My mother's mother was a cool lady. She passed away when I was about eight, but she was perfectly placed in those formative years to introduce me to the joys of everything spooky. She would visit on some Saturday mornings, with her pack of cigarettes and dressed like someone who was in a rockabilly band. She'd bring us cool toys like rubber skeletons or a neat blood-dripping candle skull. She'd also let us watch horror films. Creature Double Feature to be exact. Those days were glorious. She was someone who was the opposite of my parents. Someone who seemed to realize that a lot of life was silly and shouldn't be taken too seriously.
On one of those Saturdays, we watched a horror film with a strange long name (written and directed by the man who brought us Black Christmas and A Christmas Story - Bob Clark). I recall the film scaring us at the time, as it was made in 1972 and was low budget... so by default it had a grimy feel to it. Shot entirely at night, it felt extremely claustrophobic. And due to a surprisingly solid script and a very interesting story, it made the notion of people in a cemetery invoking a Satanic spell to raise the dead quite believable.
A local theater was showing this gem of a film on Friday night, and we went. I hadn't seen it since that one time as a boy, so I had convinced myself it would be one of those so-bad-it's-good horror movies. Turns out, it's even more enjoyable and interesting now that I'm intensely old and have seen a lifetime of zombie films. There was a believable sense of dread due to the intelligent way the story was allowed to unfold. A tension was created at the start of the film between the characters that felt incredibly real. A group of actors (fearing job loss if they don't follow their theatre group's cruel director) agree to rob a grave and take part in his necromantic ritual. It was the perfect setting for a zombie tale. And, to date, I have never seen, nor probably will ever see, a Satanic spell that was so perfectly written and believable. It felt totally real.
It's Saturday morning here, and if you click below, you can watch the entire film. My grandmother would take smoke breaks throughout a movie, and she'd go into my parents' kitchen, open a window, and sit in the chair closest to it. She wasn't allowed to smoke in the house, so this was her version of obeying the rule, blowing most of the smoke out into the back yard, with a smirk on her face.
Here's to one of the giants from my past.
Click below...
