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The Diviners is not only one of the best books of September, I think it's one of the best books of the Fall, combining the glamour and excitement of 1926 New York (think Ziegfeld girls and Prohibition gin) with totally creepy occult murder, secrets of the supernatural, and a diverse cast of characters. The Diviners has the goose bumps factor of an early Stephen King novel with an impeccably researched look at the history and pop culture of the 1920s--the Labor movement, speakeasy jazz, and young women like Evie O'Neill with their feathered headbands and chutzpah.
Author Libba Bray (who won the Printz Award in 2010 for Going Bovine) has been getting lavish praise for The Diviners, which is the first of a new four-book series (yay!), and when I talked to her earlier this year about the new book--see the video of our interview after the jump--I had a really hard time not laughing into the microphone because she was cracking me up. One of the things we talked about was Bray's love of horror--Salem's Lotis one of her all-time favorite books and she refers to it as "Our Town with vampires" (that should give you a clue about her sense of humor). In the spirit of things that go bump in the night Bray came up with something special for Omni readers: the funniest top 10 horror movies list I've ever seen (the movies are scary as hell, it's Libba Bray who is hilarious). Did she include any of your favorites?
"MY TOP TEN FAVORITE HORROR MOVIES"
Horror, how do I love thee?
Let me count the ways. I love your ominous, cobweb-encrusted mansions and
staircases leading to bad things. I
love your neighbors who might be Satanists and your slowly rising corpses. I
love your screams, your maniacs in hockey masks, your creaking doors, and your
beasties roaming the moors under a full moon. I love you so much that I had to
make a Top Ten List of my favorite horror movies of all time. Because that's
how my love rolls"¦like a severed head"¦bouncing down the stairs and landing at
the screaming heroine's feet. Wait"”why are you moving away from me?
A warning: This list will
contain spoilers, so if you haven't seen some of these movies, and you prefer
to remain unspoiled, do not read any further. You have been warned. You know,
like in a horror movie prologue.
10. AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON (1981)
For a kid who grew up loving
Hammer Horror films AND National Lampoon
magazine, this is the perfect movie"”a great mix of horror and comedy. David
(David Naughton) and Jack (Griffin Dunne) are two college pals backpacking on
the moors of chilly England where they run afoul of a local werewolf. Dude,
that was sonot listed in the Frommers
Guide. David is taken to a hospital in London to recover but is visited by his
now-undead-and-not-loving-it, toast-eating pal, Jack, who warns David that when
the moon is full, he's going to change. A lot. Like, don't make dinner plans, and
don't be wearing your best clothes when it all gets real.
What's great about AAWIL is
that it succeeds so well on both levels: The comedy is completely disarming (I
particularly love the scene in which the hero is visited by the undead in an
adult movie house, and the mauled fiancée is all English cheer and politeness)
while the scares are quite scary (Hello, businessman-in-the-London Underground
station!) It also jump-started my crush on Griffin Dunne who gets all the best
lines here. Plus, the soundtrack"”"Bad Moon Rising," "Blue Moon," "Moondance""”is
pretty darn clever.
9. WHEN A STRANGER CALLS (1979)
If you ever wondered why
teenaged girls suddenly stopped babysitting and started working at the local
Taco Bell, look no further than this movie which singlehandedly moved
babysitting from "Great way to make a few bucks on a Saturday night" to "Great
way to meet a homicidal maniac." To this day, the sound of an icemaker dropping
its frosty load makes me run for cover. And if I ever pick up the phone and
hear, "Have you checked the children yet?" I will need defibrillation paddles
STAT.
Teenaged babysitter and
all-around good kid Jill (Carol Kane!) is babysitting in a darkened house when
Billy Crystal jumps out and says, "It just so happens he's mostly dead!" and"¦oh, sorry. Wrong movie. Strike that. Anyhoots, Carol's
babysitting but she keeps getting these weird prank calls asking her if she's
checked the children yet. It's starting to work on her nerves, and we are
treated to lots of creepy build-up: the aforementioned icemaker sounds. A near
attempt at going upstairs. A frightened Carol staring into the dark outside the
windows. What could be out there, you
think. Better stay inside, Carol, and
keep those doors locked! Well, Carol hears you, and she does just that.
When she's finally good and
terrified, though, she has the police trace the call and they phone her back
frantically to let her know that the call is coming from inside the house! All together now: AAAAAHHHHHH!!!! And that's just
the first thirty minutes of the movie, folks. There's another hour to go. I
won't tell you what happens but suffice it to say that Charles Durning shows
up, and you know that where he goes, bad things follow.
8. THE EVIL DEAD II(1987)
Bruce Campbell. Sam Raimi. A
chainsaw. "Grooovy"¦" #nuffsaid
I'm not normally a fan of
gore, unless it's highly stylized gore from Italian horror master, Dario
Argento, and every death scene is like a nightmare-by-Missoni. Even the
wallpaper in this movie seems malevolent.
Jessica Harper, who was the
go-to girl for 1970's horror movies, stars as Suzy Bannion, an American dancer
attending a girls' dance academy in Germany. From the get, things are weird: Suzy
arrives in the middle of the night to see a panicked girl running away from the
academy and into the nearby forest. Because
that's not ominous AT ALL. Suzy's not real quick on the uptake, though, so
she sticks around, even though maggots fall from the ceiling. Because, you
know, sometimes that just happens.
There are murders
galore"”INCREDIBLE murders!"”and an old blind man, witches, poisonings, glowing
eyes outside windows, an attic filled with barbed wire, and one impaling that
isn't the slightest bit phallic. None of it makes much sense. But the plot is
incidental. In fact, if you go in expecting linear flow, you'll set yourself up
for disappointment. Instead, allow yourself to be carried away into an
Expressionist nightmare awash in surreal sets; Technicolor, Grand Guignol
imagery; and the bordering-on-camp dark humor that makes for an XL 1970's Grimm's
Fairy Tale. Add in that flesh-crawling soundtrack by Goblin (Fact: Prog-rock
makes everything scarier) and you might just have to watch "Step Up" to
reestablish your happy place when it comes to dance academies.
One thing's for sure: You'll never
feel the same way about stained glass ceilings again.
"Redrum! Redrum! Redrum!"
Never before has an index finger been so terrifying.
We all know that when it
comes to horror, Stephen King is The Man. But King-meets-Kubrick? Now that's a
pretty formidable combo. Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson. Right? You're scared
already.) is an alcoholic writer trying to make a go of it with sobriety and
his wife (Shelley Duvall) and son, Danny (Danny Lloyd). He's been hired to be
the caretaker of the looming Overlook Hotel for the winter season where he can
write to his heart's content. Oh, sure, there was that unfortunate incident long ago when the caretaker went a little nuts
from the isolation and murdered his entire family right in the hotel, but let's
let bloody bygones be bygones, right? I mean, what could possibly"¦GO WRONG
Little Danny Torrance, in
addition to having a creepy voice for his finger, has been gifted with "The Shining""”a
form of telepathy that allows him to see blood washing out of elevators and dead
twin girls in pinafores who want to play "forever and ever and ever." That is a
gift I would want to return, frankly. Danny's got a bad feeling about the
Overlook Hotel, and for good reason. It is the granddaddy of haunted houses. If
you think it's hard to get stale smoke smell out of hotel walls, just try
getting rid of entrenched evil. It becomes clear over the crushing long haul of
days that something ain't right about the Overlook, and Danny's family is in
terrible danger. Dun-dun-DUN!
Super scary moment: Danny,
who has free run of the hotel, riding his Big Wheel around the empty hallways.
The camera angle only lets us see what Danny can see. (What's around the next
corner? We. Don't. Know.) But it's the sound of the Big Wheel tires rumbling
across the wooden floor then going silent on the plush carpets before going
loud again that is completely unnerving.
I started to list more scary
moments and realized that there isn't a moment in this movie that isn't
frightening. The "Overlook Hotel" is actually the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park,
Colorado, not far from my brother's house. He drove me there once. I declined
to get out of the car.
5. THE OMEN (1976)
I went to see this in sixth
grade with a pal whose parents were fern-decorating, Fleetwood Mac-listening,
macramé-wearing, Let-It-All-Hang-Out folks who thought kids should be exposed
to everything in order to "expand their consciousness" (and avoid the need for
an expensive babysitter). Yeah, thanks for the nightmares, Mr. and Mrs. W.
Needless to say, this scared the pee-pee out of me.
I should probably mention
that I have a tiered system for horror, from mild thrills to major chills to
I-Will-Need-You-To-Hold-My-Hand-Through-the-Night. Let me break it down for
you:
- Dude, Watch Out for that Freak (Friday the 13th,
Halloween, Silence of the Lambs, The Beguiled) This stuff is scary, sure,
but my reasoning is that if I can outrun, outthink, out-hide, or out-bludgeon
the thing chasing me, I'm not gonna need a Depends for the movie. - Dude, This Place Ain't Right (The Haunting,
The Amityville Horror, Turn of the Screw, Session 9, The Grudge) This is
your standard haunted house/ghosts on the loose movie. I love that stuff"”love
it like Belgian waffles on a Sunday morning served to me by Jeremy Renner in an
apron. But still, I reason, I will nevereverever
go into a decaying insane asylum. You can't make me. No, you can't. - Dude, No Offense, but Are You, Like, a Malevolent
Being? (The Thing, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Salem's Lot, The Crazies,
all zombie movies) Now we're cooking. This is the kind of flick that kicks up
the paranoia quotient. The movie that makes you question your sanity, doubting
what you see and whom you love and everything you hold dear as evil closes in.
You know, like a family reunion held at DisneyWorld. - Dude, It's the Devil. We Are So Totally Screwed (Rosemary's
Baby, The Exorcist, The Last Exorcism, Audrey Rose, The Mephisto Waltz, The
Sentinel) This kind of flick is easily my #1 scarefest. It's not playing
around with minor league ghosts and maniacs anymore. We're talking Evil with a
capital E: Demons. Immortal soul threats. Antichrist shenanigans. Unicorn
warlocks. Repeated showings of "Showgirls." *shudders*
"The Omen" fits neatly into
this last category. American Ambassador Robert Thorn (Gregory Peck) and his
wife, Katherine (Lee Remick), are stationed in Rome where they're raising their
six-year-old son, Damien (Harvey Stephens), who seems to have a few"¦quirks.
Lesson one: Never name your progeny something that sounds like "Demon." Lesson
tw Casting director who found this kid? You are a stone cold genius. What
happens when Atticus Finch finds out he just might be raising the devil's tattooed
spawn? All hell breaks loose. Literally. Esteemed British actor David Warner is
great as the Me Generation photographer in a Studio 54-certified ascot trying
to warn the clueless parents. And revered Beckett actress Billie Whitelaw
chills as the nanny with a questionable pet policy. ("Nice doggy"¦") After this
movie, I was never able to listen to "Carmina Burana" or pull a nightgown over
my head again.
4. ALIEN (1979)
"In space, no one can hear
you scream," was the tagline for Ridley Scott's terrifying science
fiction-horror masterpiece. I promise
you, when I saw this movie for the first time, they could hear me scream all
the way to space.
My friend, horror writer Dan
Poblocki, calls "Alien" "a haunted house movie in space." It's also a monster
movie, a commentary on class and dehumanization, an intense survival tale, and,
as some critics contend, an exploration of primal fears of rape, vulnerability,
and birth. Whatever you want to call it, it's downright terrifying in any
universe.
The crew of the mining vessel,
Nostromo (Oh we see what you did there, Ridley Scott. Yes, we do.) is heading back
to earth after long months in space when they receive a non-negotiable directive
from their corporate employer to touch down on a planetoid and investigate a
signal. The blue-collar workers here look the part"”weary, sweaty, sleepy-eyed, cigarette-smoking,
coffee-swilling. Scott takes his time building up the believability of the
world and the characters, focusing on their relationships, the petty grievances
and intra-crew disagreements, the resentment felt toward the uncaring corporate
employer, and the palpable desire to just go
home, so that by the time the thrills start, the audience is completely
invested. That is one of the things that, to me, separates the great horror
films from the merely okay"”the investment in character and the slow turning up
of the gas.
The Nostromo, with its dimly lit
corridors, dark and narrow air ducts, blind alleys, industrial design, and
Things That Drip is as menacing as the alien"”claustrophobic and inescapable. H.
R. Giger's spooky sets and sleek, beautiful-yet-hideous monster are, of course,
iconic now, and they still terrify. My husband and I just watched this again
recently and even though I've seen it a gazillion times, I was still pulling
the covers around me. Now, that's a
good horror flick.
3. JAWS (1975)
Would you believe me if I
said I think of "Jaws" as a great horror western"¦on the beach? A Stranger Comes
to Town"”only the stranger here is a great white shark terrorizing the waters
off quaint, coastal Amity (what is it about the name Amity, man?) Roy
Scheider's Chief Brody (The Sheriff in these here parts) wants to shut down the
beaches to protect the good citizens, but the profitable Fourth of July weekend
is coming up, and the powers-that-be don't want to lose out on the cash. So
poor Brody has to keep watch, jumping at every screech and bark, until the
unthinkable happens: Director Steven Spielberg"¦
{SERIOUS SPOILER ALERT, IN
CASE YOU DIDN'T HEED MY EARLIER WARNING}
"¦.kills a kid. HE KILLS A FREAKING
KID, PEOPLE! That sixth grader and his inflatable raft are blood-in-the-water camera
chum! After that, all bets are off, and there's no sense of safety for the
audience. And Brody, who hates the water, is going to have to head out to sea like
a maritime Gary Cooper (along with his sidekicks: oceanographer Richard
Dreyfuss and seasoned shark killer Robert Shaw) to fight the bad guy
threatening the peace of his town.
Sometimes, a movie becomes
enmeshed with your personal life in a way that forever shapes it in your
memory. When I saw "Jaws", my family had just moved to a small, northern Texas
town where I felt like, well, a fish out of water. My parents were inching
toward a divorce that would take a few more years to sort out; there were
secrets in my family swimming in the murk under the surface and I could feel
them with that sonar particular to children"”an early warning device devoid of
denial's protection, much like the John Williams soundtrack here. That's what
good horror does"”it gives catharsis to the fears you've yet to voice and allows
you to deal with them in an abstract way until you can find the courage to do
so in real life. So thanks for that, Steven Spielberg.
Favorite scene: The men's
good-natured, slightly drunken, macho one-upmanship stories of survival morphing
into Robert Shaw's slow, moody recounting of the U.S.S. Indianapolis is
pitch-perfect, a real-life horror story that manages to be as heartbreaking as
it is terrifying.
2. THE EXORCIST (1973)
You knew this was coming,
right? I mean, it's as inevitable as "Layla" and "Stairway to Heaven" on a
classic rock station's "Top 100 Songs of All Time" Labor Day weekend countdown.
But seriously, how could I possibly leave off "The Exorcist"? It ticks off
every box on my checklist for good horror:
- Slow build.
(Check) - Doubt as to
what's really going on"”is Reagan disturbed or possessed? (Check) - A formidable
supernatural evil opponent. (Sooo check.) - Complex, flawed
characters. (check) - Believable
setting. (The Devil hangs out in Washington, D.C., believable? Like candy from
a baby"¦) - Political
undertones? (check)
Reagan (Linda Blair) is a
good kid on the knife's edge of puberty living with her single mom, a famous
actress (Ellen Burstyn). They've taken up residence in an old house in
Georgetown for the duration of a film shoot, and that's where Reagan is
introduced, via Ouija Board, to "Mr. Howdy." (Due to an adolescent experience,
I find Ouija Boards incredibly creepy, which is why one figures into the
opening of THE DIVINERS.) Soon, Reagan's a levitating, head-spinning, pea
soup-vomiting, furniture-throwing, crucifix"¦defiling, Mercedes
Cambridge-voiced, demon-possessed problem child giving two priests a run for
their faith. No one's getting out of this unscathed.
In DANSE MACABRE, Stephen
King argues that "The Exorcist" was a movie about parental fears of their
counterculture teens, which is a great point. (And the "film" Ellen Burstyn's
character is shooting involves student demonstrations.) But it's also about
abandonment, fractured families, loss of faith, existentialism, adolescent
angst/sexual fears, and loss. In fact, after the terror subsides, the feeling
"The Exorcist" leaves me with is one of intense sadness. A horror movie that
makes you think and feel? How
frightening.
1. ROSEMARY'S BABY (1968)
This is, without a doubt, my
favorite horror movie as well as one of my favorite movies of all time. It has
everything I love to get my scare on for: malevolent covens, anagrams, strange
chanting, a creepy old apartment building, mysterious deaths and illnesses,
paranoia, possible Satan worshippers living next door"”and all of it happening
in my own backyard of New York City. I love "Rosemary's Baby" so much that the
apartment building in THE DIVINERS, The Bennington, is influenced by the
Dakota, and one of the characters, T.S. Woodhouse, shares a name with the
protagonist of this film.
So often when we think of
horror, we think of physical isolation"”the haunted mansion on the hill, the
cabin by the lake, the motel room in the middle of nowhere. What I love about
"Rosemary's Baby" is that it takes place in the heart of bustling, modern,
crowded Manhattan, yet, the sense of isolation is palpable: a city of eight
million strangers, neighbors we don't really know, a woman marooned inside
herself, that "God is Dead" TIME magazine cover. It all adds up to an
existentialist mood that's the real emotional undertow of fear and dread needed
to make the ending work.
Rosemary and Guy Woodhouse
(Mia Farrow & John Cassavetes) score a desirable apartment in the grand old
Bramford Building off Central Park that has every New Yorker crying with real
estate envy. Midwestern, lapsed Catholic Rosemary wants to start a family,
though Guy, a rising actor with Hollywood ambitions, is reluctant. They settle
into the building and become acquainted with the eccentric, elderly couple next
door, Minnie and Roman Castevet (Ruth Gordon & Sidney Blackmer). After a
really strange night of getting frisky that guarantees Guy some nail clippers
as his next birthday gift, Rosemary gets pregnant. Friend Hutch (Maurice Evans)
is concerned that something's wrong with fragile Rosemary beyond that unfortunate
Vidal Sassoon haircut Mia Farrow got mid-movie. He leaves her a book on witches
just before he slips into a mysterious coma and dies. Soon, Rosemary's doing
detective work with Scrabble tiles and accusing her neighbors of witchcraft,
and the New Yorkers in the audience get to feel relief about their crappy
studio apartments with leaky toilets.
The majestic Dakota apartment
building"”yes, where John Lennon was tragically shot and killed"”stands in for
the Bramford here, and its gothic splendor is a perfect setting for occult
doings. When you can make a simple linen closet into a totem of fear, you're
doing it right. Ruth Gordon is a gem"”the overbearing-in-her-attentions neighbor
every New Yorker has invented elaborate excuses to avoid. Is she just a nosy
old lady? Or is she a minion of Satan?
As Mia Farrow's pregnancy and
paranoia progress, so does her unreliability as a narrator. Is she right to
feel afraid? Is she having some sort of weird, pregnancy-induced psychosis or
is a cult of Devil worshippers really after her baby? What, exactly, is Tannis Root? And how come Charles
Grodin isn't funny in this picture? Every detail is another card on the deck of
creepy.
Years after I saw the movie,
I read the Ira Levin book and was surprised to discover that the political
flourishes I had attributed to Polanski"”the Pope's visit, the Kennedys
appearing in Farrow's hallucination/dream"”were actually written by Levin, who
knew a thing or two about scaring folks. And speaking of scaring folks, I read
ROSEMARY'S BABY while sitting in a NYC park, pushing my infant son's pram.
But those are my issues.
--Libba Bray
