Horror movies have, for decades, dealt with ghosts, vampires, monsters, mad killers and invading aliens and, usually, the fear of a violent death is all it takes to frighten a character into finding the strength to do what needs to be done (and striking a primal nerve in the viewer as well).    Characters like Abraham Van Helsing find it in them to overcome whatever fears or apprehensions they might have to gather the resolve to rid the world of relentless, blood-sucking evil.  And we, as the viewers, both cheer them on and find a measure of relief when their prey is exterminated, as if, somehow, we were in danger, too.   The same primal instincts of self-preservation inform us when watching a mad killer slashing fresh young victims.   We talk to the screen (“He’s right behind you!” “Run!” ), cover our eyes and hope that someone will defeat this menace or, at the very least, survive to fight another day. But what if the fear is deeper?  What if the fear isn’t about violent death at the hands of a werewolf or vampire or serial killer?  What if the fear is simply no longer having a choice?  Losing your free will?  Losing control over everything that is important to you?  It is a fear that is, quite frankly, one of the most terrifying things a human being will ever encounter but one that horror has only examined erratically, more indirectly as a side-effect than head-on as a condition.

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Major League Baseball is in the midst of a preposterously entertaining postseason, with major upsets and wild finishes happening almost every night. As I typed that, Nelson Cruz hit a walk-off grand slam, the first in playoff history, to give the Rangers a victory over the Tigers in the ALCS. Even better for MLB’s image (if not the ratings) is the success of small market teams like the Tampa Bay Rays and the Milwaukee Brewers, the latter of which has surged into the National League Championship Series, quieting the yearly calls for an NFL-style salary cap. With that and the cheap-team strategizing of Moneyball still in theaters, I thought I’d highlight two scrappy low-budget baseball movies which deserve more attention (read: a home video release): It Happened in Flatbush (1942) and Big Leaguer (1953).

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Every week I seem to have a conversation with someone about the rapid passage of time. Where did the summer go? The month of September? This week? Enjoying anything at a leisurely pace or taking time to ensure that a task is well done have become casualties of our fast-paced, urbanized lifestyles: The immediate delivery of services, information, and goods is more important than their quality; overworked employees in a downsized job market multi-task and work overtime to compensate for the loss of coworkers. Taking eleven years to create and produce a film seems out of sync in the new millennium and the new economy, but then everything about Robert Persons’ General Orders No. 9 goes against the grain of our contemporary world.

General Orders No. 9 is almost impossible to describe and categorize, which makes it difficult to market—a strike against it, according to conventional wisdom.  Various reviewers have described it as “a tone poem,” “an experimental documentary,” and “an essay film.” None of those phrases sound particularly inviting; neither do they adequately convey what General Orders No. 9 is about. Not that I blame the reviewers. I doubt if anything I come up with is going to do justice to the film either.

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The Vancouver International Film Festival kicked into gear seven days ago and continues on for yet another week. They bill themselves as being “among the five largest film festivals in North America” (this is their 30th anniversary). The other four are not named, probably out of a desire to not offend anyone. Obvious front-runner destinations by chronology are Toronto (founded 1976), Seattle (also 1976), Montreal (1977), and Park City (established originally in Salt Lake City in 1978 and now known throughout as Sundance). To be fair, San Francisco can boast of the oldest “continuously running film festival in the Americas” (founded 1957), and NYC got their festival going six years later in 1963. Austin’s SXSW, which was founded in 1987 as music festival, qualifies as the upstart once they added the film component in 1994. (Telluride avoids the hoohah altogether by eschewing award ceremonies and not even trying to be large, focusing instead on curating a smaller selection of gems – so although not among “the largest” it certainly remains one of the most prestigious). My yearly pilgrimage to Telluride has always prevented me from attending Montreal and Toronto, but at the suggestion of a couple distributors (and unexpected help from a guardian angel) I’m leaving for Canada in two days to catch the last week of the VIFF. Dauntingly, they screen over 300 films – but here’s a peak at the first handful to catch my eye, offering a quick look at the tip of this cinematic Canadian iceberg.

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One of the sad things about being a classic movie buff is the closed nature of so much of the experience.  Fritz Lang ain’t gonna make any more movies, Alfred Hitchcock is all done and gone, Charlie Chaplin has left the building.

Now, every once in a while, some old once-lost fragment gets dug out of the archives and brought back to public consciousness.  Fritz Lang may be dead but–almost ninety years after it was made–his METROPOLIS can be refurbished and given new dimensions.  Alfred Hitchcock can’t make movies any more but the discovery of bits of THE WHITE SHADOW can be uncovered in New Zealand.  Charlie Chaplin isn’t around to share it with us, but a previously unrecorded appearance by him in THE THIEF CATCHER can draw huge crowds of gawkers and journalists.

Still, there is no question that none of these experiences comes close to the thrill of the experiences that drew us in as fans in the first place.  METROPOLIS isn’t new, it’s just longer.  THE WHITE SHADOW will not slake a thirst created by REAR WINDOW.  THE THIEF CATCHER is mildly amusing at best.

What if I were to tell you that there is a cache of movies that you have never seen before and most likely never even heard of, that can stand alongside the best of Buster Keaton’s work?  A selection of short films and features that share none of that diminished expectations that dog his later work–we’re not talking PASSIONATE PLUMBER here, but entire treasure box full of movies to take their place with THE GENERAL and STEAMBOAT BILL JR.

I am not kidding.

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I am, of course, paraphrasing Gloria Swanson from Billy Wilder’s SUNSET BLVD. (1950), which is not a horror movie and, at the same time, is. It is on the one hand a deliriously catty attack on Hollywood’s cult of personality and, on the other hand (which is just a bloody hook!) a rewriting of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, with Swanson’s Norma Desmond standing in for the schloss-bound Count Dracula and William Holden’s out-of-work writer Joe Gillis a veritable Renfield, imprisoned, bewitched, bothered and ultimately bled dry. But I digress. I’m hot here to gas on, as I did that last week. In service of the coming Halloween holiday, I plan today to stand to one side of myself and present to you a gallery of ghouls who remain my reason for staying true to horror. I will keep my comments to a minimum because this isn’t about me, it’s about those wonderful people out there… in the dark. READ MORE

Narciso Ibáñez Serrador’s horrific thriller THE HOUSE THAT SCREAMED (1969) is often cited as one of Spain’s most important and influential horror films but its audience has often been restricted to genre fanatics. The highly sexualized content and graphic murders depicted in the film limit its appeal. But the commercial success of THE HOUSE THAT SCREAMED during the late ‘60s helped pave the way for the post-Franco Spanish horror boom of the early ‘70s and its influence can be seen in the work of directors like Dario Argento (SUSPIRIA; 1976) and Massimo Dallamano (WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO SOLANGE?; 1972).

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When one thinks of Spencer Tracy, Ray Milland or Jennifer Jones, the horror/supernatural genre rarely springs to mind and yet, each one of them was in a celebrated film in just that genre.  Spencer Tracy in Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde, Ray Milland in The Uninvited and Jennifer Jones in Portrait of Jennie.  Each one is a favorite of mine with The Uninvited being what I would consider the greatest ghost story ever put on film.

By contrast, when one thinks of Vincent Price, Peter Lorre or Hazel Court, the horror/supernatural genre instantly springs to mind even though all of them did plenty of non-horror work (well, Court not so much) before taking on the mantle of horror actors, especially Vincent Price.    Other actors, notably Jack Nicholson, did the reverse, starting out doing plenty of horror before graduating to bigger, higher profile, prestige movies in the seventies.

Finally, some actors, like Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, had only a handful of movies not associated with the genre (The Lost Patrol or The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, for example, for Karloff and Ninotchka for Lugosi) and seemed to inhabit horror to such a degree that their very names alone signify the horror genre to generations.

So after breaking down all of that, the question remains:  Is there a such thing as a horror actor?

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The 49th New York Film Festival is strutting into its first full week, rolling out red carpets and doling out free espresso to its star and art-struck audience. As posh as the whole experience is, this shouldn’t hide the adventurousness of the programming, which is rivaled in NYC only by Migrating Forms and the New York Asian Film Festival. I will try to capture the scope of the event with a bunch of short reviews (as opposed to my longer appreciation of DREILEBEN last week). Luckily, almost all have U.S. distribution, so they should eventually be available at a Netflix queue near you.

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