ZDZISLAW BEKSINSKI

Zdzislaw Beksinski

THE BLACK DOLL

A single mother lived alone with her newborn baby. She was not able to work and she had no living relatives and no friends to help her, so she found it very difficult to cope on her own.

One day, the mother went out shopping for groceries and left her baby at home alone. On the way home, she met with an accident and was killed. She was not carrying any identification at the time and the police were unable to figure out who she was. Nobody came forward to claim her body, so she was buried in an unmarked grave. She had no living relatives, which meant that nobody noticed her disappearance.

Two months later, the dead mother’s landlord noticed that he hadn’t received any rent from her. He visited her house and knocked on the door. When nobody answered, he opened the front door using his duplicate key. He went inside and found the house was in complete darkness. The electricity had been cut off.

He walked around in the dark, going from room to room. All of the woman’s furniture and clothing was still there. In the bedroom, he found a black doll lying in the middle of the floor. 

“She must have left in a hurry,” he said to himself. “She didn’t take anything with her.”

Then he heard a rustling noise. It was coming from the black doll. He bent down to pick it up, but the moment he touched it, the doll crumbled apart in his hands. Hundreds of cockroaches scurried away. All that was left was the skeleton of a baby.

REVIEW: MY AMITYVILLE HORROR

 

It has taken something like nine or ten films with the word 'Amityville' in its title before we finally have something that is actually worth watching. Figures it should be a documentary approach to the alleged events that occurred in 112 Ocean Avenue in upstate New York, instead of a series of films whose events became increasingly overblown with each successive entry. Real life is always more terrifying than fiction, after all. (If you're somehow unaware of Amityville, catch up before reading on.)

My Amityville Horror is Daniel Lutz's story. The eldest child of Kathy Lutz (deceased) and step-son to George Lutz (also deceased), Daniel is still clearly haunted by the events that plagued his family for the 28 days in which they lived in the infamous house. And the scars are still certainly with him. Daniel bares his soul in more ways than one. He answers - open and honestly - every question lobbed at him, regardless of how ridiculous and unbelievable he knows his answers are going to sound. Not only that, but he allows cameras in on a session in which he discusses his childhood and the events of the house with his psychologist. At no point does he say "I won't talk about that;" likewise, he even snarls at the camera and says "I can't believe you're making me talk about this shit," before he goes on to answer whatever question it was that provoked such a response. It is an extremely intimate and unyielding look at the son of a horror.

Regardless of where your beliefs lie in terms of the Amityville house, My Amityville Horror proves to be incredibly interesting. Even if it were a work of utter fiction, Daniel is a compelling lead character. In a completely emotionally removed sort of way, there's a bastardized feeling of nostalgia one feels when hearing the eldest child reiterate some of the same stories the Lutz couple told all those years ago - in Jay Anson's book, and in all the subsequent newspaper articles and television specials that would follow. If you've followed the Amityville case in any capacity, you're aware of the fly-infested sewing room, the red-eyed pig demon, and the phantom marching band. But hearing all of these instances retold by a man who claims to have lived it as a child, and delivered in a no-holds-barred way, forces the viewer to reevaluate how he or she may feel about the claims. 

As to the legitimacy of the ghostly and demonic events themselves, I can't speculate, because I wasn't there. Neither were you. People being picked up and thrown across the room, or people becoming possessed by outside evil forces...instances like these are pretty unlikely, but not altogether impossible. Hence, that's the reason why I call Daniel Lutz a compelling lead. On the level or not, perhaps even deluded or not, Daniel's words carry weight. He does not present this information like an actor reading lines from a script. His anger, frustration, and tears make his stories of possession and telekinesis a little easier to swallow. But it is because of this anger that can sometimes make My Amityville Horror difficult to sit through. Daniel is oftentimes impatient with his interviewer. To watch his outbursts can be extremely uncomfortable, even while viewing the film with a thousand-mile buffer zone; I can only imagine the tension present between director Eric Walter and his subject during some of these moments. But because Daniel Lutz is a "real guy" and the documentary is exploring "real events," it would seem disposable to mention that at times Daniel's demeanor can make him unsympathetic. And that's kind of dangerous, considering he deserves your sympathy. This, however, is a slippery slope, because this is being presented as a true and unHollywood approach to telling the story of what "really" happened. As such, it's not like saying A-List Star's character in Such-a-Such movie comes across as unlikable, since that would have been an artistic choice. Daniel is who Daniel is. So while it may be unfair to claim he sometimes comes across as unsympathetic, it cannot go on unmentioned; plus, it does make him a more dynamic "character." (He's also really fond of offering Jim-from-The-Office-like amused glances directly into the camera.)

Those who previously delved into the so-called non-fiction aspects of the Amityville case won't find a whole lot of new information. As previously mentioned, you will hear a lot of the same old stories and become reacquainted with some old faces (I was anticipating seeing an appearance by Lorraine Warren and was not disappointed). But My Amityville Horror isn't about that - it's not about the hell the Lutz family went through then; it's about the hell Daniel is going through now, including a loss of identity and the feeling of being consistently disregarded and written off as the son continuing the farce began by his parents all those years ago.

Smartly, the doc takes an objective approach and allows the possibility that Daniel is simply fabricating his story - and these theories range from him being a pathological liar to having married his unhappy childhood with the claims his parents were weaving and, after a while, having no choice but to believe them.

The take-away theme of My Amityville Horror is two-fold: One - Daniel wanted to finally tell his own version of the story, because he feels he never got that chance; and two - he wants people to believe him. One of those was most certainly satisfied. Daniel's version of the story cuts through all of the baggage and reputation of the house and reveals what such events can do to a person. Not to speak ill of the dead, but in all of the vintage interviews featuring George and Kathy Lutz, even when they talked about leaving behind all their possessions and taking a huge financial hit in abandoning the house and living through the hell that they did, they never appeared broken. Granted, they never seemed ecstatic, but they did seem...okay.

Daniel Lutz does not. Whether the events at 112 Ocean Avenue happened or were a byproduct of an incredibly unhappy family situation, Daniel seems broken. Even when he seems to be okay, or even when someone asks him on camera how he is doing and he answers "fine," you know that's just simply not true. In fact, it may very well be the only purposeful lie Daniel tells in all of My Amityville Horror.

On DVD and VOD August 6.

THEIR HANDS

"...But those who toiled knew nothing of the dreams of those who planned. And the minds that planned the Tower of Babel cared nothing for the workers who built it..."

If we don't, remember me.

PROXY: A SLENDER MAN STORY

 

Dir. Mike Diva

BAD OMEN

“It was just after my election in 1860, when the news had been coming in thick and fast all day and there had been a great “hurrah, boys,” so that I was well tired out, and went home to rest, throwing myself down on a lounge in my chamber. Opposite where I lay was a bureau with a swinging glass upon it (and here he got up and placed furniture to illustrate the position), and looking in that glass I saw myself reflected nearly at full length; but my face, I noticed had two separate and distinct images, the tip of the nose of one being about three inches from the tip of the other. I was a little bothered, perhaps startled, and got up and looked in the glass, but the illusion vanished. On lying down again, I saw it a second time, plainer, if possible, than before; and then I noticed that one of the faces was a little paler — say five shades — than the other. I got up, and the thing melted away, and I went off, and in the excitement of the hour forgot all about it — nearly, but not quite, for the thing would once in a while come up, and give me a little pang as if something uncomfortable had happened. When I went home again that night I told my wife about it, and a few days afterward I made the experiment again, when (with a laugh), sure enough! the thing came back again; but I never succeeded in bringing the ghost back after that, though I once tried very industriously to show it to my wife, who was somewhat worried about it. She thought it was a “sign” that I was to be elected to a second term of office, and that the paleness of one of the faces was an omen that I should not see life through the last term.”

— Abraham Lincoln

 

TEOS RECOMMENDS: WISCONSIN DEATH TRIP

It's a tall order to successfully adapt a book of photographs and small passages of non-narrative text. To do so requires creating a visual representation of the strange assortment of photographs found in Michael Lesy's infamous book, Wisconsin Death Trip.

Part documentary, part art film, James Marsh (Man on Wire) successfully transports the odd and terrible beauty of the 1973 book, which chronicles genuine news stories taken from a ten-year period in Black River Falls, Wisconsin. This strange decade between 1890-1900 contains stories of murder, mysterious disappearances, as well as the completely indefinable profile of Mary Sweeney, who suffered from an unexplainable condition that compelled her to smash windows.

There are even re-occurring "characters" - not just Mary, but an opera singer who goes to great lengths to deny her irrelevance, and a young boy who steals his father's rifle, murders a man for no real reason, and lives in his house by himself for the winter.

There are spurned husbands and wives, unrequited love, and more than one botched suicide. There's also a little levity thrown in from time to time just to lighten things up.

Mary Sweeney: Hair-whipper, window-smasher.

All the still photographs that appear are lifted directly from Lesy's text, and re-enactments (thankfully dialogue-free) bring to life the photograph's origins. Captured in striking back-and-white photography, like the original photographs, Marsh's adaptation manages to paint a portrait of middle-America that's disturbing, horrifying, saddening, bleak, and yet still beautiful.

According to Marsh (via the film's website):

“The title immediately intrigued me. And it certainly lived up to its promise - the book is a catalogue of strange, disturbing, and darkly humorous vignettes of real life tragedy, from a forgotten place and a forgotten time. As you read it, the photographs begin to resemble these weird apparitions from the past, staring right into your eyes. I wanted to convey in the film the real pathos contained in a four-line newspaper report that simultaneously records and dismisses the end of someone’s life. I also sifted through hundreds of newspapers from the town as well. Certain themes began to emerge, which the film was structured around - the anxieties of the time focus on suicide and madness. That is what the people of the town seem most afraid of...”

Images of 1890s Wisconsin are randomly juxtaposed with its modern day counterpart, showing that in some ways an awful lot has changed, but in others, not much at all. A nearly unrecognizable Ian Holm (Alien, The Lord of the Rings) provides narration culled directly from the pages of Lesy's text.

Wisconsin Death Trip has proven to be a very polarizing experience for audiences since its debut on BBC's Arena series. This can be chalked up to any number of reasons, such as the possible misunderstanding as to the origins of the adaptation (a film based on photographs); others seem to find the content itself shocking, though one would think the film's title would have been a dead giveaway. 

The first time I watched Wisconsin Death Trip, I thought, "That was beautiful, but it's something I never have to watch again."

I've watched it three times so far, and I'm sure there will be more viewings in the future.

The DVD is out of print, but it's been known to show up from time to time on Netflix's streaming service. Here's hoping with the explosion of blu-ray that the film will receive another lease on life.