It’s Friday…
Ahem…I mean Frightday…
And I have some recommendations for you to enjoy this weekend…
Okay…This Frightday’s theme is…
Don’t Touch the Clickah, Kid…This Movie’s Wicked Pissah.
In 1976…
Steven Spielberg sent the entire world…
On a terrifying trip to the fictional town of Amity, Massachusetts…
And it was the first time that a film showed me…
A freckle-faced seven-year-old kid…
Growing up in a microscopic town…
In rural New Hampshire…
A truth that I already knew…
And that truth was…
New England…
Can be scary as fuck…
And in this film…
And the other films that I am recommending to you…
New England…
Isn’t just a spooky setting…
It isn’t just a baleful backdrop…
It’s more like a shifty-eyed, creepy-looking extra…
That just so happens to be…
In every fucking scene.
Okay, kid…Let’s take a chronological look at the best, most underrated, and possibly even unknown to you, Wicked Pissah New England Horror Movies…In the years following Jaws…That you may not have seen…But should.
Ghost Story (1981) – Now this little favorite of mine…Was filmed not too far from where I grew up…And it captured the vibe of that part of New England perfectly…In fact…The wintry exteriors were equal parts picturesque and nightmarish…Which is an almost perfect way to describe New England in the wintertime…Growing up here…You sometimes take it all for granted…But even when a New Englander like me…Sees the ever-changing landscape that fueled not only my own nightmares…But the nightmares of horror legends like Stephen King and H.P. Lovecraft on the big, or little screen…I get the same spooked out, mega-creepy, about-to-shit-your-pants sorta feeling…That those of you who aren’t New Englanders get…And this film doesn’t just have an overflow of that vibe…It also has some incredible practical effects from Rick Baker…And folks…This film also had one more thing…That scared this New Englander…Even more than New England does…Yep…That’s right…You guessed it…Alice Fuckin’ Krige.
The Dead Zone (1983) – Sure…I could have filled this list solely with films based on Stephen King novels…But I decided to pick just one…I mean…It’s only fair…I gotta share the love…And if there’s one to pick…I’m going with the King adaptation that not only screams New England…But it also has enough of director David Cronenberg’s uber-creepy cinematic ooze plastered all over it…To make this film a haunting amalgamation of two great horror minds…All rolled into one…Like an eggroll filled with live cockroaches and tarantulas…And then there’s the actor responsible for bringing the amazing character of Johnny Smith to life…Christopher Walken…In one of the most haunted performances ever to be captured on celluloid…And man…Walken portrayed the torment…The anguish…The horror…Of living inside the skin of Johnny Smith…Like nobody could have…And the indelible mark that performance left behind…Firmly cemented this film…Into the annals of New England horror movie history.
Re-Animator (1985) – When Stuart Gordon brought H.P. Lovecraft’s version of the Frankenstein mythology to life…He also gave life to the iconic character of Herbert West…A mad scientist seemingly cut from the same genetic cloth as Ol’ Doc Frankenstein himself…And this utterly deranged role has been played to perfection over the years by Jeffrey Combs…Now Lovecraft knew about this New England being creepy thing…Long before I did…Hell…It was even long before Stephen King did…Lovecraft spent his entire life in New England…And many of the settings that he created were based upon actual places that he had seen…Even this one…Which takes place within the ivy-covered walls of Miskatonic University…A fictional prestigious campus on par with Harvard…Nestled in Arkham…A fictional Massachusetts town…And the shit that goes down in that creepy little burg…Is enough to make you lose your mind…And maybe even…Your head.
Beetlejuice (1988) – Far too often…People forget that this film’s dark underbelly is freckled with one of the most frightening depictions of the afterlife…I think folks sometimes forget that the stink of horror is all the fuck over this 80’s cult classic…And I betcha it is sometimes forgotten that this is a quintessential New England horror film…From the flannel-clad Adam Maitland…To his staycation-happy wife…To their Volvo…Hell…To one of the most memorable covered bridge scenes since Silver Bullet…This film captures the sunny, simple, quiet, and quaint side of a little New England village…Which is an ideal counterbalance to the twisted underworld that the Maitlands uncover…One filled with perpetually ineffectual, immortal public servants serving an equally ineffectual eternal bureaucracy…And if that wasn’t enough of a contrast…The Maitlands also have an unhinged, undead flim-flam man living in the cemetery of the scale model of their tiny New England town…The one that Adam built…Back when he wasn’t so…Well…You know…Recently deceased.
In the Mouth of Madness (1994) – In this Stephen King adaptation about a horror writer who writes about a fictional town in New England whose recent work causes the reader to lose his mind is…What’s that? What?!? What the fuck do you mean this isn’t a Stephen King adaptation? But it’s about a horror author…Yeah, but the town he writes about is in New England…What? Oh…It’s not Maine? New Hampshire, you say? Oh…Okay…My bad…Anyway…When we the audience follow John Trent, played by Sam Neill…Into the formerly fictional town of Hobb’s End, New Hampshire…His descent into madness is flavored with all of the selfsame creepiness that surrounded my New Hampshire home…This film is not only one of the last great scary stories to come out of John Carpenter’s filmography…It’s also a bonafide staple on any list of essential New England horror films…Especially mine.
Lake Placid (1999) – In this tongue-in-cheek monster movie…We travel to Maine…A place known to tourists as Vacationland…And word of this apparently spread to the giant saltwater crocodile community…Because one of their ranks decided to take some time off in Black Lake…This film is a ton of fun…I can’t get enough of it…Especially the perpetually profane performance by Betty White…Everyone knows the only thing better than a toddler swearing…Is a little old lady swearing…But what really does it for me…Is the fact that growing up…I swam exclusively in ponds and lakes that resemble the one depicted in this film…And the fact that every time I stuck even a big toe in those pitch-black, mirrored shores…I was always completely shit-scared for a few minutes…Because…All I could think about back then…Was what the fuck might be swimming around…Just below the surface…And those dark, foreboding bodies of water…Instilled an inherent fear that coursed through my veins…And left behind a gnawing chill that once it had crawled up the back of my neck…It stayed there…For years to come…And that’s what makes New England lakes like this one…Such a scary setting.
Session 9 (2001) – Directed by Brad Anderson (Transsiberian)…This dark and undeniably eerie film…Takes us to New England…For real…Anderson doesn’t sell the setting as a fictional construct…Instead he chucks us headlong through the front gates of the Danvers State Hospital…A now defunct asylum in Massachusetts…One that not only has a haunted past that is well known in these parts…But it was also the inspiration for H.P. Lovecraft’s Arkham Sanitorium…Which in turn became the inspiration for Arkham Asylum…The institution which houses a great number of baddies from Batman’s rogues gallery…In this tale…We meet a group of workmen who have one week to remove the asbestos from within the confines of the hospital…Let me tell you folks…This setting was already so fucking spooky…That the director did absolutely nothing in the way of set design…Everything that you see there…Was there when they arrived on set…The film reveals the mystery within…In a purposefully measured pace…Which only serves to ratchet up the tension in this already tense New England horror.
We Are Still Here (2015) – Okay here’s a supernatural slow-burn that takes place in the dead of winter here in New England…This film is the directorial debut of Ted Geoghegan (Mohawk)…And it starts out like your typical New England haunting…Grieving couple Paul and Anne move into a quaint little home…In a quaint little town…Following the tragic death of their son…Anne is played by horror legend, Barbara Crampton…Who thankfully has had a resurgence on the blood soaked screen of horror movies, lately…And if that wasn’t enough genre film street cred…You’ve got Lisa Marie (Sleepy Hollow) and Larry Fessenden (You Don’t Know Larry Fessenden?!?)…Rounding out the cast…And as Anne and her husband begin to peel away the mystery of this haunted home…The truth that is revealed…Comes skipping down the hallway…Holding hands with the stuff that fuels our nightmares…The final act of this film is one of the scariest…One of the bloodiest… and contains some of the most original special effects…That I have ever seen in a ghost story.
Knives Out (2019) – Although not a horror…And believe me…I ain’t apologizing for that…This film represents the long awaited, and delightful return of the whodunit…This wonderful film comes from Rian Johnson (Looper)…And takes us inside the walls of a New England mansion…Filled with some of the most colorfully crafted characters to ever hit the screen…This was refreshingly smart…And loaded to the rafters with acerbic wit…And not to mention…A heaping helping of biting social commentary…The goal of which….Is to shine a spotlight on the vast chasm between the two remaining classes…In not only New England…But the rest of the country as well…The rich…And the poor…And the water found in the raging river flowing through that chasm…Is poisoned with toxic levels of misunderstanding and disdain…Which builds great tension…Delivers great laughs…And uncovers great truths.
The Video Store Clerk 