FYI File: Fantasy, Nostalgia, and "The 2014 Project"

Now that this blog has been given its third and final (I swear!!) name, I thought I would shake things up a bit. Nothing so crazy as dropping the pink text color or updating the general appearance to a post-1997 look, of course. But there's a lot I've been wanting to say, so rather than post a succession of lengthy blog posts, I thought I'd post this variety pack of short ones. 

The Twentieth Anniversary of My Obsession With Anniversaries

The hits package that redefined my life. Like, seriously!

January '14 marked the 20th anniversary of my obsession with anniversaries. My first-time viewings of Starman, The Shining, Dawn of the Dead, and Working Girl on blistery and/or snowy Friday nights in January '94 mobilized in me a 1980s nostalgia that never went away. But it wasn't just the movies I watched that month, it was also buying THE album: Totally 80s, the 2-CD Razor & Tie compilation that was advertised on TV all the time before becoming the soundtrack to most of my life in the sixth grade. From 1994 on I was fetishizing every aspect of '80s pop culture while lambasting everything I could about the '90s. However, happy Friday nights ritualistically spent at the local multiplex limited my aptness for thrashing then-contemporary film. 

It is now a time capsule for what the world looked like in March '94,

but The Paper also remains grown-up Hollywood fare at its most brilliantly entertaining.

For the Class of 2000, 1994 was the year when the sixth grade ended and the seventh grade began. Thus the year closed with my being knee deep in adolescent angst, which only kept me going back into the past. I continually found myself disappointed by reality, so I was constantly choosing fantasies that were constructed in another era. My pre-pubescent childhood had been so happy, and the spirit of the '80s was so inextricably linked to my own soul, that I lamented the decade until it became an over-idealized Heaven that I dreamed of dying and going back to. I was not unaware of this being unhealthy, but that didn't make it any less painful to push forward, not when I discovered that being a teenager was to be a lot less pleasant than I had been imagining in the '80s. Instead of forging a new path that would make childhood dreams come true, I clung to the past as an escape while reality came crashing down in the present. And, for better or for worse, I've been inclined to do this ever since.

I related to Tess McGill when I was twelve. I still do now.

And I'll bet many of you reading this feel the exact same way.

A Sorta-Facade On The Verge of Sorta-Crumbling

There has been so much that I have wanted to communicate through this blog over the last fifteen months, but during said fifteen months my life has been in a major state of upheaval. Actually, it was in upheaval when I started this blog back in 2011. But way back then, things in my life were just starting to turn upside down, and the coinciding mini-phenomenon of “Vogue Boy” allowed me to escape reality like never before. For a moment in Summer '11, it felt like my dreams of being an artist and a star had been instantly realized when that video achieved its peak popularity in one weekend. It was during that delightfully manic moment that I quickly decided to become a blogger, and my early entries here are thus defined by an optimism, and even a sense of fulfillment, that apparently represents me at my purest.  

The-blog-formerly-known-as-RobWorld has been a tremendous outlet in the three years since since then, for it has allowed me to unlock and release parts of myself through the written word in a way that I could never do within the format of a screenplay. But for well over a year, I have not been inclined to do any unlocking or releasing, for I have discovered that my life experiences are a lot less vivid in my mind after I make them public here. And, as evidenced in past entries, my memories, and the role they play in shaping my creative output, are too precious to me to be sacrificed.

On some level, I've gotten more screenwriting done by not blogging. But on most levels it has denied me an outlet that I need: not only to write, but to be read. I might not have a huge readership on here, but the feedback I've received in personal messages has been too awesome to be ignored. There is no better feeling than knowing a handful of people were affected by work that they personally related to, or which made them look at a movie or a person or a similar life experience in a new light. I don’t know if I’ll start writing again more regularly, because I thought that that would be the case last November....and it wasn’t. But I think this has a lot to do with my wanting to make every post an event, in turn defeating the purpose that this blog serves, for me, in the first place. I am a hopeless neurotic, still in the middle of a challenging and annoyingly long life chapter, and I need a place to let all this shit out. Some people go to therapy. I go to the stage. And that’s exactly what this blog is to me.

From Sixteen To Thirty-Two: "The 2014 Project"

Like the film itself, I'll NEVER forget the first time I saw this trailer!

When I was sixteen, I realized that Wes Craven's Scream was released exactly eighteen years after John Carpenter's Halloween, which itself had been released exactly eighteen years after Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. Years later, I would realize that Val Lewton and Jacque Tourneur's Cat People’s limited release in December 1942 meant it was the movie that launched this every-eighteen-years cycle. Since then, I’ve been anticipating "The 2014 Project", a film that would, like the aforementioned four films, inject the horror-viewing experience with enough wit and suspense to change the cinematic landscape and redefine the genre for another two decades.

The most bewitching of Hollywood films and

possibly the most influential horror movie ever made.

Since the late '90s, I have secretly hoped that the Universe would see fit to choose me to write this 2014 horror film, and much of my creative life has been spent preparing myself to be worthy of such an opportunity. Alas, I've proven far more adept at writing screenplays than actually getting them made into movies. And without ever seeing your work on some screen, one can hardly feel like a real screenwriter. So last year I attempted to put work of which I remain as proud as ever temporarily behind me, and to instead take a stab at crafting "The 2014 Project". I spent the entirety of 2013 working on eight different scripts, each of which I had hoped could potentially reinvent "the American horror film", but none of which ever made it to their respective finish lines. By New Year’s Eve, I was forced to admit defeat. I was proud of the work I had done, and confident that one day the characters and story elements from this arsenal of partial completion would find their way into my future projects. But by no means did I come close to striking the gold that I was digging for.

If every attempt at crafting a pure suspense picture was even half

as effective as Halloween, the world would be a much better place.

It was not until the very end of 2013 and the very beginning of 2014 that a burst of renewed inspiration and ambition (my favorite cocktail) launched me on a new path. My dream, in this easy-to-shoot-but-hard-to-distribute world of modern indie filmmaking, was that the work flowing out of me would find its way into the right hands, and a quickly-realized project (Cat People, Psycho, Halloween, and Scream were themselves low-cost/high-speed shoots) could theoretically find its way onto a VOD platform or into an early 2015 film festival. But nearly a third of the way into 2014, I'm inclined to believe that that dream will not come true....and I'm okay with that. It’s very likely that a great horror film will come along and make the impact I was hoping to make while I'm still pining away, and if that happens, I can finally say I was right all along. And hopefully, if that happens, 'my little horror film', whenever it makes its way to the screen, will still earn itself a place in the hearts of like-minded movie lovers. But for now, I think I'll put my faith in "The 2032 Project": I have good reason to believe I might be capable of writing something worthy of comparison to the aforementioned films when I'm fifty. In the meantime, I intend to enjoy the writing process instead of mourning my failure to be where I thought I would be when I was half the age that I am right now. 

No movie-going experience has come close to the first two times I saw Scream on the big screen. And I'm 99.44% sure that this will always be the case.

Furthermore, assuming that the every-eighteen-years cycle really does extend into this century, I'll be keeping my eyes peeled for the film that will ultimately redefine our collective concept of modern horror movies. There are already a few potential contenders in the pipeline, and 2014 has only just begun...

Me '93 On The Future Of American Horror Movies

Today marks twenty-five years since the U.S. release of Gary Sherman’s Poltergeist III, a film that has been derided far too much over the last quarter century. It bombed at the box office before terrifying a generation of small-screen viewers (specifically, my generation), and is most infamous for being released four months after the death of its lead actress, Heather O’Rourke. An unbelievably talented child star who would have evolved into a truly great adult star, Heather O’Rourke was so synonymous with the role of "Carole Anne Freeling" that her tragic death before filming was complete seems almost like a ghastly extension of this uniquely nightmarish film. Although savaged by critics upon its initial release, I assume that it has since earned itself a place high in the ranks of 80s cult horror films. It’s as frightening a picture as Gary Sherman’s earlier 80s gems, the darkly comic voodoo masterpiece Dead and Buried and the gritty prostitution thriller Vice Squad. The cast is uniformly exceptional, especially the pitch-perfect performances by its two late stars. Heather O’Rourke was at her most controlled and impressive by the third film, and once again Zelda Rubinstein expertly walks the fine line between genius and camp as filmdom’s most famous medium: the legendary “Tangina”. Despite its stellar performances and effectiveness as a relentlessly claustrophobic and surreal horror film, it does have its fair share of unintentionally hilarious shortcomings. This is best illustrated in this priceless (negative) review of the film by the late, great Gene Siskel & Roger Ebert, arguably one of the funniest segments ever broadcast on their classic TV series. 

Poltergeist III was a film that I did not see until my life-changing Summer of 1991. For years I’d only been allowed to either gaze at the 80s horror movie covers at the video store or “settle” for classic movies of the 30s and 40s like Bride of Frankenstein and I Walked With A Zombie. But then one day near the end of the third grade my Dad told me he would let me see Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho if I put more effort into Little League. (I was never one for sports, so movie privileges were often an incentive during my thankfully brief baseball chapter.) I can’t remember if he showed it to me or I watched it by myself, as I most remember subsequently watching it over and over that summer. I was not frightened, but I LOVED everything about it, and consider it a great blessing that the film which birthed modern horror should be my own starting point. Viewing Poltergeist and its sequels followed shortly thereafter. Like Psycho, I watched the Poltergeist movies so many times that summer that memories of the repeat viewings all absorb into one another. But unlike Psycho, the Poltergeist movies freaked me out.

Two years later, my wonderful 5^th grade teacher, Mrs. Quinn, had everyone in class create our own magazines. My magazine was called Boston Entertainment, and was a mish-mash of Entertainment Weekly and Premiere Magazine—literally. I spliced ads from both into my magazine, along with a few reviews by my favorite local film critic, James Verniere of The Boston Herald, with full credit of course. In addition to the collage of cut-outs and capsule reviews, the magazine contained a number of articles which I wrote myself, including this one about the future of the American horror film. I rediscovered this “magazine” in my parents’ attic and thought I would share my favorite article in honor of Poltergeist III's 25th Anniversary and Boston Entertainment's 20th (!) anniversary. I still remember the urgency with which I wrote it: as someone who aspired to make horror films, I felt that my own future was at stake. I wanted to insure that a market would still exist when I was old enough to make my dreams come true, and my fears in those dismal days of early 90s horror were all too valid. The genre has come a long way since. But now corporate influence, economic turmoil, changing technology, and unprecedented piracy are all drowning out the voices of independent filmmakers. Indeed, there is once again reason for those of us pursuing a career in horror films to proceed with caution. And so, without further adieu, here is another blast from my past, peppered with a bit of present-day commentary . 

My lone foray into magazine publishing. 

                                                                   The Horror of Horrors:

                                                                     Will Scary Movies Be

                                                                     Here For Us To Look

                                                                                Back On?

                                                                                                  By Robert Jeffrey

                Have you ever heard of “Jaws”? You probably have, because it IS a classic. Still, have you ever heard of the movie “Leprechaun”? In my opinion, it is a true horror, blending comedy and scary special effects to make it perfect, but just the title probably sounds strange to you, although some people are familiar with it. “Jaws” was a box office smash, but “Leprechaun” was out for less than a week in Peabody.

Alas, I would never again rave on about Leprechaun 

as much as I did at the age of eleven.

                These are just two examples of what people may realize is happening in theaters, or may not care to notice. What is it that makes a horror movie popular? Is it special effects, suspense, black humor, or a hip, cool style? The reason I don’t mention a “foundation” such as a bestselling novel is because many Stephen King movies, such as “The Dark Half”, are movies that are not only bombs at the movies, but I don’t even consider most of them to be real horrors.

Sorry, I don't know why I was so mean to Stephen King adaptations! Worse yet, I hadn't even seen The Dark Half when I wrote this--and it's a GREAT movie.

                Maybe special-effects is the way to go. In the “Nightmare on Elm Street” series, part three made forty-seven million (1987), and part four made forty-nine million (1988). Both of these movies were the most popular of the “Nightmare” movies, and these were both crammed with mind-boggling special effects. Still, other movies like “Dr. Giggles” also had fairy gory special effects, but it didn’t quite pack ‘em in the aisles.

I haven't seen Dr. Giggles since childhood, and it MIGHT be a terrible movie... 

but, to this day, I still LOVE the ad campaign! 

                Maybe it is a campy style. In the movie “Fright Night” which starred Fox 25 regulars William Ragsdale of “Herman’s Head” and Amanda Bearse of “Married…With Children”. I found this 1985 movie which was supposedly a hit at the ticket booths to have real wit, suspense, comedy, some great FX, and camp. Yes, I found this movie to have really cool style that most Stephen King horrors miss by a mile, which made this one of my favorite, if not my very favorite, horror movies. Still, some hated this movie, so don’t rely on modern gimmicks.

My #1 favorite scene in my #1 favorite vampire movie of all time. 

(I think it's safe to say I still love Fright Night as much as I did at eleven.)

                Maybe it is suspense. Lots of suspense movies get better reviews by critics and make more money at the box office than some horrors. Still, that doesn’t mean horrors don’t have suspense. The classic “Jaws” was not only one of the biggest (meaning made the most money) movies of all time, but it keeps audiences on the edge of their seats. Another horror noted for its superb suspense was the terrifying “Halloween”. Not only was the music in this just as bad as “Jaws”, but its great acting by Jamie Lee Curtis (“My Girl”) and Donald Pleasance (The 1979 version of “Dracula”) and its plot that WAS creative at this time, the movie is excellent.

The night I saw Halloween deserves its own blog post, 

because it's been one of my biggest cinematic/life influences ever since. 

                As we see, there are lots of good reasons to see a horror, but if you see a bad one, the rest you’ll see will be bad too. With that in mind, here are the horrors that I consider to be the best (although some have the gore that I don’t usually like):

                                                                Fright Night

                                                                Halloween

                                                                A Nightmare On Elm Street 1, 3, and 4

                                                                Jaws 1 and 2

                                                                Leprechaun

                                                                Dr. Giggles

It would not be until the 6th grade that I saw most of the great American horror films--hence that pitiful list. But with the exception of Dr. Giggles and Leprechaun, I still LOVE those movies, and Wes Craven's A Nightmare On Elm Street remains my favorite horror movie of all. 

Fun With Lycanthropy: I Heart "The Howling"

I can’t recall the last time we had two Full Moons in one month, but I remember the ending of the John Landis classic An American Werewolf in London every time I hear the term “Blue Moon”. I never wrote about that film, one of my two favorite werewolf movies of all time. But I did write about the other one: Joe Dante’s The Howling. It still stuns me that they were both released the same year, both played to the same audience, and both reinvigorated the concept of “the horror-comedy” like no American movie since Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein. In honor of this lunar event, here is another piece from my days reviewing DVDs for the dearly departed Laser Exchange.

The Howling

April 19^th, 2001

Review by Robert Jeffrey

When I first saw Joe Dante’s The Howling, it was via the film’s original videotape incarnation (unfortunately I missed out on the theatrical run). At the time, I thought the film was bizarre and rather overrated. Of course, I was only seeing part of the film; the video was so dark and murky that I could not see what was going on most of the time. It was not until years later that I watched a “cleaned up” cable presentation and realized what a good movie The Howling really is. Perhaps the better the image, the more enjoyable my experience, because seeing The Howling on DVD I was finally able to fully appreciate its greatness.

Karen White (Dee Wallace) is a Los Angeles reporter suffering from nightmares, panic attacks, and frigidity as a result of a botched undercover mission that results in the shooting death of a serial killer called ‘Eddie the Mangler’. Karen’s psychologist, Dr. Waggner (Patrick MacNee), advises her to stay at “The Colony”, a self-help village that he operates. She and her husband Bill (Christopher Stone) travel to this secluded sector in Northern California for a week long “therapeutic vacation”. Before long, though, Karen starts to sense something is very wrong in The Colony. Her nightmares are becoming more vivid, and are now incorporating images of her husband and of people staying in The Colony. She hears howling in the night, and finds a mutilated cow in the woods.

Meanwhile, back in L.A., Terry (Belinda Balaski) and Chris (John Dugan), a young couple working at Karen’s TV station, investigate the death of Eddie the Mangler for a news special the station has planned. Eddie’s body disappears from the morgue, and they investigate further, only to discover that he was obsessed with werewolf mythology. When a panicky Karen calls Terry to tell her that Bill was bitten by a wolf in the woods, Terry rushes to The Colony to offer comfort and further her investigation. At this point, you can probably figure out where all this is headed. But The Howling is a film full of twists and turns, and to spoil even one would be an injustice to first-time viewers.

I have not seen enough werewolf movies to recognize every homage paid by this film, but apparently most of the characters are named after werewolf movie directors. An expository scene from The Wolf Man plays as Terry learns that Bill has been bitten by a wolf, and a cartoon adaptation of The Three Little Pigs is cut into one of the most classic, terrifying sequences. Additionally, there is a stellar roster of genre cameos: Kevin McCarthy (Invasion of the Body Snatchers), B-movie king Roger Corman, and Joe Dante regular Dick Miller, to name a few.  Sound familiar? Sixteen years before Scream was even a reality, The Howling invented the “self-referential scary movie” sub-genre. In fact, the humor laced throughout the film is generally the most celebrated element of The Howling. It was certainly among the most influential, for such contemporary classics as Evil Dead, Fright Night, Return of the Living Dead, Re-Animator, and of course Scream owe a debt to the road paved by this film.

The humor may be the most widely regarded facet of this film. However, in the end, this is a horror movie, and a damn scary one. Even coming on the heels of such classic shockers as Friday the 13^th, The Shining, and Dressed to Kill, The Howling still manages to hold its own-and then some. Joe Dante, who at this point was best known for the cult classic Piranha, updated werewolf folklore by applying it to two of the more popular horror trends of the time: female paranoia (Rosemary’s Baby, The Stepford Wives, Suspiria) and fear of non-urban environments (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Deliverance, The Hills Have Eyes). Dante makes the most of these two thematic elements, while also cultivating a classic, spooky atmosphere all too rarely seen in post-Psycho horror movies. Dante also manages to tap into primal childhood fears of the dark, the woods, the fog, and The Big Bad Wolf. In fact, some of the film’s most terrifying scenes make their mark because they so aptly recreate images from Little Red Riding Hood and The Three Little Pigs.

Looking back, it really is amazing how ahead-of-its-time this movie was. Not only did it turn the mirror on horror films of the past and present, but it also offered a shockingly accurate, post-Network glimpse into the media. From what I have read, the novel The Howling, by Greg Brandner, is vastly different, particularly in this regard. Instead of being an author, as she was in the book, Karen is a reporter, and this allows Dante to explore the notion that the American public in the early 80s was so desensitized that television had to resort to extreme shock tactics to maintain viewership. It also suggests that the same public was nonetheless too sophisticated to believe what was happening right in front of them. In this time of unprecedented cynicism and complacency (not to mention being the era of “reality shows”), Dante’s message is more relevant than ever.

When The Howling was released, it was extremely well received by critics and became a box office hit. Joe Dante went on to direct the blockbuster Gremlins. Dee Wallace went on to play the mother in E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial, which years later prompted one of the funniest lines in Scream. And special make-up effects man Rob Bottin went on to do equally classic work in such films as The Thing, Total Recall, and Se7en. As the cast and crew were busy moving on with their own successes, The Howling did not get its inevitable sequel until 1985’s loosely related (or so I have heard) The Howling II: Your Sister Is a Werewolf. Over the next ten years The Howling would amass a total of six sequels, many of them barely released in theaters or sent straight to video. I have never seen these films (has anyone seen them?), but from what I understand they give Amityville a run for its money as the worst horror franchise of them all. In fact, The Howling IV: The Original Nightmare, is actually a remake of the first film! Normally a string of ill received follow-ups harms a film’s reputation, but in this case, it may have actually strengthened it. More than two decades after its initial release, The Howling remains one of the most enduring horror films of the 80s. 

NOTE: This review was pared down to omit references to the Dutch DVD I was reviewing, as it is no longer in print and I was frankly more qualified to talk about horror movies than DVD technology. If my comments sound familiar, that’s because a similarly amended version of this and most of my other Laser Exchange reviews were ported over to The Internet Movie Database ten years before I began this blog.

Satanic Panic: Did SUSPIRIA Shape The 80s?

Today marks thirty-five years since Dario Argento's Suspiria was released in the United States. It remains his most internationally lucrative and critically acclaimed film, despite or because of being a thematic and stylistic departure from the 'giallo' films that have made Dario Argento a filmmaking legend. I have written before about the role that Suspiria played in my life at the end of high school. This piece marks the last time that I wrote about it in college.

This was originally my final assignment for a class at Emerson College that explored portrayals of the occult throughout cinematic history. The class was taught by Peg Aloi, the writer and film critic and my favorite professor. It was the summer of 2005, and I was working on an occult horror screenplay. In the midst of doing lots of research for my own project, I took the class to expand knowledge for my work and to introduce what I was finding to Professor Aloi and my fellow students. Dario Argento’s Suspiria, one of my favorite movies of all time, was part of the curriculum. But one particularly fascinating piece of television history that I uncovered that summer was a 1989 broadcast of The Oprah Winfrey Show that the class watched on the last day. It was about a horrific tragedy: the brutal murder of Mark Kilroy, a young man on spring break in Mexico. The coverage in 1989, however, suggested his death was the work of a global network of devil worshippers. In 2005, and particularly to a room full of Emerson College students, the tone of the broadcast took on an amusing quality despite the humorless subject matter. The part that seemed amusing was the “Satanic Panic” that swept the nation in the 80s, and how dated it was two decades later. But I remember when those fears were too embedded in mainstream society to evoke laughs. Childhood memories of that disturbing cultural phenomenon were at the root of both my screenplay and this essay.

Robert E. Jeffrey

MA405: Final Paper

                                    Suspiria: Paving the Way for Hysteria

When Suspiria was unleashed upon American audiences by 20^th Century Fox in 1977, few could have predicted the success enjoyed by its distributors or by famed Italian horror director Dario Argento. At this point in time, Argento’s American success was distinctly limited: he had had two U.S. successes in his 1970 debut thriller The Bird With the Crystal Plumage and 1975’s Profondo Rosso, released in the U.S. as The Deep Red Hatchet Murders. Both films were blockbusters in his native Italy. Additionally he had two other hit European thrillers and a successful Italian anthology show, all of which contributed to his budding European reputation as “the Italian Hitchcock”. The release of 1977’s Suspiria marked a major turning point in Argento’s career, and the change in direction proved enormously profitable. Suspiria was a massive success in Europe, and became the first of a string of big hits for Dario Argento in Japan—preceding a 1978 re-release of his Profondo Rosso under the title Suspiria 2! (Jones, "An Eye For Horror")

Following the huge success of Twentieth Century Fox's The Omen in 1976, the internationally lucrative Suspiria must have seemed like a sure bet for a the studio to continue capitalizing on American moviegoers’ fear of a Satanic influence over our everyday lives. Indeed, Suspiria would go on to become Dario Argento’s most widely released, heavily publicized, critically acclaimed, and commercially successful film in the United States. The first film in a planned trilogy, Fox was so pleased with Suspiria’s grosses that they co-financed the lavish sequel. Filmed in 1979 and released in a few international territories in 1980, Dario Argento’s Inferno would be put on the backburner at Fox amidst a change of studio heads in 1980, making a limited theatrical appearance in the mid-1980s before quietly sliding onto video shelves under Fox’s “Key Video” label. (Jones)

           If the more densely scripted Inferno had been given a proper U.S. theatrical release by Fox in 1980, it could very well have echoed the success of Suspiria, in addition to enlightening viewers to the actual meaning of the themes and content of Suspiria. Inferno reveals that the mythology of its predecessor actually had little to do with Christianity's image of 'the Devil'. But the misconceptions inevitably taken from Suspiria’s limited narrative have come to define how most viewers will interpret it: as an artfully crafted horror movie about “witchcraft-as-Satanism”.  Part of the success of Suspiria was in hinting at the existence of Satanic cults embedded in the least conspicuous pockets of society, a fear that had heightened considerably since the release of Roman Polanski's Rosemary’s Baby in 1968. In the that followed Suspiria, that fear would heighten in the United States, manifesting itself in a new yet frighteningly familiar way in the American cultural landscape. 

In the ten years following the release of Suspiria, America’s interest in the occult in the 1970s turned into a fear of the occult in the 1980s. There could have been any number of reasons for this rapid turnaround. Many would credit the two-term run of conservative President Ronald Reagan and the emergence of “the religious Right”. Once could cite a collective parental/generational response, triggered by the bloodshed dominating movie theaters packed with teenagers or the popularity of heavy metal music, condemned by parents’ groups for its supposed references to blood, murder, and the Devil himself. I would argue that these factors merely strengthened the pull on the collective American psyche of fears already planted by paranoiac films of the 1970s--most especially Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist, and The Omen. Despite being a success, Dario Argento’s Suspiria was  never as widely viewed in America as the aforementioned three films. Nonetheless, I would argue that Suspiria, more than any other 70s occult horror film, set the standard of primal terror that would fuel what historians generally refer to as the “Satanic Panic” of the 1980s.

Although the roots of the 'Satanic Panic' began with the dozens of reports of ritualized child molestations going on at daycare centers across the country, the origin of the brand of “panic” that I associate with Dario Argento’s vision was galvanized, if not born, in the small town of Northport, Long Island. There, in the summer of 1984, seventeen year old Ricky Kasso and his friend Jimmy Troiano were arrested for the horrific stabbing death of their classmate, Gary Lauwers. Although the crime was primarily related to use of the hard drug PCP, Ricky Kasso’s interest in the Devil, as manifested in “black metal” music, became a paramount issue in the case. Says then-and-current Newport police chief Bob Howard, “The press release alluded to the "Satanic cult”. A Satanic cult never existed. There was some misinformation that went out. But you can't stop the press. The press release that went out caused a frenzy which I've never seen or have seen since” (“Satan in the Suburbs”).

Perhaps the most horrific and defining cult murder of the Satanic Panic scare was the murder of Texas college student Mark Kilroy, and the discovery of his and twelve other dismembered corpses in a mass grave in Matamoros, Mexico. Kilroy was kidnapped on spring break in 1989 and brutally tortured and murdered by a drug lord cum "black magic" practitioner Adolfo de Jesus Constanzo and his followers/crime partners, all as a means of magically attaining protection and immunity from police and fellow drug traffickers. Although Constanzo's practice came from a family tradition of an extreme interpretation of the Palo Mayombe "voodoo" tradition, early reports, naturally, claimed Satanism (Newton).

    One of the most defining time capsules of this era was a historically relevant broadcast of "The Oprah Winfrey Show" on May 1, 1989, in which Winfrey interviews one guest in particular would become infamous among critics of the controversial "Satanic Ritual Abuse" syndrome. That “anti-Satanist” would be Patricia Pulling, best known as the founder of B.A.D.D., “Bothered About Dungeons and Dragons”, which she formed in response to the tragic suicide of her son, an event she blamed on the deadly occult influence of the Dungeons and Dragons role-playing game. (Stackpole)

            On the broadcast, Pulling offered a list of “warning signs” for parents of children susceptible to becoming involved in Satanic acts.

In teenagers you look for obsessive behavior in some heavy metal music, not all. Obsessive behavior of kids that like gory slasher films: Poltergeist type films, Friday the 13^th. If they have an obsession with this, an obsession with evil, if you start to see the signs and symbols of things that you don't recognize..... if the child actually hates God....drawing pictures of death, dying, dismemberment mutilation....this is sick, and they need help. A lot of professionals are passing this off as a fad they will pass through. and many of them are not passing through. Many are dying, and killing other people. (“Oprah”)

            In a scathing attack on Pulling’s years as an “anti-Devil crusader”, Michael A. Stackpole thoroughly discredits Pulling’s ability to offer such advice.

[Patricia Pulling] has, willfully or negligently, manufactured reports concerning suicides and murders related to games and Satanism. She has promoted individuals who are, at the very least, in need of serious psychiatric help to deal with their emotional and psychological problems. She has repeatedly represented herself as an “expert witness” concerning games of which she knows little or nothing. Pat Pulling and her allies regularly conduct “cult crime seminars” at locations across the country. They are offered for police and teachers at between $100 and $300 a head, [and] the anti-Satanists profit greatly from giving the seminars. These are the seminars in which Pat Pulling distributes a questionnaire that, if used in accordance with the instructions, will prove virtually anyone to be a Satanist. These are the seminars at which “occult symbol” hand-outs are distributed, including things like “the Star of David” and at which any non-Christian religion is branded “Satanism.”

Many supposed victims of Satanic ritual abuse are widely believed to be likely candidates for childhood sexual abuse, occurring at a time when the human imagination is running so rampant that the abuse may have stored itself in the victims’ subconscious under the guise of being a Satanic rite (Holmes 3). This theory is prefaced in Suspiria by the character of Dr. Mandel (Udo Kier) when he addresses the disappearance of Sara (Stefania Cassini) and her hysterical beliefs in a witch cult hunting her down. 

“She had a nervous breakdown after her mother's death and she came to me for treatment. After she got better again, we remained friends. But lately she was upset about some notions put into her head by a friend of hers. They were kind of wild ideas. She had discovered that the Tanz Akademie was founded in 1895 by a certain Helena Markos, a Greek immigrant, and that the local people believed her to be a witch. That really got Sarah's imagination going. Madame Markos died in a fire. That's all there is as far as witchcraft is concerned. The school was taken over by her favorite pupil, the study of the occult was abandoned, and soon the place became the famous dance academy....As a believer in the material world and a psychologist to boot, I'm convinced that the current spread of belief in magic and the occult is part of mental illness. Bad luck isn't brought by broken mirrors, but by broken minds.”

            Although “mental illness” might be an overstated response to the cultural interest in the occult during the 1970s, Dr. Mandel hits on a very potent point about the time period: people were looking for something to scapegoat. Associating ill fate with the Devil was recognized as “medieval thinking” throughout the progressively modernized 20^th century, but in the wake of Rosemary’s Baby and, even more so, The Exorcist, belief in the existence of Satan and, more tellingly, his role on Earth,  was becoming increasingly popular in the mainstream American culture. This was particularly evident throughout the 1980s as evidenced by books and TV specials on the subject and a revolving cast of authors and frequent TV/radio guests making frequent media appearances during the so-called Satanic Panic.  The common fear of witchcraft in the 1980s was prophetically illustrated in Suspiria by the character of Professor Milius (Rudolf Schundler) when he describes to the protagonist, Suzy (Jessica Harper), what he learned from writing his defining book, Paranoia and Magic.

[Witches]   are malefic. Negative and destructive. Their knowledge of the art of the occult brings them tremendous powers. They can change the course of events, and people's lives. But only to do harm. Their goal is to accumulate great personal wealth, but that can only be achieved by injury to others. They can cause suffering, sickness, and even the death of those that, for whatever reason, have offended them. A woman becomes queen of her coven if her magic is 100 times more powerful than the rest of the coven, which is like a serpent. Its strength rests with its leader, which is likes it head. A coven deprived of its leader is like a headless cobra: harmless. Skepticism is the natural reaction of people today, but magic is ever present. Magic is everywhere, and all over the world, it's a recognized fact, always.

Patricia Pulling could not have said it any better herself. Indeed, this defining exchange is the most blatant misrepresentation of witchcraft-as-Satanism in the entire film. But a more careful deconstruction of this classic scene—specifically, with the aid of Argento’s view of the Suzy character—offers a very different interpretation. “[Suzy] does not know she is a white witch, but she has a great strength that drives back everything. Indeed, when she meets the professor it is the moment in which she begins to realize. She can fight because of her strength” (Locane, “Dark Dreams”). Of course, it would be virtually impossible to decipher this from what seems a straightforward condemnation of witchcraft in any form. 

Prior to 1977, serious Satanic horror in America was generally packaged for TV (Look What's Happened to Rosemary's Baby, The Devil's Daughter), EuroHorror imports (The Antichrist, The Devil's Nightmare, To the Devil....a Daughter), hardcore porn (The Devil in Miss Jones, Through the Looking Glass), and, most commonly, prime drive-in meat (Race the Devil, The Brotherhood of Satan). Satanic horror films that came in the wake of Rosemary's Baby typically aimed to be frightening in a campy, cathartic, "fun time at the movies" manner, employing tried-and-true horror techniques. Dario Argento's Suspiria demonstrates a more diverse array of genre influences: the warped world of German Expressionism, the gothic chills of silent American horror, and the subtly insidious anti-witch scares of Victor Fleming's The Wizard of Oz and Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (“Suspiria 25”, Jones 83).  Ultimately, I would argue that the very effectiveness of Suspiria is why it serves as an inevitable precursor to the Satanic Panic. The film exists on a primal level, affects on a primal level, and stays with the viewer on a primal level. When looking back on Suspiria, one consciously remembers the striking barrage of jarring sound and vivid color even more than the prevalent element of witchcraft. As such, one could be frightened by ideas presented in the film years later, with no specific recollection as to where such fears originate from. 

Michael Brandon, star of Argento’s 1973 thriller Four Flies on Grey Velvet, shared with UK viewers of the Channel 4 documentary Dario Argento: An Eye For Horror a very specific insight into Argento’s creative process as a screenwriter. “Dario told me he has dreams, or nightmares, and that's how the story comes into being. He would write down the nightmare. And it would become the script.” (“Eye for Horror”) In Suspiria, the nightmare world explored by Suzy Banyon may very well have echoed Argento’s own investigations into the world of magic in preparation for Suspiria. During this time, he and wife/co-writer Daria Nicolodi traveled throughout the “Magic Triangle”, a (supposedly) supernaturally active point where France, Germany, and Switzerland meet (“Suspiria: 25^th Anniversary”), and met with many Pagans as well as alleged worshippers of the Devil (Jones 72). Says the couple’s daughter, international star Asia Argento, “he needs somebody, a feminine character, to represent his curiosity--of life, and danger, and all those things”. ("Eye For Horror")

           Dario Argento grew up and achieved success in the most Catholicized nation in the world. Could he have been, perhaps subconsciously, combatting his own innermost fears about the world of witchcraft, a world that at once utterly fascinated and completely terrified him? Pop-rock extraordinaire Keith Emerson, who composed the score to Inferno, has offered that “Dario was probably more scared of the films that he made than his audience was. I've seen the guy just shaking watching his own film” (“Eye for Horror”). American horror legend John Carpenter, a friend and colleague of Dario’s, points out “the story he tells over and over again” as the foundation of Argento’s fear of the unknown. “There was a hallway at the back of his house, and when he had to go to sleep at night, for whatever reason, when he would walk there, he would imagine these things behind the doorways in this hallway. By the time he got to his room he was in complete terror” (“Eye for Horror”). Another genre titan, George A. Romero, puts in his own take on how these fears are passed on to audiences around the globe, infecting the world with manifested realities of Argento's private nightmares. “I think when Dario gets an idea he is basically trying to communicate either a kind of horror or an allegory about certain human behavior. He's  like Van Gogh, someone who says this is the way I want it to be, and this is the world. Take from it what you will” (“Eye for Horror”). As the Satanic Panic stormed through the American 80s, it was clear that the country had taken Argento’s view of the world very literally indeed.

WORKS CITED

Holmes, Dr. Leonard. “What the Hell is Satanic Ritual Abuse”. About.com

Acc. 6/26/05

 http://mentalhealth.about.com/cs/abuse/a/satan.htm

Jones, Alan. Profondo Argento.

FabPress, London. 2004

Locane, Francesco. “Dario Talks to Dark Dreams”. Darkdreams.org

Acc. 6/29/05

http://www.darkdreams.org/interviews/interview8.html

Newton, Michael. “Adolfo de Jesus Constanzo”. CrimeLibrary.com

Acc. 6/23/05

http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/weird/constanzo/1.html

Stackpole, Michael A.  “The Pulling Report”.

Acc. 6/23/05.

 http://www.rpg.net/sites/252/quellen/stackpole/pulling_report.html#DW

DVD Sources

Dario Argento: An Eye for Horror. Dir: Leon Ferguson, 2000.

Image Entertainment DVD, USA. 2001

Inferno. Dir: Dario Argento, 1980.

Anchor Bay Entertainment DVD, USA. 2000

Satan in the Suburbs. Dir: Scott Hillier, 2000.

WMI Media DVD, USA. 2004

Suspiria. Dir: Dario Argento, 1977.

Anchor Bay Entertainment DVD, USA. 2001

Suspiria: 25^th Anniversary. Dir: Gary Hertz, 2001.

Anchor Bay Entertainment DVD, USA. 2001