “evil doll.”    

That evil doll just wants to “play” and “have (murderous…) fun” in “Chinga.” Accordingly, the episode -- while intensely violent -- also boasts a playful nature. The episode proves intensely creepy and even a bit over-the-top in its presentation of an ambulatory toy as the walking, talking, murdering Id of an anti-social child.   

Yet simultaneously, “Chinga” is also able to have wicked fun with its premise; so much so, in fact, that Carter and King even find time to reference Chucky, the "celebrity" killer doll of the Child’s Play film series.

On a weekend getaway in Maine, Scully runs afoul of a bizarre X-File: a grocery store terrorized by a seemingly demonic force. 

In truth, however the evil originates from a little’s girl’s doll.  The girl herself, Polly (Jenny-Lynn Hutcheson), is deemed autistic, and her mother, the beautiful Melissa Turner (Susannah Hoffmann) -- a recent widow -- is suspected of being a witch.

When dead bodies start to accumulate in the small town, the girl’s evil doll -- who was fished out of the nearby bay and was apparently infused with occult powers by a coven years ago -- becomes Scully’s prime suspect.

Automatonophobia is the fear of an object that falsely represents a sentient human being.  A resident, perhaps, of the Uncanny Valley, the automaton -- the doll, the dummy, or the puppet -- is often featured in horror history.  The long-standing fear of automatons may originate from ancient religious rituals, which suggested that inanimate objects could sometimes house the voices of the "un-living."

That’s precisely what happens in “Chinga.” An inanimate object houses the life-force of a long-dead, and extremely malevolent witch.

But again, the “demonic doll” trope gets a modern make-over here, courtesy of Carter and King.  The doll is not just a malevolent, ambulatory toy, but the sinister Id of a girl, Polly, deemed “autistic” (and thus unacceptable?) by society-at-large.  

Inexpressive and yet incredibly demanding, Polly is herself a suspect in the episode’s gruesome murders, and the doll seems to act according to her bidding, or at least impulses.

To wit, the doll’s victims are those unfortunates who have in some way angered Polly, whether a potential boyfriend for Mum, a day care worker who slapped the misbehaving girl, or a testy ice cream counter employee.  The anti-social aspect of an autistic child is thus the episode’s real “monster,” only with the doll serving as its walking, talking avatar. The doll behaves according to Polly’s desires.

Intriguingly, “Chinga” also forges an under-the-surface connection between an ancient witch’s coven and a very catchy song, “The Hokey Pokey,” which proved a dance sensation in America in the late 1940s. 

In “The Hokey Pokey Dance” (as per the lyrics…) participants stand in a circle and make gestures in what -- not entirely uncharitably -- could be deemed…. ritualistic fashion.  

Is it possible that the soul of a witch was once was placed into a doll using a similar kind of witch’s circle, or a bizarre incantation?  

That’s a certainly a possibility inherent in the story. “The Hokey Pokey” recurs several times in the episode, and universally heralds the doll’s murders.  It’s very much like the incantation at the beginning of a ritual sacrifice.

“Chinga” also locates terror in King’s favorite setting: a tiny, gossip-laden New England community where everybody knows everybody else and everybody has an opinion about everything.  The locals in “Chinga” trace their roots right back to Salem and the notorious Witch Trials, and that historical drama is the episode’s ground zero for the horror: The New England witch story.  Or more snappily, New England Gothic (think: Let’s Scare Jessica to Death [1973]).

Uniquely, “Chinga” handicaps The X-Files’ intrepid investigators by separating the established “team,” and sending Scully out alone to play roles of both believer and skeptic. 

Meanwhile Mulder -- the acknowledged believer -- is left at home, as it were, in the office to twiddle his thumbs while Scully must work things out in isolation.  Although surely it wasn’t intentional, this approach actually forecasts the series’ eighth season, where Scully must contend with Mulder and his legacy, the show’s “absent” or “missing” center.

“Chinga” has been criticized as being incredibly gory (and it is…), but the episode works beautifully in terms of the overall Scully character arc.  She concludes, rather atypically, that the supernatural is to blame for a series of killings, and makes her decisions based on that conclusion.  In the absence of Mulder, Scully must absorb or assimilate his viewpoint, and so is able to destroy the evil doll -- a representation of the Gothic -- with a distinctly un-glamorous tool of modernity: the microwave oven.

Again, that’s a bit of an in-joke, or a tongue-in-cheek facet of “Chinga,”  the use of a totally average, totally de-romanticized household object to quell the invasion of the Gothic. Forget hypnotism, or DNA analysis...just press "START."

Perhaps not surprisingly, the dead doll of “Chinga” doesn’t stay dead for long.  The Gothic may not be dispensed with so easily, despite the advances of the push-button age.

My X-Files retrospective returns in two weeks with an all-time classic episode “Bad Blood.” Next week: Halloween-a-thon 2013!

Television and Cinema Verities #78

"People go, "Oh my God, that was so scary" but really, it was scary like "Boo!" At the end when the arm comes out, but there's so much humor in it. It was just one of those serendipitous things with everybody that worked on that, everybody that Brian brought together, brought something to it. He had a real handle on it and he knew what he wanted. Now, he does a lot of story-boarding, Brian, and what I loved about the way he works is that he would let me do anything I wanted within a parameter. He'd set up the shot a certain way and I'd say, "Can I do this?" "Yeah." So he knew what he needed, knew what he wanted and beyond that, we had an amazing freedom."

-Sissy Spacek discusses the making of Carrie (1976) in an interview at Coming Soon with Edward Douglas (May 2012).

Ask JKM a Question #43: Carrie, Jodie Foster, and Ghost Story?

A reader from Europe named Mario writes:

“Hi, I came across this reflection, Ghost Story: “House of Evil” and wonder if you think there is a connection between the Judy character and Carrie...”

“...And did I miss a cult classic like The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane on your site or do you ignore it, or do you think everything is said about it already? 

Hi Mario, thanks for writing.

I have just finished watching all of Ghost Story/Circle of Fear (1972 -1973) at this point, and it’s my opinion that the relatively unknown TV series is actually a major source of inspiration for Stephen King. 

He writes about the series in Danse Macabre (though under the wrong name) and praises it very strongly.

It’s a bit of a tangled chain of custody, but let me explain.  In the chapter, “The Glass Teat,” on page 249, Mr. King praises an obscure TV series called Quinn Martin’s Tales of the Unexpected (1977), particularly an episode in which a “murderer sees his victim rise from the dead on his television set.” 

The only problem is that no such episode exists in that short-lived series catalog, which consists of only eight programs. 

But the description fits “The Dead We Leave Behind,” an episode of Ghost Story, perfectly.  It stars Jason Robards as a murderer who buries his cheating wife in a garden shed, and sees her rise from the dead on his TV set.

 It’s easy to see how King might have made such a mistake, because Ghost Story (1973) and Tales of the Unexpected (1977) were virtual contemporaries.  It’s like mistaking a Twilight Zone episode for an Outer Limits or Thriller episode.  It’s not hard to do.

Again and again, while watching Ghost Story/Circle of Fear episodes, I’ve been struck by elements which seem to forecast King’s popular horror novels.

“The Dead We Leave Behind” features elements in common with Pet Sematary, for instance.  It involves a local legend -- spelled out explicitly in the dialogue -- about burying corpses before winter comes.  If they aren’t buried in time, they come back to life wrong, possessed of “both life and death.”

The episode “Doorway to Death” features some familiar elements later seen in The Shining, particularly a killer “ghost” in a haunted building.  That ghost has axe-murdered his wife in that edifice.  Snow plays a part in the episode too.   

The episode “Ghost of Potter’s Field,” meanwhile, involves a writer and his sinister doppelganger, which is reminiscent of King’s later The Dark Half. 

Finally, a vampire-like “eternal” named Barlow (David Soul) plays a role in the last episode “The Phantom of Herald Square,” forecasting Salem’s Lot.

I’m adamantly not asserting plagiarism or theft here, by the way, just noting that Ghost Story/Circle of Fear appears to have had at least some creative impact on the King of Horror in the early 1970s.  An intrepid writer could no doubt pen a very meaningful thesis, actually, on the connections between the various series episodes and multiple Stephen King’s novels.  Your question suggests another.

Why has no one else mentioned this connection yet?  Well, Ghost Story/Circle of Fear only became available on DVD months ago, for the first time in thirty-five years or so.  And I daresay I'm the first (or one of the first, anyway), to blog the whole series. 

Of course, the point is that King’s popular and beloved stories bristle with the author’s individual style and taste, and are in no way rip-offs.  

When I created my web series, The House Between, for example, I was inspired stylistically and content-wise by Sapphire and Steel, The Prisoner, Space: 1999, The Outer Limits and One Step Beyond, and sought to convert those inspirations into something new and original.  It’s what writers and creators do.  They build, naturally, on past traditions and, yes, specific works.

All that established, I did not see or notice the connection, until you mentioned it, between Carrie and the character played by Jodie Foster in the episode “House of Evil.”  Both girls seem to possess burgeoning mental abilities, for instance, and are outsiders in their own households.  A more interesting connection, perhaps, in terms of Carrie, involves a One Step Beyond episode called “The Burning Girl.”  I'd recommend watching that one.

I’m actually quite a big fan of The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane, by the way, and I’ll review it here on the blog before too long.  I’m definitely not ignoring it…I promise.

Don’t forget to send me your questions at Muirbusiness@yahoo.com