Children of Her Rage

Happy Mother's Day! We at DESCENT INTO MADNESS (and by "we" I mean me and the voices in my head) take this day seriously as there's nothing that can be more horrifying than one's own mother.  There's always a thin line between love and hate in a mother-daughter relationship. With my own mother, sometimes we're very close and get along like old friends. Then there are other times I wonder if she's possessed by JOAN CRAWFORD.
Anyhoo, with all the emphasis mainstream society at large puts on having babies, I wonder how many people realize that parenting is hard work. It's a 24-7 often thankless job that requires utter selflessness and for one to juggle being a nurturer, a teacher, a counselor and sometimes a prison warden. To be eloquent, bringing a little life into this world is a big fuckin' deal.
In a modern society obsessed with babies, most people seem to miss this point, though.
Even my normally pragmatic dad got sucked into baby mania. I had just graduated college and been accepted into grad school, but was totally eclipsed because my fertility monster stepsister got pregnant about the same time.
"We're on baby watch," my dad proclaimed with a glassy-eyed fervor that reminded me of the Manson Girls.
"Big deal," I sneered. "This is just the first one she's carried to full term." I don't know why I was the only one who thought her passing along that conehead forehead to an innocent human being was not a cause for celebration. I don't know why no one else was concerned that my stepsister was a made-for-TV-movie with FARAH FAWCETT waiting to happen.
"How can someone have children when they act like a spoiled child themselves?" I asked, which got me ostracized by my dad's family but if I had said that on DR. PHIL they would've clapped.
I think our culture tries to get people to have children for all the wrong reasons. I know my cousin Lula who's dumb as a sack of hammers and insists she's too good to get a retail job keeps getting pregnant so they don't cut off her food stamps. To give an example of Lula's parenting style, her first-born daughter didn't learn to talk until she was three years old. When I asked Lula is she ever read to her kids, she rolled her eyes and said, "That's what the schools are for."
Despite all of this, my relatives still chorused, "Don't you want to see the new baby?"
"I'm sure I'll see it if I get a job with the public defender," I replied.
Babies have become a living, breathing fashion accessory. They're like puppies but better and all you have to do is feed them, provide shelter and make sure they don't chew up the furniture. If you get tired of them, they'll be somebody else's problem.
Women particularly who do not want children are perceived as monstrous. I'm usually greeted with horror or asked to explain myself if I ever reveal that I don't want children. I just tell people, "I can't. My cats are allergic."
This is not a popular opinion, but the truth is there are a lot of people who really shouldn't be parents.
Without the responsibility, time and effort it really takes to be a parent, we're just creating future candidates for the criminal justice system. And most of them won't be able to afford a lawyer, which just gets on my nerves.
So I guess my lesson to you today, gentle readers, is please don't have children if you don't want to do that hard work it takes to be a parent. They'll grow up and kill us.

And speaking of trauma mamas, today I'm talkin' about THE BROOD written and directed by DAVID CRONENBERG. Frank Carveth (ART HINDLE of BLACK CHRISTMAS and INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS) is going through a rough custody battle for his five-year-old daughter, Candice. To complicate matters, his emotionally unstable ex-wife Nola (ever-classy horror leading lady SAMANTHA EGGAR) is receiving treatment at the Somafree Institute from controversial psychologist/guru Dr. Raglan (the imperious OLIVER REED). Raglan, best-selling author of "The Shape of Rage" practices an experimental form of therapy called "psychoplasmics" in which patients manifest their negative emotions physically. Seems Nola is consumed by rage as a result of years of abuse she endured at the hands of her alcoholic, probably personality disordered (albeit very stylish) mother. Abuse that her kindly but also alcoholic father chose to ignore. When Candice returns from a weekend with mummy dearest at the Somafree Institute covered in bruises, scratches and bitemarks, Frank is naturally afraid that the cycle is repeating itself and refuses to let his ex-wife see Candice. But Frank's got more than an unhinged ex-wife on his hands: Nola's therapy causes her rage to manifest itself in the birth of a bunch of snow-suited dwarf monsters with mallets that bludgeon the objects of her intense anger to death.
And not even her own daughter is safe.

DAVID CRONENBERG has stated that THE BROOD is his version of KRAMER VS. KRAMER, but more realistic. Lest some think he was joking, I agree with him that this film is a more accurate portrayal of the pain inflicted by divorce. Though KRAMER VS. KRAMER is the more critically lauded of the two, I never bought that a career-driven man like DUSTIN HOFFMAN's character would have learned to become a dedicated father rather than hiring a full-time nanny. And I always thought it was a pretty big cheat that the little boy be handed back over to the narcissistic mother who abandoned him in the first place. Most importantly, though, KRAMER VS. KRAMER completely neglected to mention a point explored in-depth by THE BROOD: that children are the silent victims of divorce. This was a deeply personal film for CRONENBERG who had gone through a custody battle of his own and like all smart horror films, utilizes the genre to mine darker emotional terrain than more mainstream films.
Candy spends most of the film in a state of shell shock, numbed by pain she does not fully comprehend and helpless to do anything about the adult machinations around her.
The most chilling moment in the film for me was the scene in which Frank takes polaroids of the injuries on Candy's back, placing them in a folder labeled "CUSTODY."
"Sometimes it kills me to think I've screwed up my kid already," Frank confesses.
Nola's father, Barton, expresses the same worry, lamenting that the trauma Nola endured as a child as a result of his and her mother's divorce is now all happening again, but with Nola as a willing participant and her daughter as the helpless child.
I'm tellin' ya, KRAMER VS. KRAMER completely glossed over all this shit. The kid was all happy because DUSTIN HOFFMAN learned how to be a good dad and then he was all happy to go live with his mom. So, THE BROOD is really a more honest film.
It is significant that the film ends on a close-up of Candy's tear-streaked face, then tilts down to show fleshy sacs growing on her arm, indicating that the cycle will continue.
Some critics have stated the behavior of the characters in THE BROOD is exaggerated or unbelievable. I'm willing to bet these same people have never been to family court. As a family law paralegal, I've seen conduct that guests on THE JERRY SPRINGER SHOW would be ashamed of.

THE BROOD also offers a critical view of modern psychiatry. I used to joke that I would never go see a psychiatrist because it's to their benefit that their patients get better because there'd be no one left to write them a paycheck. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of great therapists out there. However, there's no shortage of ineffectual or downright terrible ones either.
Frank dismisses Raglan as "an emotional opportunist." It's a pretty fair assessment considering that Raglan exploits Nola's mind and body to the benefit of his career. He even goes far as to neglect his other patients for Nola. Worse yet, he constantly re-opens old wounds without giving her the tools necessary for her to heal.
There are plenty of therapists who will have their patients rehash the same traumatic episodes over and over, mainly collecting a check and offering nothing more than a few affirmative statements like, "That's sounds stressful" or "That must have made you feel very angry."
Or what about those psychiatrists who are really nothing but glorified drug dealers, peddling highly addictive prescription medications rather than any coping strategies?
While there are patients whose lives are positively transformed thanks to the right prescription medication, there are many psychiatrists who use them irresponsibly, handing out boxes from their sample closets like candy. In light of this, does Dr. Raglan really seem so far-fetched?

And then there's Nola. Unable to heal from the abuse she endured as a child, she remains a wounded child herself. She's emotionally reactive, possessed by rage to the point where it warps her body, poisons her mind and destroys all of those around her.
The inability to let go of rage is a frequent subject in horror. After all, anger is one of those taboo emotions, particularly for women. A woman expressing anger, even if it is justifiable, is usually written off with, "Oh, she's a bitch" or "She just needs to get laid."
The pathologist notes that the members of "the brood" only see things in black and white. This is ultimately Nola's problem. Everyone is a perceived enemy while she is the helpless victim. Rather than acknowledge her own part in her marriage's failure, she blames Frank and her parents. She perceives Candy's teacher as a serious romantic rival even though she and her husband are divorced with no hope for reconciliation. Nola's anger ultimately consumes her life and destroys all of her relationships.
In a role-playing exercise, Raglan remarks that mummies don't hurt their children.
"Yes they do," Nola insists. "Bad mummies, fucked up mummies do."
Nola, spending all of her time focusing on her own wounds, is blind to the fact that in her selfishness, she is inflicting the same damage upon Candy that she blames her mother for inflicting upon her.
"I'd kill Candice before I'd let you take her away from me!" Nola screams at Frank.
Candice is not a daughter to Nola; she has become a possession, a pawn to be used to hurt her ex-husband.
Nola, in focusing everything upon her own anger, is blind to the fact that she has become the "bad mummy, the fucked up mummy" like her own mother she so despises.

Like most of CRONENBERG's work, THE BROOD explores the relationship between the mind and the body; something that can be explored by science, but perhaps never fully understood and certainly never controlled. The notion of intense emotions manifesting physically is not an outrageous one. Many sufferers of mental illness experience physical symptoms in conjunction with their psychological ones. I've never spawned any homicidal dwarf monsters though.
I'm kind of disappointed.
The color scheme of the film is made up of the reds, whites and yellows of bodily fluids. Some reviewers have pointed out that the color red signifies femaleness in the film. Red is the color of Nola's hair and Candy's parka. Is this related to menses, one of the things that characterizes the "Otherness" of the female body and differentiates it from the male body?
And what exactly is the film saying about the female body? Is Nola, with her fleshy sac and asexual mutant monsters spawned from intense anger, a monstrous representation of motherhood?
Does the red of the female characters represent the tradition of abuse and dysfunction passed down from mother to daughter for multiple generations in the film?
I think there may be a little bit of "yes" to all of these. And I think the film can explore male anxieties about the female body without being misogynistic. After all, pregnancy, birth and motherhood can be frightening for women as well. Despite the idealization of pregnancy in Western culture, it is something that is pretty taxing on a woman's body -- and often pretty gross.
But then again, red is also the color that characterizes the Somafree Institute which puts an interesting wrinkle on things. In that case, the functioning of the female body is not monstrous; the female body manipulated by men in authority becomes a monstrous thing -- and something they ultimately cannot control.

I have to add that even though critics dismissed THE BROOD when it was first released, the film is skillfully crafted. The production design and photography are accomplished, particularly considering the small budget. The film is filled with the kind of carefully composed symmetrical shots that STANLEY KUBRICK was so fond of. Perhaps it's just hard for critics to give a film about mutant dwarf rage monsters it's due. The performances are all excellent as well, particularly SAMANTHA EGGAR, who deftly conveys Nola's intense anger without making her a one-note harridan. In the infamous "birthing" scene, she also renders something that could have, in lesser hands, been ridiculous into something harrowing and emotionally raw.

THE BROOD ultimately illustrates the thing I love about horror movies so much. Through genre tropes and symbols, they explore the taboo subjects that people are afraid to discuss and mine darker emotional territory that more respectable films are afraid to venture into. You almost never see films that realistically convey the pain, the trauma, the straight-up crazy behavior involved when a couple decides to get a divorce. And you rarely to never see a film depicting the damage experienced by the unwitting children involved as their batted back and forth like a shuttlecock between two unhinged parents. Without snow-suited dwarf monsters, I guess it would get too depressing for most people. So, THE BROOD isn't really an exploitation movie -- it's just honest.

It's More A Story With Ghosts In It

As much as I hate people, I love any excuse to talk with them about books, so I joined a book club. Well, technically it's my second because I got kicked out of the first one. It was a classic literature group but I thought it was pretty telling that they had left a modern masterpiece like VALLEY OF THE DOLLS off their reading list. But c'est la vie. Henry Campbell, criminal defense legal wizard and best buddy extraordinaire, was also banned for life from the group for showing up to meetings pleasantly sloshed with a Coke can full of gin so that just proves those people are sucking the class out of classic literature. So, in addition to being president of the local chapter of the WARREN OATES Fan Club, Henry took the initiative and formed a brand new book club for the true lovers of literature.

I, for one, appreciated his discussion points from last week's "SINCLAIR LEWIS Is A Wimp" lecture. He talked about how LEWIS is the equivalent of that obnoxious guy at the bar who thinks he's the smartest guy in the room and laughs at all his own jokes. Then when you don't think he's that funny, he tries to pick a fight but then he's all mouth and gets his nose knocked square down to his ass by some biker guy who's not gonna put up with that punk-ass nonsense. I'm looking forward to next week's lecture, "JIM THOMPSON eats other writers for lunch."
However, not everyone is a fan of Henry's boozy, folksy literary lectures. Butch Walker's half-brother (those parents have racked up a few ex-spouses over the years) is vying to unseat Henry as president of the book club. See, before those voices in his head told him to steal a Zamboni and go on rampage through the mall food court, he had earned an M.F.A. in Literature at UVA. He knows more about DREISER than anyone on the planet. While he was doing Rorshach fingerpaintings in a state mental institution, he even formed his own "literary appreciation circle" among his fellow inmates and tried to educate some of the staff about the finer points of THE BROTHERS KARAMOZOV. He even tried to mount a production of THE ICEMAN COMETH with his fellow inmates but there were some real divas in that crowd. Anyhow, he didn't find that SINCLAIR LEWIS lecture amusing.
He couldn't understand how someone could stand back and desecrate American literary masterpieces like BABBIT and IT CAN'T HAPPEN HERE.
"Easy," Henry answered. "They're not very good."
Butch's half-brother was saying something about Henry didn't understand the satire of those books and Henry just answered, "How couldn't I understand 'em? They're about as subtle as a sack full of buttholes. Less profound, I might add."
I don't entirely know what that means, but he's got a point.
"Let me put it to ya this way," Henry said. "IT CAN'T HAPPEN HERE and ROBERT PENN WARREN's ALL THE KINGS MEN were both inspired by the same real-life subject, right? But ALL THE KINGS MEN is writing, where IT CAN'T HAPPEN HERE is whining. And ain't gonna read no damn whining."
Butch's half-brother gets madder than a wet nun and insists that literature is sacred and discussion of it should be conducted with a serious air.
Henry just responded with, "Is it just me, or is FLANNERY O' CONNOR pretty hot?"

Where do I stand on this proposed change to the book club's direction? I'm damn opposed. I refuse to take anything seriously and nothing gets on my nerves more than a bossy guy on Seroquel.
Dave Spencer is also angling to take over as president as it would provide him a captive audience for his one-man show about TRUMAN CAPOTE. He walks around spitting out bitchy putdowns in everyday life anyway so the one-man show really can't be much of a stretch.

And speaking of an appreciation for literature, today I'm talkin' about GUILLERMO DEL TORO's love letter to the Gothic romance, CRIMSON PEAK, co-written with MATTHEW ROBBINS, starring MIA WASIKOWSKA as the resourceful candelabra-wielding heroine, the lovable JIM BEAVER as her father, SONS OF ANARCHY's CHARLIE HUNNAM as her Sherlock Holmes-loving best friend who gets a chance to solve a real mystery and TOM HIDDLESTON and JESSICA CHASTAIN as the sinister Usher-like Sharpe siblings. But the real star is the decaying mansion of the title, resting on acres of blood-red clay.
Things are gonna get a little SPOILER-ific so be warned!

In turn-of-the-century Buffalo, NY, Edith Cushing is an outspoken aspiring writer. Her ambitions are met with derision by the high society folks around her, particularly since it is not customary for women to write ghost stories.
"It's not a ghost story," Edith corrects a condescending publisher. "It's more a story with ghosts in it."
Edith is not interested in being a typical, vacuous Victorian lady. When her best friend's social climbing mother patronizingly refers to her as "our own JANE AUSTEN" and remarks that Ms. Austen died a spinster, Edith retorts, "Actually, Mrs. MacMichael, I prefer to be MARY SHELLEY. She died a widow."
Perhaps Edith's upbringing granted her a different outlook. Her mother died when she was only ten and she was raised by her successful industrialist father. He's supportive of Edith's ambitions and her stubbornness. After all, those are the qualities that allowed him to rise from rags to riches. He even gives her a gift of a pen for her writing.
Edith's interest in the supernatural stems back from a childhood incident in which she was given a warning by her mother's ghost.
And of course, a warning that does not make sense to the recipient will go unheeded and figure into the plot. It would be helpful if ghosts would be a lot more specific.
Anyhow, Edith also does not suffer fools gladly and defiantly rejects the wealth and position that her peers embrace, dismissing an aristocrat as "a parasite with a title."
However, she revises her opinion when she meets a real baronet in person: the mysterious, handsome Thomas Sharpe is not only a misunderstood dreamer like herself (he's an inventor), he also praises her writing.
"Where I come from," he says. "Ghosts are serious business."
Edith is charmed by Thomas and the two fall in love, despite the consternation of Thomas's dour sister, Lucille and the disappointment of Edith's best friend, mystery-loving opthamologist , Alan MacMichael. Edith's father, however, is not so easily won over and takes an instinctive dislike to the Sharpe siblings. Perhaps it's that new money versus old money hostility or the fact that they look like living EDWARD GOREY drawings, but Mr. Cushing is mighty suspicious and hires a private investigator to see if there's any dirt on the duo.

There is, of course, but the audience will have to wait patiently to find out what it is. In the meantime, Mr. Cushing's attempt to break up this doomed romance ends in a violent head-splitting murder in a washroom that leaves Thomas free to whisk Edith away to a whirlwind marriage and life as a newlywed in his decaying mansion in Cumberland, England.

Married life is not quite as romantic as Edith anticipated. The house is, as Lucille puts it, "full of nothing but shadows, creaks and groans," falling apart and sinking into the red clay pits below. Thomas is curiously distant from his new bride and any moment the two are alone is interrupted by the domineering Lucille. And just what is in that bitter tea that Lucille serves that's making Edith awaken in the middle of the night with severe stomach pains? And just who are those howling, red ghosts appearing to Edith to deliver cryptic messages on her nightly wanderings around the mansion?

With its enthusiasm for Gothic tropes, MARIO BAVA worship (just look at those colors!) and liberal sprinklings of THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER and NOTORIOUS, CRIMSON PEAK is similar to the characters of Edith and Thomas in that it's a little out of its time and a little out of its step with its peers. Coming from me, that is definitely not a criticism, though. The film even wears its old-fashionedness on its sleeve with the use of silent cinema techniques like irises and wipes.
Audiences expecting more oogie-boogie haunted housenanigans were disappointed; after all, in CRIMSON PEAK, horror is not derived from the supernatural.
True horror comes from the living.
While ghosts in the film are something of a bridge between the past, present and future, the living are the dangerous ones.

In the park, Edith and Lucille discuss butterflies and moths. The butterflies are beautiful but cannot survive the winter.
"That's sad," Edith remarks.
"It's not sad," Lucille retorts. "It's nature. It's a savage world."
Not only do the fragile butterflies perish without the sun, they are cannibalized by moths, creatures that, Lucille explains, "thrive on the dark and cold."
The Sharpe siblings make recurring mentions of the weak being consumed by the strong in nature and living things turning savage in order to survive.
When Edith remarks about the bitterness of the tea at Allerdale Hall, Thomas laments, "Nothing gentle ever grows in this land" and that things need to develop bitterness if they don't want to be eaten.

Their grim outlook on life begins to make sense as, unlike Edith, the Sharpe siblings did not grow up in a nurturing household.
"Father was a brute," Lucille reveals.
Seems the patriarch of the Sharpe clan broke their mother's leg before abandoning the family and squandering much of their fortune on what Blanche DuBois would refer to as "epic fornications."
When Edith remarks about imagining Lucille and Thomas as small children, Lucille tellingly remarks, "We were confined to the nursery. In the attic."
The siblings were subjected to brutal beatings and emotional abuse by their mother. Lucille, the eldest, became a sort of surrogate spouse and punching bag.
Isolated both physically and by their social class, Lucille and Thomas had no one else to turn to. Attempting to fulfill a series of emotional and physical needs that are normally met by several different people, the Sharpe siblings began an incestuous relationship.
The inbred aristocratic family is a trope of Gothic literature but in the emotional core of the story it rings true as well. Thomas and Lucille had no one to rely upon or trust except for each other; as a result, their relationship became perverted.
Lucille, unlike Edith, has known only trauma and suffering. Lucille sees herself as a moth -- a predatory creature destroying more delicate, pretty things, one that "thrives on the dark and cold" as she lives separated from the rest of the world in a disintegrating old mansion she despises.
She has come to believe one needs to be vicious in order to survive.
It may also indicate feelings of self-loathing as she sees herself as a creature without beauty but that cannibalizes the pretty butterflies.

Her relationship with Thomas, the only person she remotely cares for, is characterized by dominance more than affection. She has transformed him into her willing prisoner and ultimately she would prefer to destroy him rather than have him leave the family home.
Lucille, like many abused children, has adopted the role of the victimizer rather than continue being victimized herself, venting her rage on others weaker than her.
Also, like many children of dysfunctional families, she refuses to break the cycle: it's just too familiar and any other way of living seems suspicious. Thomas, at one point, proposes they simply take what is left of the family fortune and leave the house.
Lucille will not hear of it. As much as she loathes the deteriorating Allerdale Hall, it is comfortable for her.
After all, murder has proven to be a successful method of venting her pent-up rage and she has come to relish her role as a predator. When the Sharpe skeletons all come dancing out of the closet, Lucille literally has her hair down and her long, billowing nightgown flows freely around her (like moth wings?).
"This is who I am," she proclaims.
She has proudly taken on the role of the domineering, abusive matriarch and even wears her red ring.

Lucille, however, has imprisoned herself as well as Thomas. Unable to let go of her rage, she cannot move forward and it consumes her (as well as everyone that crosses her path). At the end of the film, she remains a ghost eternally playing her piano in the decaying house.
She's stuck forever.
The performances in CRIMSON PEAK are all excellent, but I think Ms. Chastain's may be the one that really lingers with audiences. It's like if JOAN CRAWFORD played Lady MacBeth and it doesn't get any better than that.

While Lucille identifies with the moths, the film aligns Edith with the butterfly. Contrasted with the severe blacks and blues of Allerdale Hall and the Sharpe siblings' wardrobe, Edith sports brightly colored dresses. The one she wears most often is even a yellow one, the same color as the butterfly wings seen earlier in the park. The designs on several of Edith's blouses even resemble butterfly wings.
However, the film does not agree with the views espoused by the Sharpe siblings about things in nature becoming cruel and preying upon the weak to survive.
Edith, unlike the butterflies in the park, does not perish in the snowstorm besieging Allerdale Hall. She survives her ordeal through her intelligence and inner-strength.

I was talkin' about CAT PEOPLE here the other day, which is another film that never quite got the respect it deserved. I don't think this is a coincidence as both are dark fairytales for adults centering on a female character's coming-of-age.
Unlike Irena Gallier, who was on a quest for identity, Edith Cushing has a good idea of who she is. However, she still struggles to define her place in the adult world -- namely as a writer. No writer worth their salt has had an easy, happy life. And while Edith is not pampered by any means, her life experience does not extend far from her father's house. She is fascinated by the mysterious, dark and hidden aspects of life but she has not had to face much of them herself.
Having discovered the dark secrets of the Sharpe siblings, Edith's father commands Thomas to break Edith's heart and leave or else.
Thomas obeys, hitting Edith where it really hurts: her writing. He tells her she only knows what other writers tell her; that she knows nothing of real love or heart-ache; and -- the real ouch -- that she's nothing but a spoiled child.
Some reviewers have complained that Edith does not have a character arc: she is the same strong-willed young woman in the beginning that she is at the end. I'd disagree: at Allerdale Hall she is forced to confront the darkness she has long been fascinated with and survives her traumatic ordeal.
She now has her own insights into the human heart -- and the monstrousness that can dwell within. By surviving trauma, Edith defines herself as an artist and becomes a published writer.
It's not a coincidence that she defends herself against Lucille with the tool of her trade, a pen.

And what about Thomas? Where does he fit into all of this?
Though he's got the melancholy part down, Thomas is not the Gothic hero we've grown accustomed to.
In many ways, his character is more tragic than Lucille. He is stuck in the past -- his aristocratic social standing, the decaying house, the trauma from years of abuse -- but he can also see the future. After all, he is an inventor.
Unlike Lucille, who fancies herself a moth, Thomas has a distaste for violence. While Lucille is incapable of loving, Thomas falls in love with Edith for her kindness and creativity. He senses there is a better way and longs something different, but is unable to break free from his sister's grip and the trauma that haunts him.
"You're always looking to the past," Edith tells him.
Thomas does not possess the strength that both Lucille and Edith demonstrate. Had he been born into a different family, he would have been a genuinely beautiful soul, but instead he is ultimately too passive, too fragile to survive and transform himself.
While the dominant roles in the film's narrative are played by Lucille and Edith, Thomas takes on the role of the doomed heroine. He's the Madeline Usher while Lucille is Roderick.
The character is deftly played by TOM HIDDLESTON who is able to be simultaneously sinister and gentle.

As it is in all Gothic fiction, the house becomes an Expressionistic space, a metaphor for the psychological state of the characters inhabiting it. Allerdale Hall is decaying, literally sinking into the blood-like red clay that resides beneath it, much in the way that the old aristocracy is sinking in the face of the future and much in the way the Sharpe family has turned inward and destructed. While they have survived living an isolated existence from the modern world, the many shots of snow falling through the holes in the roof into the entrance hall remind us that the reality of the outside world they have tried to barricade themselves against is increasingly intruding.

And speaking of which, there is much ado in CRIMSON PEAK about social class and the past versus the modern. The European aristocracy, one in which you are born into money and social standing, is contrasted with the new money of the industrial age. Edith's father even states to Thomas Sharpe that he knows he has never worked a day in his life; after all, Thomas has the smoothest hands he has ever seen. Unlike Thomas, his hands are rough. He has earned his money not through birth-right but through hard work. 
The casting of the actors illustrates this as well with the fine-featured, distinctively English TOM HIDDLESTON contrasting with the more weathered, gruff-voiced, bearded JIM BEAVER.
While the old aristocracy is collapsing in on itself, the new (new money, new technology and the new frontier, America) is thriving.
Neither is maligned; the aristocracy as represented by the Sharpes is ultimately tragic in that it cannot adapt to the new age so it simply implodes upon itself.
Ghosts, unlike both, are ultimately timeless. On the one hand they are remanants of the past; ghosts in Gothic fiction are metaphors for the inability to let go of the past for, as WILLIAM FAULKNER would remind us, "the past is never really dead." However, in CRIMSON PEAK, ghosts are also aware of the future, offering oracles of what is to come.

As a lover of the Gothic and snowy ghost stories, I was instantaneously seduced by CRIMSON PEAK's many charms. I don't think there's been a more beautiful looking film in the past five years; the photography, production design and wardrobe are all gorgeous. And while some critics will balk at the familiarity of the story, I think that just makes it the cinematic equivalent of an oversized sweater and a nice cup of chamomile tea on a rainy day. There's even a waltz sequence - who can argue with that? It's just too damn classy!
Something about it also spoke to me when I saw it on the whim in theaters many a month ago and I think that has to do with both the female characters both being close to my heart. I can identify with Edith; she resembles the face I present to the world, a composite of the qualities I really like about myself -- the horror writer, the defiant outsider, the outspoken well-educated woman and the survivor who turns her trauma into art. On the other hand, I think my dark side looks a lot like Lucille; the side that's all wounds and bitchiness, the side that wants to remain isolated and thrive on insanity, the side that leaves a bear trap on the front lawn so those jerk neighborhood kids will stay off my turf. It's the side that wants to lay down a lot of whoopass while wearing an elegant updo.

A Gothic love story with just the right amount of stomach-churning violence, ghosts, feminism and a touch of class all guided by the hand of a masterful auteur -- what more can a culture vulture ask for?

Putting Out Fire With Gasoline

Maybe I'm missing some essential component of femaleness, but I never got into SEX AND THE CITY.  Don't worry, you will never hear me say a negative word about SJP: anyone who played a Sanderson sister in HOCUS POCUS is immune from criticism in my book. And hey, I did even make some attempts to watch it and see what all the fuss was about, but I have to admit, I was far more interested in the presence of KYLE MACLACHLAN and JAMES REMAR (I mean, c'mon, nothing can top JAMES frickin' "I'm gonna shove that bat up your ass and turn you into a popsicle" REMAR) than any of the sexnanigans, relationship melodrama and designer label dropping. I just couldn't make the same connection with it that other young women did: while the ladies in my peer group were identifying themselves as a "Charlotte" or a"Miranda" or a "Samantha" in their own clique of friends, I identified with JESSICA LANGE in FRANCES.
My friends that gushed about the show found the women's sexual attitudes and behavior "liberating" because they behaved "like men do" and they were successful enough in their careers to afford a glamorous lifestyle.
"What's liberating about sleeping with a multitude of underwritten losers and using your education and hard career work to obsess over overpriced shoes?" I asked.
"It's things like that that make people think you're an angry lesbian," they would sniff.
"If only," I always said. "I would be eligible for a lot more writing grants."
I don't know. If I wanted to watch a show where a group of female friends act like drag queens, THE GOLDEN GIRLS were a lot more relatable.
Carrie's highly toxic on-again-off-again relationship with noxious narcissist extraordinaire Mr. Big (really, writers?) was especially disgusting. Wouldn't a successful, intelligent woman with any self-respect have set him on fire after the first season?
And then after she finally breaks up with him after an entire series and a spin-off movie, her friends console her by taking her on an expensive luxury vacation where they drink more pink drinks and buy more shoes or something.
That's just not realistic at all. When Marie Janisse finally ended her on-again-off-again relationship with Lyle Calhoun, we went to Chipotle. Nachos were on me.
Then we got some of those daiquiris in a bag from the Winn-Dixie and went to hang out in the cemetery.
Then again, I realized I'm trying to mold my adult life into a psychotic version of the RHODA show, so perhaps it's just different strokes for different folks.

And while we're on the subject of female neurosis, my brief hiatus was not due to incarceration or institutionalization, I swear! Those winter doldrums I was going through reduced me to seeking refuge in a trance-like state induced by binge-watching multiple seasons of DALLAS. When the hypnosis finally wore off and I emerged from underneath the pile of empty pizza boxes, burrito wrappers, Cadbury mini-eggs and Mountain Dew cans, I realized that my Travis Bickle-like existence had caused me to miss not only the Superbowl, Mardi Gras and Valentine's Day, but pretty much the entire months of January and February. But today I'm back with a vengeance and while we're on the subject of female neurosis and rampaging sexuality, it's time for me to talk about one of my favorite movies, the remake of CAT PEOPLE (1982) starring Nasty NASTASSJA KINSKI, lovely daughter of veteran movie psycho KLAUS as the heroine; MALCOLM MCDOWELL, who since A CLOCKWORK ORANGE has been making many a movie psychopath so damn charming, as her brother; JOHN HEARD of C.H.U.D. fame as the romantic hero; and fellow Houstonian ANNETTE O' TOOLE as his former girlfriend-turned-best-friend. It's written by ALAN ORMSBY, the twisted imagination who brought us the seriously icky sick flick CHILDREN SHOULDN'T PLAY WITH DEAD THINGS and underrated zombie-combat-shock-masterpiece DEATHDREAM, and directed by auteur of the disturbed male psyche PAUL SCHRADER, who penned the screenplay for one of my top five favorite films of all-time TAXI DRIVER.

The film is a very loose remake of the original film produced by VAL LEWTON. They both feature the same premise about a young woman descended from a shape-shifting race that will transform into a voracious panther after sex and tear their lover to pieces. While the original film was about a tormented woman finally driven to destruction by her (real or imagined) demons and her intense jealousy, the remake is about a young woman (just like many protagonists in Southern Gothic fiction) in search of her identity through her ancestral history and family.

Irena Gallier knows little of her family history. Her parents were performers in a traveling circus but she was orphaned at age four and sent to live with a series of foster parents. As the film begins, Irena travels to New Orleans to reunite with her long-lost older brother, Paul.
"I used to dream about you...that you would come and rescue me," Irena confides.
Paul admits he used to have the same dream too, but one gets the sense from those sidelong glances he shares with his Creole housekeeper and caretaker, Female (pronounced like Tamale and played by the fabulous RUBY DEE), that his had a more nefarious undercurrent.
When the film introduces Irena she is shy, soft-spoken and even a little afraid to take up space. Her rigid posture and slight, nervous movements betray the fact that she is not only apprehensive about meeting an estranged brother but that she has been a stranger in strange homes for most of her life without ever really finding a place for herself.
Paul shows Irena a cabinet filled with memorabilia from their family's days in the traveling circus and gives her a picture of their parents. He gets her to perform a juggling act they used to do as children with him, which she completes on her own.  This first connection with her past and family is the first time the viewer sees Irena come out of her shell and really light up emotionally.

Now that she's been able to reconnect with her only living family, Irena plans to make a life for herself in New Orleans. 
Transfixed by the newly captured black leopard at the New Orleans Zoo, Irena meets introspective zoo curator, Oliver Yates and a mutual attraction develops between the two. The Oliver in this version of the film is completely different than the Oliver in the 1942 version; in the original version, Oliver was a boring dunce who was attracted to Irena because she was mysterious and challenging, then when her baggage proved too difficult to handle, rejected her in favor of a less complicated (and more sexually available) woman.
Oliver in the 1982 version of the story is thoughtful, well-read (his house is filled with books and he knows Dante by heart) a
willing loner, has a wry sense of humor, shares Irena's affinity for animals and is a bit of a misanthrope.
"I prefer animals to people," he tells her.
I think I just fell in love with him.

He too, is attracted to Irena for her mysteriousness and sense that she is not a typical young woman but in many ways they are also kindred souls. Both are sensitive and observant (evidenced by their hobbies: Irena sketches and Oliver is an amateur photographer) and though Oliver's past is not revealed (the only personal photo in his home is one of him standing with an elderly woman: raised alone by a grandmother, perhaps?), one gets the sense that like Irena he has spent a majority of his life, feeling different and isolated from others, on the outside looking in.
They are also both romantics; they are the kind of people who do not form attachments lightly and are truly devoted to those few that they have let in.
Alice, Oliver's spunky former girlfriend-turned-best-friend, who briefly befriends Irena is dismayed to learn that Irena is still a virgin.
"I never met anyone I liked enough," Irena explains.
Alice does not fully understand, but it's reasonable that someone with Irena's extensive history of loss, abandonment and trauma (she also reveals to Alice that one of her foster fathers repeatedly made sexual advances towards her) would have difficulty with the trust and vulnerability required of a sexual relationship.

For Irena (and Oliver), sex is more than just entertainment and too emotionally powerful to have indiscriminately. However, a revelation about their family history from Paul shows that sex may be physically as well as emotionally transformative for Irena.  Other than selectiveness and romanticism, he explains there may have been an unconscious barrier keeping her from becoming sexually active. They are descended from an extinct race of shape-shifters who after sex will transform into a black leopard that will tear apart their partner. He has been tormented his entire adult life by this curse, but proposes a solution: it seems they can still mate with their own kind without transforming. After all, he explains with a smile, their parents were brother and sister, but eventually killed themselves anyway to put an end to their cursed existence. He has lured Irena to New Orleans not to re-establish a connection with her, but to coerce her into an incestuous relationship so that he will be free to indulge in his sexual desires without fear of transforming.

It's a night-time soap opera league love triangle and dilemma for our heroine, folks. Does she submit to an illicit, incestuous relationship with her brother to maintain a façade of normalcy or does she follow her heart and consummate her relationship with Oliver even though it may let loose the beast inside?

Whereas the Irena in the original version self-destructs, the Irena in this version completes her journey into adulthood and embraces her identity. Were-cat curse or no, the thing that really prohibits Irena from engaging in a sexual relationship, is that she is still uncertain of who she is and where she wants to go in life. She has not had the anchor of a supportive family that most young women have. It is when she begins to shape her own identity that she begins to exude confidence and is finally secure enough to consummate her relationship with Oliver.
"I am not like you," Irena hisses to her brother, more than once in the film.
And it's true, her desires are not selfish or destructive like Paul's.
Unlike Paul, Irena does not simply accept her family's history as her destiny. She becomes the curse-breaker in her family, by ending the cycle of violence and dysfunction. She will not hurt others just to gratify her own physical desires and she won't continue the line of perverted relationships either.
Irena may have monstrous tendencies but she refuses to become a monster herself.
In an ending devised by PAUL SCHRADER's pervy genius, Irena has Oliver tie her arms and legs to the bedposts so she won't be able to attack him when she transforms.
"Make love to me," she says. "I want to be with my own."
The act is both one of self-sacrifice for the one she loves and self-acceptance; she embraces the monster within and claims her place in the world.

In addition to Irena's quest for identity (of which sexuality is a part), the film explores the duality in Western culture of puritanism and permissiveness. Paul epitomizes this as he is a minister by day but literally devours prostitutes and one-night stands with his voracious sexual appetite.
Throughout the film there are icons of sexuality such as the painting of MARILYN MONROE Irena looks it while walking through Jackson Square or the Greek statues looming in the corners of several frames featuring nude Dionysian women munching on grapes.
Sexuality is something that is ever-present but rarely talked about openly.
The equation of sexuality with becoming a ravenous animal is a Freudian one that betrays cultural anxiety about sex and a reflection of the Judaeo-Christian notion that non-reproductive sex is evil. The film is rife with other Freudian images as well particularly the none-to-subtle symbols of blood from a leopard attack on ED BEGLEY JR.'s zookeeper gushing onto Irena's white shoes or Irena standing dripping wet in her nightgown in a rainstorm (an image that graced many posters for the film).

With its steamy climate, reputation for good-natured debauchery, unique architecture and polyglot of cultures, New Orleans is the perfect setting for this story and it is beautifully captured on film here. New Orleans (my favorite city) was really in its prime in the 1980s and I don't know if it ever looked lovelier. Just take a look at these screencaps!

GIORGIO MORODER's moody synth score (and the DAVID BOWIE sung theme "Putting Out Fire With Gasoline") is a big contributor to the film's success, the low droning tones (particularly the motif that accompanies Paul and underscores the stalking of Alice as she jogs through Audubon Park) perfectly evoking both sensuality and menace.

Actors in horror movies rarely get praise but I think the cast of CAT PEOPLE deserves a pretty big hand. NASTASSJA KINSKI is the perfect combination of ingenuous and simmeringly sensual; she conveys so much of Irena's transformation through her body language, accomplishing much without the aid of special effects. VINCENT PRICE once said the horror movie actors were the true method actors because they made the ridiculous seem believable and KINSKI does just that with her performance.
JOHN HEARD gives Oliver an understated charm and deftly underplays the character's obsession. Rather than moving him into John Hinckley Training Camp territory, he instead conveys that Oliver is not one who falls in love easily -- and when he does it's with complete devotion.
ANNETTE O' TOOLE (who I always love no matter what she's in) adds a lot of spark to a character that could have been a boring throwaway. She and HEARD display a comfortable camaraderie that its easy to envision that they were once close enough to be a couple but appreciated one another's humor enough to stay friends.
RUBY DEE lends a gravitas to Female that really packs the most punch into the short amount of screen time for the character.
And no one does sinister sex appeal better than MALCOLM MCDOWELL. No one, I say!

And no, I did not forget LYNN LOWRY. She leaves quite an impression in her brief scene as Ruthie, a wise-cracking prostitute and I don't think anyone else could have sold being attacked by a ravenous black leopard with quite as much dedication as Ms. LOWRY does here.
With her roles in SHIVERS, THE CRAZIES and this, she is something of a Twisted Man's Sex Symbol. On a sidenote, she is also one of those rare people who is as awesome in real life as she is in the movies.

CAT PEOPLE is just one of those films that's close to my heart. Irena's journey, the New Orleans setting - it all just speaks to me. Hey, my parents, at one point in time, were even looking at buying the house on Esplanade Avenue where Paul lives in the film!
And it does what a good remake is supposed to do and employs the concept of the original to mine new territory.  SCHRADER, using ORMSBY's emotionally layered script as a blueprint, explores his favorite themes (obsession, conflict between repression and desire and creating one's own morality in an immoral world) with horror imagery and as a result delivers a more complex and subversive film than the original. Hey, I had to say it, my day isn't complete until I've made some film purists explode into a violent baby tantrum. But why destroy the monster when you can make love to the monster, hmm?

Quiet Silence

Merry Christmas, my darlings! Despite the hot, humid weather and the general atmosphere of disillusionment, Dead River is kicking up with the annual festivities. As much hype as there is surrounding Mardi Gras, I've never seen anyone in a Mardi Gras parade get their wig slapped off so the Dead River Christmas Parade wins that special place in my heart.

I've gotta finish baking my jalapeno cornbread because tonight, is Otis Calhoun's annual Christmas party and by all means, it's going to be really disgusting so I can't miss it. Otis has his the trailer all decked out like a Christmas wonderland, but it's just too bad he leaves those lights up all year round. Anyway, Otis started throwing a party every year instead of spending the holiday with his family because most of the Calhoun clan is locked up in Angola or Hunstville or Lieber and it's pretty hard to sneak eggnog into any of those places. His brother Lyle is going to try and make it if he can steal a car.
But before that, Audrey Reynolds is always a little down around this time of year because it's pretty hard to have a family Christmas when your mama's been committed to a psychiatric institution. However, re-watching ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST gave me the brilliant idea that the whacko-basket is the perfect place for a Christmas Party.  Butch Walker's law office partner, Henry Campbell, realized that his mother is actually in the same institution as Audrey's so you gotta love what a small world it is. So me and Henry and Butch and Audrey decided to dawn our gay apparel and go sing some Christmas carols for the good folks at the behavioral health institute who could use a little tidings of comfort and joy.
Marie Janisse is going to dress up like a Christmas elf and bring her all-girl punk-psychedelic acid metal-zydeco band, Satan's Chanteuses (email me if you'd like a copy of their Christmas CD), along too.

Henry said that ghost stories used to be a Christmas tradition but fundamentalist French-fryheads have to ruin everything, so after caroling we're going to head over to his house, put too much Peppermint Schnapps in the cocoa and watch THE SHINING.

And speaking of neurosis and mid-sized city debauchery, I have a special Christmas treat for you, gentle readers. Today I'm talkin' 'bout one of my favorite books of all time, featuring one of my favorite female protagonists of all time and that's MORVERN CALLAR written by ALAN WARNER.

Morvern is a taciturn 21-year-old woman working at a dead-end job for slave wages at a supermarket in an unnamed Scottish port town ("The Port"). On Christmas Eve morning, she wakes up to discover her novelist boyfriend has committed suicide on the kitchen floor, unthoughtfully leaving her with quite a mess to clean up before she heads in to work.

"He'd cut his throat with the knife. He'd near chopped off His hand with the meat cleaver. He couldn't object so I lit a Silk Cut. A sort of wave of something was going across me. There was fright but I'd daydreamed how I'd be."

Morvern prepares for her day (comically jumping over her boyfriend's body to go about her routine), unwraps her Christmas presents (including a leather jacket and a Walkman from her deceased boyfriend which she will carry with her throughout the novel) and leaves for work. After her shift at her hated job, she heads over to The Mantrap, a local bar and dance club, with her hedonistic gal pal Lanna, then to a Christmas party where she and Lanna engage in group sex with two young men.

She remains in a dissociative state before finally returning home and reading the suicide note her boyfriend has left on the computer.

He has also left his completed novel along with instructions to have his work published.

But instead, Morvern does the unthinkable: she dismembers her boyfriend's body in the bathtub, wraps the pieces for disposal on a camping trip and puts her own name on his novel.

She then uses the money in his account to book a trip to a rowdy Youth Med Resort in Spain, bringing Lanna along with her. However, disillusioned by the manufactured non-stop partying and her disintegrating friendship with Lanna, Morvern leaves once again and travels further up the coast to explore the serenity of the landscape and the rave scene.

MORVERN CALLAR is essentially a coming-of-age story and a story of a young woman finding her voice. The book has often been superficially compared to TRAINSPOTTING as they are both darkly humorous, often grotesque and depict the plight of the working class in Scotland. However, I think this would be a better companion to Shirley Jackson's HANGSAMAN as both are strange coming-of-age journeys of an observant female protagonist, dissociative from trauma as they drift through a strange landscape populated by stranger characters. Through her observations and relations with others, Morvern displays a keen intelligence and insight, but as a member of the Scottish working class, she has been denied the opportunities granted to others. She describes the traps she has fallen into as she does everything else - with quiet detachment:

"Cause of tallness I had started part-time with the superstore when thirteen, the year it got built. The superstore turn a blind eye; get as much out you as they can. You ruin your chances at school doing every evening and weekend. The manager has you working all hours cash in hand, no insurance, so when fifteen or sixteen you go full-time at the start of that summer and never go back to school."

Anyone who has been stuck in a dead-end job without benefits and no means of escape will be able to relate. Morvern knows she has no future to look forward to, only being dehumanized at the invisible hand of corporate greed and being trapped in a town filled with poverty, drunken debauchery and violence. A woman's role in the society Morvern occupies is mainly to be a victim of abuse. At a night at The Mantrap, Morvern's friends relate the casual acts of violence they have been subjected to at the hands of men:

"That's nothing to what men will do, says Lanna, and told about Pheemy her pregnant sister who lives up the stair from them in The Complex. Lanna heard another argument so she ran up and let herself in. The brother-in-law had her sister's face in the scullery sink. He gave up and threw her on the lino shouting that if the dishes had been done like a decent wife should, the water would have been deep enough to drown her properly."

Morvern's quietness is remarked upon by the other characters and in fact, while in Spain she is told her name means "quiet silence." Deprived of educational or financial opportunity and trapped in a chaotic, oppressive environment, Morvern has in fact been denied a voice. Morvern's silence is the silence of all those that live in quiet desperation.

"Quiet silence" also refers to Morvern's remoteness. She serves as a guide for the reader through this strange landscape, but she always remains at a distance from the community she occupies.

Though Morvern grew up in The Port, unlike her cohorts she was not born there and has little knowledge of her biological roots as she was an orphaned girl raised by a foster family.

"I told about a day in geography when we all had to do a talk about the village where we were born. When my turn came I'd goes that I didn't know what village I was born in so the whole class laughed and the teacher scolded me."

Whether in her hometown or away, Morvern is always a silent observer, the perpetual outsider looking in.

With her perceptiveness and sharp wit, if she had received the educational foundation she deserved she would have been a writer herself.

Like most young people, Morvern attempts to escape through movies and music. Through much of the novel, Morvern immerses herself in music and lists the tracks of all of her compilation tapes for the reader. She also spends a lot of time watching horror movies, which I always did to cope with my environment too. After long, dreadful work hours she looks forward to escape through drinking, partying, dancing and sex. However, she realizes that any escape will only be momentary and once her youth is gone, she will only have to look forward to pension and death.

Some reviewers of the novel labeled Morvern as a psychopath and that makes me want to smack the stupid out of them. The literary establishment doesn't know about much beyond trust funds and sitting on their own aerobicized asses. While Morvern's reaction to her boyfriend's suicide is an extreme one, I think it's understandable given her desperate and hopeless circumstances. It is telling that one of the movies Morvern watches is THE PASSENGER, in which JACK NICHOLSON's character feels so disillusioned he trades identities with a dead man rather than return to his old life.
She also views DESCENT INTO MADNESS favorite MS. 45, another story of an abused, traumatized young woman who finds her voice through extreme actions.
Her detachment does not come from a lack of feeling. Morvern is not only an orphan and therefore tacitly displaced from the community that she inhabits, she also lost her fostermother as a pre-teen, an age where its particularly difficult for a young woman to lose her mother. The loss of her fostermother is mentioned several times throughout the novel, but rather than happy memories of her it is always about her fostermother's funeral or the island where she is buried. She is never given a name (much like Morvern's deceased boyfriend) and it is the loss of her that is pronounced.
Though her fosterfather appears to be a loving and supportive parent, he is also detached by his own grueling work experience, lost hope and grief over his wife's death.
Morvern has become accustomed to living a life of sadness and hardship with little in the way of comfort so she has, like many victims of trauma, detached herself from her emotions in order to survive. Grief, anger and sadness are reduced to "a wave of something came over me."

Morvern also has been dehumanized herself through the demeaning conditions on her job so that dismembering her boyfriend's body becomes no different than carting around packages of meat at the grocery store.

"I used to work in meat. You cleaned up each night. Afterwards you smelled of blood and it was under your nails as you lifted the glass near your nose in the pub. You pulled the bleeding plastic bag of gubbins, cut open by bones, to the service lift. Blood spoiled three pairs of shoes. You were expected to supply your own footwear."

Those that have dismissed her as a psychopath have also missed that Morvern is always attempting to connect with others throughout the novel. There is gentleness and empathy as Morvern relates to her fosterdad, an engine driver on the railroad nicknamed Red Hanna, and Lanna's grandmother, Couris Jean. She sees herself in them, in their struggles and in their soured dreams.

At the resort, Morvern comforts a grieving young man who has just lost his mother. She tries to connect physically through sex, but also tries to connect emotionally by telling him about her fostermother's funeral.

Morvern is not a psychopath -- Morvern is a survivor.

There is a theme of connection and separation throughout MOVERN CALLAR. Morvern takes her Walkman with her everywhere; she connects to the world around her through music, but also the act of walking around with her headphones on maintains her separation from the world around her. The same can be said of Morvern's involvement in the rave scene in Spain; the participants are connected through the music and the communal dancing but remain separated through the anomie of the club scene.

This theme is best illustrated in which a dissociative Morvern, walking through the dark night on Christmas Eve lifts her dress and exposes her legs to a man on a fishing boat:

"Just then a fishing boat came round the point, so close in I could see snow on the deck and the marks on the man's oilskin that was the orangey colour. I could have shouted easy. The man on the deck stared at me. I sumley supposed he thought I was bad luck or something cause a girl in black, like the dark water round his boat and the wet rocks where the saltiness had melted the snow. Quickly I lifted the little black number to show him the pale skin above the laddered stockings with the black lines of straps on my thighs. You felt the cold nip more. The boat moved into the bay till its engine was gone, the man still looking back as the wash melted snow off the rocks with a hiss. I covered myself up then used the goldish lighter on a Silk Cut."

The scene perfectly conveys Morvern's simultaneous detachment and vulnerability. Like the scene on holiday where she attempts to connect with a grieving young man, there is a mixture of sensuality with an aura of death.

Morvern does not only attempt to forge a connection with others around her but develops a connection to the landscape as well. She is happiest when on her own, surrounded by the serenity of nature:

"This place, it doesn't care, it's just here. It helps that this place is just a few hour's walk away. All this loveliness. It's just silence isn't it?"

In fact, her entire journey is a search for connection, a search to find a place where she can feel at peace.
Violence and depravity are not restricted to The Port, however; wandering across the European landscape, Morvern witnesses equally disturbing behavior among the holidaymakers at the resort (including a group of binge-drinkers who engage in self-mutilation for sport) and even in a news broadcast she watches featuring the torture of Yugoslavian children at the hand of soldiers. Though she enjoys participating in the rave scene in Spain, Morvern spends much more time observing and relishing natural wonders. In nature she finds a refuge from the cruelty, selfishness and greed that perpetuates mankind.

Morvern is contrasted to vacuous party-girl Lanna, who does not feel any appreciation for the beauty surrounding her. In fact, she invades Morvern's idyll camping at the foot of Beinn Mheadhonach, screaming as she rides down on her bicycle. Lanna is mostly self-centered, bouncing from party to party without Morvern's observation or insight. Unlike Morvern, she does not connect to Couris Jean and is not interested in the stories she has to tell. At the resort, Lanna revels in the empty hedonism of the other young holidaymakers, which repels Morvern. Lanna, in fact, proves to be a treacherous friend, alternating from Sapphic attraction to Morvern and intense jealousy to the point where she reveals she had slept with Morvern's boyfriend and at the end of the novel takes up with Morvern's fosterdad, scolding a now-returned Morvern that she simply wasn't there when he needed her.

Morvern, on the other hand is a heavenly creature. Couris Jean, in fact, refers to Morvern as "an angel come to earth" and having emerged from the midst of such a chaotic environment, Morvern is a real diamond in the rough.

Perhaps that's what drew her boyfriend to her, as Morvern reveals that they met when he walked in the store and handed her a bouquet of flowers. And what of her enigmatic boyfriend? He is never even given a name and the reader only learns a few things about him such as his father owned a hotel  and he has carefully constructed a model train set of his neighboring childhood village. I wonder if he was like JACK NICHOLSON's character in FIVE EASY PIECES, raised in a well-educated, artistic family but who felt alienated from the middle class but also an outsider among the working class.

WARNER emphasizes Morvern's specialness through Morvern's so-called "glittering knee": as a child, Morvern went running into the kitchen, slipped and cut her knee badly where she had been making Christmas cards on the floor. The glitter embedded itself deep in her knee and can still be seen right beneath the skin. The instance of trauma transforming into something unique and magical is the essence of what makes Morvern so wonderful. Morvern states that she never wants the glitter to fade, that it makes her feel special.

The ending of the novel implies that Morvern will always be a wanderer and that though there will be slivers of happiness and contentment that her journey may never really be over.  However, Morvern will always shine like a diamond.

And I'd love to spend time with her drinking Southern Comfort and lemonade, doing pedicures and watching MS. 45.

House of Neurotic Women

'Tis the season to be jolly, folks! Streets are bustling with shoppers, families gather together and smile around a sumptuous Christmas feast, people gleefully wrap presents for their loved ones and Christmas carols about good tidings and joy fill the air.  However, despite all the peace on earth and good will towards men yakkety-yak this is the time of year where Americans descend upon shopping centers like rampaging Vikings and kick one another's faces in to get a better deal on a Blu-ray player. All the while the wealthy sit back and sneer at the desperation of the lumpen proletariat and hapless middle class to dismember one another over half-priced electronics.
And the mayhem doesn't end after the holidays have passed either. As someone who once worked seasonal retail, I now have a morbid fear of elderly women who line up at eight a.m. the day after Christmas just so they can claw one another's eyes out over discounted wrapping paper and Christmas cards.
DAWN OF THE DEAD ain't got nothin' on that.
This is also the time of year you may be subjected to some Ned and Maude Flanders types who think it'd be cute to go caroling, a tradition started by marauding drunks, and inflict their neighbors with a bunch of tone deaf Christmas songs. Therefore, I have a nice vat of boiling oil ready and I'm not afraid to use it.
Christmas is also the time of year where one is supposed to enjoy the company of their loving family, but if you're like me, family gatherings are more like a game of Pin the Tail On the Personality Disorder.
For those facing a lack of familial support, financial means and whose fragile emotional state cannot handle being bombarded by all the mass-manufactured holiday cheer, 'tis the season to hang yourself by the chimney with care.
For any readers crawling into this dark corner - have no fear! Your hostess, Madamoiselle Macabre is bringing you some mad, macabre and neurotic Christmas treats to pick up your spirits.
And you don't really need store-bought presents in pretty wrapping or a loving family to make your holiday. The maudlin swill distributed by those money-grubbing greed swine so we'll feel inadequate enough to mindlessly buy the useless garbage they're peddling is right in one respect and that's that the spirit of the holiday is in your heart.
Celebrate Christmas doing what makes you happy and to hell with tradition.
I've already witnessed a drunk Jimmy Gillespie beating a Salvation Army Santa over the head with his own donation bucket and if that doesn't holler Christmas spirit, I don't know what does.
So, get yourself all warm and cozy while I present to you the ultimate dysfunctional family Christmas, the made-for-TV proto-slasher melodrama HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS (1972) written by PSYCHO (also a Christmas movie)-scribe JOSEPH STEFANO and directed by master of television horror JOHN LLEWELLYN MOXEY (THE NIGHT STALKER).

On Christmas Eve, the Morgan sisters - dependable surrogate mother Alex (classical Hollywood leading lady, ELEANOR PARKER who we all remember as the Baroness in THE SOUND OF MUSIC, but who earned her place in my heart for her portrayal of the tortured protagonist in LIZZIE), neurotic pill-popping alcoholic Freddie (JESSICA WALTER of ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT and PLAY MISTY FOR ME), acerbic-witted, multiply-divorced party-girl Jo (played with deliciously bitchy relish by British horror mainstay JILL HAWORTH) and ingenuous grad student Chris (soon-to-be SYBIL SALLY FIELD) - return to their childhood home where their estranged father (WALTER BRENNAN) lays dying. And during an appropriately atmospheric Gothic thunderstorm to boot. And anyone who grew up in a dysfunctional family knows that any family reunion is a chance to set aside old resentments and recriminations so we can move on and create new resentments and recriminations.
To say there are many old wounds to be reopened and unfettered bitterness is an understatement. "I swore I would never set foot in this house again, even to have the pleasure of seeing his coffin closed," Jo sneers.
But in addition to this, the Morgan family patriarch confides to his daughters that he believes his former mistress and second-wife, Elizabeth (JULIE HARRIS, THE HAUNTING) is poisoning him to death. Though she proclaimed her innocence, ol' Liz was tried and convicted for poisoning her first husband's hot toddy.
Now Paw insists that his daughters celebrate the joyous reunion by killing their stepmother before she can kill him.
Aren't the same parents who provide absolutely zero love and support for their children always the ones that make the most demands?
However, as the storm rages outside and washes away the road to town, a pitchfork-wielding killer in a yellow raincoat begins picking off bickering family members one by one...

Yes, kiddies, it's soap opera melodrama (produced by AARON SPELLING, no less) mixed with proto-slasher panache and like chocolate and peanut butter, they're delicious together. And in '70s made-for-television format that's like putting chunks of caramel brownie in the mix too (mmm...caramel...). JOSEPH STEFANO's script is packed with sharp dialogue (particularly when the tart-tongued Jo is speaking) and wrings every last drop of claustrophobic atmosphere out of its limited setting. The lightning illuminating close-ups of faces in rain-spattered windows, the omnipresent thunder, the blood droplets dripping from the portrait of Mother, the candlelit dinner, the winding staircase and the sound of ornaments clinking as Chris dashes past the Christmas tree fleeing her attacker are all perfect. I'm not surprised to learn that SEAN CUNNINGHAM wanted to cast SALLY FIELD as Alice in FRIDAY THE 13TH as her chase scene through the woods is the thing slasher movie dreams are made of. The marvelous cast takes the drama up another notch, lending a gravitas to the melodrama. It does not hurt that pretty much every cast member is a veteran of portraying female neurosis.

Having to contend with dysfunctional family relationships during the holiday is never easy and HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS mines this dark terrain as the wealthy Morgans are one of those families where interaction is built less on love and emotional support than on shame, blame, recrimination and unmitigated hostility.
In exploring the melodrama of the Morgan family, the film delves into the dangers of emotional needs as every character is a prisoner of them in one way or another.
There is no love lost between the Morgan daughters and their father. The film implies they were always made to feel unwanted by him because he would have preferred sons and even designated masculine nicknames to each daughter. His brazen affair with his current wife, Elizabeth, may have even driven their already fragile mother to suicide.
He has even gone so far to disinherit his daughters. His reunion with his girls is not a joyous one, as he regards each of them in a patronizing, ridiculing manner before revealing he has called all of them home not to rebuild their relationship but for completely selfish reasons.
Steadfast Alex is overly-responsible and selfless; she is the support her sisters run to when they are in trouble. However, this is at a cost to herself and there is clearly resentment bubbling underneath the surface.
"I once told Chris I thought we were all your emotional prisoners," Jo tells Alex. "But she said, 'wouldn't it be funny if it were the other way around?'...if you were our emotional prisoner. Are you?"
Alex is not a daughter or sister, but a safety blanket that is discarded once demands are met.
Alex has sacrificed her own needs and well-being for her sisters and has become their prisoner and victim as a result.
Freddie suffers from feelings of worthlessness and a need to be loved that she drowns in addiction. Her devotion to her dead mother (whom she resembles) stems from a feeling that her mother was the only person who ever loved her.  Freddie's dependence on the support of others and unfulfilled needs ultimately lead her to self-destruction.
Jo's tart tongue and hedonistic lifestyle are barriers she has erected to protect herself from the needs of others; one can assume one of the reasons she has been divorced multiple times is that she denies the emotional needs of others. Except for Alex, she is not dependent upon anyone, but she has also built a prison for herself in order to keep others out.
Upon being asked why she is unmarried, Chris replies that she needs too much and scares men away. Chris, seemingly the kindest and most well-adjusted of the Morgan sisters, is also childish for her age and has never become self-sufficient and her emotional demands are exhausting for others to fulfill.
The last words of the film are in fact, "Take care of her" and are spoken in regards to Chris. Chris may remain an emotional prisoner in that she will always be dependent.
Elizabeth, the not-so-wicked stepmother, became a literal prisoner after being accused of poisoning her husband and ostracized by the townspeople.
Once freed, she is again a prisoner on an isolated ranch in a loveless relationship with an unyielding and demanding husband with no other sources of support or comfort.

I will not spoil HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS's ending here, but there are two close-ups of two different female characters at the end of the film, both finally alone with strange half-smiles on their faces. Society constantly barrages us with idea that it is somehow wrong to be alone and that the perfect family or perfect relationships are what we need to make us whole. This is only intensified for women, as women who remain single and childless are often viewed as defective and deviant.  Perhaps HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS posits it is better to be alone, at peace and free to take care of yourself than embroiled in toxic relationships with family and loved ones.

It's always more entertaining to endure fictional familial dysfunction than your own, so for all of you gentle readers having to deal with screwed up family or are spending the holiday alone because you are avoiding your screwed up family, fix yourself a nice hot toddy and have Christmas with the Morgan family as you can watch HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS for FREE on YouTube!
God bless us, every one.