The Haunting of Hill House - The Best Thing on Netflix?

By
Scott D. Parker

I never saw this show coming and it totally blew me away.

We live in a golden age of content, especially television content. There is just so much that we can’t realistically be expected to watch it all. Even as an avid Netflix consumer, I didn’t know the re-imagined version of “The Haunting of Hill House” was even a thing. My wife, did, however. She read about it in ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY and then it popped up on her Netflix account. We had just finished Amazon’s brilliant "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel," it was October, so why not? It was a short, 10-episode series--movie, really--so it wouldn’t take up too much time if it proved to be bad or if I proved indifferent.

All I needed was the first episode.

Specifically, the last minute or so. Well, no, let me backtrack: the steller cast, the adept direction, and the fantastic writing of the first episode got me to swallow the hook. The last couple of minutes set the hook. “I’m in,” were the words out of my mouth as soon as the credits rolled. Truth be told, I was already in.

The Haunting of Hill House, as re-imagined by director/writer Mike Flanagan, tells the story of the Crain family in two different phases of their lives. In flashbacks, we see Hugh Crain (Henry Thomas; yes, that Henry Thomas) and his wife, Olivia (Carla Gugino) move into Hill House with their five children. In the present day, the children are now adults, Hugh is now played by Timothy Hutton, and Olivia isn’t around. The central mystery of the show is what happened to her and to the family at Hill House.

Taking his cue from any number of modern examples of non-linear storytelling, director Flanagan expertly weaves in and out of both times, revealing just enough here while intentionally not showing you something there. I knew what he was doing, and I didn’t care. I became so enthralled in the story and the way it was presented that I came close to the desire to binge it all. The closest we got was two separate days of two episodes each. Most of the time, however, it was an episode per day. But the beauty of watching the show in this manner was the ability to mull over the story and the characters.

And mull it over I did. Numerous nights and even throughout the days, snippets of the show would float back into my head. My wife and I discussed various aspects of the show, and I even played the age-old game of trying to guess what was going to happen next.  Thankfully, I was wrong on nearly everything except one crucial aspect. And, no, I can’t tell you what it was because it is fundamental to the story. (see below)

Billed as a horror show, it lives up to that reputation. Yes, there are jump scares. Of course there are jump scares. But, for me, Hill House was less a horror show than a supernatural suspense, eerie type show. There were some moments in the show that I was glad I was watching in the day time. And most of those are quiet moments you didn’t see coming.

Flanagan--whose work I don’t know--did a marvelous job at directing and pacing. I’m no film geek, but even I realized some of the tricks he used to great effect. One was the just-out-of-range blurring of a background character. He did this often, and it really worked well. Camera movement was pitch perfect. Probably the thing getting the most buzz is episode 6, “Two Storms.” The story content is stellar and pivotal to the series, but the direction is what will earn this episode award nominations. Even as we watched it, we could tell it was shot in multiple long-takes, with the camera moving this way and that, revealing a nothingness behind one character in one second only to reveal something behind the very same character when the camera pulls around again. Excellent work.

An excellent director with an excellent story can only get you so far. If you don’t have excellent actors, you get something sub par. The casing director of Hill House needs an award today. Let’s start with Henry Thomas. Seeing as I didn’t look up or know anything about this show ahead of time, it was during the first episode I realized he was the “E.T.” kid. I haven’t followed his career at all, but man did he deliver in the various flashback scenes. The chemistry Thomas has with Gugino and the five child actors is so good, you’d think they were a real family. Speaking of Gugino, she had the difficult task of conveying Olivia as a loving mother and wife, but as someone also haunted by things not often visible, sometimes even in the same scene. When she was comforting a scared child, she was honest and sincere. When she was facing something else, she was just as scared as you were in that moment.

In any movie starring kids, you might get less-than-good actors who deliver less-than-good performances. The five children--especially Julian Hilliard (young Luke) and McKenna Grace (as young Theodora)--gelled on screen as if they were truly siblings. They really inhabited their characters well. Not to be outdone, the adult actors playing these characters also knocked it out of the park. There was one scene in particular where Theodora--who has a special talent--does the thing she does to use her talent (like how I’m obfuscating?). With modern technology and CGI chicanery, Flanagan could have conjured up anything for a scary moment. Instead, he lets Kate Siegel’s face be centered on the screen. When she “sees” what she sees, Siegel screams a scream so bloodcurdling your mind is the thing conjuring up the horror. So well done.

I questioned why Flanagan didn’t just put Henry Thomas in older make up but rather cast Timothy Hutton as the older Hugh. Visually, the two actors are not too far off, and stylistically, they created mannerisms for Hugh each actor mimicked. But in keeping with the obvious recasting of the kids, the choice for a second actor for Hugh was a good one. I’m not too familiar with Hutton’s work, but as the series propelled itself to the end, his gravitas carried his scenes and I was ultimately satisfied with both actors playing the same part.

Oh, one other thing about the cast: each one of them get what I call a “Robert Shaw in Jaws” moment. You know the scene in Jaws where Shaw, as Quint, tells the story of the U.S.S. Indianapolis and the sharks. Best dang scene in the movie. Well, the adults get their version, but none was better than of Robert Longstreet as caretaker Horace Dudley. When he says what he says in the manner he does it, Flanagan keeps the camera on Longstreet. The actor delivers that story with so much depth and emotion that I immediately called it a “Robert Shaw in Jaws” moment. Incredible that a piece of a show like this by a side character could be so compelling.

I could go on and on, but I'm going to halt here. I’ve seen some great stuff this year, but The Haunting of Hill House is easily in the Top 3, maybe even Top 2. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

P.S., I’m stopping the main review here. If you want to avoid spoilers, stop and watch then return. For those of y’all who want to continue, you’ve been warned.

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The one aspect of the show I did see coming was Episode 5, “The Bent Neck Lady.” At that moment, I nearly thought the secret of the house was an alternate dimension.

What I didn’t see coming was the ending.

Holy moley. Who in the world saw it coming? Who in the world would have predicted the ending of a showed billed as a horror show could have such a genuinely emotional ending? I don’t know about y’all, but I was bawling my eyes out when Hugh--first as Hutton then as Thomas--talked to Steve and explained the situation. He told his son why and how the house needed to be saved. And then the instant transition from Hutton to Thomas? Lost it. My wife did, too. Maybe it’s my age, maybe I’m just so emotional about family, but The Haunting of Hill House delivered not only genuine scares, creeps, and thrills, but also a deep, heartfelt emotionally resonant ending. I couldn’t be happier about it.

The Horror of Truth and Half-Truths

At some point today, I'll be dropping by the Thriller Roundtable to answer the question, “What can thriller writers learn from the horror genre?”

I've had a very strange relationship with horror and every year for the past 11 years Brian has tried to get me to agree to a month of horror in October - primarily watching horror movies.

And every year I've refused.

Until this year.

Why now?

Well, one of the things I needed to understand about my relationship with horror was that it was shaped by the wrong strand of horror. As a teen in the 80s, I grew up when slasher flicks like Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street were big.

And slasher flicks are definitely not my thing. 

However, there is something very appealing about horror that eluded me until I had a broader exposure to the genre. Horror - like police procedurals and thrillers - strives for the restoration of order. In horror, a protagonist or group of key characters face threat of death from all manner of evil creatures (be it a person who's lost their humanity or some sort of monster or something else) and triumphs. It may not feel like much of a triumph, depending on what they've lost along the way, but they find a way to survive.

What's really interesting is that some prominent horror offerings have recently addressed the fact that at the end of that part of the story, there really isn't a return to order. The life of the protagonist or lives of the core group have been permanently altered.

From the new Halloween movie to The Haunting of Hill House, horror is expanding its reach and exploring the trauma that victims of horror endure.

No matter how many ghosts, goblins, vampires or other types of monsters or fictional beings you throw at them, trauma is very real world. And perhaps by taking a person out of the context of real, day to day normalcy, it's easier to explore. 

As part of our horror marathon, we watched the new Hill House series. I'm not going to give anything away in saying this - it's episode 1 reality.

The older brother, Steve, is an author. And he writes about hauntings ... including what happened at Hill House when he was a child.

And he really pisses the family off by doing so.

...is anything real before you write it...? The things you write about are real,  those people are real their feelings are real,  their pain is real,  but not to you,  is it? Not until you chew it up and you digest it and you've shit it out on a piece of paper,  and even then its a pale imitation at best. 

You take other peoples lives and love and loss and pain and you eat it...  You are an eater. You eat it and you shit it out and then, and only then, is it real for you. 

I found myself thinking about this a lot. Most of his family is so angry with him because of his book. He took something so personal and put it out into the world.

This is often what writers do. They put their truths into stories. And that's often what editors and agents want to see. One of the increasingly common requests I've seen for queries lately is, "Tell me why you're the person to write this story." They want to see that there's a personal connection. They don't mean, "Because I earned an MFA and know how to construct a grammatically correct sentence." They mean, "Because I survived sexual assault" or "Because I grew up with divorced parents" or "Because I have experienced racism" - they're looking for the personal connection to your story. 

There are two things that are more likely to happen when the writer has a personal connection. One is that they may more effectively convey appropriate emotions in the story and a sense of realism that readers connect to. The other is that they're more likely to have topics they can talk about to promote their book.

Now, Steve's story wasn't the most compelling one for me, out of all the survivors, but I did appreciate how the story looked at the personal implications of sharing your truth.

And, however the events of Hill House changed how Steve perceived the events from his childhood, he had written what he believed. 

It was not how others in the family saw things. As we all learned when Robin Williams' character challenged the young men in Dead Poet's Society to stand on their desks, the world looks different when you look at things from a different perspective.

As writers, we face the peculiar balancing act of sharing what is personal and considering how others might feel about those revelations or even if they believe or agree with those alleged truths.

Everything we experience, every relationship we have, are potentially opposing truths. 

Sometimes, those opposing perspectives are the result of listening to lies or suppressing events or knowledge because of an inability to cope with what happened. Sometimes it really is a difference in perspective.

And sometimes, we all say or type things that come off as more of an absolute than we intend, or have an inference that was unintended. I had that experience recently on Facebook, with Brian pointing out to me one single line in a post and its relationship to one specific perspective on the issue. It prompted me to make an amendment.

We don't always get a chance to take things back. Sometimes, we have to leave ourselves room for another person's perspective to alter our own. 

And perhaps we need to take a look at the dust or cracks on our lenses that may be marring or limiting our view and understanding. 

Perhaps that's a caution to us all to be careful what we write on social media and elsewhere. Perhaps most of all it's an opening to talk about something we rarely tackle. As writers, we often process our feelings on the page and that can be therapeutic. However, it can also have a cost ... and we must always remember that things that are not known to us can change our understanding of ourselves and others and things we've experienced.

And sometimes, the popular consensus just boils down to who is more popular. You could be absolutely right and honest in a position or perspective but be ridiculed as a liar if your view opposes someone with a big platform and popularity. And many people are like Steve - they don't really want truth. They just don't want anyone to contradict their interpretation of events.

Be absolutely honest for yourself ... and remember that not everyone may thank you for it.

Reducing Genre to the Point of Offense or Betraying One's Ignorance

I had a very limited view of what 'horror' meant for a long time. To me, it was the slasher/scare-me-to-death films of the 80s. Jason. Freddy. The stuff we watched at sleepovers that was probably a subconscious ploy to ensure we would stay up all night, because we couldn't sleep, not just because we wanted to.

In truth, I have to credit my husband for expanding my understanding of some genres. I'd make some remark about horror or another genre and he'd round up a stack of anthologies related to the topic and tell me to start reading.

The result was that my understanding of horror as a genre expanded. The Cabin in the Woods isn't Nightmare on Elm Street, although I may or may not* have still jumped when the title sequence started.

Now, I recently noted some submission guidelines from a publisher, and I took offense to them. There's been a long-standing argument between literary and genre fiction that involves the perception that literary writers look down on genre writers as being beneath them, and that genre fiction isn't seen as having the same quality as literary fiction. (I'm sure J.K. Rowling is crying over how she doesn't sell like literary writers.)

One of the perceived differences between literary fiction and genre fiction is that genre fiction is driven by a plot, with a clear beginning, middle and end. Things build up to a climax with resolution. Things happen.

Literary fiction can be more introspective, with less focus on events and actions than on the impact events have on the main characters.

I was reading a set of submission guidelines, and the publisher was pretty detailed about what they wanted. That can be a very good thing for writers, because it can help them figure out if they're a good fit with that publisher. There's nothing worse than skipping to a set of submission guidelines and seeing a generic, "Only send us material that's similar to what we publish." That can be very ambiguous because over time a publication may evolve. What Spinetingler publishes today in terms of fiction is different than what it published initially. I always go back to the story, "Jessie's Toothbrush," which we published very early on. The mystery was why the guy was so enamored with that toothbrush, but it certainly wasn't crime fiction. It was memorable, though. However, if a comparable story was submitted today it would probably get rejected because the focus has narrowed over time, and also it can be determined by the preferences of the editor, and our editorial staff has changed over time.

Specific details can be good. When a publisher has identifiable genres or subgenres they publish, it's great to know this. However, when the publisher states that they are more interested in character growth than plot and then says that's why they aren't interested in any manuscripts about characters who are in law enforcement, they've demonstrated a prejudice.

Now, those aren't the exact words that I read. I've been reading a lot of submission guidelines lately, because when I do manuscript reviews I don't always stay within one genre. I've been working on an assessment of a non-fiction manuscript, and the one before that was some sort of horror/speculative fiction piece that didn't fit easily in one box. I'm rarely hired to review crime fiction manuscripts, which means I'm often researching different genres and publishing categories so that I can provide up-to-date examples to illustrate a point I'm making to the writer I'm working with.

As I read this set of submission guidelines, I felt my blood boil. I was offended and annoyed.

It's remarkably presumptive to assume that a character who happens to work in law enforcement doesn't have the capacity for self growth, or that their journey isn't worth reading about. It also suggests a certain level of ignorance. My mind automatically went to the brilliant works of James Sallis, and the John Turner and Lew Griffin books. Those books are the definition of a personal journey for the central character. The mystery in any Lew Griffin book isn't a case but is the man himself, and what prompts his limitations and relationships.

I clicked off of that site with cheeks burning and some inappropriate words mixed in with a vow to never read a dang thing by that publisher if they were so biased against a genre I love.  

I'm not sure if it's an entirely fair response. Perhaps in another week or two I'll forget about it and even forget who said it. I understand if an editorial team has had a hefty percentage of their books be police procedurals and they want to see something else. Just say you aren't accepting police procedurals at this time. There's no need to piss on the whole genre in the process and suggest that it's so fucking beneath you that it can't say anything significant about the human equation or contribute any depth to our understanding about humanity, a person's motivations, or how it can prompt character growth.

My husband may or may not have been tired of hearing me rant about the subject, so I may or may not have needed to work this out of my system here. I also know that when I approached my latest manuscript, I wanted it to push deeper than a formulaic procedural, while still having a solid story. I don't believe the two are mutually exclusive. I don't want to live in a publishing era that suggests that's the case. I have always felt that what's more compelling about a Rebus book is the man himself than the specific crimes being investigated, and while those crimes may open the door for an examination of politics and personal views, they work best when everything from the crime to the investigation to the characters mirror the central theme of the story and amplify what the protagonist is working through.

It may be that a high number of police procedurals fall short on this account, but to suggest they all do is wrong, and the publisher could have picked a more tactful way to talk about what they wanted to see from writers, rather than making such a sweeping judgment against a whole subgenre... and I have to be honest, while I've only addressed the law enforcement restriction, that was just one of a number of careers that were excluded from submissions.

* I'm a jumper, so nobody questions when I have a strong fear reaction. This is also why I prefer to lie on the couch rather than sit.

Why is The Exorcist so damn scary 40+ years later?

Buckle up, this one's long. I wrote this three years ago to celebrate the 40th anniversary of The Exorcist, and the site I published it on has gone the way of the buffalo. Happy Halloween!

Forty years ago The Exorcist opened to the greatest hype of any R rated film before or since. Lines stretched around the block despite the cold weather, additional showings had to be added to cater to the masses desperate to see it, it earned a ten minute segment with Tom Brokaw on the national news program, and reviews of the film made the front page of newspapers around the world. Reports of audiences responding by jumping out of their seats, running up and down the aisles, fainting, and leaving the film early in horrified tears came in from all over. By the time The Exorcist hit the UK, the theaters had ambulances standing by during showings. Something else happened at these showings, too. Something more interesting than reports of a man in San Francisco charging the screen in an attempt to kill the demon possessing Regan MacNeil. When people left the theaters, whether they left early or made it all the way through, they didn’t go home. They loitered around the theaters eager to connect with their fellow viewers over what they had just witnessed. People couldn’t stop talking about The Exorcist, and it appears we still can’t. The obvious question is: why?

The Rev. Billy Graham had harsh criticisms for the film, insisting that it had “a power of evil”, and believing the mass viewings would damage the souls of the nation. Other religious leaders condemned the film, too, but interestingly, many applauded it. Father Robert J. Henle of Georgetown was so supportive of the film that he not only allowed director William Friedkin full access to film anywhere on campus, including his own office, but also gave him the diaries of the two priests that performed the last sanctioned exorcism in America. William Peter Blatty, author of the book and screenplay, believed that by confronting evil, he was doing something positive for the Catholic Church. Many Catholics agreed.

Hype and controversy aside, one element of the film stands out in a way that may explain the public’s reaction to it. Realism. Blatty said he believed that the real reason audience members suffered nausea, panic, and fainting was not the horror elements of the film, but the realism of the medical procedures. In the scene Blatty cites as the one he can’t stomach seeing, the doctors perform a procedure on young Regan known as an Arteriogram. This scene was shot at the NYU Medical Center, using the actual lighting of the room, and rather than using actors, a radiologist and neurosurgeon from the university performed the fake procedure for the cameras.

It’s important to remember than in 1973, filmmakers did not have CGI, green screens, or even equipment modern filmmakers take for granted, like steady cams. What we see while watching the film is what actually happened on set. Friedkin was intent on making this film feel like a documentary, to make the symptoms of Regan’s possession as real as possible, sometimes going to dubious lengths to achieve that realism. Perhaps the most famous example is how cold the working conditions were on set. He wanted the actors’ breath to be visible. In today’s filmmaking, breath would be added in postproduction, but Friedkin did not have this kind of technology. So in addition to having the room on pneumatic wheels to simulate earthquake, he refrigerated the room to at least 30 below zero, leaving the cast and crew in ski suits, and Linda Blair restrained to the bed in nothing but a nightgown and long underwear. The lights and body heat warmed the room so quickly that they could only film for an hour or so before it became too “warm” and they had to stop filming and turn everything off so the temperature would drop again, and the breath would again be visible when the actors spoke. Crewmembers recall coming to the set one morning to find “snow” that had been created as a result of the overnight cooling mixing with the natural condensation inside the room.

Friedkin was not above endangering the actors to get a perfect scene. In one instance, Ellen Burstyn approached him to ask that her harness not be pulled so hard in the scene where she is thrown from Regan’s bedside, because she was afraid she would be injured. He agreed with her but instead had the man working the rope pull as hard as he could, yanking her back and slamming her into the floor, resulting in intense back pain for the actress. Friedkin’s response to her screams of pain was to motion for the cameraman to get in for a close up. That is the cut that made the film. When the real Jesuit priest playing Father Dyer couldn’t affect the emotion required of him as he performed last rites on the character Father Karras, Friedkin slapped him across the face as hard as he could, causing the young priest to cry and shake through the final take of the scene. Friedkin was rumored to have fired a gun off at random times during filming to shake the actors. Chris Newman, a sound engineer, said that Friedkin “would do anything to motivate an actor.” Burstyn had a different opinion, she said in the BBC documentary Fear of God: 25 Years of The Exorcist that Friedkin went “beyond what anyone needed to do to make a movie.” It is rumored that her back injury affected her throughout her life, while some who worked on the film claim it wasn’t a serious injury. So many times, what the audience sees isn’t acting at all, but a response to a real stimulus that wasn’t filmed (or in some cases, was).

Some of the more impressive feats are seemingly small in light of today’s technology. To get an unbroken shot from the front door of the house, all the way up the stairs to Regan’s room, they had to build a chair rigged up on a wire that could be moved smoothly and quickly, lighting the scene with extreme care to keep the rig from casting shadows. For a very small scene, where Regan injures the psychiatrist visiting her, they built a contraption the actor could lay on, with a camera mounted in front of his face to get the shot of him falling just the way Friedkin wanted it. There were a number of devices built specially for the film, but perhaps the most unsettling was the life sized, photo realistic dummy of Linda Blair they used to film the scene where her head turns completely around. Blair claimed that she didn’t even want to be in the same room as the thing. Watching the film, it’s nearly impossible to tell it is a dummy, even if you already know. One of the things that add to that realism is that they made sure the dummy “breathed” during the shot, her breath condensing in the freezing room.

Not only are the visuals incredibly realistic, and the actors responding sometimes genuinely to fear and pain inflicted on them by the director, but the story itself is about what happens when otherwise pragmatic people cannot find a logical explanation of events. Father Karras is a Jesuit priest who has lost his faith, and is considering leaving his position. Chris MacNeil is described by Blatty as “an atheistic woman”. When faced with the strange behaviors, vulgarity, and violence of her daughter, she first turns to her doctors, then to psychiatry, and only after one of the most disturbing scenes in the film, where twelve year old Regan is shown stabbing herself in the vagina with a crucifix, bleeding and taunting her mother, shoving her face into the bleeding crotch, does Chris seek the counsel of Karras. One of the many things Jesuits are responsible for is education, and Karras was sent to medical school by the Church to become a psychiatrist. He neither knows much about, nor believes in, exorcism and possession. He isn’t even sure he believes in God. He attempts to find an alternate explanation, even tries to point Chris MacNeil back to psychiatry, but in the end, he has to admit to himself that this is a genuine possession.

What is terrifying about this, is the feeling that we could be wrong. I don’t believe the viewer is afraid that they or someone they love will become possessed nearly as much as they fear the idea that events could conspire to prove our understanding of the world around us completely void. In many ways, this film doesn’t rely on the supernatural to get under the audience’s skin, it relies on the failure of medicine, science, and logic. Blatty himself doesn’t consider the story “horror” at all. He once said that while writing the book he never set out to scare anyone, while admitting that his words would be “an admission of failure on a stupefying level”, he felt that this story was a “supernatural detective” story. Friedkin says he never saw it as a horror film, either, going so far as to say, “Anyone who thinks this is a horror film is wrong”. They both claim it is a story about the mysteries of faith. Through the beginning of the film, that by modern accounts is quite slow, it is a mystery. Is the girl possessed? Will her mother realize it in time? Will Father Karras be able to help her? But the questions it raises when paired with the incredibly real effects create a horror, whether Blatty and Friedkin intended it or not.

William Peter Blatty wrote The Exorcist in a cabin that cost $70 a month, holed away from his wife and children, only leaving to buy groceries and visit his mother who was in a convalescent home. Originally a comedy writer, it was the first time he wrote without the intention of getting laughs, and the first time he felt that the characters had taken over. He said he never had a plot in mind, but instead used notes on the physical symptoms of a possession instead. After a seven year correspondence with a priest named Father Bowdern, a man who had actually performed an exorcism, his notes must have been fairly in-depth. He based the characters on people he knew, and inserted his own grief over the loss of his mother into Father Karras’s narrative. Some of the events in the story were inspired by actual events unrelated to possession and exorcism, like the story he tells of a student attempting to steal a physics test from a classroom and being discovered, only to launch himself through a window and down a set of stairs. Even the bits not based on Father Bowdern’s 1949 exorcism case are steeped in realism.

The effects, make up, and compelling journey from skepticism to belief was so compelling that the cast and crew felt a deep unease. After a mysterious fire on set that delayed filming, and some accidents on set like Linda Blair’s back harness coming loose, causing her to be thrashed about on the bed while screaming, “It hurts! Make it stop!” which also happened to be her lines for the scene, it was believed that there was a curse on the film. Some posited that the Devil himself was attempting to keep the film from being made; afraid it would reveal him to the world. Most horror films have rumors of a curse surrounding the filming, as it adds a mystique to the film. The Exorcist is no different. Several members of the cast and crew said that nine people who were involved in the film died. It is difficult to corroborate the number as they counted relatives of the cast, and rarely name more than four people, to include the ninety-year-old woman who played Father Karras’s mother. The deaths all appear to be from natural causes, and some occurred years after the making of the film. Still, during filming the cast and crew were so unnerved that Friedkin asked a priest to come in and exorcise the set. The priest refused, in part because it was nearly impossible to get Church approval for an exorcism at the time, and because he felt it would only serve to unnerve the cast and crew further. He did come in and bless the set and speak with the cast and crew in an attempt to calm them.

Even after the filming was complete, the sense of evil looming infected people working on the postproduction. Not satisfied with the 150 hours of work the sound people put into making Linda Blair’s voice sound demonic, Friedkin hired renowned radio actress Mercedes McCambridge to do the vocal work. McCambridge asked to be bound to a chair, and have the restraints tighten during the lines where Regan was distressed. To achieve the rasping, deep, demonic voice she drank whiskey, chain smoked, and swallowed raw eggs, even her breathing sounded ominous. Despite her dedication to the role, or perhaps because of it, she had to take frequent breaks to be comforted by priests and read scripture. There were times that she spontaneously erupted into tears while recording, as she was so disturbed by the work.

Adding to the idea that the film was cursed, or evil in and of itself, it was sent to 666 Fifth Avenue to be edited. Friedkin writes in his autobiography that if he had believed that there was a curse he would not have been able to go on with it, despite asking for an exorcism and having priests standing by during postproduction voice recordings. In the same writing, Friedkin shares that Fr. Bowdern had written to Blatty saying, “I can assure you of one thing: The case I was involved in was the real thing. I had no doubt about it then, and have no doubts about it now”. He also claims that Fr. Henle had felt that Blatty’s writing was a faithful, but fictionalized account of the 1949 case Fr. Browdern had participated in. Given his inclusion of the letter that wasn’t even addressed to him, is difficult to believe that Friedkin was completely divorced from the idea that the film was cursed or under some sort of supernatural black cloud, even as he talks about the good he feels the film did in confronting evil and bringing matters of faith to the mainstream.

The end result of all of this is a film that produced visuals years ahead of its time. Audiences had never seen a film where so much attention to detail and innovation had been put into what ended up on screen. Regan’s levitation was accomplished with a trick the director of photography had learned in advertising – if you paint dotted lines on the strings holding her and light the scene just right, the lines become invisible. Without the experience of seeing hundreds of films using CGI to create illusions, film goers of the seventies saw a girl rise up from the bed and float in midair, without any evidence of the device allowing it to happen apparent on screen. When the bed shook, jumped, or bucked like an untamed horse, it required the use of four different mechanized beds. Even the scene where Father Karras jumps out of the window and to his death, tumbling down those infamous stairs, a stunt man had to do just that.

In addition to that, we have the unsettling visual of Regan MacNeil’s demonic, gashed, bleeding and cracking face, the result of hours in the make up chair each day, but not so overwhelming that the audience cannot see the young, innocent girl beneath the demonic thing inside of her. Audiences were faced with the kind of vulgarity that was not commonplace in films of the time at all, let alone from the mouth of a twelve-year-old girl. Friedkin admits that casting Regan proved incredibly troublesome, as he needed a young actress that could portray innocence as well as possession, and could also deal with the subject matter and the possible results of portraying the character. Blair won the part after he had auditioned thousands of girls to no avail, and her mother brought her to his office without an appointment.


To hear Linda Blair tell it, she “simply did as she was told”, and in many cases had no idea what the things she did and said meant. Friedkin recalls the masturbation scene, telling her she had to thrust the cross into her crotch, and Blair responding that she wouldn't do that because it was “bad”. He had to coax her into it, and even then Blair says she didn’t really understand what she was doing, she just thrust the cross into a box between her legs that held a sponge soaked in Karo syrup, without fully understanding the vulgarity. Further, she says that her Lutheran family didn’t speak much of the Devil or evil, and thus she didn’t understand much of what she was portraying. As an adult, she says her mother told her “To play Jesus or to play the Devil will change your life forever”. She recalls having to explain to people that she was okay, that the film was just a film, and she had not been affected in any significant way by portraying Regan MacNeil.

Part of the reason The Exorcist lives on in several rereleases, documentaries, interviews, and books is because the themes are universal. One cannot put a date stamp on the fear that results from not being able to find a logical answer to a terrifying problem. There will always be things we cannot explain, things we cannot put a name to, things that get under our skin and cause us to doubt what we believe. Whether this doubt is doubt in a particular god or religion, or it is doubt of the institutions we have grown to trust in our modern world – hospitals, psychiatry, scientific research—it still arises for everyone at one time or another. So long as religion asks for blind faith, and so long as science leaves some questions unanswered, people will face disappointment in both. The story of Regan MacNeil put the audience face to face with that reality and forces us to ask ourselves how we would respond to an unanswered question with such high stakes.

Poor special effects have dated and made irrelevant many films. In refusing to take the easy route, Friedkin insured that the effects seen in The Exorcist will never be distracting. The realism of the film itself, when paired with the realism of the characters, and the questions of faith and logic, make this a timeless tale. It’s a film I watch at least once a year leading up to Halloween and it never fails to entertain me. It has aged well thanks to Friedkin’s obsessive directing style that took the film almost three times over budget, leaving the viewer unable to laugh off the more intense parts of the film because of dated effects. Though Blatty and Friedkin will disagree, I think it is one of the greatest horror films ever made, and deserves both the hype it drummed up in the seventies and the continued interest in the film and the work done to make it.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that the book is, in fact, better than the movie. Some things are harder to communicate on celluloid, and Friedkin and Blatty worked hard (and argued often) about what would be included and what would be cut. We cannot get inside Father Karras’s head as he does everything he can to convince himself that Regan is suffering from a psychosomatic illness, or be drawn by his interior arguments that keep leading him to possession as the only answer. The friendship between Father Dyer and Father Karras is likewise explored more deeply in the novel, giving Karras’s sacrifice a more intense sting. The feeling of dread, the feeling of evil, and feeling of logic being stripped away little by little as things escalate are captured in the film brilliantly, but they will overcome the reader of the novel.

Oh, The horror

By Jay Stringer

I've had horror on my brain all month. It's natural enough at this time of year. We all like to think a little darker, a little spookier. We like to cuddle up at the weekend and watch a few horror classics.

I've gone a little further than usual this year. My good friends over at Matinee Idles have had a horror season, with a series of podcasts examining some classics of the genre. To tie in with their shows, I've been doing two articles a week looking at some good (and very bad) examples of horror films. Not only have I been writing about two films a week, but in order to decide which films to write about, I've watched a ton of films. More than usual.

It's lead to some fun dreams, I can tell you.

In watching the films I've begun to realise a few things about what I look for in horror, and I've realised how closely it ties into what I look for in crime, and in fiction overall.

Now there's nothing new in noticing a link between horror and crime. A look on the shelves of your nearest book store (hey, remember them?) shows that the market is well ahead of us there. There are vampire detectives, wizard detectives, werewolf detectives and...hey I'm spotting a theme here. Over in comic books, John Constantine (that's the blond Brit, rhyming with time, not the vacant Californian guy who rhymes with spleen) is a hardboiled detective dropped into the middle of Lovecraft.

Al Guthrie has said "noir is non-supernatural horror." And he makes a fair point. It would be a blog in itself exploring that idea, showing the overlap between the two, but that's best left for the man himself or for a podcast further down the road.

I'm thinking that the draw for me is in a slightly different place.

It's interesting to note how people end up at crime fiction. It seems a lot of crime writers have moved across from other fields. Russel is on record at having come to crime via sci fi. I've had my stints as a sci fi fan, of course. And fantasy. What teenage male hasn't? I tended to be more Michael Moorcock than Issac Asimov, a strange hyrbid of sci fi, pulp and fantasy that probably says a lot about my tastes.

But as a writer I cut my teeth with horror and comic book scripts. Somewhere in my parents attic are sheets filled with short stories about vampires, werewolves, zombies, and strange men whistling nursery rhymes in dark streets. I remember getting in borderline trouble at school for writing a poem about a boy who found a severed head by the side of the road, took it home and planted it in a plant-pot, and nurtured it back to life.

(Yes, don't worry, the men in white coats have been called.)

And what I think I found in horror that I later came to find in crime was the social fiction. It's easy to get caught out generalising things like fiction, which can be all things to all people, but I think it's fair to say that for me (and a lot of this sites readers and contributors) good fiction is social fiction. I've written at length -and Russel, Dave, Steve, Gerald So and I have discussed in the podcasts- that we like crime fiction to hit us where it matters. On the streets, with real issues and real people.

What I have realised is that I want the same from horror, too. I want Halloween that holds a scary lens up to suburbia, that asks us, that guy down the road, was he staring at us? I want Night Of The Living Dead and Dawn Of The Dead to show some uncomfortable home truths about humanity. There are many famous quotes and images from those two films, but that one that sticks with me most is the scientist describing that the zombies can't be considered human, in part because they don't prey on each other. It's hitting us where it hurts to think about that. And the more obvious moments hold power too, of course. The mall mentality, the brainlessness, the inevitability of it all. The lynch mobs, the need for material goods and violence.

Sure, the classic movie monsters can be fun. And who doesn't like to see the occasional alien invasion? But real horror for me are the films that show that we are the problem. The films that show that our society is frail and broken, and that we let people slip through the cracks. It shows us the haves and the have nots, and shows how we will exploit and victimise each other.

It's in bringing horror down into the streets and houses with us -rather than in some spooky castle or forest- that I find stories and issues worth investing my time and fears into. And that's just the same as crime.

Once again it all comes down to social fiction. Funny that, eh?

Guest Post -Why I Love Serial Killers

By Sarah Pinborough

While Russel sets out to see if it's true what they say about cats in America, we're taking the chance to get a few different voices onto DSD. First up, please welcome Sarah Pinborough. Sarah is the author of six horror novels and her first thriller, A Matter Of Blood, was released earlier this year.

Why I love serial killers.

After writing six horror novels, I've recently crossed the line into writing crime fiction, (A Matter of Blood, Gollancz March 2010), and I've been asked quite a few times what it's like to switch genres. I often say that it's been quite refreshing, but in fact of all the genres, horror and crime feel to me like the most closely related. If they're not quite brother and sister, then they are at least first cousins.

I was reminded quite strongly of this while watching the first part of the TV adaptation 'DCI Banks: Aftermath' of Peter Robinson's work. Without giving any spoilers, the graphic opening scenes involve a machete, blood, death and the discovery of a serial killer's lair replete with bodies. Take away the involvement of a detective (perhaps the only genre separator) and it could have been the opening of a horror film.

If horror and crime are cousins, then the serial killer is their love-child. He fits so perfectly into both genres (I chose to use a serial killer in A Matter of Bood, and had also used one in a horror novel). The serial killer is the embodiment of every boogie man under the bed or monster in the closet for those who are too grown up to believe in such things. I look at films like Seven or The Silence of the Lambs and I can't decide whether they're crime thrillers or horrors. They certainly both create horror in the viewer and it might not be coincidental that they both are centred around the work of serial killers.

The serial killer is the adult's nightmare, in the way ghosts and vampires (the old-school sort anyway) should scare children. So maybe, in a lot of ways, the genre of crime is for grown-ups who like horror. Certainly more women write crime than they do horror and the whole world knows we're the more grown up of the sexes! Also, the women writing crime are writing some quite horrific stuff – I visited a friend of mine yesterday, who told me he'd been reading a Karin Slaughter novel. He paled slightly and said 'she doesn't pull any punches, does she? That is some really graphic shit.'

So if I'm honest, although I've met some really lovely new people through moving to crime, I don't feel like I've moved genres at all. It's more like I've gone to stay with relatives for a while.

-Sarah

The horror, the horror

By Russel D McLean

“The advice I got was don’t put supernatural in a crime story. It won’t work. Readers won’t buy it.”

That’s a paraphrase of a friend of mine talking about the advice he got for his first novel. Apparently supernatural and crime don’t work together. At least for readers.

I’ve thought about this a lot because the advice came from a source I respect, but the more I think about the more I think that in this case the source of wrong.

Two cases in point.

The first is the most recent. Sarah Pinborough has been hanging around the horror genre for a few years now, but her first “big” novel (at least in the UK) has just broken free. A MATTER OF BLOOD combines near future dystopia, crime fiction and, yes, the supernatural to thrilling effect. What’s particularly impressive – at least to me – is the build up to the “unnatural” events. By first combining two more “natural” genres (the near future stuff, set after an organisation called The Bank came in to save us from our monetary woes, and of course the crime fiction element which spins very naturally from her created society, being as it is set amongst coppers for “hire” and organised crime bosses) and then gently layering the supernatural elements on top until you suddenly realise they were there all along and you just weren’t paying attention, Pinborough effectively mashes genre styles to captivating effect. It’s a gamble that pays off wonderfully, and by mixing genres in this way, the story arc becomes more unpredictable, and the reader is drawn into a world with which they are unfamiliar. Putting readers off balance is a brilliant trick, and mixing genre traits – something that has become de-rigeur in the world of movies, so why is it quite so sneered upon in the world of prose? – is a perfect way to achieve that.



Of course, Pinborough isn’t the first person to mix the supernatural and crime genres to grand effect. One author who has been doing this since almost the beginning of his career is the sublimely talented John Connolly* whose latest novel, THE WHISPERERS** is one of the most chilling and artfully written thrillers I’ve read in a long time.

While I came to Connolly through an ostensibly “straight” horror novel, BAD MEN, it is his Charlie Parker series that fascinates me. EVERY DEAD THING, Connolly’s debut was, on the surface, a very well written serial killer novel set in the US. Charlie Parker’s family were killed by a stranger who called himself The Travelling Man, so our protagonist sets out across the country for revenge on this serial killer. By the end of the novel, however, something happened that made us question the nature of its events. We were left with the uneasy feeling that The Travelling Man may have been part of deeper, more unexplained events. This feeling again occurred in DARK HOLLOW, the second Parker novel and by the time of THE KILLING KIND, we were sure that all was not as it seemed in the world of Charlie Parker.

But the stroke of genius on the part of Connolly, was that, until THE LOVERS, we were never sure what was going on, how much was in the damaged head of Charlie Parker and how much was real. There were hints here and there, but the interpretation was left to the reader, and there were ways in which you could read events to suit either interpretation.

I won’t tell you which way he jumped. But it is a beautiful surprise, and changes the nature of the series in a way Connolly has followed up masterfully in THE WHISPERERS.





So this week’s reading advice (if you hadn’t figured already)?

Pinborough and Connolly.

Go on, you won’t be disappointed.


*Disclaimer, blah-blah, yes I know JC has said very very nice things about my debut, THE GOOD SON, but I was a fan of his for many years before he even knew my name never mind said such ego-swelling things.

**An early edition fell into me lap thanks to the wonderful folks at Hodder & Stoughton

The Horror of it all

I love Stephen King.

During about a six month stretch in late '01, early '02, I read IT, MISERY, THE SHINING, THE DARK HALF, THE GREEN MILE, ON WRITING, BAG OF BONES and probably a few others. And all of them were great. Each had moments that really struck me, whether it's his comments on writing in MISERY and THE DARK HALF or his utmost creepy moments in IT and THE SHINING.

Very rarely am I freaked out reading a book. King has been able to do that to me several times.

In the last month, I tried to read THE STAND.

And I couldn't finish it.

And it made me think about what freaks me out in a book. And for the most part, it's the little things. Whether it's Pennywise in the sewer in IT or a father turned bad in THE SHINING, the small horrors scare me the most.

I think it's because the little things seem plausible. I can imagine someone snapping at a moments notice and trying to kill a family. I can actually imagine someone grabbing a person's leg through a sewer grate. Those details stick with me.

In fact, I was compelled by the first 300 pages of the THE STAND. I believed in the Captain Trips' superflu. But beyond that the book started to get too big for me. I couldn't find a way to ground myself in the book. There weren't many characters I could believe in.

If characters are scared of real things, if the characters believe in these things, so can I. But in THE STAND it was all beyond me. I'm not much into fantasy.

I want to feel the fear of the characters. I want to feel my own fear. When it's something completely made up, I lose interest.

So, what about you? What scares you in books?