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| Tom Provost with Mira Sorvino on set of The Presence |
Today we welcome Tom Provost to the site. Tom runs the fantastic On Food and Film blog and is the writer/director of the romantic ghost story, THE PRESENCE. Tom was kind enough to share with us his background and introduction to horror films as well as five films that freak him out! Grab your blanket, turn on the lights and read on!
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| The Night Stalker |
My first experience with a movie that scared me terribly was THE NIGHT STALKER, a TV movie which aired on ABC in 1972. I was 7 years old, my brother 10, and our parents let us watch the movie with them, which I think they regretted: two hours later my parents had to nail a cross over my bed. It was the only way I would get in bed. Not that I slept. I was terrified... and yet I felt so alive! Which for me is the paradoxical attraction of scary movies. Truly frightening movies offer a tantalizing pull of adrenaline as well as the thrill of experiencing the unknown, yet at the same time they come with the possibility of causing true emotional damage. It's the same pull as contemplating sticking a finger in a socket... wanting to do it because of the charge of the dare and the thrill of doing something forbidden, yet along with the thrill, it can hurt.
The first scary movie that really hurt me in that way was 4 years later, in 1976. I'd had some fun scares in between, most notably the summer before with Jaws. Jaws is dazzling and scary, at times terrifying. Yet it is also a ton of fun. It has a joy de vivre that somehow makes even the scariest jolts bearable. In '76, though, I went to see my first R-rated movie, The Omen. Our monsignor told my parents it was ok to bring me, he loved the movie, finding its theology fascinating and accurate. So I went with my Mom, also a scary movie junkie. I vividly remember, about the time the storm draws near and Father Brennan begins his fateful trip to the church, experiencing a sense of terror so deep I felt my heart would stop. It grew and grew and around the time of the cemetery I had to excuse myself and run into the bathroom in order to cry a little, and orient myself. I eventually made it back into the theatre, slightly calmed, and shuddered through the rest of the movie, hating it, terrified, yet loving it. And wanting more.
I was with Mom and my best friend Marty for the next one - Halloween. Damn, what a great movie. Relentless suspense. I am not embellishing to say we three basically ended up in the same seat for the final 30 minutes. I was getting a little older by then, I was 13, and I was able to handle the terror a little better. I went back to see it over and over.
Dressed to Kill came next, in 1980. Mom and I drug my father to see this one. He hated scary movies but we tricked him into going, using the lure of seeing his favorite, Angie Dickenson, naked. We also used a rave review from Pauline Kael in The New Yorker to seal the deal. "See, it's brilliant!" None of us had any idea what we were getting into. I myself had yet to see Psycho, so the narrative twists of the movie were new to me. Dressed to Kill's "shower sequence", brilliantly revised in an elevator, remains one of the most disturbing things I've ever seen, for the same reasons Psycho was so disturbing to the audiences of its time: it was as much the shock of my main character being ripped out from under me as it was the hyper violence of the scene.
Dressed to Kill was also the movie that truly turned me onto the art of filmmaking. DePalma's technique is so confident and assured, I remember for the first time actually thinking about the camera and narrative strategies. When the museum sequence ended, still one of my favorite sequences of any movie, we three turned to each other in the theatre in awe. I'd never seen anything like it. And thus began my own love of wordless sequences, evidenced in my own feature which has much less dialogue than most, almost none in the first 25 minutes.
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| Freddy can be pretty unnerving |
While I certainly saw some very influential scary movies in the next few years (The Changeling, for instance, wow, @$# awesome, and Poltergeist, a wonderful, wildly entertaining and very scary movie), it wasn't until college that I saw a couple more that truly went under my skin. First was the original Nightmare on Elm Street. I went with my best friend and college roommate Mark Stolaroff, still my best friend and a wonderful film producer as well as the creator of the No Budget Film School. I'm not sure I've ever been so deeply unnerved watching a movie. The narrative device of never quite knowing what is a dream and what is real freaked me out. Completely. It was a Sunday night, a great movie night in college, and when we left the theatre, we ran into another friend in the lobby. He looked at me and said, 'Dude, what's wrong? You're fucking white as a ghost!" I could barely even answer him, I was so shaken. Then came Cronenberg's The Fly. Does this freak people out the way it does me? Emotionally, it's devastating. The romance in the movie works beautifully, given the chemistry between Geena Davis and Jeff Goldblum, who were falling in love in real life as they shot they movie. The heartfelt and resonant romance makes the end of the movie horrifying, even without his wonderful gross out theatrics. I have a hard time watching that one again, it gets me so upset.
My love for scary movies has continued since. And I have a long list of favorites, movies that have shaken me to various degrees... The Haunting (the original !!), The Others, Wait Until Dark, Alien... Angel Heart remains a very disturbing movie to me. And it's so beautiful at the same time, what a strangely lush, gorgeous film. I love the Paranormal movies, they scare the shit out of me. The Ring certainly stopped my heart a few times. Scary. One Halloween, I was able to see a preview of Jacob's Ladder, just 50 of us in attendance with director Adrian Lyne. Wow. I was deeply, deeply unnerved. Lyne told us that evening they had to cut two scenes from the end, given how upsetting the movie was to test audiences. Having now seen those two scenes, I wish he'd left them in but in whatever form Jacob's Ladder remains one of my most disturbing experiences. Few things in any movie rival the 'trip to hell' in the hospital for true horror.
I could go on and on, as we all could, and I am sure most of us share many of the same movies on our lists. I'll admit, though, in the past few years I shy away from the hyper violent. I watched the first Saw and that was enough. Those don't scare or disturb me, they are not that clever, they just make me a little ill. So no Hostel, Human Centipedes et all for me. What I love are smart, clever movies that even as an adult can still freak me out. So for this wonderful website, and their Halloween celebration, rather than give a typical list of top 5, I wanted to throw out 5 freaky movies that people may not have yet seen or even heard of. If you haven't seen one, check it out:
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| ILS, French horror at it's best |
ILS (Them) - This film rivals my experience with Nightmare on Elm Street. It's terrifying. And brilliant in its simplicity. It is so simple it's surprising that it works so terribly well. Yet the filmmakers are so gifted, at so many things, once the movie kicks into gear I remember at times not being able to breathe. Freaked Me Out!
INFECTION - This one, about all hell breaking loose at a hospital, is a total blast. Visually Infection is extremely clever and the movie provides many requisite scares and jumps. The movie is often very funny and has a great time thumbing its nose at certain conventions. Yet ultimately, even with the humor, it manages to disturb. I love it.
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| When aren't orphans creepy? |
THE ORPHANAGE - This movie is a classic ghost story. Elegant, creepy, beautifully done. With a lead performance by Belen Rueda that astonishes. The movie is scary, yes, and has a couple of the best "set-up/pay-offs" I've ever seen. Yet it is the point of the movie, and an ending that is daring and devastating, that causes the movie to unsettle.
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| Mental hospital? Never good |
SESSION 9 - A masterpiece. I watched this it home, not in a theatre... it wasn't in theatres long enough for most to catch it. About halfway through, during an extended scene in the bowels of an abandoned insane asylum, I did something I've never done before or since... I paused the movie and turned on every light in the house, downstairs and up. That's the only way I could finish it. Terrifying.
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| Sometimes you gotta kill the baby |
ROSEMARY'S BABY - I know, I know, it's well known and on many lists. It's already been mentioned on this site! But for creeping horror, it doesn't get any better. Put a gun to my head and ask "what is the best directed movie of all time" and I'd probably cite this. Polanski works brilliance with nothing. Everything is just slightly, purposefully off. It's hard to tell what Polanski is doing, how he works his magic, yet with each passing scene we get more and more unsettled. I'm thrilled that Criterion is releasing this in BluRay form, finally! Watch it on as big a screen sometime if possible. It's simply the best.
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