CULT MOVIE REVIEW: Antichrist (2009)

One quality of a great work of art is that it provokes you. It consumes your mind and your senses. You find yourself returning to the work of art over and over to suss out meaning; to seek clarity; to judge how it makes you feel and what you think it attempts to convey.

Not everyone is game for such a mind-bending exercise. Especially if the work of art in question happens to be a film. After all, it is much easier to reckon with a two-and-half-hour entertainment about giant robots (with robot testicles, no less…) than a dark, brooding film about guilt, self-hatred, human nature, and psychoanalysis.

Directed by Lars von Trier, Antichrist is just the sort of horror movie (and it is a horror movie…) that will infuriate many and captivate others. The director made this 2009 film in the midst of a deep personal depression, but despite the film’s brooding, lugubrious nature, Antichrist remains a vibrant and masterful meditation on nature. Human and otherwise. The primary argument against Antichrist — which you will find popping up again and again on the Net — is that it is “overtly misogynistic.” That the movie hates women.

I’ve written about this subject before in regards to Brian De Palma, but when charges of misogyny are leveled, it is sometimes helpful to contextualize a filmmaker’s choices and to look back at the director’s overall career, rather than simply leap to the knee jerk conclusion that one particular work happens to be misogynistic.

Lars von Trier, if you don’t recall, is the Danish director (working from Zentropa Productions in Hvidovre) who created in the late 1990s the informal “Golden Heart” trilogy. The films in this Dogma 95/Goldenheart cycle included Breaking the Waves (1996), The Idiots (1998) and Dancer in the Dark (2000). The premise underlining each of these Golden Heart movies is that a sweet, put-upon woman — one who plays by the rules — is utterly destroyed by an uncaring, cruel society. Specifically, the “Goldenheart” is so good-hearted and sweet that she sacrifices all that she has – all that she is — for other people.

Dancer in the Dark – which was also a critique of the application of the death penalty in America — was perhaps the most heart-breaking of Von Trier’s Goldenheart films. Starring Bjork, it involved a woman who viewed her sad, poverty-stricken life as a beautiful musical in the mold of The Sound of Music…right up until the very moment she waltzed into the gallows and the State snapped her neck.

On the other hand, Von Trier is also known for putting his leading ladies through…difficult paces. If you’ve seen Nicole Kidman in his controversial (but I think brilliant…) Dogville, you understand. Yet being a difficult and perfectionist director doesn’t make one a woman-hater. It makes one a difficult and perfectionist director.

What The Mind Can Believe and Conceive, It Can Achieve.

Antichrist tells the strange story of a middle-class. married couple, known only as He (Willem Dafoe) and She (Charlotte Gainesbourg). In withholding their names from us, von Trier indicates that “He” and “She” are more than individual people. They are symbols of Male and Female nature.

As the film opens in sumptuous, slow-motion photography and black-and-white, we are treated to an extended, extremely passionate sex scene between He and She that includes close-up views of vaginal penetration.

As He and She make love, steam rises luxuriously from the shower enclosure. Glittering water droplets fall all around their nude bodies…an atmospheric flourishing that adds to the atmosphere of stimulation. Outside the couple’s comfortable home, it snows and snows…a winter-time fantasy brought to life. The sex itself looks extremely…gratifying for both husband and wife…but a troubling object soon looms into the foreground of one composition (set in their bedroom).

It is a baby monitor.

As the couple continues to make love, the baby monitor’s sound levels (represented as ascending bars) spike dramatically. The couple’s young son, Nick, is awake. His parents don’t notice. Or if they do notice, they don’t stop their carnal pursuit. As the sex grows more heated, the world seems to grow increasingly disordered. Things fall on the floor. On open bottle spills its contents chaotically…

Von Trier then cross-cuts between the continuing, focused sexual intercourse of the parents, and little Nick’s innocent nocturnal exploration. The toddler slides out of his crib. He opens the baby gate. He strolls by his parents’ bedroom door. Horrifyingly, he climbs to an open window to touch the ubiquitous falling snow just out of reach…

All this — edited to an Aria by Handel — culminates in a frenzy of sexual orgasm and tragic death. Passion has been sated. But responsibility has been neglected. Nick — the little boy — falls from the window to his death in agonizing, almost cruel slow-motion (replete with falling teddy bear at his side…). After the child’s death, the family’s dirty laundry stops circling in the dryer in a separate shot. This is an image of domesticity shirked for passion.

After this terrible incident, He and She attempt to cope with their child’s tragic death. She blames herself, becomes dependent on mood-altering medication, and ends up in the hospital. She finds herself prone to panic attacks. He — a therapist — immediately makes his wife his pet project. Instead of coping with his own grief, He makes coping with her grief his only care; his only concern. Yet he is distant and arrogant, and treats his wife like an experimental subject case. The doctors believe that She is experiencing an “atypical grief pattern,” but He knows better. He always knows better. Grief is normal; she just has to “work through it.”

One day, He asks his wife what She is afraid of most. Rather surprisingly, she tells him that she fears “the woods.” So together, they travel to the woods. “Nature is Satan’s Church,” the movie informs us, and that warning soon proves accurate. But specifically, the couple travels to a pastoral corner of Earth named “Eden.” At their cabin there, the couple works out her grief, her panic attacks, her self-hatred. All by his timetable and modus operandi.

At the rural cabin, He also discovers evidence of his wife’s academic thesis, which she mysteriously abandoned during her last trip to Eden. That academic work involved witches and “gynocide,” the mistreatment of women by men throughout history. Her notes also reveal a transformation in her thinking process: They go from being extremely detailed and academic to looking like the lunatic scrawlings of a schizophrenic, or someone possessed by the Devil.

Then, He discovers photographs of their son Nick, from the boy’s last summer trip to Eden (alone with his mother). In every single photograph the man unearths, the boy’s shoes were placed on the wrong feet. And the official autopsy reveals that the boy’s feet were slightly deformed…a result of his mother’s strange, repetitive behavior.

Before long, the wife tells her husband that perhaps it is the Female’s very nature to be evil, and that is why their son is dead. She indicates that all those men who burned and brutalized women as “witches” were only murdering “evil.” He categorically rejects this argument, stating that she — as an educated woman — should know better. That her research should tell her differently. Those women were brutalized. Those women (the witches) were destroyed by a male society that feared female strength and power.

But his wife proves her point most dramatically. During sexual intercourse with her husband, she batters him in the penis (and this is seen on screen…) with what appears to be a heavy log (though I have also seen it described as a brick in some reviews ). The pain knocks the husband unconscious. And while he’s out, his wife jerks him off until he ejaculates torrents of blood. This is depicted on camera too. Nothing is hidden.

And that’s just the beginning! The man’s wife bolts a heavy, industrial pole (and thick metal grinding wheel) to one of his legs…and throws away the wrench that could unbolt it. He tries to crawl away to safety, fearing for his life (but the “weight” of his wife drags him down…get it?)

Later, in perhaps the most harrowing scene I’ve seen in years, the wife in Antichrist mutilates her own genitals with a pair of scissors (also depicted on screen, in nauseating close-up), and then sets upon her husband with the scissors too. He fights back.

Finally, after the last battle, He walks alone in the isolating forest of Eden. Mysteriously, an army of faceless women pass him by him on the hill…headed for some unknown destination.

Good and Evil: They Have Nothing to Do With Therapy

So what the hell is going on in Antichrist, and why do some people insist it is misogynist in intent?

Well, the movie is about one big idea: how people (women or men) believe and internalize the messages sent out by the culture, and the serious damage that those messages can inflict on a fragile ego.

“She” has internalized all of the literature and history that she’s read about witches (including the book, “Gynocide”), and decided that…it must be true. That women are evil. She believes this — as the movie reveals in the final act — because she actually saw her son climb to the window before he fell…and didn’t stop him. She was in the midst of an orgasm, actually. She didn’t save her own boy, so she must be evil, right?

The woman’s act of slicing off her own clitoris is important here. It is the act of cutting off the part of herself that is not acceptable to society; the part that wanted “sex” in one moment of passion. And putting the boy’s shoes on backwards? A passive-aggressive push-back against the male-dominated culture that tells her she must be a maternal care-giver first and an intellectual (and a sexual being) second and third.

Her husband believes he can talk to his wife rationally in terms of psychotherapy jargon and platitudes; that he can deploy rationality and the intellect to talk her out of her very real grief, sadness, and blistering self-hatred. What he learns is that in Satan’s Church (nature), “chaos reigns.” Therapy has nothing to do with good or evil. Good and evil are more powerful forces than the constructs of man’s science. And in acting out the part of “witch” (down to the physical torturing of her husband), “She” accomplishes something else. She forces her cold-fish of a husband to feel something too, a denied emotion. Rage. She rips the veneer of civilization from him. Now it is his nature — his ugly, violent “male” nature that is in play.

The therapist’s wife forces him into a role from “Gynocide” indeed: the respectable man (the priest, the judge, the governor, the farmer…) who puts aside all rationality and condemns a woman as a monster. When, in the film’s last shot, Dafoe sees the hundreds of faceless women milling about in the woods, it is because he — the coldly rational therapist — has joined the ranks of the abusers. All these women, essentially, are the victims of his male nature.

Dafoe’s character is not a bad or evil man, per se, but he is a dominating one. Throughout the film, He forces his wife to “play” therapist games on his timetable, in his fashion. He forces her to confront things she doesn’t want to confront. He forces her to go where she does not want to go. He is demanding and relentless that she be “open.” Yet in the end, his wife performs an experiment on him: burdening him with physical pain (and literally a physical weight), so as to see, finally, what he is made of. What she discovers, sadly, is that her husband is made of the same matter as the historical men in the academic books. When push comes to shove, he succumbs to rage. He commits murder. His hatred for her (and for all womankind, by extension) is the thing he has kept buried, and her experiments have exposed it.

The Three Beggars: A Shamanic Journey.

Antichrist is filled with odd symbols. “Eden,” of course, is a reference to the Biblical Garden of Eden. It is the place where He and She attempt to return to a state of innocence (free of guilt).

But because nature is Satan’s Church, there is no return to innocence; only a darkening of the situation. An opening up of the Evil. A giant life-less tree seems to dominate the landscape, and it is the Biblical Tree of Knowledge, now an ugly, malevolent husk.

Throughout the film, He and She also encounter a variety of animals in the wild: A fox who speaks (“Chaos Reigns,” he says…); a deer who carries a stillborn doe on its back, and a crow who eerily mimics the call of a dying child.

In the end — when these three beggars meet — someone has to die, according to the wife’s understanding of witchcraft lore. These animals represent, then, the woman’s tacit philosophical acceptance of her “evil” sisterhood: so-called “pagan witches” who danced and prayed by moonlight in the forests; who controlled familiars (animals), and who — their powers joined — could make the sleet fall. Late in the film, She also makes it hail. (And thus, one must wonder, if she can make it hail; can she make it snow? And if she can make it snow…did she create the snow on the night her son died?)

The answers aren’t easy to know here. All we can do is interpret the signals and determine what the story of Antichrist means to us, personally, based on our best reading of the clues.

My viewpoint is that, like the Goldenheart trilogy by the same director, Antichrist is actually a rejection of misogyny. The film indicates that the woman — the once-obedient and “good” wife and mother — has internalized all the negative and hateful messages of a patriarchal culture and arrived at a place of self-hatred. Like the Goldenheart, she was good, and obligingly put her faith in the wrong place. That’s what destroys her.

This woman enjoys sex (you’ll notice the woman is always the sexual aggressor in this film…) and yet she feels guilty about that, because our society by and large does not believe this is how a proper woman should behave. She also chafes under the role of “mother,” because she is unable to continue her intellectual pursuits while acting as the child’s caregiver. And also, her husband does not relate to her as an equal, but rather as a patient, a child needing to be corrected. She thus doesn’t see herself in the role the culture demands of women: she is not happy as a Mom; she is not happy as a wife. She wants to feel passion and enjoys sex. In the lingo of the society that makes her a whore or a slut, doesn’t it?

The result is something terrible: after absorbing all those messages about the Evil in Female Nature, “She” decides to live up to them. She believes them. Her extreme guilt over her son’s death allows her no other trajectory. Similarly, her husband’s denial takes him down the same path. He can only “blame” his wife for her mistakes and miscues, and this battle of the sexes ends in murder.

In whatever way you should choose to interpret Antichrist, it is a visceral, haunting film. Some of the images found here are impossible to shake. The opening montage is a disturbing masterpiece, a mini-film unto itself. And the shamanic,dream walk through the forest by “She” is filled with gorgeous, portentous imagery that harks back to something primeval about the woods. Darkness has come early at that lonely bridge, in a frozen, misty woods. Cross that bridge, and there is no turning back…

Antichrist is weird: an art-house movie that is, literally, gorier than Saw or any Saw sequel. Here, however, the violence is much more disturbing because it all occurs within the framework of the marital relationship; in the very place where love should reign.

What is there to fear in the woods of Eden? As the wife says, “Can’t I just be afraid without a definite object?”

Antichrist will make you afraid. And the definite object to be afraid of…is us. Or as is scrawled by “He” on his wife’s “pyramid of fear: Me.”

Human nature.

The 2nd Annual Cyber Horror Awards: Announcing the Nominees

They’re heeeeeeere!

The Vault of Horror’s B-Sol has just announced the nominees for the 2009 Cyber Horror Awards.

Along with Zombos Closet maestro and League of Tana Tea Drinkers Founder John Cozzoli, and B-Sol, I was quite honored to serve on the nominating committee this year.

Be sure to read the full list of nominees, here at the 2009 Cyber Horror Awards site.

Ballots have been sent out, votes will be tallied, and winners will be announced the first week of March, 2010. Stay tuned!

CULT MOVIE REVIEW: Pandorum (2009)

Important note to architects of the future: the Generational space ark or “sleeper ark” is a very problematic vehicle. At least, that is, if we are to believe the examples of science fiction novels, TV series, and films focusing on the topic.

Way back in 1941, author Robert Heinlein demonstrated some of the pitfalls of the colossal, generational space ark in two stories that would eventually form the novel Orphans of the Sky (1963). In that tale, the vast vessel Vanguard, bound for Proxima Centauri became pilot-less en route; and the passengers and flight crew aboard her separated over time into distinct classes or sects (like the mutants or “muties.”) They even forgot they were aboard a ship…

After Heinlein, sci-fi television soon took the lead in terms of huge space ark dramas. Cordwainer Bird (a.k.a. Harlan Ellison) created the Canadian program The Starlost (1973), which concerned three Quakers learning that they were living not on a planet surface, but rather in a dome that was part of a much larger vessel, an ark. Led by a man named Devon (Keir Dullea), these unlikely explorers discovered that the ark was actually on a collision course with a star, and that it — like the Vanguard — was essentially pilot-less. They spent the series visiting different domes (and different cultures) and trying to control their ark.

In Johnny Byrne’s brilliant “Mission of the Darians,” an episode of Space: 1999 from 1975, the errant Alphans came across the space ark of an alien race called the Darians. There had been a nuclear disaster aboard the vast ark, transforming some crew into mutants while leaving the remainder of the crew physically intact. Across the centuries, the “pure” Darians resorted to cannibalism and transplant surgery from the ranks of the mutants to stay alive; so they could reach a “new Daria.” The Darians rationalized this exploitation of the lower caste for one reason. Carried about the ark was the DNA gene bank of the entire Darian race. Theoretically, this gene bank would ensure that, by landfall, the Darian race could re-constitute itself.

In Doctor Who’s “The Ark in Space” (also in 1975), another twist on the space ark format was developed. Man’s future generations — the crew of a space station in this case — was being devoured while asleep in their cryo-tubes by a predatory race of alien insectoids called The Wirrn.

There are other examples of this narrative, both literary and video, including David Gerrold’s Star Trek novel The Galactic Whirlpool (1980). And now, director Christian Alvart’s harrowing horror film, Pandorum (2009) is the latest permutation of the formula. Of course, you wouldn’t know it from the advertisements, which sold the movie more as a “space zombies on the loose in a spaceship“-type of thing.

In Pandorum, the generational space ark Elysium departs from Earth in 2174, bound for the only habitable planet ever discovered: distant Tanis. Early on the Space Ark’s journey, however, the crew receives a frightening message from Mission Control on Earth. “You’re all that’s left. Good luck and god speed.”

And then, mysteriously, Earth blinks out of existence. Perhaps — as one crew member suggests — the planetary disaster was “nuclear” in origin. Or perhaps the demise of our world was caused by an asteroid collision. Regardless, the 60,000 human colonists on Elysium are all that remains of the human race…the seeds of our future. The seeds of our hope.

The film then jumps to an undisclosed time in the future. A likable technician, Bower (Ben Foster) awakens from extended hyper-sleep in a state of disorientation and suffering from temporary amnesia. The ship itself is a wreck: no one is at the helm, and the bridge is locked and sealed. Bower awakens another crew member on the flight team, Lt. Payton (Dennis Quaid), and together these two men learn that the ship’s reactor is going critical in a matter of hours. The ark — and the human passengers — will be destroyed if the reactor can’t be fixed. While Payton attempts to gain access to the bridge, Bower heads down into the ship’s bowels, bound for the reactor core. His is an Orphean journey into the Underworld, to be certain.

Specifically, what Bower finds throughout the gigantic ship is terrifying indeed. A species of sub-human monsters has turned the passenger section — the cryo-chamber rooms — into their hunting and feeding grounds (like the Wirrn on Doctor Who.) These beasts were once “sleepers” and colonists themselves, but the synthetic accelerator that was pumped into their cryo-chambers (to help them adapt to life on Tanis) has instead adapted them to life aboard the ruined, out-of-control. Elysium. These monsters — who physically resemble John Carpenter’s Ghosts of Mars and Joss Whedon’s Reavers — have set nasty booby-traps for flight crew members throughout the ark, often using live human beings as bait.

There are some normal human survivors left too, but they seem to possess no knowledge that they are even on board a ship. Eventually, Bower encounters a woman — a scientist — named Nadia who takes him to a laboratory where all of Earth’s biological heritage and legacy is stored; Pandorum’s equivalent of “Mission of the Darians’” gene bank. This biological legacy must be protected or Earth is really and truly lost.

An unexpected twist in the familiar space ark format arises from the film’s unusual title: “Pandorum.”

Pandorum is a feared disease of the mind that sometimes afflicts astronauts in deep space. The illness begins with quivering, shaking hands and then culminates with hysteria, paranoia and violence. For a comparison, recall Michael Biehn suffering from the bends in Cameron’s The Abyss (1989). [Editor's note: my friend and regular reader Le0pard 13 corrected me on this, it wasn't the Bends it was High Pressure Nervous Syndrome!] Pandorum is the space-borne equivalent.

There’s an oddly beautiful, if utterly horrifying sequence regarding Pandorum early in the film’s first act. Payton recounts the tale — and we see it unfold in flashback — as a crew member on another space mission goes irrevocably mad and ejects all his crew into space, in their separate sleep chambers (which, let’s face it, are the equivalent of space-bound coffins).

The film cuts to a spectacular long shot from deep space as the troubled ship literally ejects hundreds of these tiny flowering, technological spores. Then, at closer range, we detect a screaming human inside one of these tubes and quickly realize he is headed into oblivion…alive and conscious of his situation.

Simply stated, Pandorum is pandemonium.

And that quality is both the film’s greatest strength and the film’s most troubling weakness. The movie opens with total chaos and we — like Bower himself — have no idea what the hell is happening aboard Elysium. We experience the horrors of the ark alongside Bower, and it’s a scarifying descent into a man-made, technological Hell. Then there’s some wild action and jolts that really get the blood rolling. But before long, the story starts to feel repetitive, and there are some plot points that I would have preferred to see explored with deeper insight. I don’t exaggerate when I say that this movie is madness, violence, madness, more violence, and more madness, until you feel whiplash. It’s all a bit exhausting.

Pandorum is also, perhaps, stuffed with one narrative u-turn too many (particularly the schizoid psyche of one character), though I understand why he’s present. This schizoid crew man reflects the schizoid personality of the ship, as well as the new cultures that have sprung up aboard her. I just wish this character’s back story felt more organic and less like a de rigueur third act “twist.” By film’s end, Pandorum is already ramped-up to insanity; it doesn’t need more of it.

However, I have always enjoyed stories like the one dramatized here: stories of lost and imperiled space arks, of generational ships bound for disaster. I love the intriguing concept of cultural identity, heritage and history forgotten; and the accidental birth of a new social order, one based on the enironment at hand. Pandorum encompasses all that (and indeed, will seem very familiar to fans of Space:1999, The Starlost and Dr. Who).

Outside the space ark template, Pandorum also borrows from The Abyss, as I mentioned above, and even, to some extent, The Poseidon Adventure, since much of the film involves traveling from one end of a damaged, dangerous vessel to the other, facing all kinds of hazards on the trip. An authentic horror film, Pandorum also lingers on some extreme violence and gore. In particular, there’s one scene here that will definitely cause nightmares: an innocent crew member awakes from cryo-sleep only to be viciously set upon and devoured by the cannibals. Grotesque stuff, but vivid and memorable.

Pandorum may not be a great movie, but it is a good one; a hectic one that captures the essential elements of the space ark tale. The lead character, Bower, is drawn well enough that he anchors most of the crazy action…at least until the over-the-top climax, which relies on a surprise you’ll probably see coming a mile away.

Pandorum ends with the legend “Tanis, Year One.” And instead of seeing Elysium’s journey end right there, I wanted more…which probably indicates the movie is better than I’m giving it credit for in this review. But Pandorum made no money at the box office and critics hated it, so we’ll probably never see “Tanis, Year Two.”

To tell you the truth, that makes me sad. This decent, technologically updated re-telling of the classic space ark adventure would make the perfect prologue to an updated “colonizing a new planet at the edge of the galaxy” story.

Besides, there are lots of episodes of Dr. Who, Space:1999 and Starlost left to mine for inspiration. Pandorum may ultimately be a derivative riff on a familiar, oft-told science-fiction tale, but at least it isn’t a remake, a re-boot or a re-imagination. And in my book, that’s what passes as “original” in Hollywood these days.

The Millennium Group Sessions Podcast: JKM

T.L. Foreman and James McLean, two masterminds of Back to Frank Black — the dedicated campaign to resurrect Chris Carter’s Millennium — have just posted the 20th Millennium Group Session Podcast at their site.

And –yep! — it’s an in-depth audio interview with yours truly, me! Click here to listen to the full hour.

This the first part of a two-part conversation. The topics range from my writing career to my opinion of the social value of the horror genre. We discuss Millennium, the ways beloved TV series age and change over the years. And there’s also some talk about my officially licensed Space:1999 novel (The Forsaken)…and more.

Coming up in Part 2 next week there’s more Millennium talk as well as a detailed look back at my independent web series, The House Between.

Anyway, I’d like to thank James and Troy for doing such a great job hosting the show and for including me in their impressive Podcast series. I hope you’ll take a listen…

Theme Song of the Week: VR 5 (1995)

Sci-Fi Wisdom of the Week

“One man’s mundane and desperate existence is another man’s Technicolor.”

– Strange Days (1995)

Goodbye, Holden…

“I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I do all day.”

- J.D. Salinger (1919 – 2010)

CULT TV FLASHBACK #99: The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew Meet Dracula

Don your bell-bottoms, cue the stock-footage thunderstorms, and turn up the library archive sound-effects of wolves baying at the full moon. It’s time to ride our blogging TV time machine back to that great year 1977. Our destination: The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries, a Glen A. Larson production that ran for three years on ABC (1977-1979).

This once-popular detective TV series (styled after the popular, long-lived, mystery books by Edward Stratemeyer) starred teen heartthrob Shaun Cassidy (“Da Doo Ron Ron…”) as Joe Hardy and Parker Stevenson (later the husband of Kirstie Alley…) as his cleverer brother, Frank.

On the Nancy Drew side of the equation, lovely Pamela Sue Martin portrayed the dedicated part-time sleuth. At least that was the case for the first two seasons of The Hardy Boy/Nancy Drew Mysteries. Then she permanently exited the series, breaking the hearts of pre-adolescent boys across the nation. Concurrent with her departure, Pamela Sue Martin shed her “good girl” image forever by posing nude in Playboy.

Little known fact: I still own that particular issue…

But for this 99th cult tv flashback, I want to direct your attention to the two-part, second season opener of The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries, the charmingly-titled “The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew Meet Dracula,” which aired on September 11th and September 18th, 1977.

In most of my reviews, I prefer not to use descriptors such as cheesy or camp — because in time, all programming turns to cheese or camp — but this series is indeed a very cheesy. It’s also rather charming…and innocent. In other words: perfect stuff for kids. Even better: it’s perfect stuff for kids with a burgeoning interest in the horror genre.

So, in this particular tale, hapless Hardy Senior — Fenton Hardy (Ed Gilbert) — disappears at Count Dracula’s castle in Transylvania (on June 4th, 1977…). Weeks later, Joe and Frank go in search of him…in Paris. Then, they run into the lovely Nancy Drew in Munich, and learn more about their father’s unusual disappearance. Fenton and Nancy were “comparing notes” on a mystery involving international art thefts. Many of the world’s most valuable paintings have disappeared, and Fenton was on the case.

The three amateur detectives concur that all roads lead to Transylvania, where a Dracula Festival is being held at Vlad The Impaler’s historic castle. Shooting a rock concert there for ABC is the rock sensation Allison Troy…really the incomparable Paul Williams (who appeared EVERYWHERE in the 1970s, including in Battle for the Planet of the Apes…).

And here (in Part I), Williams performs a great song from one of my favorite movies of all time (and one by Brian De Palma, no less…), 1974’s Phantom of the Paradise.

Anyway, the Hardy Boys go undercover as members of a band called “Circus”….which is just a transparent excuse for Shaun Cassidy to sing “That’s Rock’N'Roll” (“Come on Everybody, get down, get with it, come on everybody get down, get with it…”)

While Joe sings his heart out for costumed revelers, Frank and Nancy Drew separately investigate the creepy caverns underneath the castle; a locale they have been warned about repeatedly. Before long, Frank ends up locked in a dungeon with the apparent victim of a vampire attack.

Soon vampire bats are attacking a night-gowned Nancy Drew in her hotel bedroom (!) and the Transylvania town elders start panicking. Before long, they are on the receiving end of vampire neck bites. Inspector Stavlin, played by Lorne Greene — a traditional sort-of-guy — hints that Dracula may be perturbed that his castle is being used for such crass commercialism (meaning Allison Troy’s concert, not this two-part Glen Larson episode…).

But deep in the caverns — behind the ancient Dracula family crest — a secret chamber awaits. And there, Frank, Joe and Nancy finally learn the truth about vampires, and international art thieves too.

Directed by Joseph Pevney and written by Glen A. Larson and Michael Sloane, “The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew Meet Dracula” is a show I vividly remember from my childhood. I guess I was seven years old when I watched it originally, and, well, what can I say? it had a lasting impression on me.

For instance, I’ve always recalled the Dracula-”stalking” scenes that dominate this two-part episode. We just see Dracula’s stylish boots as the count hunts his prey in the dark caverns. Of course, the villain was filmed in this manner so we couldn’t discover Dracula’s real identity. But there was always something unsettling (to my young mind, anyway….) about the way those shiny boots came out of the darkness and followed everybody through the catacombs.

And, of course, how can you not love Paul Williams? The performer gets to camp it up here as an egotistical rock star. I love that he sings “The Hell of It” in this episode, because it features nihilistic song lyrics that aren’t exactly as kid-friendly as the rest of this landmark Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew endeavor. Anyway, I’ve embedded the Paul Williams Hardy Boys performance below this review, so you too can share in the joy.

All right, so it’’s all too easy to make fun of 1970s costumes and lingo, right… turkey? And vampire bats on visible strings? Han Solo hair cuts? Lorne Greene — Ben Cartwright — as the Prince of Darkness, Dracula?

But all snark aside, from 1976-1979, I loved this series. I mean, I loved it. I never missed an episode. The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries had fun stories, featured engaging performances and depicted some great tales about The Bermuda Triangle, King Tut, the Phantom of Hollywood and other weird 1970s era obsessions. I often write about TV series as “time capsules” for their era, and — my god — what a time capsule this show is. It’s just a whole lot of goofy, 1977-style fun.

And now, before I sign off, may I present Paul Williams on The Hardy Boys…?

CULT TV FLASHBACK #98: The Incredible Hulk: "Married" (1978)

Even as late as 1978, superhero television was still attempting to escape the gravitational pull of the campy but highly-entertaining 1960s Batman series starring Adam West and Burt Ward. That watershed ABC series — undeniably a prime example of colorful, counter-culture pop art — had so shaded the format requirements for superhero and comic book TV initiatives that a new template — sans “BAM!” “POW!” and “WHAM” — was required.

Resourceful and literate, writer/producer Kenneth Johnson crafted that new template when adapting Marvel’s The Incredible Hulk comic-book for television. Instead of depending on dynamic super criminals, tongue-in-cheek dialogue, and out-of-this-world swashbuckling, Johnson grounded his new hero, David Bruce Banner (Bill Bixby), in a more familiar, less over-the-top world.

As author Gary Gerani observed in TV Episode Guides Volume 2 (1982, page 64), “he [Johnson] turned to a more intelligent and dramatic approach of a man whose life is upset by the fact that he can become this uncontrollable monster.”

Series producer Nick Corea was even more specific about the program’s approach: “Any writer who comes in with clones or extraterrestrials, we steer in another direction.” (John Abbot, SFX #18, November 1996, page 76).

Today, we happily take costumed and colorful heroes at face value, as part and parcel of the superhero genre. We want to see super villains and super feats. So the superhero stigma once associated with the camp 1960s Batman is finally gone. And in something of a turnaround, we actually gaze at TV’s drama The Incredible Hulk — which rigorously followed a format similar to The Fugitive – as a bit of a relic; as a time capsule of a different era.

Times change. Tastes change.

Yet The Incredible Hulk ran for four successful years on CBS because of Johnson’s dedication to the “human factor.” A latter day Jekyll-Hyde story, The Incredible Hulk explicitly concerned the divide between human emotions and human rationality.

Think about it this way: we exist day-to-day by controlling our emotions; by keeping them firmly in check. Yet in the person hood of the raging Hulk (Lou Ferrigno), our impulses are free…unfettered. For David Banner — living in the last days of disco — the struggle was an internal one; to manage that provoked Id; to restrain the instinct-based beast inside all of us who wants to react to every challenge, fear, and pain with raw emotion and brute force. Hulk smash!

One of the best and most touching episodes of The Incredible Hulk was the second season opener, “Married” (written and directed by Johnson). A two-hour tale, “Married” originally aired on November 22, 1978, and guest-starred Mariette Hartley as Dr. Caroline Fields.

Caroline is a brilliant psychologist facing her own internal struggle: a terminal disease (like Lou Gehrig’s Disease) that has reduced her expected life span to just six weeks.

Our protagonist, David Banner, arrives at Caroline’s medical practice in Hawaii to seek her assistance in controlling his “monster,” unaware of her own debilitating condition. In particular, Caroline is an expert in hypnosis, and David believes that she could hypnotize his conscious mind into trapping the Hulk within. In other words, he hopes to cage the Hulk with his brain.

Over a few weeks, David and Caroline fall in love…and are married. David tries to cure Caroline’s disease, and Caroline tries to cure David of his affliction. And impressively, much of the episode’s “action” occurs inside the mind-states of these two individuals.

As David is hypnotized, we see him physically encounter the Hulk in a barren, desert landscape. First, David tries to restrain the Hulk in heavy ropes. But the Hulk breaks out.

Then David tries a cage with steel bars. Again, the Hulk breaks free.

Finally, David attempts trapping the Hulk inside the mental construct of an impenetrable vault. But even here, the beast within him cannot be contained.

Meanwhile, Caroline attempts to use the mind-over-matter hypnosis technique to cure her defective “mitochondria” of the invading disease lesions. She envisions her put-upon cells as an Old West wagon train; and the lesions there as invading Indian raiders surrounding it. When David formulates a new drug (taken from the Hulk’s skin sample…) Caroline imagines the drug as the cavalry, coming over the hill. This is all weird and wonderful stuff (and fits in perfectly with the 1970s obsession with hypnosis).

The Incredible Hulk always concerned the ways in which our mind responds to external stimuli. We can choose to respond with rage; or we can choose to respond calmly. We can choose to respond with violence; or peaceably. “Married” is very much on target in terms of the series’ overriding themes then, since virtually every major scene concerns the way our brain faces conflict and interprets challenges.

Today — 32 years later — “Married” has indeed dated somewhat. No doubt there. There are two worrisome scenes during which Bill Bixby and Mariette Hartley speak in atrocious Pidgeon English (talking about Chinese food…) and then perform bad John Wayne imitations. This is what seemed like witty and romantic banter in the 1970s, I guess, but today’s it’s just sort of cringe-inducing.

And also, “Married” evidences a big flaw common in many Incredible Hulk scenarios That flaw: the Hulk’s presence isn’t entirely warranted given the less-than-threatening circumstances.

For example, in “Married” two on-the-make “groovy” swingers (wearing polyester pants two-sizes too small…) pick-up a drunk Caroline and take her back to their bachelor pad (along with a floozy…) for a night of casual sex. David arrives to take Caroline home, and then these two swingers suddenly become violent. They push David around. They pop a champagne cork in his face (!). Then — all kidding aside — they violently hurl him from their second-story bedroom balcony…into a glass coffee table, below thus precipitating an appearance by the Hulk. The un-jolly green giant then proceeds to tear the bachelor pad to pieces. It’s an impressive-enough action scene, but entirely unnecessary. Not to mention unmotivated.

Why would two relatively harmless guys with sex on the brain suddenly turn egregiously violent? (And destroy their own apartment in the process?) This sort of thing happened a lot on the show: people who you wouldn’t expect to immediately turn to violence suddenly become a HUGE threat so that the Hulk can appear and save the day.

But leaving aside these dated elements, “Married” remain an outstanding episode of the CBS series. Perhaps because of the two-hour running time, Caroline feels like a “real” person and not just the guest-star/love-interest-of-the-week. And the relationship she shares with David doesn’t feel forced or silly. It’s clear that Caroline and Bruce are both suffering terribly, and sharing what little time they have left together eases that pain. That’s as good a reason for marriage as any, isn’t it?

There’s also one incredibly dark moment in “Married.” With only two weeks to live, Caroline plays frisbee with a little boy (Meeno Peluce of Voyagers!) on the beach. The scene is much longer than it need be; and focuses a great deal on Hartley in close-shot. There’s almost no dialogue. The scene is mostly silent. But inscribed on her expression is the agony and regret of the life Caroline will never experience. She will never be a mother; never have children, as she once dreamed of. This is an issue “Married” raised early on, but then returns to with this unexpectedly sad and restrained moment. I can’t deny “Married” is a tear-jerker, either, but then that was a perpetual quality of The Incredible Hulk too: it was, overall, a pretty lugubrious, melancholy show.

What I admire most about “Married,” however, are those “dream state” sequences occurring in the desert of Banner’s mind; as David and The Hulk face each other down. It may not seem like much of a comic-book-style adventure — there’s no Marvel-style mythology or continuity in place — but the human drama is nonetheless fascinating.

We don’t like ourselves when we’re angry. We don’t like ourselves when we’re bad tampered; when we let our “Hulks” out to roam. The Incredible Hulk’s impressive “Married” externalizes and literalizes the idea of the emotional battle raging within each of us, the battle for control with our barely concealed monsters.

CULT MOVIE REVIEW: Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992)

To aggressively analyze and interpret a David Lynch film is to invite agitation. On one hand, many critics suggest the artist’s movies are dense and impenetrable; that they are weird just for the sake of weirdness. Therefore, no possible interpretation for what occurs on screen exists, and the interpreter is simply partaking in a wild goose chase. Or worse, being self-indulgent.

Reviewing Lynch’s Lost Highway (1997), for instance, one of my favorite critics, Roger Ebert, admitted “I’ve seen it twice, hoping to make sense of it. There is no sense to be made of it. To try is to miss the point. What you see is all you get.”

Yet, David Lynch’s films are so abundant with symbolic representation; so rife with abstruse dream sequences; so criss-crossed with narrative alleyways, and so thoroughly dominated by opaque characterizations that they virtually cry out for contextualization and analysis.

To leave such treasure troves of figuration uninterpreted or unexamined is to abandon a half-solved puzzle.

Contrarily, to delve into the mysteries of David Lynch’s cinema is to grow nearer the mind (and dream state…) of a most singular American film artist. For me, the temptation to dive in is…well…irresistible.

Sometimes, audiences, scholars and critics have also been willing to take that giant leap of faith and gaze — unblinking and unbowed — at the secrets and enigmas presented in Lynch’s twisting, tricky narratives. Many of Lynch’s productions, such as Blue Velvet (1984), are indeed held in high critical esteem. But at the same time, other Lynch films have not met with the same aggressive intellectual curiosity. Exhibit A: Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992) a prequel to the popular TV series; a movie produced a year after the program was canceled.

As you may recall, the movie was booed at the Cannes Film Festival, and New York Times critic Vincent Canby suggested “It’s not the worst movie ever made; it just seems to be. Its 134 minutes induce a state of simulated brain death, an effect as easily attained in half the time by staring at the blinking lights on a Christmas tree.”

Jay Scott at Toronto’s Globe and Mail called Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me “a disgusting, misanthropic movie,” and compared a viewing of the film to “cocaine-induced paranoia.”

To many critics, the layered, perplexing Fire Walk with Me is but “as blank as a fart,” to quote one of the film’s quirkier characters.

Yet taken at simple face value, Fire Walk With Me is a disquieting exhumation of the “underneath” in America. In the film, we encounter homecoming queen and Twin Peaks resident Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee). We follow her through her harrowing last week on this mortal coil, and see that this “typical” teenager is anything but.

If the movie feels like a case of cocaine-induced paranoia, that is likely intentional. Because Laura is indeed experiencing a cocaine-induced paranoia throughout much of the movie. She’s a junkie (and the film depicts Laura snorting coke on several occasions; as well as participating in a drug deal gone wrong.) Thus the film’s lurid, jittery, unpleasant shape perfectly reflects the piece’s content. We seem to be viewing the film from inside a drug fever.

Quit Trying to Hold on So Tight…I’m Gone: Laura Palmer as Victim of Incest

David Lynch’s films work on different metaphorical layers, and one thematic layer of Fire Walk with Me involves a truly unpleasant topic: incest.

Beautiful Laura Palmer — the envy of every girl at Twin Peaks high school — is the victim of incest. She has been the victim of sexual molestation by her father, Leland Palmer (Ray Wise), for several years.

Unable to cope with this monstrous reality, Laura’s shattered mind has come to visually re-interpret her father’s nocturnal bedroom visits as the home invasions of a swarthy stranger, a monster named “Bob.”

Laura informs her psychiatrist, Harold ,that “Bob is real. He’s been having me since I was twelve.” Furthermore, she notes “he comes through my window at night…he’s getting to know me. He wants to be me…or he’ll kill me.”

And sure enough, one day, Laura arrives home from school early and sees Bob prowling around in her bedroom. As if sniffing her out. It’s a terrifying scene: we suddenly register the unexpected intruder in a place of safety and comfort, and almost physically blanch at his presence. Scared, Laura runs out of the house, terrified, only to see not the Evil Bob emerge after her…but rather her beloved father, Leland. He is the Monster of Her Id.

In another disturbing scene, Bob slips inside the Palmer house through Laura’s window at night. In electric blue moonlight, he seduces her. In the throes of their mutual passion, Laura suddenly sees that the stranger is actually her father, Leland, and nearly goes mad at the revelation. Again, this is the thing she is trying to bury under mountains of cocaine; in alcohol. The betrayal of a trusted loved one.

How does a the typical victim deal with persistent sexual abuse and incest? According to author Ken Chisholm’s article on the subject, “Some of the social maladjustments arising from incest are alcoholism, drug addiction, prostitution and promiscuity.” Consider these factors in relationship to Laura Palmer. We already know she is addicted to cocaine. We already know she drinks.

But Laura is also sexually-involved with at least two boyfriends at school: the temperamental Bobby (Dana Ashbrook) and James-Dean-ish James Hurley (James Marshall). She seems to ping-pong back and forth between them. And, as prescribed above, prostitution is part of Laura’s life too. We learn in Fire Walk With Me that (as in the series before…), Laura has been selling her body both at One Eyed Jacks and at the film’s sleazy Bang Bang Bar.

In other words, a history and pattern of incest leads to self-destructive behavior on the part of the victim. It leads to the destruction of — and disassociation from — the healthy ego. This is also evident in Fire Walk with Me. “Your Laura disappeared,” Laura informs James blankly, feeling unworthy and undeserved of his authentic, romantic love. “It’s just me now,” she explains, feeling ashamed and guilty over her behavior.

At one point, late in the film, even Laura’s guardian angel seems to abandon her, vanishing from a painting in her bedroom. It’s thus clear that Laura blames herself for her father’s behavior, and consequently that she views herself as ugly and corrupted. She isn’t the golden girl anymore, she’s tarnished.

This self-hatred becomes especially plain during the moment when Laura confides in her psychiatrist Harold about “Bob’s” visits.

Suddenly, the film cuts to a nightmarish view of Laura as an ivory white crone; one with alabaster skin, yellowed teeth, scarlet gums and blackened lips. She looks like a terrible, corrupted monster: an outward reflection of her low self-esteem. This is how she sees herself.

Later in the film, we see Leland Palmer — suffering his own personal hell of guilt and shame — imagining himself in identical terms, right down to the black lips. This is the form of the bad conscience made manifest.

Those who endure incest and sexual abuse also, over time, may experience night terrors, hallucinations or insomnia. Laura is not immune from these symptoms either. She lives through terrifying nightmares, especially ones that involve a creepy painting. On that painting is rendered a half-open door; and in Laura’s dream she mindlessly treads though that door into the evil world of the Black Lodge. A place were “garmonbozia” (pain and suffering) is eaten like creamed corn, and her suffering will provide a feast. She is, literally, the Devil’s candy. And she knows it.

Laura is aware that she is a moth driven to the flame (a woman consigned to Hell…) and again and again, Fire Walk With Me brings up the idea of fire in connection to Laura. Donna Hayward (Moira Kelly) asks Laura a weird question. “If you fall in outer space, do you think you’d slow down after a while, or go faster and faster?”

Laura’s telling answer is that she would go faster and faster…without knowing it, and then spontaneously burn up. No angels could save her…because they’re all gone. The world is devoid of angels.

Again, this answer appears to be a metaphor for Laura’s increasingly “fast” life (a life made even more jittery and fast by the cocaine): dating two boys; scoring drugs; acting as a prostitute…trying desperately to escape her real life and the sexual abuse.

In the end, however, no matter how fast she goes, Laura will still be consumed by flame; destroyed. The Log Lady (Catherine E. Coulson) tells Laura — in an important, if brief, scene that “When this kind of fire starts, it is very hard to put out. The tender boughs of innocence burn first, and the wind rises, and then all goodness is in jeopardy.”

Once more, you’ve got to contextualize this remark in terms of the incest: the act which has made the self-loathing Laura change from golden girl to promiscuous drug abuser and prostitute. In the execution of that bad behavior, the first victim is Laura’s innocence…her childhood. The second is her goodness (and now she can’t even volunteer to feed the hungry in the meals on wheels program…). The third victim…is existence itself. Laura understands this. She realizes she is headed “nowhere…fast.”

Another frequent quality of incest victims is a protective impulse; an overriding need to save or rescue younger siblings from the life-destroying behavior that has ruined them. In Fire Walk with Me, Donna goes to the Bang Bang Bar with Laura. Donna drinks alcohol, takes drugs, and seduces a john. When Laura witnesses Donna’s craven behavior — the tender boughs of innocence about to burn — she is roused to act. Unable to save herself, Laura does the next best thing: she rescues naive Donna. Afterwards, Laura warns Donna cryptically “don’t wear my stuff,” an indication that Donna has “tried on” Laura’s lifestyle. But it doesn’t fit Donna; and Laura doesn’t want Donna to be like her.

There’s No Tomorrow; It Will Never Get Here: The Spirit World in Fire Walk With Me

A central question regarding Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me involves the rogue’s gallery in the Black Lodge. This gallery includes Bob, The (backwards-talking) Man from Another Place (Michael Anderson) and the One-Armed Man. They dwell in that sitting room (the velvet-lined room with zig-zag floor). Are they real? Or imaginary? Are they sentient, or symbolic?

Is Leland an all-too “human” sexual abuser? Or is he an unlucky man possessed by an evil spirit? Who do we blame for the incest: the spirit (Bob) or the body (Leland)?

In a sense, it doesn’t matter a whit. It is immaterial. When criminals commit terrible acts, they often claim the “devil made them do it,” right? Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me may suggest a universe of Hell (in the form of the Black Lodge) and Heaven too (in the form or Ronette Pulaski’s and Laura’s individual guardian angels), but it never suggests that Leland is innocent.

There may be a “monster” cowering inside him; but there is a monster cowering inside all abusers, isn’t there? If evil dwells in the human psyche, then it dwells in the human psyche…and we must combat it. Leland never does that. He murders Teresa Banks, and eventually he murders his own daughter, Laura, because he is so consumed of “the evil spirit.” That’s what makes him a villain.

That really was something with the dancing girl, wasn’t it? What exactly did all that mean?

Encoded in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me is a self-commentary on David Lynch’s approach to symbolic story telling.

Early in the film, FBI agent Sam Stanley (Kiefer Sutherland) and Agent Chester Desmond (Chris Isaak) are tasked by Lynch’s deaf FBI chief with the investigation of Teresa’s murder. After briefing them in very general terms, Lynch’s character then maddeningly introduces the two agents to “Lil” a woman in a red dress wearing a blue rose. He says, in essence, that she represents the case that the men have embarked upon.

Then, in a bewildering moment, the strange Lil dances up to the two agents, grimaces — revealing a sour face — and makes a fist.

Then, Lil is never seen or heard from again as a living, breathing, human character. But soon after this scene, Desmond and Stanley interpret her presence. They analyze her facial expressions. They note the color of her dress. They register the presence of the blue rose, and ponder the meaning of her balled fist. On one hand, this is Lynch’s oddball humor, acknowledging the Twin Peaks’ aficionado’s propensity for analyzing every little thing.

But in another sense, Lil — and Desmond’s explanation of Lil — is the audience’s primer to successfully reading or interpreting the figurations of this movie. Following Desmond’s example, the viewer is meant to weigh characters and events symbolically. We are supposed to “see” Bob as Laura’s “safe” interpretation of her father’s criminal, unacceptable behavior. We are supposed to understand the drug use and prostitution as a victim’s escape from guilt and shame. Even the passing of Theresa’s ring we are to comprehend as a legacy of death, carried from one victim to the next. And the creamed corn? Human pain and suffering as the food of the gods.

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me is really The Tragedy of Laura Palmer and the Tragedy of Small Town America. The golden girl — the cheerleader beloved by all — is actually a secret victim of sexual abuse…and no one sees it. Or no one cares to see it.

This is the roiling “underneath” that Lynch so frequently expose in his films, and it was never more relevant, perhaps, than in the early 1990s when this film was made. These were the early years after the notorious 1989 Glen Ridge rape case (wherein popular football jocks raped a retarded girl with a baseball bat and broom); these were the years of the Spur Posse. Suburbia’s shameful secrets were spilling out into the tabloid culture in creamed-corn torrents.

Perhaps an entire American generation of teenagers was actually fire walking with us; possessed by darkest impulses.

What remains profound about Laura Palmer’s tragedy today is that, in the end, David Lynch grants the character a small measure of contentment. The guardian angel she believed she lost during her last, brutal hours on Earth, returns anew (in the afterlife) to heal her pain; even as good Dale Cooper lands a comforting, supportive arm on her shoulder. Our last view of the cheerleader is of Laura smiling.

In life, Laura was relentlessly victimized…her goodness burned away by life’s ugliness. In death’s sitting room, of all places, peace is finally at hand.

Although this may seem decidedly bleak, it is also Lynch’s balancing of the spiritual world. It may be a place of garmonbozia — death and suffering — but it isn’t populated merely by the likes of Bob and the Man From Another Place. The winged celestial being is there too, the seraph, and that means that forgiveness is at hand.

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me isn’t misanthropic. In Laura Palmer, there’s sympathy for the victim of abuse. Even in Leland Palmer, there’s sympathy for the devil. If we do “live in a dream,” as one character suggests in the film, then it is also up to us to shape that dream, and always keep Bob at bay.