strange_complex | Entries tagged with ghost stories

A full list of the 102 films which I watched in 2024, mainly with Joel. Includes 24 films with Christopher Lee in them and 21 Hammer films. My most-watched director was Terence Fisher with 5, while Freddie Francis, Mario Bava and Roger Corman are equal second place with 3 each. There's at least one film on the list for every decade since the 1910s, peaking at 21 each for the 1960s and '70s.

1. Le Frisson des Vampires (1971), dir. Jean Rollin - amazing lesbian vampire film executed with the trippy crushed-velvet excess only possible c. 1970.
2. Daughter of Darkness (1990), dir. Stuart Gordon - not to be confused with Daughters of Darkness (1971). An American woman goes to Romania in search of her father, who turns out to be a vampire.
3. Transylvania (2006), dir. Tony Gatlif - a portrait of the region, focused especially on the Romani people there, seen through the eyes of a Romani-Italian girl who goes there in pursuit of a lost boyfriend. Very rich and human.
4. Il mostro dell'opera / The Vampire of the Opera (1964), dir. Renato Polselli - a vampire haunts a neglected old theatre in which an opera troupe are rehearsing a new production. Not particularly good.
5. Nandor Fodor and the Talking Mongoose (2023), dir. Adam Sigal - about this case. Trying to do something about the reasons why people are drawn to belief in the supernatural, including a personal character arc from scepticism to a desperate desire to believe on the part of Fodor, but somehow a bit flat in the delivery and not really that profound in the end. Good to spot location footage in the Victoria pub, Leeds and Whitby harbour, though.
6. The Woman in Black (1989), dir. Herbert Wise - the ITV version, which now has quite the status of a cult classic in vintage horror circles. Very good, and delivering sustained creepy, squirm-inducing scares in a way that modern jump scares can't really match.
7. Blade II (2002), dir. Guillermo del Toro - I didn't think I'd seen this, but it turned out I had. I just knew I'd only seen one Blade film and assumed it had been the first. Good cyber fun, very of its era.
8. Once Upon a Spy (1980), dir. Ivan Nagy - terrible American wannabe James Bond movie with Christopher Lee as a mega-villain threatening the world with a shrink-ray!
9. The Woman in Black (2012), dir. James Watkins - the revived Hammer version, which I saw in the cinema when it came out. Doesn't have the same atmosphere as the 1989 version, and even the jump scares weren't as effective at home as in the cinema. Still, had a good cast and looks nice.
10. Dark Places (1973), dir. Don Sharp - little-known contemporary-set horror film in which a man inherits a house with money hidden somewhere within it, but is haunted by the tragic legacy of the previous owner, with Christopher Lee in a minor role. Pretty solid psychological horror, better than we were expecting.
( 92 more films under here )

I went to see The Woman in Black with Joel last night at the Grand Opera House in York, and since I've written about it at some length on Facebook, I may as well transfer that over here too.

My first encounter with this story was reading the script of the play what must be almost 25 years ago now, and I've wanted to see an actual production of it ever since. All the more so after watching the classic 1989 ITV adaptation of it last week by way of preparation. In fact, that worked even better than expected, as the stage play begins after the action of the story has ended, with the protagonist (Arthur Kipps) asking a young actor to help him tell the story. So it was quite easy to imagine the Kipps of the ITV version going on to be the Kipps of this stage production, some decades later.

We had seats a looooonng way up in the gods, because I only found out it was even on late in the day when there weren't many tickets left. At York's Grand Opera House, that meant very steeply-raked rows with terrible leg-room, so we probably didn't see it to its absolute best effect. Nevertheless, it delivered some really effective chills for a theatre production. Joel's hand got a good squeezing at certain points! Very good use made of a beating-heart sound effect, some sudden plunges into darkness, projected silhouettes etc. Also nice creative work with a small selection of basic props which 'became' a myriad of different things during the course of the play - especially a large wicker trunk which served as back-stage storage, a desk, a train carriage seat, a horse-drawn trap, a bed, and Alice Drablow's document repository.

One of the things I really liked when I read the script was the double-layered approach the story. It begins with Kipps and the actor he has hired discussed how to tell his story, and beginning some read-throughs, after which they 'go into' the story itself, 'becoming' the various characters within it but also periodically coming back 'out' of the narrative to comment further on matters of stage production. During this process, a Woman in Black appears at the appropriate moments in the story, but she isn't played by either of them, and the implication of course is that she isn't merely 'in' the story but is actually manifesting in the empty theatre they're using, with ghastly implications for them - and perhaps even for us, the real-world audience.

It's a very clever device, not merely 'meta' for the sake of it, but adding a layer of thrill and ambiguity around where the line lies between reality and imagination. It worked well in this production - though I think I'd have had the Woman standing silently somewhere within the actual auditorium at a couple of points for that extra blurring of realities. However, some business at the beginning around the protagonist not being a natural performer was slightly over-egged, and played for laughs in a way that then set the audience up to respond to some of the later chills with self-conscious laughter that I'm not sure added to the experience.

One thing I hadn't remembered was that once Kipps and his hired actor get into the story, it begins on Christmas Eve with Kipps' family telling ghost stories around the fire - way to acknowledge the grand tradition within which your ghost story belongs! I also had fun turning up in all-black Victoriana, just for the lulz. We intended to take a picture next to one of the posters for the play, but there wasn't really room amongst the crowds coming out at the end. However, one woman spontaneously complimented me on my outfit, clearly understanding exactly what I'd done, so it was all worthwhile!

The production we saw is touring all over the UK and Ireland, so if you live in one of those countries, you have ample opportunity to catch it yourselves if you are interested!