I can sense you, tossing and turning in your bed, as the cloud-covered moon gleams through your window…you long for sleep, but the question still haunts you, hounds you, nibbles on your earlobe, even…you want to scream aloud…:

"WHAT CAN POSSIBLY SCARE MR. GHOUL?!?"

Well, actually, nearly all the world's current political and religious leaders scare me, especially those that consider themselves both. That's not a very fun kind of scary, though.

With that best time of the year, Halloween, come upon us again, it's time for the FUN scares, and I thought I'd take a minute to list a few things from films and other media that I personally find frightening in the thrilling way that attracts those of our…"ilk" to the supernatural genres. Now, as you might suspect, the Ghoul has been watching spooky flicks since he could practically sit in his top hat, so obviously the real scares have been few and far between. I mean, you just grow a bit hardened and jaded, no matter how much you still love the stuff. But there have been those moments, and some of them continue to evoke a similar, though lessened, shudder even in my adult self.

I also want to point out that the following will not include the sudden, jump-out-of-your-seat kind of scares. Those are always fun, and some can even make the Ghoul yelp like a little girl…and it takes a very manly ghoul to admit that. But ultimately, it's kind of CHEAP. It doesn't take imagination or talent on the part of a director to make an audience jump. I call 'em the "flying cat" scares. You know what I'm talking about: the suspenseful music swells, the hero/heroine walks with a candle through the decrepit hallway, and then someone off-camera tosses some poor feline into the shot, a "MEOW!" and loud crashing music is dubbed over the scene, and we all jump. Well, of course we do, and I'll say it again: It's fun…but it's CHEAP.

No, what I find really impressive are those certain images, bits of dialogue, or even just imaginative concepts that send a real thrill of dread up your spine. You shudder a bit, and get on with the story….but then later, it creeps back into your mind's eye, and again and again for days afterward, it's in your head and you just have to give a measure of respect to whatever creative folk were able to produce something that managed to shake you out of your complacent tree.
 
            Now as you know, Mr. Ghoul is violently opposed to the revealing of "spoilers" (in fact his personal graveyard is populated by the corpses of many such spoiler-revealers), but the very nature of this discussion means I'm going to have to reveal some key moments/plot points of these works. So, instead of reading my dribble on these films, you might want to just copy down the title, buy or rent it, then come back to this blog and see if you got the creepin' jeepers from the same scenes that I did.
 
I've put an asterisk next to the films that can be found on DVD. For the others, you might have to do a bit of "digging" to find. Heh heh…

1. *THE RESURRECTED

– This criminally overlooked film by Dan O'Bannon is still the best filmic realization of the world of writer H.P. Lovecraft, although Guilermo Del Toro's "At the Mountains of Madness" has potential to top it, if it ever gets made. The "nameless dread" and New England decay that are trademarks of H.P.L.'s style permeate the film, culminating in an amazing moment when the heroes, having uncovered a nightmarish cavern containing the living mutant results of a man's insane experiments, find themselves surrounded by these shambling nightmare creatures…and their torches go out, plunging them (and us) into total darkness. A typical scary movie contrivance? Sure, but what makes the scene so effective is the total absence of any soundtrack music, and no sound from the mutant "things"…all we hear is the sound of the humans calling out to each other, as they (and we) know that the creatures are…silently…closing in.

2. *KOLCHAK: THE NIGHT STALKER (episode 2, "The Zombie")

This 1974 TV series created by Dan Curtis (a man responsible for many of 70's television's scariest moments) might only have lasted 20 episodes, but it covered a helluva lot of supernatural ground in that short time, and gave horror fans some unforgettable sequences. None more so than in this episode, in which Darren McGavin's intrepid, unkempt investigative report Kolchak has tracked a zombie to its resting place in an automotive junkyard. The zombie can only be destroyed by pouring salt in its mouth and sewing the lips shut. Kolchak finds the zombie in the back of a station wagon, surrounds it with lighted candles, and begins the agonizingly slow work with the salt and the needle and thread….the camera holding closely on the undead thing's face…and the whole time, you just know those dead yellow eyes are gonna fly open! This was one of the most gut-wrenching few minutes of film that I had to sit through as a kid…but I made it through. Unlike the next one on our list….

3. *THE ABOMINABLE DR. PHIBES

--- Vincent Price's campy starring role as Anton Phibes is played more for Grand Guignol fun than it is for serious scares, but it remains the one time in my life I have had to walk away from a horror film not because it sucked but because it overwhelmed me. Now, I was indeed a young soul, but I already had many horror films under my belt. It was late night, and PHIBES was playing on "Creature Feature" (all pause in reverence) hosted by Sir Cecil Creape (pause again in reverence), and I was watching this tale of the mad Dr. Phibes' and his elaborate schemes of murder and revenge against the doctors whom he blames for his wife's death. One such doctor/victim is attending a masquerade party, and a disguised (well, doubly-disguised, if you think about it) Phibes gives him a full-head Toad mask to wear. The doctor appreciatively dons it, and Phibes helps him adjust the fasten at the back of the mask. As we soon see, though, the mask is rigged in a most ghastly way...the fastener has been set to keep tightening…and tightening. The doctor, in his toad mask, is ascending a staircase when he starts staggering and struggling to free himself from the mask that is slowly crushing his skull, and the other masqueraders laugh at what they think are his drunken antics. We see a close-up of the back of the mask as the fastener loudly snaps into its furthermost point…and the frog-headed victim tumbles to rest at the bottom of the stairs, a single thin stream of blood oozing out from under the mask…
            …and I had to get up and leave the room. I felt ill, hot, a little dizzy, and deeply disturbed by what I had just seen. You might be thinking that I was feeling these effects because I had seen something gruesome, and that is not the same as being scared, but I didn't leave because I was grossed-out. It was more that I felt suffocated, like I could feel that mask tightening cruelly on my head, that helplessness. Maybe it was the big glassy eyes of that frog mask, staring up as the red 70's-film era fake blood ran down from the mask and onto the white shirt.
            ..But in any case, I was back in front of the TV in a few minutes. Oh come on, you didn't think I'd stay gone for long, did you? But I was damn sure impressed. A horror film had just kicked my ass, albeit momentarily…and I never forgot it.

4. *THE TWILIGHT ZONE, "The After Hours"

--- I'm not alone in this, but I find any instances of dolls, mannequins, ventriloquist dummies moving/acting on their own to be damned scary. Apparently, a lot of folks feel the same way, since they turn up quite frequently in works of horror. I was already a huge Twilight Zone fan when I saw this episode. My older brother, Packy, and I were seeing them all for the first time as a local station was airing reruns, and it was a nightly routine of ours to watch it. We'd grown accustomed to the ever-shifting moods of the show, sometimes scary, or poignant, or light-hearted, but nothing prepared us for this story of a young woman who is locked inside a department store all night, just her and…the mannequins. In the opening sequence, the woman has just dealt with a strange, somewhat rude female clerk in an otherwise deserted department. Downstairs, she complains to the store manager about the clerk's behavior, but he insists that neither that department nor the clerk exists. The woman spots what she thinks is the female clerk, standing with her back to her. "That's her! That's the woman who waited on me" she tells the manager. Just then, the figure of the woman is turned around…to reveal a mannequin that looks exactly like the female clerk. I remember Pack and I turning to look at each other and mouthing "Oh…..SHIT." Come to think of it, that might have been the first time I used a four-letter word. Anyway, what followed this opening sequence was one of the scariest half-hours I've ever watched.

5. *THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT – Maybe more a brilliant concept than an actual brilliant film, BWP nonetheless scores some real chills, though its constantly moving, jerking handheld camerawork forces Mr. Ghoul to have to take a Bromo and lie down in his coffin for a bit. What's scariest to me about the film is something that seemed to be missed by a lot of folks, which is the complicit role of nature in the ultimate demise of the protagonists. I was really amused by how BWP brought out the "inner macho woodsman" in so many viewers. People would scoff at the helplessness of the three victims that enter the woods in order to shoot a documentary on the Blair Witch Legend and promptly get totally lost. They'd say, "Hell, all them kids had to do was shimmy up a tree and get their bearings" and then also expound on how they (being expert campers, of course) could have survived and gotten themselves out of such an ignorant city-fied pickle. I just wanted to scream "THE WOODS WERE SUPERNATURAL TOO! HOW DID THAT CONCEPT ESCAPE YOU??" Yes, the kids were city folk a bit out of their element, but to me it was very obvious that the reason they couldn't get out, kept wandering in circles, even did stupid things like throwing away their map, was all a result of being in the heart of a powerful, disorienting, influential evil in which the trees, the streams, the unseen wildlife, perhaps even the inhabitants of the nearby town, were all active participants. If they had indeed "shimmied up a tree to get their bearings" it wouldn't have served them any good…they'd still find the continually shifting woods taking them back to where they started from. This is what sticks with me from the film: the idea that from the minute these poor young people enter this haunted wood, they never stand a chance. And by the way, Mr. Macho Woodsman, neither would you.

6. *THE EXORCIST – Now that the once-shocking special-effects and gross-outs that made The Exorcist such a sensation upon its release have lost their impact and are tame in comparison to most typical hours of prime-time television nowadays, the film still has lasting power due to what happens when all hell is NOT breaking loose. The low-key, realistic style of the direction, as we get to know the principal players, creates a you-are-there intimacy and makes us aware of how spiritually ill-equipped these characters are to undertake the supernatural battle that is about to invade their lives. The goosebump-inducing moment for me is always after Father Karras has first interviewed the supposedly-possessed little girl, Regan. He has taped the session, in which Regan has spoken in a voice seemingly not her own, and has demonstrated fluency in several languages, including one that Karras cannot identify. Still determined to prove that Regan's problems stem from psychological trauma and not demonic possession, Karras gives the tape to a Linguistics expert for analysis. The expert tells Karras, "It's not another language she's speaking. It's English...backwards."

7. *THE HAUNTING

– Of course I'm talking about the 1963 version, which gets everything right, and not the horrendous 1999 remake, which gets it all horribly wrong. Under Robert Wise's direction, The Haunting is a model of how much scarier things can be when you DON'T show people everything, and it remains the very best haunted house movie. My favorite "don't watch this alone" moment: Two women, part of the team of psychic investigators come to investigate Hill House and its hauntings, are sharing a bedroom when the house begins its nightly round of noises and disturbances. Our attention centers on Nell, and we hear her thoughts as she watches a wall (which seems, in its patterns, to be returning her gaze) and listens to the various ghostly voices coming from just behind the wall. She realizes that the other woman, Theo, has reached out for her in the dark in fear, because Theo has a fierce death-grip on Nell's hand. Finally Nell can stand the terror no longer, and cries out. Suddenly, the light comes on, switched on by Theo…who we see has been on the other side of the room the whole time. Nell looks down at her hand and says, "God….whose hand was I holding????" To which Mr. Ghoul says, "Aieeeeee!!!"

8. *THE DEVIL'S NIGHTMARE

– I have a hard time finding fans of this European flick, and I'll admit it's not the most impressively directed film, nor is it served very well by the typically clumsy English dubbing that appears on all the versions of the film released so far. However, it's a fun spooky tale of a busload of dysfunctional Euros who get stranded in a castle and fall victim to a succubus. What really sells it for me, though, is that director Jean Brismee has the great benefit of two of European cinema's great faces among his cast: The sultry Erika Blanc and the very creepy Daniel Emilfork. Blanc, who plays the succubus, has a great facial bone structure that allows her to go from a beauty to a truly ghastly visage with very minimal makeup. She uses her eyes and mouth to lend surprising layers to what could have been a one-note role as the vengeful succubus. With no dialogue, we see gleeful malice, righteous rage, and even a strange hint of sorrow and self-loathing pass over Blanc's unforgettable face. Daniel Emilfork, who worked with some A-list European directors in his time, plays the role of Satan, and his rodent-like features make him the most feral representation of Ol' Scratch since Walter Huston in "THE DEVIL AND DANIEL WEBSTER".

9. THE WORKS OF M.R. JAMES - various productions, 1960-2000

Give it up for the Brits! When it comes to telling a cracking good ghost story on film, they flat out "get" how to do it. It's a great blend of decorum and good taste masking a particularly nasty bit of cutlery up your bum. You can almost hear them saying, "Very well, if we have to be about all this deucedly unpleasant business, we might as well just scare the bloody buggers to death! Then who's for tea?" And scare us they do, in productions such as THE WOMAN IN BLACK, GHOST WATCH, and my favorite here, a succession of thirty-minute adaptations of the works of the great ghost story writer, M.R.James. What blows me away the most is that these films were made over a stretch of many years for BBC, with different directors (and in different decades) and yet they very nearly all are of top-notch quality and all have moments that make it very hard to extinguish that last candle before you go to bed after viewing them. Unfortunately, they're damned hard to find, and I've been lucky that some of my friends have managed to acquire bootleg tapes of varying quality over the years. The brilliance of the Brits' method can be summed up in one sequence from a black-and-white adaptation of James' "O Whistle and I'll Come to You". The protagonist is dreaming that…something…is pursuing him along a lonely stretch of beach. He pauses in his fleeing to look back, but each time he does, the screen goes black, and we only hear him cry out. He awakens, then drifts back to sleep, and the dream starts up again. To this point, we have been truly drawn into the terror because of our fear of what it is he's seeing that is not being revealed yet to us. Finally, he turns around and we see what is chasing him…sort of. It's still too far off to view it clearly, but it's very definitely not human and it moves in the most unnatural way…and it's scary as shit. Now, this is no doubt an effect that cost mere pennies (mere pennies is all the British will spend on their TV productions) and it's probably achieved by throwing a piece of fabric over a wooden frame and letting the wind do the rest. But Geez!…filmed at just the right distance, with just the right lighting, with unnerving noises on the soundtrack, and with our curiosity/apprehension already manipulated to just the right pitch…it becomes a twisting, lurching, relentless Thing spawned from the pits of our worst childhood nightmares. And to the Brits, Mr. Ghoul says, "Well Played!"

And last but not least…
10. THE TELEVISION ADS FOR "MAGIC" AND "IT'S ALIVE!"

- That's right, I'm not talking about the actual films, which really don't scare me at all, but the TV ads for them just about turned my big mop of hair totally white! I've said earlier that dolls, mannequins, and the like really creep me out. So, I'm watching TV by myself, and suddenly this ventriloquist's dummy's face fills the screen and starts reciting some kind of creepy little poem about magic. I can't remember all the words, but it ends with the line, "Magic is fun…when you're dead…" after which, the dummy's eyes roll up in his head as the movie's title, "MAGIC" comes up. During "MAGIC's" entire run at the theaters, I would leave the room if commercials came on…just so I wouldn't have to chance seeing that too-realistic doll's face again. Whoever came up with that ad should've gotten a special Oscar. Or would that be an Emmy?

As for "IT'S ALIVE", I encountered its TV spot on my small, portable black 'n white television, which I was watching in my room, with all the other lights turned off. It starts off like some Johnson & Johnson commercial, with a baby's carriage slowly turning around, and nursery-type music playing. A voice intones, "The Davis family has a new baby…" and I'm just sort of half paying attention, waiting for whatever the hell show it was I was watching to resume. Then the narrator says, "There's only one thing wrong with the Davis' baby…It's Alive." Just then, the crib spins around and we see a taloned, mutant claw hanging over the edge of the crib, and hear a bloodcurdling scream. Yeah, my lights came on pretty quick after that!
Both of these films are available on DVD, but I don't know if these brilliant TV spots are included. "MAGIC" lists the theatrical trailer as an extra, but I'm not sure if the theater ad was the same as the one for television. The "IT'S ALIVE" DVD doesn't list any included trailers at all. That's a shame, I'd love to see them again now that I'm…somewhat…braver.

Well, I could continue, but the sun's coming up, so it's time to close that coffin door. I actually have about 10 more examples I can think of right off the bat (Wow, I guess I AM a big fraidy-cat, after all), and I meant to delve into other media, such as comics, literature, etc. I think I'll save those for next October. Let me hear what scares you…and Happy Halloween!!

(Currently listening to: Chris Peltier's Halloween mixes. Thanks, Chris!)