The Phantom Carriage (1921)

Who’s In It: Victor Sjöström, who also wrote the adapted screenplay (from Selma Lagerlöf's novel) and directed the film.

What It’s About: A cruelly selfish, deadbeat dad (Sjöström) receives encouragement to turn his life around. But will he heed the warnings in time to avoid becoming the next driver of Death's carriage?

How It Is: Like The Penalty, The Phantom Carriage is another disappointing "horror" movie. It's got a great hook: that the last person who dies on New Year's Eve has to drive Death's carriage for the next year and transport souls to their final destinations. But instead of focusing on the dread around that, it's a morality tale about Sjöström's character and a dying woman (Astrid Holm) who desperately wants to help him.

It's well acted, but it's also melodramatic and the same story could easily have been told without the "supernatural" elements.

Rating: Two out of five ghostly coachmen.

Anne of Green Horrors [Guest Post]

By GW Thomas

I suppose it's a national disgrace to admit you haven't read Lucy Maud Montgomery when you are a Canuck. (My mother was a big fan, but didn't pass it on to me.) If there is any room for forgiveness, it's that LMG was an Atlantic Canadian, while I am a true-born Westerner. (I have this odd theory that Ontario and onward doesn't really exist. You simply fall off the edge of Manitoba.)

Imagine my surprise when I stumbled onto Weird Tales, August 1935, with its Doctor Satan cover, and hiding amongst the Paul Ernst, Seabury Quinn and Clark Ashton Smith is a little story called "The House Party at Smoky Island" by LM Montgomery. It turns out that LMG wrote quite a few of these "horror" stories, enough to fill a book, Among the Shadows: Tales from the Darker Side (1990), nineteen tales in all. But only one appeared in the Unique Magazine.

I read "House Party" in one sitting, finding it oddly compelling. Montgomery's style is so different from the typical Weirdies, with 1920s party fever that I haven't seen since I read Lord Peter Wimsey. Montgomery spends the first third of the story getting us caught up on all the gossip. The plot follows the narrator and his sister who invite a group of friends out to the wilds for a week of woodsy fun. Amongst the invites are Anthony Armstrong and his wife, Brenda, who have suffered marital difficulty because Anthony's first wife, Suzette Wilder died under mysterious circumstance, leaving him a large sum of money. Brenda has been distant for she suspects her husband a murderer. Nobody wants to talk about it, but the tension is evident.

Unfortunately for the partiers, it rains the entire time. Things between Anthony and Brenda don't improve and he finally leaves, perhaps for good. After a short discussion on the reality of ghosts, the party falls to telling ghost stories. The Judge tells a story about a house haunted by a child's voice; Dick tells a story about a dead dog who avenges his master; Consuelo tells a gruesome yarn about a ghost who came to the wedding of her lover; Ted speaks of a house with mysterious footfalls; and even Aunt Alma gets in on the action with a story about "a white lady with a cold hand," dressed in the style of the 1870s. One of the "pretty little things" is horrified, not at the undead, but of someone's dressing in crinoline. Brenda Andrews joins the party at this point.

Finally, Christine is invited to tell a story, though the narrator can't recall Christine's last name. She tells the story that everybody has been avoiding: that of Aunt Elizabeth Wilder, who left her money to Suzette, Anthony's first wife. Christine explains that Suzette was dying of a wasting illness, and began to hate her husband. She planned to write him out of the will at the end. Only Christine's intervention, a lethal overdose, stopped that from happening. Christine had loved Anthony from afar for a long time, though he never knew it. At this confession, Christine disappears, a ghost herself. Suddenly the narrator realizes he has never known or seen Christine before. Anthony appears, back from the rain, and Brenda runs to him, begging forgiveness. All is well again in the Armstrong household.

The finale is nothing special in ghost story terms. The old chestnut about one of the party being a spirit dates back to antiquity, though it never stopped Algernon Blackwood from using it again and again. The spectral elements fade at the end, returning to Montgomery's real forte: jolly tales of love and romance. What might have become a chilling tale of Poesque nightmare, veers back towards Edwardian geniality. And why not? This is a holiday outing, after all.

GW Thomas has appeared in over 400 different books, magazines and ezines including The Writer, Writer's Digest, Black October Magazine and Contact. His website is gwthomas.org. He is editor of Dark Worlds magazine.

Ghosts at Christmas: Dickens to Davies [Guest Post]

By GW Thomas

Charles Dickens gets the credit for the idea of a ghost story at Christmas. We all know Scrooge, whether it's Alastair Sim, Bill Murray, Patrick Stewart, or Fred Flintstone. The only problem is that Dickens didn't invent it. I would even go so far as to say he tried to hi-jack the idea and turn it to his own purposes: making money and instruction. I could be wrong. But Dickens wouldn't be the first person to realize that Christmas is a cash cow.

The telling of a winter's tale, a gory or fantastic story around a merry fire in the depths of the dark, cold season, is as old at least as Shakespeare. He couldn't have written the play The Winter's Tale (1623) if it had not existed. By it's very title, we know the story will not be realistic and offer a happy ending. But old Willy didn't invent it either. The tradition goes back into time wherever there were people living in northern climes and had some form of forced inactivity imposed on them. The last remnants of this tradition in North America is the campfire tale that is so often featured in movies, just before the madman starts cutting up teenagers.

So it's been around awhile. The Christmas version is usually told by a grandmother or a trusted nurse, the tale having a homely feel, but a cold shiver as its ultimate goal. It should be no surprise that Elizabeth Gaskell wrote "The Old Nurse's Tale"(1852), one of my favorite Christmas tales. The author of Cranford (1851) was doing what many women Victorian writers did, penning a ghost story for Christmas (and some holiday cash). Many of these stories were published by Mr. Dickens in his Christmas numbers of Household Words and All the Year Round. In this way Dickens did contribute to the popularity of Christmas ghosts over and beyond Tiny Tim and Jacob Marley. Fortunately for us, these tales take after Dickens' "The Signal-Man"(1866) more than A Christmas Carol (1843). For this was Dickens' other fault besides wanting to sell a lot of copies of a magazine (a sin I understand only too well): his ghosts tend to be lessons or morals dressed up in chains. A Christmas Carol rises above the lecturing because it is so entertaining and it has creepy ghosts. Other Dickens' Christmas stories such as "The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain" (1848), "Baron Koeldwethout's Apparation" (1838), "A Child's Dream of a Star" (1850), and "The Last Words of the Old Year" (1851) are all heavy on message and light on supernatural thrills.

Dickens was the promoter of Christmas and ghosts, but fortunately the man they all turned to for inspiration was J Sheridan Le Fanu. Le Fanu's many ghost stories set the holiday scribes on the right path. "Madam Crowl's Ghost," "The Child Who Went With the Fairies," "The White Cat of Drumgunniol," "Sir Dominick's Bargain," "The Vision of Tom Chuff," and "Stories of Lough Guir" all appeared in Dickens' All the Year Round, usually around December. Others appeared in Le Fanu's Dublin University Magazine. Le Fanu, despite seeing himself as a serious historical novelist, is largely remembered for these and other ghost and mystery stories. The Irish writer drew upon the tales of his country for inspiration, and why not? The winter tale is related to "Marchen" or fairy tales, both being part of the oral tradition of storytelling.

The greatest ghost story writer of them all (my opinion, but many would agree) was Le Fanu's disciple, MR James. The Cambridge and Eton don wrote an annual Christmas story and shared it with students and friends. These yearly treats were much looked forward to and there was even a little prestige in being including in such a reading. The thirty-three stories that James produced over the decades are sterling examples of what a ghost story can and should do. Classics like "Casting the Runes," "Count Magnus," "The Ash Tree," "Canon Alberic's Scrapbook," and "Lost Hearts" all begin quietly, usually about an amateur antiquarian on a holiday, but end with a glimpse into the cold netherworlds that lurk near by. James' ghosts are never fun, kind, or even well-defined. They are truly terrible, half-glimpsed, and cruel. How Christmasy!

"Christmasy?" you ask. Yes, of course. The shiver that goes down your spine after a truly effective ghost story is not so much different than the feeling of outré joy that the story of Jesus's birth inspires in Christians. In a way, the whole purpose of the Christmas ghost story is to jump-start your sense of the impossible, a faculty that becomes atrophied after months of going to work, enduring the hum-drum tedium that is life. Here is a small dose of Something Greater. Dickens tried in several stories to create this jump-start from a happy place. He fails. James and his wicked spirits never do.

I understand that the idea of a scary story at Christmas is hard to understand today. I live in Canada, perhaps the most realistic country in the world. We get White Christmases, but not ghostly ones. Robertson Davies, the Canadian author, defined it as "the rational rickets." We are so depleted of fantastic imagination, we think men chasing a small black dot around on ice is fun. (Beer helps.) Despite this, Davies wrote his own book of Canadian Christmas ghosts called High Spirits (1982). It is surprising that the deft wordsmith does not reach for the black depths of MR James (who inspired Davies to tell an annual tale for the enjoyment of his college buddies), but Davies' ghosts are enchanting and humorous. As the title implies, jocularity is the key. Ghosts like "The Ghost Who Vanished By Degrees," the grad student who never received his Masters and PhD and the only way Davies can lay him to rest is to give him more and more degrees. The titles are suggestive: "The Ugly Spectre of Sexism," "The Refuge of Insulted Saints," "The Xerox in the Lost Room," and "Dickens Digested." Davies' ghosts take after the stories of J Kendrick Bangs' "Told After Supper" (1891). If you can't quite manage horrific ghosts this Yuletide, I would suggest Davies or Bangs.

Me? I'll stick to the harder stuff. Perhaps a little Algernon Blackwood, who used to read his stories at Christmas on the BBC. Feeling Victorian? Then there is no better place to go than the Gaslight website. Like a mix of Radio and print? Then the Amalgamated Brotherhood of Spooks will do.

One last suggestion: if you'd like a taste of MR James, try Mark Gatiss's BBC TV version of "The Tractate Middoth"  and his documentary about James. And if you catch the mood, there is a collection of MR James BBC shows.

Happy holidays and enjoy the ghosts!

GW Thomas has appeared in over 400 different books, magazines and ezines including The Writer, Writer's Digest, Black October Magazine and Contact. His website is gwthomas.org. He is editor of Dark Worlds magazine.

On the Trail of Lonesome Ghosts [Guest Post]

By GW Thomas

I've been watching Disney's "Lonesome Ghosts" from 1937 and wondering... where did Dick Friel get the story idea and how much it relates to the ghostbreaker tradition dating back seventy years. Now, if you've lived under a rock and never seen the cartoon I'm talking about, it appeared originally on December 24, 1937. (Like Mr. Dickens, Mr. Disney enjoys a ghost at Christmas.) But most of us saw it later: on Disneyland (1954), with The Sword in the Stone (1963), The Wonderful World of Color (1958), The Mouse Factory (1972), with The Legend of Sleepy Hollow in 1982, or in 1983, 1989, 1997, 1998, and on. Fisher-Price even had a silent, hand-cranked version as a toy. If you were like me, you saw it on The Wonderful World of Disney on the CBC back into the '70s. It doesn't matter. Most people have seen Mickey, Donald and Goofy go into the haunted house and try to deal with its mischievous inhabitants, laughed, and forgotten about it.

This cartoon has been haunting me though. I have to think "Lonesome Ghosts" was probably the very first piece of media to suggest the idea of "ghost busters" to me. I never saw The Ghost Busters with Forrest Tucker and Larry Storch in 1975. By then I had moved onto Kolchak the Nightstalker. (I was twelve after all!) 1975 was a good time to be a horror kid. My parents would never have let me see The Exorcist or anything like that, but television had Dan Curtis and other TV movie producers creating shows like Gargoyles, Moon of the Wolf, and The Night Strangler. And as long as you weren't allergic to Bradford Dillman, you got some kid-sized scares that worked you up to William Friedkin's The Exorcist and Steven Spielberg's Jaws.

But to go back to 1937 and the three intrepid members of the Ajax Ghost Exterminators. I look for clues like our brilliant detectives. The first is the date: 1937. What films or books might have been so popular that Friel would think to do a cartoon from them? The answer was pretty easy to locate. Topper was the box office winner for 1937, coming out on July 16. Based on the 1926 novel by Thorne Smith, the film features two fun-loving ghosts played by Cary Grant and Constance Bennett. The couple torment conservative banker Cosmo Topper, played by Roland Young (who received an Oscar nomination for the part.) Topper is a Walter Mitty type, regimented by his wife who's played by Billie Burke. The scene that most likely affected Friel was the finale of the film, when the ghosts pull Topper out of a fancy hotel, playing gags on the house detective and bellboy.

So far, so good. But it doesn't explain everything. The Disney story man could have just had Mickey and friends arrive at the old house late one night, a ploy used in some later Sylvester and Porky Pig cartoons at Warner Brothers. But Friel doesn't do this. He specifically makes them ghostbreakers, the three members of the Ajax Ghost Exterminators. Armed with silly tools like a shotgun, a butterfly net, an axe, and a mouse trap, the three characters enter a house worthy of a Weird Tales cover. Now, Friel may have done all this for the joke of comparing vermin exterminators with ghost exterminators, a trope that would last until the 1980s when Harold Ramis and Dan Ackroyd wrote Ghostbusters, but I wonder if Friel was inspired by something more?

The date 1937 makes this hard. Many of the great ghostbreaker pieces don't exist until after that date. I Love a Mystery, the radio show that would inspire Scooby Doo, was 1939. Ghostbuster films like Bob Hope's The Ghostbreakers (1940, but based on the Paul Dickey and Charles W. Goddard's 1909 play) and the Bowery Boys' Spook Busters, as well as the Abbott and Costello films are all in the mid-'40s or later. Even Basil Rathbone as Sherlock in The Hound of the Baskervilles came on the verge of the war, in 1939. No actual ghost breaker films appear in and around 1937.

That leaves print stories. Was Dick Friel a horror connoisseur? There is very little information on the man. He worked for the Jefferson Film Corporation in the 1920s, a company that made the Mutt and Jeff cartoons. His only Disney credit is "Lonesome Ghosts." So who knows? The most popular occult detective in 1937 was Jules de Grandin in Weird Tales, but there appears to be no influence on Mickey, Donald, and Goofy. Another was Gees by EC Vivian (under his Jack Mann pseudonym). One of Vivian's influences was the jungle writer Arthur Friel. Friel's stories set in South America - like "The Barragudo" - have a ghostbreaker element. A strange coincidence, but hardly proof of anything. Were Dick and Arthur Friel related? Like ghosts, the threads are tantalizing, but disappear like smoke.

In the end I can't find anything that links the cartoon to a specific horror icon. Mickey and Goofy wear Sherlockian deerstalkers but this was cartoon short-hand for any detective. One of the ghosts is sitting in a chair with a book called Ghost Stories on the floor, but not any particular ghost stories. As with all cartoons at this time, it was about the gags. The short soft shoe routine the ghosts do into a closet reminded me a little of Disney's "The Skeleton Dance" from 1929 (which won Disney an Oscar), but mostly it's pokes in the eye with Goofy getting stuck in a bureau, a scene that may have inspired a similar bit in "Prest-O, Change-O," an early Bugs Bunny cartoon from 1939.

Ultimately, my biggest take away is Goofy's declaring, "I ain't a-scared of no ghosts," which will become Ray Parker Jr's singing "I ain't afraid of no ghosts!" in 1984. In between 1937 and '84 we had Casper the Friendly Ghost in cartoons and comics, who I am sure was inspired in part by "Lonesome Ghosts." The derby-wearing quartet became the Ghostly Trio in time, and Spooky sports some similar head gear. Strangely, the Casper copyright holders tried to sue Columbia for fifty million because of the ghost used in the ghostbusters logo. They lost. Disney never said boo.

GW Thomas has appeared in over 400 different books, magazines and ezines including The Writer, Writer's Digest, Black October Magazine and Contact. His website is gwthomas.org. He is editor of Dark Worlds magazine.

Twixt (2011)

Who's In It: Val Kilmer (Batman Forever), Bruce Dern (Django Unchained), and Elle Fanning (Maleficent).

What It's About: A struggling writer (Kilmer) arrives in a small town on his book tour and is convinced by the sheriff (Dern) to stay and use a local mystery as the plot of his next book. But the writer's dreams of a young ghost (Fanning) begin to blur the lines between reality and fiction.

How It Is: Francis Ford Coppola is in an interesting stage of his career right now where he's able to just make movies because he wants to and not because a studio finds them potentially profitable. Twixt is a great example of that. Based on a dream that Coppola had, but was unable to finish, the movie feels really small and personal in an idiosyncratic way. Coppola's totally indulging himself, but there's nothing necessarily wrong with that. Twixt is loose and sloppy, but it's got a cool story and a fantastic cast.

In addition to its three stars it also has appearances by Kilmer's ex-wife (and Willow co-star) Joanne Whalley, character actor David Paymer, and Don Novello (aka Father Guido Sarducci). Ben Chapman (Murder by Numbers) has an especially cool role as the ghost of Edgar Allan Poe who serves as sort of a muse/spirit guide for Kilmer's character.

The movie is funny and charming, but also weird and - depending on your tolerance level - possibly pretentious. There may or may not be vampires, and that's not just me being coy. After Shark Night and Black Rock though, I was in the mood for something strange and daring and Twixt delivered.

Rating: Four out of five gothy ghost girls.

10 Honorable Mention Films from 2012

20. The Five-Year Engagement



I lost patience toward the middle when it took some really stupid decision-making to prolong the engagement to five years, but even when it stretched credibility, the movie never stopped being funny or having Jason Segel in it. It wins points for both of those things.

19. John Carter



Nowhere near the mess that lots of people claim it was; just not as spectacular as it should have been for the talent involved. It's a fun, scifi escape with a couple of legitimately great moments; we just all hoped for so much more.

18. The Amazing Spider-Man



"Expectations" are a recurring theme on my honorable mentions list this year. I didn't have high ones for The Amazing Spider-Man and like most people, I questioned the fundamental existence of the project. It was made for purely cynical, We Have to Do This or Lose the License reasons.

But though it contains some highly unnecessary rehashing of the Sam Raimi material, it also found some new things to do with its tone and the central relationships. It's worthwhile for Peter and Gwen alone.

17. ParaNorman



I love the theme in ParaNorman about being your own person and not letting other people define you. Also: the animation is amazing. I wasn't totally in love with the character designs though, and since that's what I was looking at for most of the film, that's what keeps it out of my Top 10.

16. The Hunger Games



I'm disappointed that this isn't in my Top 10 for the year, either. I totally thought it would be, but during the second viewing I found myself getting bored. I kept myself entertained by focusing on Jennifer Lawrence's wonderful performance, which communicated very well the horror of Katniss' situation. Without her internal monologue though, it was hard to get what I wanted from her moral struggle over how to act in the arena.

Still looking forward to Catching Fire, but I'm more detachedly curious about it than wildly enthusiastic like I was for this one.

15. Underworld: Awakening



In a year that brought a disappointing entry in the Resident Evil movies, I'm thrilled that we got a worthy film in my other favorite horror/scifi adventure series starring a woman. Awakening pretty much punts and launches a Bold New Direction for Underworld, but it's a good direction with some likable, new characters and I enjoyed it very much.

14. 21 Jump Street



I want to say that this is so much better than a movie based on an all-but-forgotten TV show has the right to be, but even though that's true, it's not really fair to suggest that that's all 21 Jump Street has going for it. It's just a very funny movie, period. That it gets a small part of that humor from pointing out and making fun of its sordid roots is just frosting for the cake. I'd probably rate it higher if not for the skeevy romance between Jonah Hill's character and a high school student.

13. Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted



Listen: After the horrible piece of derivative crap that Madagascar 2 was, I'm as surprised as anyone to find Madagascar 3 on this list. In fact, I didn't want to see it at all when it was announced. It wasn't until it got a 79% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes that I had to see what the heck was going on with this thing. To my surprise, it was hilarious and - more importantly - original. It also pretty much wrapped up the saga with a nice bow on top, so I don't expect to be interested in a Madagascar 4, but never say never.

12. Haywire



No, Gina Carano is not a great actress. And the plot of Haywire is nothing new. But the movie makes up for both of those things with heart and authenticity. I wrote a full review of it, so I'll point you there for more thoughts, but it really was one of my favorite movie experiences of the year.

11. Moonrise Kingdom



This was my first Wes Anderson film since Rushmore, which I never quite forgave for stealing Bill Murray away from movies like Groundhog Day and The Man Who Knew Too Little. Seeing Moonrise Kingdom makes me want to find out what I've been missing. It's a small movie, but a lovely one, and makes great use of its setting and awesome cast.

10 Movies I Could Take or Leave in 2012

If you're just now tuning in, I'm counting down the 43 movies I saw in the theater last year. The bottom of the barrel was in this post, so we pick up with Number 30 this week: the part of the list where I found things in each movie to like and dislike, in more or less equal amounts.

30. The Bourne Legacy



I was more eager for this than I should have been. I hoped it would be a decent placeholder for the series until Matt Damon found a reason to come back, but it was a tired plot with very low stakes. Nice performances from Jeremy Renner and Rachel Wiesz, but they didn't have much to work with except for a couple of really effective action pieces.

29. Man on a Ledge



Another thriller in which the excellent cast is wasted on a generic, predictable script. Genesis Rodriguez steals the movie and brings Jamie Bell along with her though. I want another, better movie about just the two of them.

28. The Woman in Black



An effective, spooky movie with a welcome performance by Daniel Radcliffe. That ending though... It's designed to clear the road for Woman in Black 2, but is so cynical and obvious about it that it not only kills my interest in a sequel, it also makes this one un-rewatchable for me.

27. Men in Black 3



I'm not a fan of the Men in Black movies. They're disposable entertainment that I tend to forget about as soon as I leave the theater. This one actually stuck with me, but I haven't made up my mind about if that was for the right reason or not. The movie's point is unclear, but whatever it is, it makes it in a memorable way.

And Josh Brolin is super entertaining as Young Tommy Lee Jones.

26. Hotel Transylvania



I would've liked it a lot more if Dracula didn't sound like Adam Sandler doing a Lugosi accent. I mean, that's exactly what's going on, but I wish it wasn't so distracting. Other than that, it's a funny movie with some amusing interpretations of classic monsters.

25. The Expendables 2



The first one was pretty miserable, but they got me back to the theater by adding Chuck Norris to the mix and promising to expand the roles of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis. There were still some huge, ridiculous plot holes, but I loved the finale as everyone used their best moves (and best lines) to show each other up. What it has over the first one is "fun."

24. Flight



Not the movie I expected. I thought it was going to be more of a legal drama, but not being that doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing. Taken on its own terms, Flight is a powerful, effective film about addiction and the lengths people go to deny it and cover it up. I liked it a lot for that and enjoyed being surprised by it, but it's a difficult movie to watch and I can't imagine I'll ever want to see it again.

23. Argo



Nice thriller with some laugh out loud moments, some harrowing ones, and a couple of great, touching ones when reluctant participants in the escape plan decide to commit to it. Unfortunately, the script goes to great lengths to ramp up the tension in unbelievable and cheesy ways that kept reminding me this couldn't be how it actually happened.

22. Prometheus



I already wrote a long post about this one, but short version: There are some truly great and fascinating ideas in this visually stunning movie. It's just too bad that they're executed so very, very sloppily.

21. Brave



I just rewatched Brave the other night and liked it better than I did the first time. I don't know if I liked it well enough to move it out of this section of my list, but maybe. I'm certainly not as disappointed this time.

The biggest thing is that I was able to spot the moment where Merida and her mom resolve their conflict. It was right where it was supposed to be, but the first time around I missed an important, but subtle line of dialogue and some equally vital body language. Turns out, the point of the movie really is about compromise and the bravery it takes to do that when you haven't yet exhausted all the stubborn tantrum-throwing you'd planned on doing. It's a much sneakier message than I was prepared for, but I liked it more for that. Maybe next time, I'll like it even better.

The Spectre judges cephalopods

And the sea monster seems pretty terrified about it.

48 Scares of Casper #48

Well, it's about time. What goes around comes around, I guess.

Happy Halloween, everyone!

48 Scares of Casper #47

Don't worry, I haven't miscounted! Stay tuned for the Casper's last scare (this year)!

48 Scares of Casper #46

48 Scares of Casper #45

48 Scares of Casper #44

48 Scares of Casper #43

Part Two of Two.

Wait a minnit! Those guys can't get scared and run away! There's a woman coming down!

Don't worry. Casper's on the job and he catches her, but man the comic got dark for a second there.

48 Scares of Casper #42

Part One of Two. Don't worry, there's firemen below. We'll meet them tomorrow.

Although...

48 Scares of Casper #41

48 Scares of Casper #40

48 Scares of Casper #39

48 Scares of Casper #38

48 Scares of Casper #37