The Goosebump Moment -- The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949)

Say what you will about Walt Disney being all about sweet family-friendly fare, but I maintain that beneath that wholesome exterior beat the heart of someone who loved to scare the hell out of little kids.

Think about it -- Snow White being told to run into the forest because the Queen wants her heart cut out (!!!), Bambi's mother getting shot, the nightmare of Pleasure Island in Pinocchio.

I loved them all.

And I loved this one as well. Every year on The Wonderful World of Disney, they would show this short, and I would watch it and enjoy the combination of humor and horror.

I think it still holds up today as one of the most horrifying (and hilarious) cartoons ever made. I love how it starts out with him getting terrified by just his imagination, with easily explained reasons. Then, just when he convinces himself that he's being an idiot....

The Goosebump Moment -- The Birds (1963)

After a two-week hiatus, I'm back with a few more scares in prep for Halloween (it's for the best that I didn't continue at the pace I was going -- I needed to hold back some stuff for next year!)

First up is the perfect counterpoint to my first Goosebump post -- Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds.

This is an unusual Hitchcock film, but because of its repeated TV showings and subject matter, it became one of his most famous. It also was the best and most successful of the "nature turns against man" subgenre until Jaws came along 12 years later.

The Birds has a number of famous set pieces -- the most famous of which are the attack on the school by crows, and the climax in the attic. But the following scene is my favorite. I think I like it because of its complete absurdity, and it's the point where all hell has started to break loose in the movie.

The first hour of The Birds is very slow, and the audience is disoriented because it attempts to play out like a typical Hitchcock romantic suspense comedy. But there are several important differences -- first, there's no soundtrack, no background music at all, except for the cries of birds. Second, the normal playfulness doesn't really ring true -- the main character Melanie (played by Tippi Hedren) is so abrasive that the audience can't really warm up to her. Finally, the scenes go on (and on) with a lot of unnecessary exposition and talking. While there have been various criticisms leveled at the movie for this and other reasons, I think it serves an interesting purpose. Rather than building suspense, it builds a restlessness in the audience -- you find yourself wanting the attacks to start so something starts to happen. This complicity of the audience response is unlike any other horror movie of the time.

This clip is really a portion of a much longer scene that starts immediately following the attack on the school.

Here's the setup: Melanie has just been in the attack and has taken refuge in the Tides Cafe, where she has (another!) lengthy talky scene with various townsfolk and tourists, none of whom believe her. Soon enough, the attacks begin outside, the gas station explodes and everyone panics. Here's the absurdity, Melanie is really the only one at this point who realizes the birds are out to maim and kill, yet rather than staying in the relative safety of the Cafe she rushes outside (to help? to chase down her nascent boyfriend?) and immediately ducks for cover into a glass telephone booth. What follows is another masterpiece of editing and special effects.

Some other fun facts about The Birds:

The schoolhouse and the Tides Cafe are still both standing, but they are in two separate towns five miles apart. In the movie, it's edited so that it looks like the schoolkids run a couple blocks down the hill toward the cafe. Dianne and I had dinner at the Cafe and afterwards I called home from the phone booth, which unfortunately is now just an open booth rather than the glass cage you see here.

The artwork on the poster is not Tippi Hedren, but actually based on a still of Jessica Tandy (from the scene where the sparrows come down the chimney).

An alternate ending (planned but not shot) had the survivors driving to San Francisco among evidence of the damage, and then seeing the Golden Gate Bridge, covered in birds (!!!)

In an absurd (but cool) bit of licensing, Mattel put out The Birds Barbie a couple years ago (Dianne has it, of course!)

 

The Goosebump Moment -- The Haunting (1963)

Okay, enough with the funny....back to the creepy and suspenseful.

The Haunting is a perfect example of how to make a ghost story (along with The Innocents -- see my earlier post).

Based on The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, the film follows an ill-fated paranormal investigation by a group of four relative strangers (two men and two women).

But the director (Robert Wise, between West Side Story and The Sound of Music) doesn't go for cheap thrills. Instead, he uses the camera, the music, and the big empty house (sets?) to build a sense of isolation and dread. And he brings you into the story without any real effects and without really showing anything at all.

I think that's key. It's always scarier to worry about what you're going to see, or thought you may have seen, rather than seeing the monster straight on. Watch what he does in the bedroom scene in the clip below....

Shock cuts are great, but the scare wears off rather quickly. Movies like The Haunting stick with you long after the credits roll.

The Goosebump Moment -- An American Werewolf in London (1982)

While we're on the topic of John Landis -- where else to go next but to the movie that inspired the Thriller video.

Many of my posts have championed the slow build-up of suspense as opposed to out-and-out shocks.

But sometimes, a shock is just what you need. In that regard, An American in Werewolf delivers.

It also manages to deliver the very tricky proposition of melding funny and scary. When it's pulled off, audiences tend to love being able to laugh after they're scared.

Prior to this film, its director was known primarily for large-cast unrefined comedies (most recently Blues Brothers), and its star (David Naughton) was known primarily as the I'm-a-Pepper Guy and for his one-hit disco wonder "Makin' It!". Put together with the special effects genius of Rick Baker, they created a darkly comic horror classic.

For this Goosebump Moment clip, I didn't want to go with the excellent but often-seen Transformation Scene. Instead, I wanted to show either shockcut dream sequence where Jenny Agutter as David's nurse/girlfriend awakes him in the forest, or the subway scene -- a great example of suspense without showing anything.

Unfortunately, thanks to NBC/Universal's legal department, neither of those clips are available on youtube.....but fortunately, the trailer includes shots from both of those scenes, is available on youtube, and is a kick on its own....

Tales of TV Halloween Past -- Michael Jackson's Thriller (1983)

Since I've gone on a short musical detour, now seems like the best time to bring in the best music video ever produced, which also happens to be a great blending of horror movie imagery and pop music.

In 1983, Michael Jackson was at his peak, and MTV was known primarily for showing music videos (hence the title). So, in one of those moments of perfect timing, Jackson and John Landis (the director of horror movie classic An American Werewolf in London) teamed up to produce a long-form video for the title track of his blockbuster album.

Though ground-breaking in its day, the impact of Thriller has been somewhat lessened in recent years through a combination of Jackson's downfall and death and the zombie-dance centerpiece becoming a pop culture trope in movies, tv, and youtube flashmob videos.

As a result, more people have likely seen the Chinese prisoners doing the Thriller dance than have seen the video in its entirety. Unfortunately, the complete 13-minute mini-movie is rarely if ever shown on TV -- usually cutting out the first pre-music 4 minutes and much of the center section, and the entire credits sequence. It is also apparently not out on DVD -- nor is the Making Of... video (which was a huge bestseller in its own right on VHS).

So, although I like to only show a tease of the film in question, encouraging you to go out and track down the dvd and watch it, I am including the complete video below. In production values alone, I think it holds up as a short tongue-in-cheek horror film even today. And the song will be stuck in your head the rest of the month (which is as it should be...).

The Goosebump Moment -- Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)

Okay, so this one is a little bit of a cheat....you've likely never seen a Judy Garland musical showing up on any self-respecting Halloween/Horror movie list.

But Meet Me in St. Louis is important to the genre because one of its pivotal scenes takes place at Halloween. And the way that scene was filmed, with its use of blues and oranges, and long tracking shots that make a suburban street sinister, in turn inspired John Carpenter and Dean Cundey (the director and cinematographer of 1978's Halloween).

The movie takes place in four parts covering each season of a year and follows the everyday dramas of a turn of the (20th) century family -- of course, occasionally they also burst into song.

Here's the set-up: The Halloween segment focuses on youngest sister Tootie, played by Margaret O'Brien. She's being allowed to join in with the older kids for Halloween festivities -- apparently in the good old days this involved building a giant bonfire in the middle of the street and tormenting the neighbors, as opposed to trick-or-treating. Well, the older kids dare Tootie to approach the scary house down the street.

So, even though this really supposed to be charming and funny rather than scary, watch how the framing and the colors are used to evoke the mood -- then the next time you watch Halloween (later this month hopefully) see what they swiped. (And sorry this one doesn't embed...just click the link)

The Goosebump Moment -- The Lady in White (1988)

I couldn't find a larger picture of the poster, so you can't read the tagline, but here's what it says:



The year is 1962.
The place is Willowpoint Falls.
Nobody talks about what
happened in the school
cloakroom 10 years ago.
Now, in the dead of night,
Frankie Scarlatti is going
to find out why.

I love the graphics and layout of this poster. It perfectly captures the mood of the film.

The Lady in White is a little-known ghost movie from the late 80's that starred Lukas Haas, who was the little kid in Witness and who now is known for arthouse indie films. (He most recently played Nash in Inception).

Here he plays Frankie Scarlatti, and the scene shown on the poster is probably the best in the movie. Unfortunately, I think the plot falls apart with some unnecessary issues toward the end, but the first hour or so has a great set-up and some great moody visuals.

The color timing of the early scenes is similar to those in the original Halloween, as well as the target film of my next blog post.

But as ghost scenes go, this one is pretty darn disturbing for a PG movie, especially if you can surrender to the set-up and imagine you're the kid...

Here's the set-up: It's Halloween late afternoon in 1962 and little Frankie has been double-dog dared by some of his classmates to go check out the cloakroom, which is supposed to be haunted by the ghost of a little girl that was murdered years before. Of course, just like you or me or any number of preadolescent boys, he succumbs to peer pressure, accepts the challenge and plans on the quickest of run-throughs, just so he can say he didn't chicken out....things don't go as planned.