TEOS RECOMMENDS: THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF ROSALIND LEIGH

In a cinematic time in which the masses have lost their patience for nearly everything that doesn’t involve massive amounts of blood or a brand title they recognize from years past, it seems almost incorrect to say that there is still life burning behind the slow-burn movement. Guys like Ti West, and James Wan, or standalone films like Citadel or The Awakening, are keeping the movement going thanks to their contributions of slow-going horror, established on a foundation of tone and atmosphere rather than full-on scare. Those two things are more important to a horror film than anything else. If you can establish a mood that never allows your audience to settle back into their seats, then you’re onto something.

That’s how I felt watching the directorial debut of Rodrigo Gudiño, editor of Rue Morgue Magazine.

The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh finds Leon (Aaron Poole) coming back to his childhood home following the death of his mother, Rosalind (Vanessa Redgrave, who never appears on-screen in any traditional way). Inside her almost castle-like interior of a house, Leon finds an army of religious relics – angels, Virgin Marys, and crosses. They litter every room – some less than six inches, and some twice as tall as himself. Among this collection of religious iconography, he finds a lone VHS tape labeled as “God’s Messengers.” Its contents feature shaky amateur footage of a religious cult, led by a Nick-Cave-lookin’ fellow who it would seem has the power to beckon stone sculptures to life. This, coupled with the demonic animal that apparently lives in the overgrown brush outback, and you have yourself one haunting night to remember.

If you can appreciate films for anything beyond mindless time-wasters, you’ll be immediately struck by Gudiño’s direction. For a directorial debut, the film is gorgeous.  The camera moves incredibly fluidly around Rosalind’s house, accompanied by a haunting voice over seemingly narrating her journal she purposely left behind for Leon to find. Another thing you may notice: though the film’s concept you could argue is a tired one, I’d argue it’s been quite a while since you’ll experience a film that feels like this. Part experimental, part traditional horror, The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh feels at times like something The Exorcist and Legion author William Peter Blatty would have undertaken as director.  His direction on his own novel adaptation The Exorcist 3: Legion as well as The Ninth Configuration feels the same way as it does with here. The images captured are haunting and beautiful and heartbreaking and unnerving all at the same time, though there is nothing obvious or overly horrific on-screen.

Like House of the Devil, or I Am A Ghost, Rosalind Leigh is a one-man show. Except for characters on the phone, or on choppy camcorder footage, or unseen on the other side of the door, it is just Leon, son of Rosalind Leigh, wandering around her old, archaic house, wondering if that one particular statue of the Virgin Mary is moving around from room to room by itself.

At no point does Rosalind Leigh not feel like a dream. Leon’s sparing interaction with who sounds to be an estranged girlfriend over the phone never feels…right. Nor does the strange man who knocks on the door in the middle of the night to express his condolences over Rosalind’s death, and to warn about the strange animal that has allegedly been sighted on the property. This scene, too, doesn’t quite feel right. None of these people act as if they have any semblance of humanity whatsoever, but know enough about it to skate by.

Fair warning, Rosalind Leigh’s pace is not for every one. In fact, once the one-hour mark comes and goes, and it doesn’t appear the film is laying down any real, concrete development or revelations, it might cause some viewers to tune out. With this kind of approach to filmmaking, that’s inevitable.

Nor, either, will those people enjoy the film’s conclusion. Because there really isn’t one – not in the traditional sense where Leon finds his mother’s bones, or her lost prized necklace, or some other lame icon that has prevented her from resting in peace. Like the Polanski films that defined slow-burn horror, it’s not so much about the conclusion as it is about the journey. It’s about sticking with this one solitary character as he wanders around a dark house in the middle of the night clutching a lit candle. It’s not just a night of death but of rebirth.

I’ve corresponded with Rod Gudiño several times over the years and I can say without hesitation he is a fine fellow and quite personable. Beyond that, I can’t say I know much about the man from a personal standpoint. Beyond reading the last paragraph of every review for this film (which is my style—people give away too much shit these days), I haven’t done any kind of research behind the film’s origins and inspirations. Having said that, The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh feels intensely personal. It feels like a film made by a person who wanted to do more than just marry together a bunch of elements caused by nothing by budget restrictions.

In a way, it feels less like a film and more like an exorcism.

THE MOMENT OF DEATH

The Moment Of Death:
1. The heart stops.
2. The skin gets tight and ashen in color.
3. All the muscles relax.
4. The bladder and bowels empty.
5. The body temperature begins to drop 1 1/2 degrees Fahrenheit per hour.

After 30 Minutes:
6. The skin gets purple and waxy.
7. The lips, fingernails, and toenails fade to a pale color.
8. Blood pools at the bottom of the body.
9. The hands and feet turn blue.
10. The eyes sink into the skull.

After 4 Hours:
11. Rigor mortis has set in.
12. The purpling of the skin and the pooling of the blood continue.
13. Rigor continues to tighten muscles for another 24 hours or so.

After 12 Hours:
14. The body is in full rigor mortis.

After 24 Hours:
15. The body is now the temperature of the surrounding environment.
16. In males, the semen dies.
17. The head and neck are now a greenish-blue color.
18. The greenish-blue color spreads to the rest of the body.
19. There is a pervasive smell of rotting meat.

After 3 Days:
20. The gas in the body tissues forms large blisters on the skin.
21. The whole body begins to bloat and swell grotesquely.
22. Fluids leak from the mouth, nose, ears, and rectum.

After 3 Weeks:

23. The skin, hair, and nails are so loose they can easily be pulled off the corpse.

24. The skin bursts open on many places on the body.

25. Decomposition will continue until the body is nothing but skeletal remains, a process that can take a month or so in hot climates, and two months or more in cold climates.

FOLLOW ME

LAST MEALS

ENDINGS

Jesse flipped through the records in the clearance rack at Second Spin, one of the many stores down on Main Street. He had recently gotten into older music, and further, collecting it on vinyl. There was something mysterious about vinyl records that Jesse found intriguing, precisely because the end of the record era pre-dated Jesse’s birth by thirty years, give or take. He spent much of his free time searching through the many vinyl crates in Second Spin. Every record he pulled out and examined was like a treasure—forgotten for years until he came along to discover it.

While on one of his routine searches, he pulled out a record that had an interesting design. Its entirely black cardboard folder was in pretty flawed condition, as if it had been in many homes over the years. There was no title on the front, and when he flipped it over, he saw the record contained only three songs:

  

1. Demon of Darkness

2. Invoke

3. Endings

  

Jesse was annoyed by the lack of information on the album, such as the record company that had produced it, or even the name of the band that had recorded it...but there was something about it that compelled him to bring it home. The vinyl at Second Spin was cheap, so he decided to take the risk and give it a try.

After getting home, Jesse nudged the front door open with his shoulder – a daily necessity – and made his way into the cluttered house he shared with his father. Jesse’s mom was no longer in the picture, and a true bachelor pad their household had become. If the pizza boxes sitting on the couch were only a week old, then they considered the place to be squeaky-clean.

He threw his backpack on the floor and ran up to his room with his newest acquisition. He slid the record out of the folder and held it up under the light. The entire record was black, and there was no label. He plopped the record on the spindle of his record player, dropped the needle in place, and impatiently waited. It began playing so he lay down on his bed, listening to the music slowly pouring through his crackling speakers.

Not bad, Jesse thought to himself as the first song ended and the next began. And it wasn’t. It didn’t bring the house down, but it wasn’t entirely incompetent like some of the other stuff he’d brought home before. And each song sounded pretty different from the one previous.

It was good. Not great.

Jesse had the feeling he had bought yet another record that would end up in his trade-in box—a hazard of being a collector. He sat up in bed to retrieve the record from the player when the last track began—the one called ‘Endings.’

Jesse had never heard anything like it, and he sat very still, as if moving even an inch would interrupt this strange feeling that had come over him. Then, very slowly, as the song continued to play, Jesse stood up, went over to his desk, and opened the drawer. He rifled through the drawer until he found what he was looking for. He leaned his head back and drew the scissors’ blade over the taut flesh of his throat. Blood dribbled immediately down the front of his shirt, and the flesh of his neck tore open with ease, widening quickly in a muddy, red smile. Jesse even made it as far as slicing another gash through his throat before he fell back onto the floor, blood gushing out of his wounds with such intensity that it splattered the ceiling above. As Jesse lost consciousness, and as the final song faded to a close, his own blood dripped down on him from the ceiling, splotching him and the floor around him with crimson dots.

* * *

Shelly excitedly tore the wrapping paper from her newest gift as her grandparents looked on. Her gift had an odd shape: big and square, but very thin, like a giant cracker. She had no idea what it could have been. She ripped off the last of the paper and held her gift in her hand. And she still had no idea what it was.

Her grandfather chuckled. “Now that you’ve seen the gift, it’s time for a history lesson,” he said.

“Oh, no. No stories, grandpa,” Shelly said, pouting.

“We didn’t have CDs in my day—back when horses pulled carts and we communicated by tapping rocks together,” he said, his eyes twinkling. “We listened to these—they’re called records.”

“Well, how do I listen to it?” Shelly asked. She took the record out of the folder and held it up. “It looks like a tire,” she said.

“They’re not all that different from the CDs you listen to these days,” said Shelly’s grandmother. “They were just bigger, that’s all.”

“You’ll need what’s called a turntable to play it, honey,” Shelly’s grandfather said.

“So I gotta spend money to use one of my own birthday gifts?” Shelly asked. “That’s stupid!”

“Who said you had to spend money?” her grandfather said, bending down and lifting a turntable – decorated with a single colorful bow – onto the table.

Shelly looked at it, utterly confused. “How does it work?”

Her grandfather chuckled and took the album from her, laying it carefully down on the player and placing the needle at the record’s very edge. The music began to play out of the modestly sized speakers that were hooked into the back of the player.

“See that?” he asked. “Neat, huh?”

“I guess...” she said, her disappointment in the gift more than obvious.

“Well, it won’t hurt you to experience a little culture,” he said, upset by his granddaughter’s attitude. He slid out his chair with a screech and stood up to make his way into the kitchen. “I’m getting some more coffee.”

“Did I make him mad?” Shelly asked her grandmother, frowning.

“No, of course not, honey,” her grandmother lied. “He just gets frustrated sometimes because things are so different now than they used to be.”

Shelly lowered her chin to the tabletop so her eyes were level with the needle’s point. The second song had ended and the third was just beginning.

“What band is this?” Shelly asked.

“We don’t know, actually,” her grandmother answered. We found the player in a pawn shop and this was the only record the man had.”

“Why did you buy it if you didn’t know who the band was?” Shelly asked, confused.

“Well, your real gift was the player, sweetie. Not the record. We both saw it one day and thought you would really get a ki—” The words droned to a halt in the old woman’s mouth and she began staring off in the distance, as if immediately stuck in a trance.

“Grandma?” Shelly asked.

Shelly’s grandmother turned her head and stared at her granddaughter for a moment before picking up the empty cake dish in front of her and smashing it into several sharp pieces, one of which she then drove into the young girl’s right eye. Shelly shrieked in pain, but her cries were cut short by another slash with the shard, this time across her temple. The gash left behind was deep. The C-shaped flap of skin hung down over her ear, revealing a patch of her light-brown-colored skull, which was barely visible through the thin membrane surrounding it. Her blood flowed like a river, and soon she became limp in her grandmother’s arms. Shelley’s grandmother dropped her small body fall to the ground with a hard, sickening thud before walking into the kitchen. Her husband was in the process of rushing out to see what had happened when he stopped in his tracks, seeing the blood on his wife’s white sweater and the blank look on her face.

“What is it?” he demanded. “Is Shelly hurt?”

She didn’t respond, but instead pushed him roughly back against the kitchen pantry door and grabbed the large cake knife from the empty platter on the kitchen table, which she stabbed with great force into his throat. The blade easily plunged through the man’s skin, muscles, and bone before splintering the wooden cabinet behind him. She let go of the knife, which easily supported the weight of her husband, and held his face in her hands. A single tear fell from his left eye as his last breath left his body. She left the kitchen and walked into the bathroom where she turned on the bathtub faucet at full blast. She lowered herself into the tub until she was flat on her back. She then waited patiently for the water in the tub to rise—to invade her body and take her away.

And in the dining room where the family had convened to share the joy of Shelly’s tenth birthday, the last track on the album ended, and the needle fell into the last groove – the gutter – emitting nothing but static...letting any listeners know that there was nothing more to come.

* * *

Kirby walked in, wearing his tacky, punk-rock jacket, smiled a suspicious smile, and tossed the record at Sarah.

“Oomph,” she said, catching the record without trying to spill the coffee that was on the desk next to her computer. “Thanks for that,” she said finally.

Kirby smiled again and sat down next to her, kissing her once on the cheek. “Got you a present.”

Sarah held up the album and looked at it questioningly.

“Song list is on the back,” he told her.

Sarah flipped over the album and read off some of the titles. “What band?” she asked.

“No idea,” Kirby said, shrugging.

“Where’d you get it?” Sarah asked, taking the record out of the folder. She turned it around in her hands to search for a label and found none.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” he said, grinning devilishly.

“I’ll believe anything you tell me because you’re crazy enough to do anything,” Sarah replied.

“My brother came across it at work and gave it to me...” Kirby said, coyly looking down at the desk, along which he absent-mindedly dragged his finger.

“No way, really?” Sarah asked, looking at the album again, as if its lineage would now be more obvious. “Won’t he get in trouble for that?”

“Nah, are you kidding? That’s been sitting in the evidence room for years and years. No one’s going to notice it’s missing.” He grinned again. “So...are you going to play it?”

“I can’t play it if I don’t even know who recorded the thing,” Sarah said, pretending to dismiss the record altogether.

Kirby flashed Sarah the smile that made her fall in love in the first place.

“I’ll think about it,” Sarah said, smiling scornfully.

Kirby laughed. He bent over her desk for a quick kiss. “I’ll see you tonight.”

Sarah watched Kirby walk out the door before turning her attention back to her computer screen. After another hour’s worth of typing, she printed her work and then walked out of her office with the mystery album tucked under her arm. She nodded hello to the radio DJ as he made his way out of the studio after having finished his set. She slipped through the door, took her seat, and lifted the headphones onto her face after the commercial break was through. She slid Kirby’s record into one of the station’s many players and prepped it for broadcast.

“I have a special gift for you, boys and girls,” Sarah said into the college station’s bright red microphone. “A mysterious record hit my desk tonight. I know nothing about it—not even the band that recorded it. Three songs total...and here they come.” She dropped the needle slowly in place to play the album. As the record began spinning, she leaned into the microphone one more time.

“Let’s hope this brings the house down.”

 

Image source.

TALES # 9

 

Tales #9

© Tara Marynowsky

COME TO DADDY