Life's funny. Been having a pretty good week so far and just got word that an uncle who had been a favorite of mine when I was little just passed away. Not a blood relative (he was married to one of my mother's cousins), but he was instrumental in making it possible for my mother to immigrate to the U.S. and settle in Chicago. We had gotten distant as I grew up, but in my childhood he was an ever-present jokester at family Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's gatherings (quite contrary to the stern image of most Korean men of his generation). He always made an effort to play with the little kids, and had me convinced that every night a spaceman landed in his backyard and someday I might get to meet him (a tall tale he concocted based on my obsession with the Apollo 11 moon landing). He did get to meet Czerina when we were dating (and trotted out a single line of Tagalog he knew), but sadly never met Jack. I go to sleep imagining I'm six years old, standing in the backyard of his then-home in Hyde Park under a starry sky, and that spaceship (which I never saw but had lovingly detailed in my imagination) is descending slowly. Uncle Peter is standing next to me, holding my hand, waiting to introduce me to his friend.
Today cable TV is the go-to place for original programming, but back in the early days its networks were still wanting for content. Children's channel Nickelodeon was no different. While it did have a slate of homegrown shows, Nickelodeon also filled out its early 80's schedule with imports like the Canadian sketch comedies You Can't Do That On Television and Turkey Televisionand the British science fiction drama The Tomorrow People(which recently resurfaced as a short-lived US remake on the CW).
One show that sticks out in memory is The Third Eye, which actually was a compilation of four different serials from the UK and New Zealand (Into the Labyrinth, The Haunting of Cassie Palmer, Children of the Stones, and Under the Mountain). While most of Nickelodeon's programming was geared towards comedic or educational shows, with a few family-friendly action adventures, all of the stories shown on the Third Eye were dark and menacing, and with the exception of Under the Mountain, tales of the supernatural.
Each episode was preceded by this Rod Serling-ish opening.
By far the scariest and most memorable of the serials for me was Children of the Stones. So much so, I sought it out as an adult and watched all seven episodes on Youtube not long ago. And though its flat videotaped images and low-budget special effects (on par with old Doctor Who) have blunted its ability to frighten me now, it's certainly strong enough in the writing and acting departments that I can still see how it was the stuff of nightmares for my younger self.
Opening titles to Children of the Stones
Although Nickelodeon aired Stones during the 1980s, it was actually made in 1976 by British network HTV. The story follows an astrophysicist named Adam Brake (played by Gareth Thomas, better known to genre fans as the star of Blakes 7) who travels to the small rural village of Milbury with his teenage son Matthew. The entire town is built in the midst of a circle of stone megaliths similar to Stonehenge, which Brake and Matthew begin to investigate.
The village of Milbury and the stone circle, seen from above.
The arrangement of the stones is unusual, with no clear purpose, and they also seem to exert a sinister influence. This becomes obvious when Brake touches one of the stones and apparently receives a kind of psychic shock (seeing and hearing screaming faces and voices).
Matthew also begins noticing strange shifts in behavior among the townsfolk: people acting normal one day then unusually happy and joyful the next with no explanation (Repeatedly saying, "Happy Day."). In addition (in the grand tradition of Stephen King), he discovers that he is psychic, giving him special insight into the strange goings-on in Milbury. Awaking one night from a dream (or is it a vision?), he hears strange voices in the dark and follows them, finding a group of villagers engaged in some kind of ritual.
Only two people in the village apparently know what's really going on. One is a superstitious and slightly demented local poacher named Dai (played with bug-eyed conviction by the great British character actor Freddie Jones, who seems to have specialized in delivering eccentric performances in films such as The Elephant Man, Dune and Young Sherlock Holmes), who eventually dies under mysterious circumstances when one of the stones falls onto him (despite being rooted in centuries-old earth). The other is the village's leader, a wealthy landowner and astronomer named Rafael Hendrick, whose cryptic words and actions hint that maybe he's at the center of everything.
There's also an old painting purchased by Matthew on a whim (or premonition) before coming to the village. It depicts a stone circle resembling Milbury with people dancing in a ring within it as part of some pagan rite. Curiously, there's a bright shaft of light emanating from the ground in the center of the ring of people reaching into the sky. The painting also includes a sinister serpent and what appears to be other people either trapped within or turning into stone.
This totally spooked me as a child
As stranger and stranger events unfold and more of the townfolk turn into the "Happy Ones," Brake and Matthew attempt to depart Milbury. Unfortunately, they discover that, like the Hotel California, you can check-out any time you like, but you can never leave.
There's a number of things about Children of the Stones that make it a standout. First of all, despite the crude production values, there's a great sense of atmosphere. Just as Patrick McGoohan's science fiction series The Prisonerfilmed in the Village of Portmeiron in Wales and used that town's unusual architecture to create a surreal environment on a budget, Stones makes maximum use of its location, the village of Avebury in Wiltshire, and the actual stone megaliths dotting the landscape. The mysterious and ancient stones, towering over the characters, and standing here and there in fields and next to houses and buildings, feel like characters unto themselves (as a child I swore I could make out creepy faces), and create the sensation of an alien presence lurking about and watching. Coupled with the rural environment, odd behavior from villagers and hints of paganism, the whole serial feel like an unsettling PG-rated version of The Wicker Man.
Secondly, the script, acting and direction all approach the story with dead seriousness. There's absolutely none of the campiness or reassuring comic relief of new or old Doctor Who. Each new piece of plot information is introduced intelligently and understandably, which is especially important when things take an incredibly fantastic turn. I don't want to give away too much of the plot in this mere blog post, but suffice to say the eventual revelation of what the stones are and their connection to the village is an incredibly ambitious blend of science fiction and supernatural concepts involving psychic powers, cosmic energy, and reality-bending causality loops.
I'm not sure if kids (or adults) today would enjoy Children of the Stones the same as when it was originally made. It might just look too chintzy for modern tastes, and some of its dramatic devices (like the chorus of moaning voices on the soundtrack) might feel hokey instead of spooky.
But if you're curious, the entire thing is up on Youtube to view or may be purchased on Amazon. My personal viewing recommendation: Watch it on your TV, but first close the shades, turn down the lights and put yourself into the mindset of a 10-year-old child.
"THE "Red Death" had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal --the redness and the horror of blood." - The Masque of the Red Death, Edgar Allen Poe (1842)
Edgar Allen Poe's short story The Masque of the Red Death (1842) is pretty creepy on its own terms. Its gloomy Gothic setting within a Medieval castle while a deadly plague ravages the countryside outside is dripping with atmosphere and death, topped by the haunting image of a cloaked figure that turns out to be the plague incarnate.
My first encounter with the tale was a glimpse of Lon Cheney dressed as the Red Death in the masked ball sequence from the silent classic The Phantom of the Opera(1925). I didn't see the actual film until catching it on the Arts & Entertainment Network when in high school, but a still of the scene showed up in one of the many movie monster books I used to check out of the River Forest Public Library.
The significance of the name was lost on me, but the red-cloaked, skull-faced image was definitely arresting. Later when I was eight, the horror film program Son of Svengoolieon WFLD Channel 32 in Chicago showed Roger Corman's 1964 film version of Masque of the Red Death starring Vincent Price. Although it follows the general contours of Poe's original narrative, it added a lot of character, plot and dialogue to fill up a feature length running time. However, despite these alterations, Corman's film is a pretty solid horror film in its own right. I'm not the biggest fan of the Corman/Price Poe collaborations, but to me Masque is exceptional. A big part is the cinematography (by Nicholas Roeg, who himself later became a noted director, helming The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976) and The Witches (1990) among others), which makes some startling use of color. Usually with older horror films, I find it's the black & white ones which have best retained the ability to scare over the years, as the color quality is sometimes too garish or highlights flaws in special effects. But the color in Masque is evocative and jarring, helping to set the mood or shock the senses. I remember even the end credits creeping me out as a child.
That brings us to what I feel is the single best film adaptation of Poe's story: the 1969 animated short by the Croatian company Zagreb Film, MASKA CRVENE SMRTI. I first saw this when my English teacher Mr. Millet showed it to my class at Roosevelt Junior High and it's stuck with me ever since.
Like Teeny-Tiny and the Witch Woman, this version of Masque of the Red Death uses limited animation in extremely effective ways. In this case, the style recalls Renaissance paintings, though includes elements of horror that remind me of Francis Bacon.
There's no dialogue to speak of. Not much music except for a tune sung by a troubadour at a party (which climaxes in a black joke on the part of the singer). Just creepy, unsettling sound effects which include the screams of those succumbing to the deadly plague.
Everything witnessed onscreen follows Poe's original story pretty faithfully. One interesting deviation is the moment from the original story when the prince whose castle is serving as a refuge from the plague for the wealthy and privileged chases down an uninvited guest appearing at a masked ball. In this film version, the guest is changed into a seductive woman who leads the prince through various rooms until revealing her true identity.
If you're at a loss for some perfectly-themed Halloween scares for the kiddies, I think this should fit the bill. Enjoy.
Friday, October 3, 2014
Countdown to Halloween 2014:
1. Teeny-Tiny and the Witch Woman
This year will mark the first Halloween for my son Jack who was born in July. Having been fond of tales of the macabre, ghosts and monsters from an early age (which I blame on catching Son of Svenghoolie's Halloween Draculathonon WFLD Channel 32 in 1979 and my subsequent discovery of the Crestwood House Monster Series of books at the River Forest Library), I thought I'd look back on some of the films, books and TV shows that fed my childhood nightmares.
To keep things interesting, I'm going to skip the more obvious choices like The Exorcist or The Shining, and all those other Hollywood horror films kids growing up in the late 70s/early 80s dared each other to watch on VHS or cable in their parents' basements or at sleepovers. I'm going to reach back into my memories for some less well-known works whose stories and images have lingered with me to this day.
First up is the short film Teeny-Tiny and the Witch Woman. I saw this sometime between ages six and nine at Lincoln Elementary School in River Forest as one of those films teachers would sometimes screen for kids in class, or that you'd watch in the school auditorium when bad weather prevented playing outdoors during recess. I think they were all made available to schools by the Scholastic Corporation.
The story is about three brothers who wander into the woods one day an encounter an old lady who is actually the "Witch Woman" of the title, who eats little children and has a fence around her house made from their leftover bones. While the two oldest brothers remain clueless as to the peril they face, the youngest brother (Teeny-Tiny) realizes something is amiss, and manages to outsmart the Witch-Woman and devise an escape for all three using some magical items he pilfered from her house.
I remember being creeped out by the film's narration, which was done by an actress either possessing or affecting a terrific foreboding old crone voice, and even as a child feeling like I was watching a nightmare. I couldn't put my finger on it back then, but rewatching the movie as an adult I notice marvelous things were done with limited resources. The action is crude and static, but the animators seemed to have realized exactly when and what should be moving or unmoving to deliver maximum impact. When Teeny-Tiny and his brothers walk through the woods, the trees and their shadows stand stock still, looming over them with vague hints of human faces and bony fingers outstretched. In the great tradition of old horror films, the Witch-Woman is introduced by a creaking door and then a single green inhuman hand beckoning with a clawlike finger. And the scene where Teeny-Tiny catches the Witch-Woman sharpening her kitchen knives (at 7:16 in the Youtube link above) is a perfect moment of storybook terror. There's also simple but great design work with extreme angles and exaggerated shapes that accentuates everything (I wonder if Tim Burton saw this film, because it's very evocative of his now familiar style).
So, if you've never seen Teeny-Tiny and the Witch Womanand are looking for something to give the kids a scare (though a tolerable scare), check it out (A link to the complete film is below).
