MOVIE MOMENTS: WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT (1988)

"Which scary movie moment freaked you out the most as a kid?"

Oh, give me a break. No contest. Judge Doom, as brought to manic life by Christopher Lloyd in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, is the stuff of kid nightmares. One of the all-time great movie villains, Judge Doom, in his all-black, Gestapo-like suit, is an eerie menace from his very first appearance in a 1947’s version of Los Angeles where “real” human beings coexist alongside walking cartoon characters. And he hates ‘toons. Vilifies them. Wants to dip them all in barrels of paint thinner (“the dip”) until nothing is left but colored grease. The evisceration and erasure of Toon Town. A full-on cartoon holocaust – that’s his endgame. That’s all bad enough.

And then the classic film’s lunatic finale happens.

Judge Doom is flattened under the wheels of a steamroller, only to resurrect, stick a gas tank nozzle into his mouth, and inflate his pancake body. His glass eyes pop out of his head to reveal he is, in fact, a ‘toon wearing a human façade. In pure, unfettered mania of which only Christopher Lloyd is capable, he embarks on a tirade in which he proudly, insanely, over-the-toply admits to Eddie Valiant (Bob Hoskins) that he was the one who killed Eddie’s brother – the crux of the movie’s conflict – and as his confession becomes more and more unhinged, his voice reaches a cartoonish high pitch like a whistling teapot before his cartoon eyes turn to daggers and springs burst from his feet, which he uses to launch across half a warehouse after a fleeing Eddie – and the whole time, his animated eyes are bubbling in his plastic face like a witch’s cauldron.

You know, for kids!

Watching Who Framed Roger Rabbit today, I’m still amazed director Robert Zemeckis was able to get away with the ghastly images that appear throughout the finale of his cleverly plotted Chinatown spoof. If the seed for horror hadn’t already been planted in my brain when I first saw it in my youth, then Who Framed Roger Rabbit was definitely one of the influences that cultivated it. (I also had an unhealthy crush on Jessica Rabbit, but that’s for another time.)

[Reprinted/excerpted from Daily Grindhouse.]

DVD REVIEW: ‘SCARY STORIES’ DOC FANS THE FLAMES OF NOSTALGIA

As someone who has adored the horror genre ever since I was a kid, even weathering the storm when that adoration made me feel like an outcast, there was always something comforting about discovering that I’d traveled the same exact road, and made all the same stops, as other kids had during their formative years. It was a joy to grow older, meet people with the same interests, and realize that we had  shared experiences and interests before ever knowing each other.

The Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark trilogy was a huge part of that.

I wish I could remember under what circumstances I first came to read Alvin Schwartz’s three-book collection based on urban legends, folklore, and myths. There was never a shortage of books in my house when I was a kid, as my mother had discovered I was an avid reader, and she was willing to exploit my love for all things horror (within reason) so long as it kept me reading. It got to the point where she would have to lovingly but sternly remind me that those monthly Goosebump books by R.L. Stine were somewhat expensive, as she tended to bring home a few at a time, and maybe I should try to read only a few chapters a night to make them last. (She brought home Deep Trouble one day, and with a shark on the cover, I read that book in under two hours. Spoiler alert: it ain’t about sharks.) I’m tempted to believe that my mother had been the one to bring home one of those Scary Stories books (for whatever reason, Scary Stories 3 was the first one I read), but that she’d done so without actually cracking the book and seeing Stephen Gammell’s illustrations. One glimpse at “The Haunted House” or “Me-Tie Doughty Walker” and she never would have left the store with them.

If there ever existed a bible for the horror-loving youth, it was Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. Incredibly, horror-loving kids discovered these books on their own, almost like a rite of passage. It felt like childhood destiny. The illustrations were tantamount to pornography—as if they’d slipped through the parental and school library systems on some kind of technicality and were never meant for kids’ eyes, but something glorious had gone wrong, and those lucky kids were going to get their fill. Gammell’s illustrations were often so surreal that sometimes they didn’t seem to complement their stories at all. One story in particular, “Oh Susanna,” was a retelling of the urban legend about the college student who comes home to her dorm at night and doesn’t turn on the light, only to discover the next morning that her roommate had been decapitated. The illustration that accompanies that story sees an old man in a rocking chair grasping a leash tied around a flying Lovecraftian monster and being pulled through the sky of a stormy limbo. How completely inappropriate this illustration is for that story somehow made both even scarier. Was it a happy accident? Was it a one-off illustration Gammell had done that had been arbitrarily assigned to that story? Or was Gammell depicting the instant madness that the story’s terrified girl was suffering upon the discovery of her dead roommate?

On the cusp of release for the first ever adaptation of the book series (produced by Guillermo Del Toro and directed by The Autopsy of Jane Doe’s André Øvredal) comes this low-fi, DIY documentary by Cody Meirick, which explores the history of the books, the controversies that ensued because of their graphic content, and their legacy today. Sadly, the doc lacks the two keyest players – author Alvin Schwartz died of cancer in 1992, and illustrator Stephen Gammell, still alive, is a bit of a recluse and doesn’t grant interviews. (Nerd brag: I wrote to him about ten years ago and sent him a copy of the Scary Stories hardcover treasury edition, which he returned with his signature.)

The doc speaks to Schwartz’s family – his wife, Barbara; son, Peter; and grandson, Daniel – some of which remains surface level, but some of which, notably the segments with the son, touch on unexpectedly deep material, including the strained relationship between himself and his father, and the regrets he still lives with following his death. Wisely, the doc makes use of seemingly the only interview Gammell ever gave, which is years old; resurrecting certain excerpts from that interview not only allows him a presence in the doc, but also puts the viewer directly within his frame of mind. (Despite how perfectly married his illustrations are to Schwartz’s stories, the doc heavily suggests that the two men never actually met.)

The doc somewhat struggles to have a “point,” with the backbone being the controversies the book series endured over the years, with one parent in particular (who appears in the doc via archive footage and a newly filmed interview) leading the charge to get them banned from elementary schools. The book-ban segments are smartly intermingled with interviews with artists who grew up reading the Scary Stories trilogy and who discuss in what ways they have informed their work, directly or indirectly. Doing so makes the case that, had these books been banned successfully, these artists might never have stumbled upon them, and hence, never become inspired to do their own creating. The doc also attempts to setup a sort-of squaring off between that parent who led the ban charge and Schwartz’s son as a knock-down/drag-out moment of drama, but in reality, they sit down and share their own differing thoughts on the book, neither of which have changed ever since the initial controversy, all while remaining ever polite toward each other.

Scary Stories also struggles to feel consistently engaging, even at a brisk 85 minutes, with too many scenes of interviewees, or in some really distracting moments, actors engaging in storytelling skits, reiterating some of the books’ most famous stories. Meirick uses these bits sometimes to help transition between points, and including actual text from the stories makes total sense, but a simple voiceover accompanied by Gammell’s original illustrations would’ve accomplished the same goal while removing the incidental corniness that results from watching two young kid actors pretend to be scared by a story about an exploding spider bite.

Still, Scary Story mostly works the way it was meant to: it’s a celebration of the black sheep books that permeated so many of our bookshelves in our youth, examining their long legacy and the mark they’ve made on so many impressionable minds. With the world becoming a bigger, warmer, and angrier pile of shit, the nostalgia machine is operating at an all-time high (the self-serving third season of Stranger Things proves this), and Scary Stories is all part of it. This exploration into the infamous books is likely as thorough as it could’ve been, assuming that Schwartz never spoke candidly about them after having written them—material from which the doc could have mined (as it did with Gammell’s sole interview). Because of this, the doc can sometimes feel like it lacks potency, at times feeling more like you’re sitting around having a lightheaded conversation with friends. It doesn’t ask any tough questions about the dangers of censorship, and it lacks the kind of drama that even documentaries have proven to include from time to time. Scary Stories is more interested in serving as a keepsake—a quasi pre-eulogy for books that, it would seem, will never go away, no matter how much certain parents may want them to.

The special features are as follows:

• Director's Commentary
• Over 20 minutes of bonus footage
• Closed Captions
• Scene Selection
• Trailers   

Scary Stories is now on DVD from Wild Eye Releasing, and Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark hits theaters in August.

#HALLOWEEN: UNSUNG HORRORS: LADY IN WHITE

Every once in a while, a genuinely great horror movie—one that would rightfully be considered a classic, had it gotten more exposure and love at the box office—makes an appearance. It comes, no one notices, and it goes. But movies like this are important. They need to be treasured and remembered. If intelligent, original horror is supported, then that's what we'll begin to receive, in droves. We need to make these movies a part of the legendary genre we hold so dear. Because these are the unsung horrors. These are the movies that should have been successful, but were instead ignored. They should be rightfully praised for the freshness and intelligence and craft that they have contributed to our genre.

So, better late than never, we’re going to celebrate them now…one at a time.

Dir. Frank LaLoggia

1988

New Sky Productions

United States

"The bells of St. Andrews were soothingly familiar, even in those strange surroundings. It wasn't long before I drifted off to sleep, comforted by their ancient voices. ...It was All Hallow's Eve, and I, still locked behind the cloak-room door, suddenly felt a wind sweep through the darkness, chilling me to the bone..."

Nostalgia. That, more than anything, is what fuels my love for Halloween. It's just a day on the calendar, of course, and one which I anticipate more than any other, but it's also a feeling. It's indescribable, intangible. Never more has a day been so ably defined by an entire scene found in paintings, photography, or hazy memories — sprawling pumpkin fields, forests filled with orange and golden leaves, red barns with white trim and a scarecrow poking out of the cornfield around back. This type of iconography triggers a feeling more than any other. It's wilderness, rustic, and somewhat uncivilized. It's an outlaw; a misfit. Halloween wasn't born in the streets or in a book. It was born outside under the moon, in the woods, amongst people honoring something bigger than themselves (with a little help from the Church). And like most holidays and traditions with ancient origins, it doesn't quite resemble what it once was. But it's still the closest. It changed over time because it's had to. To me, it's become rural America. Small towns. Main Street. Crepe paper on doors. Dead and dying leaves blowing across front yards. It's the end of summer and the pinnacle of autumn. It's changing seasons and changing leaves. It's embracing the night and giving yourself to the dark. And it's opening the front door to the vampire waiting on your front porch, who cannot enter unless invited. It's not lighting jack-o-lanterns or brewing the cider or smearing the greasepaint across your face that beckons another October 31st into being. It's anticipation. It's simply wanting it to be here and not wanting it to leave. And it's facing the fact that, sadly, as you get older, the things that used to bring you so much joy don't seem nearly as special as they used to be.

Nostalgia.

When I interviewed singer/songwriter Lonesome Wyatt for a 2013 Halloween post, his answer to one of my questions has stuck with me ever since: 

"The idea of Halloween is much better than the stinking reality."

He succinctly put into words what I'd discovered over the years as I found myself one year older every Halloween. As the years go by, it seems I foolishly try to force Halloween to feel a certain way, by the activities in which I partake or the company I keep or the foods and drinks (and pumpkin beer) I consume. More and more I am learning that this, not for lack of trying, doesn't work. Halloween simply was, and I've got to make peace with that fact. Instead of trying to make it feel the way I remember it being, I need to look back on the things I treasured that were synonymous with it.

Enter Lady in White.

It was Halloween. I was in fourth grade. I couldn't tell you what particular costume I wore that year, or what games we played at our class party. But I can tell you, at some point, the lights went dim, a television on a cart borrowed from the school library was rolled to the front of the room, and Lady in White was soon playing in front of us all. Though there's nothing inherently offensive or ghastly about the film, it was still an unusual choice to show to a classroom filled with elementary school students, considering the film features the ghost of a girl acting out her death and being strangled in mid-air as she screams out for her mother to help her, backseat assassinations, and ever-so-subtle allusions to molestation and sexual perversion. I sat rapt, my eyes glued to the screen, unable to help but immediately put myself into the shoes of the very young protagonist, who looked to be the same age as me. He was shy, and bullied, and he had an older brother who was sometimes his friend and sometimes his foe...just like me. It was Halloween in real life, but also in the film. The scenes involving the ghost of the departed took place in a school classroom, the very same place I was sitting.

At that formative moment, Lady in White was gospel.

Frankie Scarlatti, small-town native and successful horror novelist, is going home. Not home to Los Angeles, his present, but home to Willowpoint Falls, his past, where he lived as a child.

Following a brief monologue set in the present, it's back in time to Halloween, 1962, in Willowpoint Falls, where two brothers, Frankie (Lukas Haas) and Geno (Jason Presson)  race to school on their bicycles — from their rural farm where three generations of the Scarlatti family live and work, through the woods, and down to the heart of their quaint little town's main street, where they call hello by name to the people they pass. Shopkeepers decorate their front windows with bright and cheerful homages to October, and fill baskets with candy corn by the shovelful. Much like the charming name of the charming town filled with charming, small-town people, it is idyllic; nirvana; perfect.

"What's it like living in Los Angeles?" the cabbie asks in the present-day prologue as he drives Frankie home down clean quiet streets strewn with autumn leaves.

"It's...different," he answers.

"Yeah..." the cabbie says, as if to suggest no other place on earth could ever feel like home besides Willowpoint Falls.

Back in the past and later that day, once class lets out, two bullies trick Frankie back into their classroom's cloakroom and lock him in for a Halloween prank. After beating against the door, Frankie falls asleep...and later awakens when he hears the soft voice of a young girl. She's in the closet with him, singing and dancing — and Frankie can see right through her. Soon her singing comes to an end, as she begins fighting off an invisible attacker who has slowly begun strangling her. She eventually succumbs, and the sound of something small and metal bounces across the floor and into the floor vent. Frankie is understandably terrified...and it gets worse when someone else — someone quite real — comes into the very same closet with a flashlight, hunting for the very same object that bounced into the vent. Frankie is spotted and attacked by the man, eventually passing out. He dreams of the girl he just met and finds out her name: Melissa. She's looking for her mother, she tells him. And then he wakes up on the floor of the cloakroom, his father before him, a concerned cop shining a flashlight over both of them. The school is swept for suspects, and Harold Williams, the janitor — the black janitor — is arrested, though there is no evidence to suggest he was responsible. He is charged with the attack on Frankie, as well as for the murders of several missing kids over the last ten years, Melissa being the first. A sad end, it would seem, but at least an ending.

Until Frankie realizes that Melissa has followed him home.

Lady in White is an old-fashioned film made by an old-fashioned filmmaker. From what I have gathered, the film is somewhat autobiographical, and because of that personal connection, the film feels very personal. It's also kind of a peculiar final product in that the story seems to transform as the plot demands. Criticisms lobbed at the film call its plot confused and its tone uneven. I can't really say I disagree with either, as there are certain unfortunate plot holes, and the two bickering Scarlatti grandparents provide really the only comic relief in what is a pretty dour and dark film geared toward younger viewers. It's a strange hybrid of legitimate horror, fantasy, comedy, thriller, and Frank Capra. And it's about twenty minutes too long. At times it almost becomes a game of, "What else can we cram into this thing?" Despite that, the journey you'll take with this film is a strong one, and there are constant twists and turns along the way that you won't see coming.

Lukas Haas leads the cast as young Frankie, making his second appearance in a major film (the first being Witness with Harrison Ford). Though he still acts intermittently today, his roles have been mostly blink-and-miss cameos, like his turn as a union soldier in Spielberg's Lincoln, or as Failure from Inception. In Lady in White, he's all doe-eyed, big-eared, and pixy-voiced; he provides all the necessary adorable little-boy requirements to make for a sympathetic lead.

Alex Rocco, as Frankie's father, Al, is awesome, because Alex Rocco is always awesome. His voice is instantly recognizable, and his presence is both reassuring and intimidating. He seems to be the only adult in all of Willowpoint Falls vocal about Harold Williams' innocence and the audience likes him for it. Granted, the mystery of the killer's identity is kept a secret until the end, but we all know from the very start that Harold is not to blame — especially with some characters flat-out calling him a perfect scapegoat. (Why? "Because he's black!") Rocco brings a lot of weight to his role and embodies that kind of small-town father unafraid to speak up against bureaucracy. Plus, I mean, the guy played Moe Green in The Godfather. No shit he's awesome.

Lastly, Karen Powell as the titular lady has the least amount of screen time, but the most affecting performance. She is at once hauntingly heartbroken and eerily ambient. Her visage pervades as an urban legend, but she is quite real, and her pain is paramount.

So much of Lady in White rides on the imagery either eerie and beautiful (or both) that writer/director/semi-autobiographical-film-subject Frank LaLoggia creates. Nearly every other frame of the film could be captured, isolated, and hung on a wall. Alternately, every other frame feels like the nightmares you had as a child. Special mention must be made of Frankie's dream about his mother's funeral — everyone there is obscured by darkness and not moving an inch, giving their fuzzy presence a disturbing and surreal appearance, but their sea of hushed crying echoes throughout the church; the spotlight is on Frankie only as he peers into his mother's coffin. The geography of his dream doesn't make sense, as it has suddenly changes, and now he sees his mother sitting in a chair in the middle of an unfurnished room, a pair of double-doors wide open behind her, allowing in the sun and a sight of Frankie's father and brother having a catch in front of a sea of cornstalks.

"Don't leave me," he says to her.

"How could I ever leave you?" she responds.

Cut back to her funeral.

Ouch.

Strangely, given the kind of reputation that Lady in White has garnered (some people consider it a classic, and it currently boasts a very respectable 6.7 on IMDB), LaLoggia only ever made this, the pretty cheesy Fear No Evil before this, and a 1995 thriller that looks as if it went direct to video. Otherwise he's been fairly quiet over the years, and I wonder why. 

Lady in White gets all the credit in the world for having the balls, the gall, the nerve, to treat its kid audience like...gasp...people. There are a lot of heavy themes at play here: racism in "perfect" small towns, death of a parent, child murder, pedophilia. None of it's ever taken lightly and none of it is ever cheaply exploited. Though one could argue there's simply too much going on within the story (I would not fight you on that), all of these themes never feel extraneous. A sort of To Kill a Mockingbird with a supernatural twist, what begins as a ghost story soon transformers into a familial drama and an allegory for race, and then unfortunately devolves into a rather standard thriller on which Hollywood depended and still depends.

The visual effects on display are, twenty-five years later, almost laughably outdated, but they're not undone due to their ingenuity and construct. They're perfectly geared toward its young audience, almost comic-bookish in their design.

Ultimately, Halloween is a device that kicks off the strange and twisty-turny events that make up Lady in White (it's Christmastime exactly halfway through), but the supernatural elements are consistent enough to safely label it a horror film, and thus, appropriate for some Halloween watching. What keeps me coming back is the healthy injection of nostalgia and small-town Americana for which I yearn more and more as the years go by.

Lady in White isn't a perfect film, but the ambiance that it creates, and the feeling of childhood nostalgia it set out to establish, is.

My thanks to She Blogged By Night for the screencaps.