Katie Holmes, Don't Rape My Childhood!

I'm trying to trust the wisdom of Guillermo del Toro right now. I really am. I'm trying to trust the man who translated Mike Mignola's Hellboy flawlessly to the screen, and who so deftly brought nightmares to life in Cronos and Pan's Labyrinth. But my faith is being shaken, I can't deny it.

See, I've been buzzing for months now at the thought of del Toro producing a remake of my all-time favorite TV horror movie, 1973's Don't Be Afraid of the Dark--an obscure, brilliant, yet flawed little picture which, in the right hands, could become a masterpiece. Finally, a remake to be excited about? Right??

Then I wake up this morning, an otherwise fine spring day, to discover that The Hollywood Reporter has uncovered the very first casting news on the upcoming project. Guillermo del Toro's remake will star... Katie Holmes.

Yes, Joey Potter from Dawson's Creek will apparently be heading up the long-awaited, 35-years-in-the-making, big-screen adaptation of the movie that has been an obsession of mine since the age of five, and which is largely responsible for my entire horror fascination. Yes, Katie "I Almost Single-Handedly Ruined the First Great Batman Movie" Holmes, owner of one of the most ho-hum resumes of any mainstream Hollywood leading lady.

Granted, she did put in a somewhat interesting performance in Sam Raimi's all-but-forgotten 2000 chiller The Gift, but is this really a woman who screams out "horror"? Supremo nutball Tom Cruise's captive Stepford wife, the chick who's proven that even the classic Louise Brooks bob can be potentially unsexy? Perhaps my Thetan count is simply too high, but what's a dedicated DBAOTD fan to do but despair?

I'm assuming that Mrs. Cruise has been cast in the role of Sally Farnham, played by former child star Kim Darby in the original. Now, I know what some of you may be thinking. Sally Farnham was certainly nothing to write home about, on any level, going through the film like a somnambulistic 14-year-old boy. I'll grant you that. But that's the whole point, see, I was expecting a lot more from this big-time remake, especially given the impressive fire power involved.

Maybe I'm overreacting. Yeah, that's the ticket. After all, the part calls for a type that's not unlike the public image Holmes has created for herself anyway, right? Maybe her combination of cluelessness and anhedonia is exactly what got her the part in the first place, and will serve her well in portraying the ill-fated housewife targeted by bizarre, otherworldly creatures. Hey, wait a minute. Ill-fated housewife? Targeted by bizarre, otherworldy creatures? ... Holy Jeebus! She's perfect!

Never mind.

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Reliving Childhood Terror: Don't Be Afraid of the Dark

It was just some obscure TV movie that I had seen as a small child on afternoon syndicated TV. Yet it remained burned into my psyche well into adulthood. In fact, I would sometimes wonder if it had ever been a real movie at all, or just a half-remembered figment of my overactive childhood imagination.

In the pre-internet days, before IMDB, I would mention it now and then to others my age, to see if they had seen it, too. A creepy, quirky little flick about a woman haunted by demonic creatures in her furnace, desperate to drag her down to become one of them. To my astonishment, some folks also had half-recalled, vague memories of such a TV movie. Once the internet came into the picture, I still couldn't quite track it down, because I had no idea what the title was, or any of the actors in it. For some bizarre reason I thought Bonnie Franklin was in it. I have no idea why, but alas, I was wrong...

It took years before I was finally able to identify the movie as Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, a TV production originally aired on ABC in October 1973. I had seen it some years later, most likely on a lazy Sunday afternoon at my grandparents' house, where we would go every week, like a good Italian-American family. It scared the living daylights out of me, and I never forgot it.

One of the benefits of writing The Vault of Horror has been that I've been able to get in touch with and share ideas/memories with horror fans both near and far. In this case, one of the near ones, whom I happen to work with, not only was just as obsessed with the movie as myself, but actually had a Japanese DVD in her possession! And so, at long last, I was able to finally return to the movie that had haunted my dreams for some 30 years (Thanks, Tracy!).

Amazingly, so much of it was exactly as I had remembered it from that afternoon long ago. Kim Darby (of The Searchers and Star Trek's Miri episode) plays Sally, a poor young housewife neglected by her over-ambitious husband Alex (played by Jim Hutton, Timothy's dad). To her dismay, upon moving into the home bequeathed to her by her grandparents, Sally finds herself the target of menacing little monsters that she has unwittingly freed from their bricked-in prision within the old furnace in the basement. Over the course of the next hour, they taunt and torture her mercilessly, as she desperately tries to convince those around her that she's not imagining things. Until finally, they drag her kicking and screaming into the furnace. The end.

A large part of what scarred me as a kid was the uncompromising grimness--my Disney-trained brain couldn't conceive of such a tragic ending. And I'm glad to report that the movie remained just as foreboding to me now--although I have no way of really knowing if much of that had to with my memories of it, since my wife was certainly less than impressed.

I'll admit, we're not talking about fine cinema here. But Don't Be Afraid of the Dark is about as good as one can expect an early 1970s network TV movie made in three weeks to be. The acting leaves something to be desired, and unfortunately, the silly little costumes of the furnace creatures are decidedly less frightening now than they were to me then.

Nevertheless, I maintain that the movie still held much of its original power to get under my skin. The score, by prolific TV composer Billy Goldenberg, is genuinely eery and atmospheric. The persistent, whispering calls of the demons ("Saaalllyyyy.....We want you, Sally....") are just as spine-tingling as I remember, and have definitely held up much more than the costumes! What I also love is that you never learn what the creatures are, or how they got there. Creepy as hell.

Apparently, I wasn't the only one who was traumatized by Don't Be Afraid of the Dark as a kid. No sooner had I jumped on Facebook after watching the movie than I discovered a group entitled "U Saw Don't Be Afraid of the Dark in the 70s and Are STILL SCARED". Ha. Plus, there's the astonishing news that none other than Guillermo del Toro is prepping a theatrical remake to be released next year! Not bad for a supposedly obscure little TV movie. And you can bet your life that there is much room for improvement here--this is one remake I'm looking forward to with mucho excitement.

I'm not sure about the proprietary rights, but someone needs to put out a box set of TV horror movies from the '70s and early '80s--there's a fortune to be made. Throw in this one, Dark Night of the Scarecrow, Gargoyles, When Michael Calls, etc. There are a lot of us out there who have fond memories of these chillers!

"Ssaaaalllyyyy......"

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Want to Know What Scares Me?

After procrastinating long enough, it's only fair that since my worthy Vault of Horror contributors Karl Hungus and RayRay have seen fit to bare their respective souls around here of late, it's time for ol' B-Sol to come clean and discuss what I've found most terrifying in horror movies over the years.

My lifelong obsession with horror is most certainly tied to this fascination I, along with many others, seem to have with that which I find personally frightening. To a certain extent, it's the rubbernecking phenomenon--we find ourselves morbidly drawn to face the very things that freak us out. Some folks can't seem to relate to this personality trait. I'm betting not many of them are reading this blog.

The earliest sense of true fear I ever remember experiencing with regards to horror came from the movies I was exposed to on regular TV. Like many of my fellow GenXers, I got my first taste of genre movies thanks to the wonderland known as afternoon syndicated TV. Growing up in Brooklyn, that meant WNEW Channel 5, WPIX Channel 11 (a.k.a. "11 Alive") and WOR Channel 9. These channels have since fallen prey to the blights of mini-networks and informercials, but back then, it was a veritable wonderland of spaghetti westerns, Planet of the Apes flicks, kung-fu, Abbott & Costello, and so much more.

Allow me to explain for all you pampered millenials out there. See, we didn't have TV channels specifically designed with 24-hour kids' programming. Forget DVD, I'm going back before VCRs here. We could count all our channels on two hands, and we had to watch what was on--which, with the exception of Saturday mornings and a few hours after school, was stuff not particularly programmed with kids in mind. Sure it sucked compared to the choices kids have today. But on the positive side, it was precisely due to that lack of choice that we got exposed to a lot of great stuff we may never have learned to appreciate had it been set adrift amidst a sea of distractions.

I can recall going over my grandparents' house for Sunday dinner, and later in the day, my little tummy full of macaroni, chicken and salad, experiencing the horrors of Hammer Films at the foot of my grandpa's recliner. This was shocking stuff for a seven-year-old--blood, boobs, demonic vampires seeking to transform you into something that wasn't human.

If memory serves, the one that got to me the most was called Lust for a Vampire, the tale of a naive mortal who becomes entangled in the web of a coven of female bloodsuckers. Although now I may realize it is not the most highly regarded of the Hammer canon, nevertheless, at my tender age it affected me profoundly. And despite my pre-pubescence, I can remember somehow vaguely perceiving the sinister sexuality that pervaded the whole movie, even if I didn't have the intellectual vocabulary yet to recognize it as such.

Interestingly, some of the earliest mental scarring inflicted upon me by horror films came from made-for-TV movies. There was Gargoyles, When Michael Calls, and Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, three early '70s cult favorites that I saw as afternoon reruns, and which became instant nightmare material. The latter film stuck with me so strongly that for years (prior to the advent of IMDB), I kept trying to find out if it was a real movie at all, or just a bizarre figment of my childhood imagination. And who could forget Dark Night of the Scarecrow, which I saw when it aired for the very first time, right around Halloween 1981.

Perhaps it's because I had this exposure as a little kid that I take a relatively liberal attitude toward my own kids and their experiences with horror. I mean, in my case it may have meant sleeping with the covers over my neck to prevent Dracula from attacking me in the middle of the night, but hey, if that's the worst of it, what's the big deal? You grow up, you realize vampires aren't out to get you, and life goes on.

More to come tomorrow...

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