Things in Horror Movies

Frankenstein (1910)

Sometimes, when an effect is particularly difficult to pull off, it helps to look at things from another direction: backwards.

FX artists are always discovering that the impossible isn’t so impossible if you do it backwards, using a technique known as reverse motion photography: in An American Werewolf in London, when filming the werewolf transformation scene, they discovered that it’s much easier to pull hair in through the prosthetic skin than it is to push it out. In Hellraiser, the birth of a corpse from a blood puddle was created by melting it into a puddle and running the film backwards. Go back to 1910, though, and you’ll find what must be one of the first uses of this technique.

The Edison Studios Frankenstein is only around twelve minutes long, and much of this is dedicated to the dramatic birth of the creature: here again, the effect was created by burning a model creature, and reversing the footage. It’s pretty rough (although you could argue that the resulting movement of the smoke downwards contributes to the sense of something unholy coming together), but nonetheless interesting to see the early use of an effect that would still be in use almost a century later.

And see it you can: this film is now in the public domain, and viewable at the Internet Archive, here: Edison’s Frankenstein.

The Shining (1980)

“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” must be one of the best known lines in horror cinema. Not bad, given that it’s only ever shown on screen, and not spoken.

When Kubrick’s 1980 horror classic The Shining was first distributed to cinemas, the prints varied slightly by country: the close-ups of the manuscript had been filmed several times, substituting manuscripts in different languages.

The Italians got “Il mattino ha l’oro in bocca.” (The morning has gold in its mouth)

The Germans got “Was du heute kannst besorgen, das verschiebe nicht auf morgen.” (Never put off till tomorrow what may be done today)

The Spanish got “No por mucho madrugar amanece más temprano.” (No matter how early you get up, you can’t make the sun rise any sooner).

The French got “Un Tiens vaut mieux que deux Tu l’auras.” (What you have is worth much more than what you’ll have).

All the current DVD releases seem to feature the English language manuscript, and only the English language manuscript. It’s a shame really, as it’s a moment made for the “alternate angle” feature on DVDs: press the angle key now to select the language in which Jack Torrance goes crazy…

Vampyr (1932)

Although credited as Julian West, the star of Carl Dreyer’s haunting film Vampyr is really Baron Nicolas de Gunzburg, the film-loving son of a Russian aristocratic family whose international travels had become an exile following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.

Baron Nicolas met Dreyer at a party in Paris; they fell into conversation, and he offered to help fund Vampyr, on condition that he be allowed to play the lead role: Allan Gray, a young man whose interest in the occult leads him into conflict with a vampire.

This seems to have been de Gunzburg’s only acting role: he later moved to the USA, where he worked as an editor on magazines including Town & Country and Vogue. Nicolas de Gunzburg’s life story is told in a fifteen-minute documentary included as an extra in the Masters of Cinema DVD release of Vampyr.

Vampyr is based on the work of Sheridan Le Fanu, but there’s a remarkable physical similarity between Julian West / Baron Nicolas and another horror author, H. P. Lovecraft (photo right), who was writing during the period when the film was made.

Perhaps it wouldn’t be so noticeable if it wasn’t for the fact that Allan Gray and Lovecraft share an interest in the more esoteric mysteries of life, or in the blurring between dreams and reality: as it is, one can’t help pondering the opening line from Lovecraft’s short story, ‘The Picture in the House’: Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places. …