The Spider Woman Strikes Back not a bad late Universal horror

 

I've been watching the free Internet Universal Monsters Channel of late (Xfinity 4135) and in between some dull and boring 21st century horror flicks, the UMC shows a healthy selection of the vintage Universal horror movies. Universal's run peaked in the mid '40s and the films essentially were better produced and written "poverty-row" horror types. They were on their last legs.

A lot of these mid '40s films are on the UMC. I had never seen 1946's The Spider Woman Strikes Back. But I'm a fan of Gale Sondergaard, who was pretty good in a couple of Universal Sherlock Holmes films. This film is 59 minutes and I wasn't expecting much. It's a slight film with a kind of "let's-wrap-things-up-quickly finale." However, it was a pleasant surprise: a not bad film with a good plot, fine acting and a generally creepy, suspenseful pace. And it also has the disfigured Rondo Hatton, Universal's dying horror star of the mid '40s. (Hatton suffered from acromegaly). 

The plot: Sondergaard is Zenobia Dollard, a reclusive blind woman living in a mansion. Hatton is her scary looking mute servant, Mario. Starlet Brenda Joyce (also Jane in the Tarzan movies) is hired as Zenobia's assistant. Zenobia's had other assistants who have mysteriously left service. Although Mario takes some getting used to, things start well between the trio. But Joyce, (whose character is named Jean Kingsley) begins to have excessive fatigue, and sleeps too much.

What's happening is Zenobia (who is not blind) is siphoning blood out of Jean nightly, with Mario as her assistant. She feeds the blood to toxic plants, which eventually pollutes the milk. Cows are dying. Area residents get ill. The community is in an uproar wondering why this is happening. I don't want to give away the final reel. Other characters include Jean's boyfriend, Kirby Grant (Hal Wentley), who does some sleuthing for his beloved. Along with other townspeople, they begin to tighten the noose on Zenobia and Mario.

Sondergaard is excellent in the film, with a chilly politeness and solicitude that is increasingly sinister. Hatton was a poor actor, but in this film, he seems to show -- in his own way -- sympathy for Jean. He doesn't want her to die like the other assistants.

Sondergaard had previously played The Spider Woman in a Sherlock Holmes Universal mystery, matching wits with Basil Rathbone. Obviously, producers played on that in The Spider Woman Strikes Back. But they are not the same character, and there are few spiders in the film. The sharp dialogue and pacing provide tension, particularly when Jean is in the large mansion, at the mercy of Xenobia and Mario.

The film plays like a longer version of a superb TV show along the lines of Thriller, Night Gallery, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, or The Twilight Zone. It's largely ignored now although there was a recent Blu Ray release. It must have pleased viewers as a B feature in the late 40s.

Universal was soon to end their horror production. It became Universal International and made a string of flops until Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein became a bit hit. As mentioned, the Universal B horrors are tighter and more disciplined than Poverty-Row films. But it's the chaotic, slapdash scripts of films such as The Corpse Vanishes or The Ape Man that make these cheapie films more popular today; not to mention the iconic Bela Lugosi starring in many.

But give The Spider Woman Strikes Back a viewing. I'll wager you'll enjoy it. You can watch the Universal Monster Channel here.

-- Doug Gibson

Amidst the Changing Tides an homage to Puget Sound's natural beauty

 

Puget Sound is a beautiful 100 miles or so of interconnected marine waterways along the state of Washington. Its deepest level is 930 feet. Its average water depth is 450 feet. This reviewer has never enjoyed the opportunity to visit. However, I just finished an anthology, Amidst the Changing Tides: Stories from Puget Sound, that makes me want to explore its natural beauty.

The anthology is edited by Drienie Hattingh, who lives in Gig Harbor, Wash. (located on the shore of Puget Sound) Hattingh is a novelist and short story writer, and she has contributed to this book. Hattingh once lived in Northern Utah. This reviewer, although not associated with Amidst the Changing Tides, has contributed to several books edited by Hattingh.

There are 29 stories in the anthology, which includes beautiful drawings. All the stories are well edited and don't tax the reader with excessive verbiage. They provide up-and-close, often personal descriptions of life in and around the waters of Puget Sound.

My favorite offering was the story, "Senescence," by Shannon Lewis. It's a fascinating tale of the last day in the life of a giant Pacific octopus. The passages tell the tale -- incredibly -- from the perspective of the sea creature. It's a poignant story, respectful, as the octopus deals with impending death, the loss of appetites and comforts it has enjoyed for years. The climax occurs in a shallow stream as the octopus feels the warmth of the sun.

Although not a scary story, the style contained a sense of the ominous, a foreboding that I'm accustomed to reading in dark literature. I was not surprised to learn that Lewis is a published horror writer.

Another story I enjoyed, and learned a lot from, is Hattingh's "Stella and Mac," a brief but heartwarming true tale of two Canadian geese, mated for life, that return to the same tavern in the town every year since 2015, making their nest to hatch their eggs. As Hattingh notes, people come to the tavern just to be witnesses to this annual event. (I had no idea Canadian geese mate for life.)

"Sound Therapy," by Tammy Joy Lane, is an emotional story of an Iraq War veteran, a woman, struggling with depression and raising a family in the Puget Sound area, which has lots of rain and dark days. To deal with this, she embraces the area she's chosen as home, noting its beauty and charm through long walks and other activities. The climax of this story, of encountering a seal during a walk, is powerful.

"Fishing the Alaskan Waters," by Ken Malich, is a spare, matter-of-fact tale about the challenges, travel and stress involved in trying to make a living from the sea. There's no high drama in the passages, but I found myself immersed with the interesting details of fishing life. It's something I'll never experience, but I certainly respect.

As mentioned, there are 29 stories, lots of illustrations, and brief biographies. I recommend reading two or three a day. As you get to know these writers, you'll both learn a lot about and gain appreciation for life on Puget Sound, and the sea.

-- Doug Gibson

Backrooms vs Obsession vs Joe

 

By Joe Gibson

 

I schedule my videos on our YouTube channel a long time in advance. This can cause problems when, for whatever reason, I am improperly prepared come recording day (though recent developments have mitigated that) or I notice a glaring irreconcilable issue with the premise of the video or the completed file does not sit right with me. Since I script out many of my videos, I have the option to do this and just redeem a half-baked video into a blog post in such cases, but it is still quite annoying to shuffle things around to fill that slot. This essay went through multiple iterations before its midsummer recording and subsequent forestalling to August and untimely scrapping.

 

When Backrooms came out, I watched it in theaters. A couple weeks later, I was able to watch Obsession because, frankly, for a good while, it seemed like that film would never leave theaters, as I then watched Obsession another time the week after that. I think of myself as a perceptive moviegoer, but as I learned when I tried to write a “First Impressions” blog post about either film, I didn't actually have that much to say about them, even up until I tried to put these thoughts in video format. 

 

Up until my most recent rewatch of both films that sparked this iteration of the essay, (second for Backrooms and third for Obsession overall), I had resigned myself to the idea that I just have less to say. And that's a weird spot for me. I turned my disdain for the new Animal Farm film adaptation into a meaty blog post about Chairman Mao, but I had nothing to say about two new genre defining horror classics? Admittedly it took me a couple weeks to formulate my thoughts on Mao, in which time I probably should have done a rewatch of that film. As I mentioned, I now have rewatched both films with the capacity for pausing and most importantly, discussion with people more passionate about both these films than I am.

 

When you pair Backrooms with Obsession in a sort of cult film double feature, some cosmetic details about these films soar to the forefront of discussion. That works as a transition statement to the point I’m trying to raise, but it also is very possible that some of you have watched neither film or just one, so I am going to have to give some exposition about both films. So, I had a transition statement to skip over the exposition and then another sentence reintroducing the need for further context, is that a detransition statement? Good thing I didn’t finish this in June. 

 

 

In Kane Parson’s Backrooms film, we follow Chiwetol Ejiofor’s character Clark in his job and to therapy and through his aspirations and frustrations. The Backrooms, as levels of misremembered locales of the real world, provide an opposite perspective to his therapist Mary’s specific brand of CBT. His tenuous connection with his employees, once he has been in the Backrooms long enough, destabilizes into a misanthropic borderline cannibalistic possession of others that he gets to exert over the Still Life copies of ambiguously random people. At the same time, the horror in the movie shifts from simple survival horror to psychological horror with a confrontation between Mary and Clark to a slasher v final girl chase of Mary and the main entity in the film to finally existential horror as Mary is still not safe as ASYNC may not let her leave their facilities in the Backrooms, which themselves have made a Still Life of her. Her backstory, given through flashbacks matches the mundane to the magical with her mother’s delusion in some ways foreshadowing the nature of the Backrooms.

 

On the other hand, Curry Barker’s Obsession is about a young man called Bar who pines for his coworker Nikki. It plays out as a Greek tragedy of old showing the story of Bar’s cowardice, or alternatively it functions as a modern style morality tale where Bar’s obsession leads him to cross a threshold into the Twilight Zone where he should have been more careful as to what he wished for. In any case, after failing to confess his feelings to Nikki on his own terms and even after failing to answer honestly when she asks him point blank if he likes her, his transgression in the story is wishing that she loved him more than anything in the world. That sounds rather benign, but the discourse surrounding the movie has honed in on the fact that if you actually describe what happens without the magic, they go drinking at a bar, Bar separates Nikki from their group and makes a choice that gets her to think she loves him without her being capable of coming to that conclusion herself. The question of if Bar is taking advantage of Nikki comes up multiple times, and from there on, Bar makes the worst decision possible at every single moment, not learning his lesson even through the end. 

 

Upon a first watch, the horror comes from the tension of watching this new Nikki act not quite right, misunderstanding her social cues, manipulating Bar, snapping out of her role abruptly at times, and eventually murdering their other friends. Upon a rewatch or two, it becomes clear that the real Nikki is the more prevalent antagonist than the Wish Nikki that most stories of this premise would have you fear. Nikki’s suffering is still actually central to the film (both Nikkis but especially the real one that is fighting against the wish for the entire journey), and right at the end, Wish Nikki actually prevents Bar from making a climactic decision of one last instance of cowardice. 

 

From the midpoint on, Bar knows that his own death is the only thing that will break the spell, but he chickens out of shooting himself and instead overdoses on pills…but is about to vomit them out when Nikki wishes for him to love her. Not allowing your protagonist to make their climactic choice probably means something specific about the nature of the ways Bar and Nikki overwrite the other’s agency, but for the sake of this conversation, it may mean that they are coleads, especially since the final scare is Nikki coming back to consciousness in a situation with three dead bodies she has no way of talking her way out of. (Behind the scenes, Bar’s actor added in the final cowardice from the character, noting the pattern that Bar would do that because he had not grown at any point in the film.)

 

What I’m trying to say here is that if I show you two films where a relatable yet mentally unstable lead crosses a magical threshold that ends up causing the suffering of a leading lady who also has claim to the protagonist label and ends up outliving him, then those are the details we have to focus on in that conversation. Furthermore, the mental states of the lead characters are inextricably tied to the horror in a way we can't really ignore when comparing them. Clark wishes for a different world order based on warped memories of the past, and this manifests as the uncanny Backrooms and the Still Life copies it makes of him, Mary and random other people. Bar is an awkward, anxious coward who wishes for the girl he likes to love him under terms he decides and tries to modify to his comfort, which manifests as a new personality supplanting Nikki that is even worse at emotionally regulating than Bar is. So internal or external uncanny doppelganger replacement. At the same time, Nikki’s erratic nature while under the spell resembles her prior instances of drug use, which furthers the allusion to date rape. If you watched the movie and doubted that the date rape analogy works as an objective correlative throughout, rewatching the movie helps with that, because Bar never actually wants to release Nikki from his spell; he just wants a more palatable Wish Nikki and will draft any spell he can to get there.

 

Both films ambiguously include some thinking entity behind the magic. If the Backrooms is misremembering the real world, to what end, why and how? Is it something related to the mysterious Ivan Beck or do The Backrooms exist from something deeper and older than humanity and the experiments that unlocked it? This will sound weirder out of context, but Wish Nikki’s prose about Hansel and Gretel sleeping together implicates an older figure teaching them how to sin together, which is significant because the reveal that Nikki saw Bar as a brother comes out around that time in the movie, and if we thread these plot points, the similar sense of humor, cadence and casual sadism in the speech of Wish Nikki, the two (or possibly one trans) retail worker and the Curry Barker cameo helpline could point to some entity behind the wishes controlling these people.

 

Under this framework, I have felt confident in labeling both Clark and Bar as Tragic Heroes, and if you have followed the discourse online surrounding Obsession, you will know that that is an excellent way to get yelled at. So, I should clarify. Though the Oedipus type Tragic Hero is a good person whom fate and duty screw over, that is not indicative of all or even most of the Greek Tragic Heroes to say nothing of the waves and waves of literary Tragic Heroes that have come since. Framing a story around a person’s fatal flaw that destabilizes the world around them and ruins their life is enough to make that person the “Tragic Hero.” Add back in the fact that Greek tragedies often stipulated condemnation from heaven or the extant magic system, and the ways that the Backrooms eat Clark alive and final wish overrides Bar’s autonomy (after the seeming hive-mind of wish users that talk in the same cadence pass judgement on him) click neatly back into the Greek model. 

 

 

A Tragic Hero is not the same as a hero because usually the tragedies about each Greek hero cover the period of time where they stopped being virtuous and fell to their flaw. Creon, in Antigone, is a great King making the decision he thinks is best for his kingdom, but he goes against the gods and enforces his will in such a cruel and obstinate way that not only do you root against him but almost his entire remaining family kills themselves directly because of his actions. Ajax, son of Telamon, is one of the greatest heroes in the Trojan War, who valiantly defends the Greeks and does not live long enough to participate in the major war crimes at the end. Sophocles’ play about him is a character study about that time he went crazy with envy over not getting Achilles’ armor and tried to murder his friends before killing himself. The actions of Odysseus in most of the tragedies written after the Odyssey, whether they result in his own death or not, are highly suspect and very unsympathetic. 

 

I should not take it personally, but I am still quite annoyed at how many people have told me I am wrong for calling Bar in particular a Tragic Hero just because they can’t fathom old, established literary terminology being more complicated than a simple binary. The best rebuttal I got to that point is that it is weird to stick to the Greek standards and not the more recent ones, but we see a similar pattern anyways. Macbeth, Rambo (First Blood part 1 specifically), Eren Jaeger and Anakin Skywalker (prequel era specifically) are all war heroes in the backstory, but the main story shows how their flaws lead to their fall from grace as they eventually lose their status or humanity. There is technically a trend of sanitizing our tragedies in recent Western media, as the infinite ending variations of Chess fall on a scale of depressing to bittersweet to happy based partially on how moral Anatoly feels during the final match, but Greek tragedies also sometimes had happier endings that avoided the logical punishment (at least for Medea) so I think the Greek model is still applicable to almost every wave since because of how scattershot it was in the first place.

 

I have thought long and hard about how I would actually define the villain of a story, when considering that they could be either the main antagonist (Voldemort), protagonist (Light Yagami), the main antagonist’s boss (Palpatine or the old wizard archetype) or an incidental cameo (Satan in the Gospels), and I have settled on the main evil character as my definition. If the character fits those criteria as the principal of the evil characters or the evilest of the main characters, then I call them “The Villain.” This, of course, does not preclude Duumvirates or Triumvirates, and it somehow results in Sean Renard being the Villain of Grimm with The Royals, Black Claw and Zerstörer as mere seasonal antagonists, but it works the best for the most amount of stories I have encountered. Bar fits that criteria by the way. I am not disagreeing that Bar is the villain; that is self evident, and what we should focus on is how the story positions his downward spiral as the impetus for a horror movie. I refuse to bear any more lectures from people who define villain as main antagonist, somehow think that Bar qualifies as the main antagonist (instead of protagonist) and do not realize that Tragic Hero does not mean good guy. The online conversations about this movie are insufferable, but the in-person ones have been edifying. If you will still find issues with my definitions here, let us talk this out rationally.

 

 

One issue I have with Backrooms that is actually quite sizable is that I do not fully buy Clark’s descent into madness because it feels like there are about two scenes missing from his arc between when the Still Life corners him and when he has moved in with them and started eating them. The Backrooms bring out the worst parts of Clark, that is self-evident, but his fall from grace does not necessarily track as smoothly for him to fall as far as he does as quickly as he does. The villain of the movie is still technically the Captain Still Life, because Clark killing people and eating Still Life are behaviors coded to the Captain, not him. Clark comes off as too reasonable with his employees for his murderous and cannibalistic turn to come off as foreshadowed in the first two acts; the solution is to add in more moments where Clark mooched or controlled the other characters. (If this is confusing, just think back to Halloween Ends. Michael's evil is what infects Corey, Corey's villainy is coded through Michael, and Michael outlasts Corey. Ergo, Michael is The villain and Corey merely a tragic hero.) Now, a while ago, A24 announced that they will put the movie back out with 15 additional minutes, and that pissed me off because clearly it was missing those the whole time. Then, it came out that the additional 15 minutes was done in blender, which is how Kane did his web series of the Backrooms for the monsters and Hazmat suit ASYNC employees. And, finally, that version of the movie came out, and (according to Variety) the extra 15 minutes was essentially one of Kane’s YouTube videos just exploring one of the hallways from the film, so there is no complete version of this story. It doesn’t make the movie bad; it just holds it back from near perfection. I should note, upon this most recent redraft of these thoughts, that stories such as Euripedes’ Herakles introduced a fit of madness right at the end for Herakles to kill his family. There is better and more subtle foreshadowing in the third act of Backrooms, and if you choose to read into the possible identities and dynamics the shown Still Life have, you get hints towards some further characterization for Clark. If you choose to believe that the redheaded Still Life woman is the copy of his wife or at least represents his wife to him, it helps but is doing a lot of heavy lifting.

 

 

On the topic of Obsession’s character study, there is something interesting about Bar that creates the same ambiguity surrounding his intentions and mental state that the film blatantly displays for its dichotomous Nikkis. At the start of the film, his cat Sandy overdoses on prescription pills. I initially thought the pills were his own and that Bar was short for Barbara, and his friends only called him Baron out of trying to play into his own masculinity issues. Furthermore, I thought the mention of his grandmother early on was only to set up that Wish Nikki might have interpreted them sleeping together in grandmother’s house into her fairy tale inspired prose. Apparently, the pills belonged to his grandmother Barbara, which I could do without for the sake of this tragedy, but it does not really matter. Bar clearly needs some kind of counseling and medication, and whether he is on prescription pills or just has a family history of problems necessitating them does not change much.

 

In any case, in that first scene, he finds that Sandy has eaten the pills with her food, and this serves to foreshadow some plot beats later on. He wants to stay home and mourn Sandy, but Nikki tells him to come to the bar and he comes. He also explains that it hasn’t really set in yet, the death. That scene justifies a later one when Wish Nikki murders Sarah in front of him, and he is visibly not processing it in the moment and folds when Nikki tells him they have to hide the body. His central flaw of cowardice used the same way to show escalating stakes. 

 

Where this gets interesting is that the bottom of the pill bottle says not to eat the pills, which is an odd label to put, and we never actually see Sandy knock the pill bottle down. Bar is not aware of leaving the pill bottle out, but considering that this whole movie exists to document Bar’s inability to take responsibility for anything while he selfishly focuses on his obsession, his inability to see that his negligence would kill his cat is a good visual metaphor. Tragedies (often) have prologues, an initial monologue or primer, but this could also go further if you will permit the tinfoil hat (this is still much less of a stretch than many of the popular fan theories out there about either film).

 

Now once Nikki is under the spell, she wakes up at the slightest provocation as part of the codependence…except for one scene. When Bar is texting Sarah right before Nikki wakes up and kills her, the real Nikki comes to the surface begging for Bar to kill her because the fake one is sleeping. But Bar has time to carry on a whole conversation with her and put on clothes and leave with the fake Nikki asleep. When Bar talks with Sarah, he says he has sleeping pills in his pocket, which is such a weird detail to include because he never uses those pills again, wasn’t wearing those clothes in bed and has no real reason to bring it up. Taking all that together though, it really seems like the film is saying that he drugged Nikki, but he was still scared she would notice him leaving, which suggests he might not be aware he drugged her. And if that’s the case, then that would further justify the suggestion that he left his pills out for the cat in some kind of fugue state. As far as we can tell, the magic in the film is objectively real in-universe and not the result of his delusions. At the same time, the film juxtaposes his feelings with fake Nikki’s, and the ambiguity of the title could be describing his own obsession and not the one he creates. If we accept that he unintentionally killed the cat and drugged Nikki, then his obsession also led him to act erratically, snapping back between two understandings of awareness, and the film is trying to see if we will ignore that for a cowardly man but not a “hysterical” woman. Nikki has a better excuse for her actions in this film. As my subsequent conversations with other viewers has uncovered the realization that her intentions are far less ambiguous than I realized, the pattern seems to be that after seeing her reflection, the real Nikki can surface to try and hurt Bar or herself, after which point the Wish version goes and overcompensates. I prefer the ambiguity, especially since Wish Nikki’s hands aren’t clean of blood entirely given the Sarah incident, but knowing the actual dynamic clears up Nikki’s behavior throughout the film, which is an important step towards giving her back her voice in this story. (This is why Nikki has, I believe, nearly equal claim to the label of protagonist.)

 

Now, which film is better? Obsession. I think it’s obviously the better film. I’ve already highlighted the ways I find the writing to be tighter and more intricate, but I think it is closer than it might seem. I have Backrooms at like an 8 out of 10 personally, and Obsession, while better, is still below a 9. Both films have excellent directing and superb acting; Chiwetol Ejiofor was amazing in particular. And on the finer levels of cinematography and color grading, both films used darkness more effectively than most modern larger studio films. You can still see what is going on, just not as much as you would like to, some of the details blacked out to make it scarier. Many blockbusters annoyingly use a black and orange color scale very arbitrarily, but Backrooms slipped into that naturally to escalate the fear in a scene by juxtaposing the usual white and orange aesthetic of the Backrooms. Naturally, this is another area I do not feel confident speaking on outside of these vague statements, so I have had difficulty articulating this in the prior drafts, and I do not even think I have done the best job now. 

 

Obsession has better characters in my assessment because Mary, aside from her flashbacks, is static until Clark’s arc has run, Clark is less easily understandable than if the flashbacks had been his instead, and his employees really do not amount to much. Conversely, Bar has a layer of audience insert relatability that masks his darker tendencies initially, and his tragic fatal flaw becomes clearer over repeated views. Even though he is very passive compared to most tragic heroes (though I would apparently be remiss not to reiterate that as the main evil character, he is the villain), both versions of Nikki are actually active enough participants in the plot to push it forward as the real Nikki is behind all of her self-harming in a desperate effort to escape her torment. Sarah and Ian are also more complicated characters than I can break down into a single sentence. They have some great characteristics and other flaws that led them to fail to save Nikki. Really, the area that holds Obsession back from a 9 or 10 is worldbuilding.

 

 

Frankly, it would work better if Bar slipped into the twilight Zone momentarily to make this wish instead of the One Wish Willows existing in the world for anybody to buy. As I have mentioned, the corner store employee(s) and Curry Barker customer service cameo speak in the same cadence and tone as possessed Nikki, which seems to imply some hive mind entity is behind these wishes. That raises many questions. Furthermore, no other character in this movie has ever used a wish until Bar makes them aware of it despite the fact that they probably would since Bar did. Ian instantly wishes for a billion dollars once he gets one, and Sarah’s whole subplot revolves around her wish to get into a good school. 

 

The school she wants finally sends her a letter right before Nikki kills her, but Bar opens it after, and the envelope doesn’t disappear which means that Sarah earned that spot in her school instead of wishing for it. More sad, sure, but it comes at the cost of justifying the plot mechanic of a widespread wish toy. There is actually debate on that point; apparently the ink smudges in the letter. If it takes hours after Sarah’s death for her wish to gradually come undone, but Bar’s death instantly breaks his wish, that is contrived. What is worse is that the fix of having the letter instantly disappear would just remind Bar of the willows, which he follows up on in the next scene, so the only reason for that contrivance to be there is to make it seem like Sarah didn’t use a wish.

 

Nikki of course gets to wish for Bar right before his pills kill him, so she never used one either even though she wanted to leave her job, find love and be able to write peacefully, three things that would each make for good wishes for her to try. In terms of other common wishes, we see that homeless people still exist, the world hasn’t ended, etc so the mass marketability of these one wish willows is superfluous and just weakens audience immersion. I understand that Curry Barker has plans for a limited series or sequel exploring other wishes, but the history of the world playing out the same when one wish willows exist is an insane backstory ask. The Backrooms can slot into the Greek myths of the Labyrinth, but the idea that no fringe politician wished an extreme agenda through or a controversy away is impossible. Kane already accounted for the Backrooms opening late into Earth’s history though, if we factor in his YouTube series which gives a distinct unfair advantage for worldbuilding. 

 

Backrooms is still set within Kane’s web series, I think pretty early in the timeline, so the main questions left after the movie are the ones that already existed. That said, the movie does bring in the concept of multiple levels of the Backrooms including a pool level, which was part of the original Backrooms wiki and not something that I thought Kane could legally use. The entity in the film predates other entities in the series, and, though I was worried about possible overreliance on survival horror getting in the way of the existential horror of the Backrooms, I think it threaded that needle fairly well, though again, we are missing scenes of Clark to optimally ease us from the survival horror into the psychological and existential horror.

 

Sometimes, it is hard for me to write about certain films. Though Backrooms and Obsession are films we, as horror fans, will keep talking about for decades, I have been satiated by a few conversations already. It was conversations with people more enthusiastic about these films that got me to think harder about them and finish this post. As more time has passed, I maintain that Evil Dead Burn deserves a slot alongside these two films as a thought provoking 2026 horror masterpiece, but 2026 itself already seems like a return to form year for the cinemas (by return on investment if not quality). Though I can make no promises at this time, I think it would be productive to rank the 2026 films I've seen by the end of the year. Let us know if you would like to see that, and share your opinions on Backrooms and Obsessions in our comment section.

 

Novel takes us through the last, desperate era of Ed Wood's life

 

The Valley Obscured By Smog, Bearmanor Media, 2026. 

Alan Starkwell is a young college graduate, transplanted to Los Angeles in the latter mid-70s, with dreams of working in the movie industry. Alan doesn't have too many prospects. He has a degree in English. He thought he had a job as a script reader lined up, but his friend took the job from him. And he's crashing the same friend's pad with several others, including an ex-girlfriend who definitely is not interested in him anymore but sometimes hangs around the pad barely dressed.

Ah, the life of the educated young poor two generations ago ...

Alan, needing cash as soon as possible, has a potential job tossed to him, It's a publishing house. He hurries to the job and is hired on the spot by the owner Bernie Bloom, who says he needs a magazine editor. The business office has locks just about everywhere. Alan is assigned a windowless area to churn out copy all day long. The pay's low but there are bonuses if you write a book once a month.

Fans of the cult auteur Edward D. Wood Jr. will recognize the setting. It's a pornography publisher called Pendulum. Ed Wood spent much of his last several years there writing stories, novels, film captions, essays, screenplays, even directing. For $200 a week, Alan is expected to write fiction and non-fiction for the magazines. In these magazines the highest priority are photos, not text. 

Alan can make an extra $800 to $1,000 a month if he can pen a porn book, preferably non-fiction sourced with a "doctor" of some sorts to lend legitimacy on topics such as sex between a husband and wife, or homosexuality, etc. There's even a library in the office with source material that Bloom has purchased. Dr. T.K. Peters, anyone? ...

Most of the staff is young, like Alan. Most are unmotivated, except an older writer, who keeps to himself. This guy, Ed Wood, likes to also occasionally work in women's clothes. He's dismissed and often chided by the staff. They shrug off his disapproval of their laziness, thinking him a tired, old drunk.

There's some truth to the "tired old drunk" moniker, but Alan -- not cynical, just skeptical -- finds the old man interesting. Over the course of a couple of weeks, Alan and Ed form a kind of team. Ed's been assigned to direct a movie, to be called "Necromania: A Tale of Weird Love." He has $7,000 to do it. He wants Alan as his assistant. Alan knows he's unqualified for the job but wants to be a part of any movie. 

Alan becomes more of an assistant. He becomes a kind of minder for Ed, once a movie director but now an unreliable alcoholic hanging on to his job. Ed needs someone to care about him; make sure he gets out of bed, his apartment, and finishes the porn film. Ed's job depends on it.

W. Paul Apel has crafted a novel that provides readers a glimpse of what Wood's life was probably like in his final years. In my opinion, it's another addition to the surge of Ed-Wood related books the past decade-plus that -- read together -- provide a sort of biography of Wood's life, before and after, what occurs in the Tim Burton film, "Ed Wood." 

I'll stop with mostly plot narrative. Writer Apel has created an accurate portrayal of Los Angeles/Hollywood of the '70s. He's placed the release of "Star Wars" in his time frame. Alan thinks Ed would be excited about this new blockbuster. Ed isn't but he does perk up a bit when Alan mentions Peter Cushing is in Star Wars. 

Ed's dreams live in the past; but he exists in a hard, tough present where Imperial whiskey is most real to him

Apel's research is a plus for the reader. Scenes in the narrative derive from Rudolph Grey's classic oral biography of Wood, Nightmare of Ecstasy. (A quick note: I wrote my NOE review when many of the myths of Ed Wood were still believed.) And Apel has clearly seen the many documentaries and read the growing list of books on Ed Wood, the Ed Wood Wednesdays blog from Joe Blevins, and Bob Blackburn's Ed Wood Jr. Facebook page. 

Shannon Dolder, a young woman neighbor of Wood's in the infamous Yucca Street apartment complex in Hollywood Wood and wife Kathy endured, becomes in the novel a sort of pal to Alan. The late Dolder, who was part of the '70s and '80s LA punk scene, accompanies our protagonist Alan to a reading from poet/novelist Charles Bukowski, and meets rocker Keith Moon; both are fun interludes.

But when Alan and Ed frantically attempt to complete Necromania in a couple of days, contemporaries of Wood surface. There's Ed's wife, Kathy Wood. There's a phone call to Vampira who turns down a part in "Necromania." There's a lot of Criswell in the novel. They visit him and his eccentric wife. Criswell loans Wood a coffin and visits the movie set, which of course includes Hal Guthu, cinematographer and agent to adult actresses. Porn starlet Rene Bond, and her husband Rick Lutze, both in "Necromania," are in the novel. And there's a hilarious passage of Alan and Ed, after egocentric porn star John Holmes turns them down, sneaking out of the iconic Tail O' the Cock restaurant, stiffing Holmes with the cost of a steak dinner.

Ed Wood fans know, of course, that "Necromania" was filmed several years before 1977, the novel's time. But including the film in the narrative makes sense. It provides a central theme; Wood's economic survival, perhaps his life, depends on him finishing that film. Alan becomes a participant in that drama stress. The film also provides a more interesting center than the locked-up colorless Pendulum offices. There is one fun scene where cops raid Pendulum, which was a normal occurrence back then. (Much of the Pendulum offices scenes are recollections of the late Leo Eaton, who worked with Wood there, and Robert Cremer, biographer of Bela Lugosi who interviewed Wood in the 1970s.)

Apel has written a fast-moving, entertaining novel Wood fans will devour like a fine dinner with great dessert. But even those not aware of Wood's career can enjoy the novel if they come across it. It's an interesting tale of a young, penniless writer living essentially by his wits, grabbing the only job he can snag. And this writer finds a kind of mentor, old and weak, but with a backstory that turns out to be so interesting.

--- Doug Gibson

Apel's Amazon page is here. He's written a non-fiction book -- I Watched Football Early the Day I Died: The Lost Ed Wood Frank Leahy Screenplay -- based on an unproduced screenplay Wood wrote on the life of the legendary Notre Dame football coach. Apel is currently writing a book called Necromania: A Tale of Weird Lit -- The Pulp Fiction of Ed Wood. ... The endurance of Wood's 50 years-plus appeal and cult status is fascinating. It first peaked in the mid to late 90s, after Grey's Nightmare of Ecstasy, Burton's film Ed Wood, various documentaries, and now-defunct genre magazines such as Cult Movies and Psychotronic Video. But the cult never went away. The past 12 years or so it's grown, along with a renewed interest in Wood's career post 1965. As mentioned, lots of valuable books, websites and Wood Facebook pages exist.

Watch a Plan9Crunch YouTube interview with author Paul Apel discussing The Valley Obscured by Smog.

Bearmanor Media link to novel is here.

Gauthier's Dracula Never Dies volume 2 scores another Rondo award

 

It was no surprise that Christopher R. Gauthier's second volume of the planned Dracula Never Dies: The Revenge of Bela Vorlock, earned another Rondo award for the author. Just as it will be no surprise in the future, -- Gauthier completes the final volume of the trilogy -- when he wins another Rondo.

Here is our Plan 9 Crunch blog  review of Gauthier's Volume 1 of the trilogy.

Here is our Plan9Crunch YouTube interview with Gauthier after Volume 2 was released.

The strength with any Gauthier art creation is the prose ... and the passion. I described Volume 1 as a "primal scream." Both books are a tale of a proud, talented actor, who has survived a lot, maintaining his dignity and honor despite cruel brickbats from fellow actors, smarmy film executives, arrogant critics, and a rather fickle public.

And actor Bela Vorlock eventually gets -- as the title says -- his revenge. In Volume 2 he even acquires a servant/accomplice, a sort of Renfield.

I wrote the following blurb for Dracula Never Dies: The Revenge of Bela Vorlock Volume 2:

"Savage, dark poetry defines the prose of Christopher R. Gauthier. Volume 2 continues the righteous revenge of a proud star against tormentors. You'll be under Gauthier's spell, reading long into the dawn. One sequence I particularly enjoy features Vorlock carefully preparing revenge for an evil critic who has slandered him for decades. It's brutal and savage, but justified. In Troyman, Gauthier has created a character as evil as Ellsworth M. Toohey from The Fountainhead.”

And I penned this review: 

"Volume 2 of The Dracula Never Dies planned trilogy ups the horror from author Christopher Gauthier's tale of brilliant horror actor Bela Vorlock. On the streets of Los Angeles our protagonist takes revenge on the cruel establishment that persecutes him, including an arrogant, cruel critic.

Gauthier introduces a servant to Vorlock, who helps with his quest for accountability and dignity.

As with the first Volume, the book's prose is its signature strength. Gauthier is unmastered in presenting passion, anguish and retribution on pages."

Readers, this a darker, gothic tale in Volume 2. It exceeds the haunting darkness of Volume 1. However, the tone is very appropriate. Gauthier's talents with plot and dialogue make the events seem natural -- and even just.

The author has experienced a very challenging life. He is, as mentioned, a survivor. He battles adversity in the past and today, taking it one day at a time. The passion in the Dracula Never Dies series is as much as emotional response to life itself as much as the action within the pages.

This trilogy is wonderful tribute to Bela Lugosi. Dracula Never Dies: The Revenge of Bela Vorlock Volume 2, Arcane Shadows Press, 2025, will provide hours of dark, delicious horror for gothic lovers.

-- Doug Gibson

Heat Lightning is one damn good pre-code melodrama

 

I must confess, I absolutely love watching early 1930s pre-code films on Turner Classic Movies. "Heat Lightning," 1934, is one of my favorites. These films could be rated PG or even G today but it's the adult dramas and themes in the films that panicked the short pants of the old-maid prudes of the Hays Commission way back then. And Heat Lightning was Aline MacMahon's first starring role. MacMahon was a great actress; heck, she'd be a big star in this era.

I am going to post a couple of 1934 reviews below. I know they are tough to read. I will then offer a brief review from me and add a couple more newspaper clips to go with the one above. Plan9Crunch thanks David Grudt of Long Beach, Calif., for digging through Newspaper Archives to find these old press gems.

OK, McMahon and co-star Ann Dvorak are Olga and Myra, sisters running a gas station on the old road through the hottest part of California (I always think near Baker, Calif.) but town is unnamed. At their station 110 degrees is a cool day. Olga is the protective older sister whose lived a lot. She won't let younger Myra go to a dance because she thinks young sister's boyfriend Steve is a bad guy.

A whole host of wonderful vintage stars are in the film. Jane Darwell and Edgar Kennedy are wonderfully comic as an old couple who stop by the station for a car repair. (Olga is also a mechanic.)

 

Two rich divorcees (Glenda Farrell and Ruth Donnelly) breeze in to spend the night in rooms the station lets. They're with a world-weary chauffer (Frank McHugh). An impoverished Mexican family stays the night in their vehicle and sings at night. An old man called "Popsy" is traveling with two "cutie-pies" he picked up. The sheriff occasionally shows up.

Tension mounts when two men, George (Preston Foster) and Jeff (Lyle Talbot) stop for the night. It turns out George is a former boyfriend of Olga's (from her old days). The pair are actually robbers who have killed a man in Salt Lake City. They're heading for the border but George, despite a nervous Jeff, is determined to first steal the jewels the rich divorcees have placed in the station's safe.

I won't say any more about the plot's resolution, but I'll list the pre-code elements, and why the silly Catholic Legion of decency panned the film.

-- In one scene, one of the "cutie pies" (Muriel Evans) tells her friend, "Say, it's your turn to sit up front with that old thigh-pincher."

-- Divorcee played by Glenda Farrell is forced to take a bath outside. Her chauffer (Frank McHugh), a married man, keeps guard and later they are a couple.

-- Despite her reservations and distrust of George, Olga spends the night with him. George is seen leaving her room early in the morning.

-- Although it's only barely implied, younger sister Myra, who sneaks out to the dance with boyfriend Steve, is treated coldly by him when he returns her home; this despite her obvious affection. Her sobbing afterwards with Olga hints that she was seduced.

-- The resolution, not to be told here, has violence and a nontraditional opinion on crime punishment.

This is a melodrama with stereotypes, but it has that Warner Bros/First National heart, with all the great actors of that era. Preston Foster and Aline MacMahon generate attraction despite the latter's wish not to feel it.

This film pops up on TCM a few times a year. Enjoy a couple more clips below.

-- Doug Gibson

Ranking The Evil Dead Films With Evil Dead Burn

 

By Joe Gibson

 

Over the last couple of months, I have dived back into the Evil Dead franchise in order to correspond with the release of its newest entry Evil Dead Burn. First, I ranked the films from memory on this blog, rewatched the original and 2013 ahead of Burn (that was how I knew the incantation in Burn was 2013’s; I do not have them memorized), watched Evil Dead Burn, uploaded my initial reaction to the film, gathered my thoughts for a more in depth review of Burn, blitzed through the remaining three films in my rewatch, ranked the main Deadites in each film on this blog and rewatched Burn (and AoD, 2013 and Rise again). Now, I intend to rerank the franchise, but that might be a bit more difficult than I anticipated. There is a visual gag in the manga One Punch Man where, during the climactic final showdown between hero Saitama and arc villain Garou, both of their power levels are increasing exponentially, just at slightly different rates. Upon this recent rewatch saga of every Evil Dead film, none of them got worse; I found new things to appreciate about each of them, but some are still better than others. Also, I am pleased to announce that after rewatching Evil Dead Burn in theaters, I finally have some conclusions about it including what the symbol of smoking means for the movie and its ending. 

 

#6 - Evil Dead 2013

 

 

Yes, this film has technically both maintained its last place spot and even gone down a position, but, again, all of these films have increased in my estimations, just not all at the same level. Previously, I mentioned that I wanted something to make Evil Dead 2013 click back into place for me, and surprisingly enough, my rewatch of the original film is what did so. At each relevant plot point in the original, I could track along what 2013’s equivalent was in a way that proved how faithful 2013 really was. 

 

Then, when I rewatched 2013, I realized that Olivia is actually a decent character for her little screentime, in some ways an improvement over Shelly, and David, though held back by his premature exit, actually has a pretty good emotional throughline with his character. (Evaluations of acting should be tabled in this franchise ranking, otherwise Rise and Burn are the best by default.) Really, every living character except Natalie is good in this film and some (Mia and Eric) are all time great characters in the franchise. 

 

While I think the original film works in large part because of the chemistry the cast has, conflict is how the remake builds up its characters. Olivia gets bossier as the stakes raise, Eric is stuck between his unending adoration and justifiable bitterness for David (which could have come back in their final fight but didn’t), Mia loves David but harbors some resentment for his selfish patterns, and, as the main point of the film, through both her drug use and Deaditing, Mia says and does shocking things that hurt those near to her and herself. These characters either choose to stay by Mia even as she declines or they have already done so in the past. Using the Deadites to reflect the way Mia’s withdrawal causes her to hurt herself and say horrible things to her loved ones is a brilliant decision (were the film to commit to it).

 

Still, I stand by my criticisms of the film’s structure and its central themes. Showing off a Deadite in the opening scene kind of spoils the metaphor a little bit (the first film is a lot more subtle in showing the entity influencing the plot before it gains a human host, and more scenes like that in the remake would have helped ground us in Mia’s seemingly worsening withdrawal induced mental state), but the larger problem is that David’s arc leads to him finding a way to free his sister without killing her. For context, the cold open uses the trope of a grieving father doing what is necessary to put down his Deadite daughter, and the film treats that as the correct decision, not yet foreshadowing that it is possible to redeem a Deadite. (Unlike David, the father is not a good man trying his best without knowledge of what to do; there are literal experts with him that never explain that it is possible to cleanse a taken soul.) The arc of the designated hero through act one and two and deuteragonist overall is entirely divorced from the cold open, which otherwise serves no thematic purpose for the drug addiction metaphor or substantial plot importance. That is bad. As divorced as Jessica and her cousin in the cold open are from Ellie and Beth in Rise, it at least foreshadows their dynamic in a tangible way.

 

Also, while Mia works as an update of Cheryl, the other Deadites do not really serve any type of purpose in the film beyond self-mutilating and injuring Eric (or David in Deadite Eric’s case) for one scene before they die. The drug abuse analogy starts and stops with Mia. Olivia, Natalie and Eric, after their transformations, act more like zombies. What little dialogue Deadite Eric has exists to foreshadow the coming arrival of the Abomination, the boss battle that I had a difficult time wrapping my head around in my Deadite ranking.

 

The only way that the metaphor of ‘Mia battling the worst version of herself as the last step to getting sober’ functions on that level is if the Abomination has any investment in that journey, and while the film says that the entity is becoming Mia while corrupting her, there is reason to believe that the Abomination is not the same as Deadite Mia despite looking the same. They don’t act similar, and the Abomination seems much less intelligent in breaking its prey than Mia was. This would mean that the Abomination is just fishing around for its admittedly generic dialogue taunting Mia at the end, which makes it only meaningful for her. Again, David saving Mia is a good payoff to their story, but Mia’s victory against the Deadite symbolizing her addiction involves self harming in order to attack the being physically nearest to her, which is exactly what she did as a Deadite, so the movie drops the ball with its metaphor in a way Rise and Burn do not.

 

Overall, though this film is a meticulous remake of the first, I kind of regard it as a companion piece to Army of Darkness, going in the opposite tonal extreme and with a Deadite cast that amounts to “evolving doppelganger of the hero and its army of corpses”. The plot of Army of Darkness is so contingent upon its comedic tone outweighing logical consistency with the franchise rules, and if the main directive of Evil Dead 2013 is to have as much terror and blood despite the script, then it makes a bit more sense. In that framework, Evil Dead Rise matches with Evil Dead 2, as it is the closest of the newer films to that comedic tone (though still quite a ways away), and Evil Dead Burn reminds me a lot of the first film for its inventive grungy directing and black comedy (though of course Burn and Army of Darkness are the two films that feature a boss fight with specifically a skeleton). But we’ll discuss each of those films on their own a little later on. I no longer dislike 2013, but I also still feel weird grouping it with the rest of the franchise.

 

#5 - Army of Darkness

 

 

This movie is uniquely suited to make me feel as strong of joy as the scarier films can generate in terror, so it gets better every time. I watched many of the movies this film took inspiration from as a child, and so it still feels like something I have a deep attachment to even though I was too scared to watch it as a child. Still, I cannot in good conscience tear into the deeper subtextual storytelling of 2013 and not critically analyze Army of Darkness (which itself is also uniquely ill-suited for that).

 

The majority of the characters are simple archetypes, which is neutral. The Wise Man and Henry the Red are very simple features of this type of fantasy story, and though he looks like the love child of Scotty and Eric, the film only really starts to give Arthur some good material in the final act (when he becomes a pincushion like those two). After the procession of Ash and his clones, Sheila is the next most dynamic character, falsely blaming Ash for her brother’s death, falling for him, becoming Deadited and then returning to humanity very abruptly. That is among the issues in the plot.

 

Logically speaking, Sheila and Arthur should have fallen to the curse due to possession and damage taken, the ancient Brits of Castle Kandar should only barely understand Ash, his car should not work, the contrived presence of those textbooks in his trunk shouldn’t be sufficient for the battlements they make, Ash shouldn’t be able to swordfight a skeleton and his clone at the same time, etc. However, being a comedic action power fantasy, it has the best possible excuse for logical inconsistency of any genre: “it is both funnier and cooler if it happens this way.” 

 

If you try to analyze the film any other way, which I have spent way too long thinking about, Ash losing his mind in Evil Dead 2 makes all of the repetition across the original trilogy more purposeful. If Ash’s fight against the Deadites starts to loop back in on itself into resembling the comedy shorts and films he likely watched as a child, then the fact that he saves a character that gets turned into a Deadite via rape (Cheryl) that is his love interest (Linda) and also saves a strong adversarial pincushion ally (Scotty) after venturing into a pit to fight a with Deadite (Henrietta) and fighting a miniature form of himself (hand) is so much more interesting. Bad Ash serves as a shadow to Ash in this film, taking on more and more inhumanity and ugly attributes as Ash softens more into a(n almost) traditional hero, and it works as interesting commentary on the fact that Ash causes most of his own problems but still solves them, always in a kind of battle with himself but losing other people along the way.

 

I think the ambition of Army of Darkness lands better than Evil Dead 2013’s (it’s better to excel at representing nothing but comedy and spectacle than fail to represent something important and complex), so it is an easier decision than last time to keep it in the spot above 2013 (again both films got better but one more so than the other), but I understand switching these two. I would not understand putting either of these films that much higher unless the list is more subjective than clinical, but I will hear out any arguments on the quality. I used to think Spider-Man 2 was far away Raimi’s best Spider-Man film and Spider-Man 3 the worst, but I eventually came to the conclusion that it was just a consistently good but flawed trilogy, and I think I could argue that given the time and space. I look forward to well-articulated opposing viewpoints.

 

The list from this point on was very difficult to sort, so have patience and grace for me. Even if this order is not your same, you may still agree with some of my rationale. And even if you disagree with the rationale, it is possible your list will be similar.

 

#4 - Evil Dead Rise

 

 

Yeah uh, this is lower than it was before, but, as I keep repeating, these films all got better upon a rewatch. This part is less a case of some getting better than others; these next few are essentially a three-way tie because it is very difficult to order these fairly. I want this film to be higher, but it is more important today for me to rehabilitate Evil Dead 2 and Burn. Let us discuss the good and the bad of Evil Dead Rise. 

 

My criticism of the use of the high rise setting in Evil Dead Rise did not really pan out as well upon a rewatch for the simple fact that I compared it to the cabin across the first two films. It took the first film's tense exploration and the second film's frenetic chase scene to get a sense for that layout. Expecting one film to cover all of that ground was ill-advised. The high rise is a gimmick that allows for the inversion of certain scenes from the originals as I mentioned, but it also enables the forced proximity in a less invasive way than “and then the entity swallowed up a whole trail in the woods.” The high rise is a good setting, and the only weird parts are the convenient backstory with the bank and the slightly contrived inciting earthquake.

 

I find Ash and Alice more captivating than Beth, but as I have been trying to say these past few blog posts, the central relationship and rivalry of Beth and Ellie is the best written siblings to enemies in this franchise, remaining relevant to the plot and themes throughout the entire runtime. Beth and Ellie both have faced struggles the other hasn't known, and their reunion juxtaposes them so effectively. The Prodigal nature of Beth’s return and the sisters’ issues with their mother warrant its own essay at some point. The actors’ chemistry does the rest.

 

The theme of motherhood and motif of contrasting healthy and Deadite families are a bit more vague than the way Evil Dead Burn ties its Deadites so closely to the Price family's own toxic patterns, but that is neither a good nor bad thing inherently. Any metaphor is going to be at least a little imprecise, and locking your story too tightly into symbolism can result in avoidable literary misspeaks and confusion. Showing Beth the real Ellie's motherhood style and then a warped version of it is more impactful than having their dynamic be one thinly veiled metaphor, because there truly is infinite potential for how Beth could raise her children (heck, knowing this franchise, the one in her belly could turn out to be Ash via time travel shenanigans). 

 

Pretty much every character is likable in their own way, and, yeah this is notably the first film in the franchise where absolutely nobody gives a bad performance (though there is some accent slippage and once you realize Lily Sullivan cannot scream, you can never un-notice that). The entire scenario is such a well-polished tribute to what came before. It is still possible for this to regain its second-place footing one day, just the next couple films impressed me almost equally.

 

#3 - Evil Dead 2

 

 

Evil Dead 2 has the best ideas in the franchise and among the best execution. Though it is easy to view this film as the most undiluted Sam Raimi directing in existence, there were some studio guardrails in play preventing as dark a tone as the first film (and if you think Army of Darkness represents his style the best, that was chopped to hell and had the ending changed depending on what you watched). This film is the best showcase for Bruce Campbell’s talents, and it has far and away the best Deadite cast, as I recently argued on this blog.

 

The recap opening is still a problem, replacing the friend group's chemistry with cliffnotes (that really weakens the payoff that Ash's love for Linda is so strong, he can unDeadite himself). Also, as I recently realized, the rest of the film largely plays out compatible with The Evil Dead (the Necronomicon doesn't show up again outside of those torn pages, the door takes on its appropriate canonical damage level fairly quickly, etc), but the recap still ruins that continuity. Still, largely, Evil Dead 2 acknowledges and builds on the first in some pretty key ways.

 

Annie, though her writing still leaves much to be desired, picks up on the dangling plot thread of the Knowbys, and she joins the cast as a knowledgeable character to bounce off a more experienced Ash. Her few moments of guile don't replace a deeper exploration of how she can move on from Ed so quickly, but it is something for her character which makes her better than Natalie and the third iteration of Linda. Ed is fine, but the first new Deadite of the group usually has more going on. Upon a rewatch, Jake was actually a standout character with an equally reasonable rivalry as Ash's other male counterparts Scotty and Arthur, and Bobby Joe's scene with the tree is at least more tasteful than Cheryl's (and also helps bridge the gap of the tree's journey from rapist to boss fight).

 

I still have issues with Raymond Knowby's ghost because the easy fix with that is to just have those instructions be on the recordings as well. It would hit harder for his, at first, objective account of the proceedings to become more and more personalized to his daughter as his sanity and life fizzle. His ghost briefly escaping hell to narrate instructions just still raises too many worldbuilding questions and makes him seem like a Chosen One more than anything. (I am now aware he is not the only ghost in this franchise, but he still is the only one shown off prominently in the movies, so my point still stands.)

 

This is still the film I show people to test the waters of getting them into this franchise, and I feel even more emboldened to do so, because the direction, effects and physical acting are exceptional for what they were working with and in general. I just think that the cause and effect in the script is weaker and, furthermore, that the more intense guardrails put on Raimi's vision compromise it a little.

 

#2 - Evil Dead Burn

 

This placement was difficult to come to but feels right at least for now. In some ways, this ranking is inevitably going to be subjective, and I am now encountering the issue I have with ranking with Scream where every sequel has equal but opposite flaws from the last that make them roughly equivalent in my eyes. (Aside from 7 and 3, every other Scream sequel got to enjoy second place in my rankings at least temporarily as I watched them for the first time.) I am disheartened to see the mixed reaction towards Evil Dead Burn, because, especially upon a rewatch of the franchise and then Burn itself, it fits in quite well while doing its own thing. To an extent, I now have a loyalty to this film and a vested interest in trying to get people to see it the way that I do. Part of that is communicating a feeling, and the other part is delving into craft. My enthusiasm doesn’t make the movie perfect; this is just the same thing that happened to me with The Last Voyage Of The Demeter if you watched that video on our channel.

 

The core of what makes every Evil Dead film special isn’t Ash, and it isn’t even Deadites; it is the sheer hunger and enthusiasm these up-and-coming directors have for the art of filmmaking, the way that they test out new shots and push extremes in multiple directions. From the first scene of Evil Dead Burn, I am once again seeing things I haven’t seen anywhere else in a movie (maybe that is because French extremity is a blind spot in my studies, but even if these shots have a precedent, bringing them into Evil Dead is a good decision). Sebastien Vanicek takes Jessica and the Deadites as a whole and makes them his own, while still paying homage to the franchise up to that point. Edgar is a little anomalous as he feels more like a Sinners Vampire (the less said about the dog, the better), but Thya is a classic Rise Deadite, Susan’s bathroom scene clearly took heavy inspiration from 2013, and Polly is exactly the kind of Deadite you would see on Ash vs Evil Dead. I’ve already talked about how Joseph Price becoming a Deadite works better and hits harder than Scotty and Eric’s Deadite scenes, and I’ve mentioned how the film inverts the primal fear of going into the dark cellar by having Alice have to go into the terror by going up through the levels of the house. What I want to talk about right now is the richness of the characters and the thematic value of this story.

 

One of the main criticisms of Evil Dead Burn is that the characters are unlikable, and, well if we are reductive enough, we say that about literally every cast in this franchise (likability is more related to charisma and acting talent, which Bruce Campbell gained between the first two films). Still, the criticism touches upon an intentional aspect of the movie; aside from Alice (who is basically just trying to survive), every other character has a severe negative trait that defines them in the story. Thya and the other Prices are clearly aware of the abuse Will inflicts on Alice but do nothing. (As that is Thya’s only real transgression, the story has less to do with her outside of turning her into a short-lived but memorable Deadite.) Joseph is notably a coward, likely due to suffering abuse from Edgar, though Susan matches Edgar’s sheer aggression with biting passive aggression (the first wound inflicted on Alice by her in laws is Susan judging Alice’s footwear, forcing her to change, lying that they are the same size, and not caring that the shoes are so small they hurt Alice). Grandma Polly, though a comic relief character with dementia, is xenophobic, instantly assuming that the ambiguously brown Thya is trying to steal her money and never accepting Alice (even trying to get Susan to kill Alice rather than convert the strong Frenchwoman into a Deadite). What makes these characters rich though is that the film takes the time to show the limitations of their central flaw before they fall to the curse.

 

Thya is, again, on the outs with the rest of the family. She is largely a sympathetic character and notably does not want to officially get married to Joseph because she thinks it would lead to Will and Alice’s level of fighting. (This likely means that Thya has observed a similar pattern in the other Price union between Edgar and Susan.) Thya is on the outs with the family, particularly the grandmother as I mentioned, and she is mainly trying to stay under the radar and avoid contention in the family. That explains her role in Alice's suffering perfectly sufficiently. Joseph has more going on though. His cowardice is on full display for the first act of the film, but when Deadite Thya attacks him, he brings himself to fight back and even finish her off. Throughout the rest of the movie, even through waterboarding, he never gives up the location of the dagger and survives a long time, getting a few licks in on his father during the prolonged take of Alice crawling through the battle. He is the type of coward that finds his strength even though it isn't enough.

 

Edgar is the source of Will’s pattern of behavior. Susan believes she is nothing without her family and gives up her artistic talents for the family; the implication is that Edgar is a very controlling spouse that told her that. She also puts up with his aggression toward the other characters at dinner, and, if you will permit me to describe her role in the back half of the film without the magic, her main function is that she fails to stop Edgar from abusing Joseph. Edgar’s whistle for the dog is the same whistle Will uses for his wife, and while Alice instantly pushes back on that, I don’t think Susan would if that were to happen. Edgar is a hard sell of a character to be sympathetic, but the humanity is in the contradictions of his character early on. He puts on a gruff sense of bravado, refusing to cry at the funeral but doing so as soon as he is alone with Will’s body. When he later criticizes Alice for not even crying at the funeral, this makes sense to him because he knows he cried. During the scene of his infection, Edgar, this strong looking man, instantly cowers after seeing what Deadite Will can do. When the voices tell him to harm himself, he struggles with that, and when Alice finds him about to cut himself, he lets her take the knife and begs her not to tell his wife. It does not excuse any of his actions, but it builds a picture of a realistic character.

 

Susan, again, juxtaposes Edgar’s aggression with passive aggression, but what she really wants is to keep together this incredibly fragile family (the fact that she goes along with the Deadites even though it is obvious they are lying further characterizes her goal of keeping the family together as a similarly vain pursuit). She has sacrificed a lot for Edgar and expects everyone else to make those sacrifices too, so she is really a tragic character and the main antagonist for Alice because of their differing philosophies. It’s like if the rivalry of Jake and Ash in Evil Dead 2 mattered more to the overall story. The limit for what Susan will put up correlates to the amount of abuse Edgar blatantly inflicts on Joseph, but what makes her die as a villain is that it becomes clear, that she will not stop the Deadites from hurting Alice (or in the subtextual sense, she will let her abusive family do anything to Alice, anything to herself and almost anything to Joseph). With the lines clearly drawn, each character becomes the worst possible version of themselves and enact a torturous spectacle trying to kill Alice.

 

I have struggled to come to a conclusion about what smoking represents in the movie, because it is clearly a very important symbol during the start and end of Alice’s story. In a film called Evil Dead Burn that uses fire as prevalently as it does, smoking takes on further importance. What tripped me up is that Edgar shoots himself in the head to take a hit of the gun smoke midway through the movie. Smoking represents the disapproval the Prices have for Alice, her Frenchness, and her individuality from their prescribed ends. (Thya is the only family member that smokes with her.) Adding Deadite Edgar into the symbolism of the smoking and dramatically showing Alice’s bloodshot eyes brings in the ambiguous possibility that she has been Deadited by the end of the film.

 

What I probably should have focused on is Alice’s hesitation to smoke before the funeral and how she doesn’t hesitate at the end. In both cases, she takes a step to separate herself from Will, taking off the wedding ring at the beginning and calling him her ex-husband at the end. She finally smokes after a moment of catharsis, so it represents triumphing over Will’s control. For that reason, it would not make sense for that scene to show her being Deadited (and thus she probably isn’t), but, as I have said in the past, I would love to see her fending off possession for a film like Ash in Evil Dead 2 and hearing Deadite tauntings in her deaf ear. Edgar probably has no bearing on Alice’s smoking since Will’s burning touch is enough to instantly defeat Edgar and begin his corruption whereas Alice has the strength to grab Will’s burning head and crush it.

 

Because of all of this, I genuinely feel that Evil Dead Burn’s toxic family throughline is strong in a literary sense that 2013’s drug addiction imagery was not and even in a way that Rise’s motherhood conflict was not. Now, again, not every horror film needs to have this type of literary value, and if the story naturally leads away from the symbolism, then that is the price that the author must pay. Rise pulled back a little more than Burn did, in a similar way that Evil Dead 2 pulled back from The Evil Dead, but this part of the ranking is basically a three-way tie. I just needed to give them each their own spot.

 

In the future, some drawbacks of the film may become more pressing. Though I am fine with the Burning Will boss fight, the best version of this film might not have had Will pop up again after the car crash at all (as he lacks the nuance the rest of his family gets and feels tacked on after a climactic triumph just to have the obligatory final boss). Also, as Polly and Jessica proved the film was not traditional Deadite averse, I maintain that the dog should've been a lot more expressive, whether it morphed its shape or merely said “Dead by dawn.” When I encounter a three way tie, recency bias and reactionary loyalty can elevate one of those films to the top, but those may fade with time. A number score feels especially arbitrary, but I feel this film, on a level of craft, is in the same conversation as at least Backrooms if not Obsession, and it is one of my favorites of the year so far. If you, like me, place the first film at the top of this ranking, I suspect you will place Burn fairly high as well. They feel similar.

 

#1 - The Evil Dead

 

 

Throughout my coverage of Evil Dead the last couple months, I have kept gushing about this first film. Truly, this low-budget film managed to tap into some primal fears about demonic possession, body horror, descending into a dark and dangerous cellar, and the slow degradation of everybody around you as you are unable to save them. Watching this movie as a child terrified me and coming to terms with those fears has inoculated me to the other films on this list as the scenario of this film is classically the most terrifying thing I can fathom. 

 

The effects are very low budget, the acting is stilted without the more complicated character arcs of later films, and the movie is beset by moments of unintentional (and intentional dark) comedy, but this all contributes to an atmosphere of a film you should not be watching. The craft is there and a vision, and if you let yourself get drawn in, it feels real, with these regular people stuck in a horrifying situation. The horror is paced perfectly, building up to the Deadites and whittling down the survivors into just Ash. Though the tree rape is ill advised and shot a little too sensually, it is a load bearing scene as 2013 kind of understands, with a bookend as the tree taking Scotty out winds up forcing Ash fully into the hero role. 

 

Going more into specifics, this version of Ash is special for how down to Earth he is (please don’t ask me to pick my favorite version of the man though), suffering tremendously in a way that is played straight. He is more timid, and the bit where he stumbles on his words trying to remember a phrase in a different language comes back in Army of Darkness but serves to endear him to us here. I feel like 2013 kind of buckled in the shadow of Ash by giving David a sort of cool factor with the adoration Eric holds for David, David’s own increased coolness by reentering Mia’s orbit suddenly rather than just being a part of the friend group that steps up, etc, and from that point onward, it is impossible to truly return to the underdog Ash initially was.

 

It is still fair to criticize the other characters, but I think their chemistry and rapport shines through and that their characters are each functional. We see these characters talking, flirting, playing games to set up their relationships, and then the Deadite versions recreate or subvert those interactions to scare us by warping that which is good. If you want me to go more in detail about my thoughts on this movie, let me know in the comments. I have an easier time describing this film in comparison to the others because the tone it strikes is so unique and the demonstration of artistic craft so peculiar that the other films naturally invite that comparison.