{"id":2876,"date":"2012-05-16T13:37:50","date_gmt":"2012-05-16T19:37:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bmovienation.com\/?p=2876"},"modified":"2012-05-16T13:37:50","modified_gmt":"2012-05-16T19:37:50","slug":"a-house-on-a-haunted-hill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bmovienation.com\/?p=2876","title":{"rendered":"A House On A Haunted Hill"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nAs a former English major, I couldn\u2019t resist going to see the new version of Jane Eyre, starring Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender. For those who can accept movies without a single bare breast or car crash, it\u2019s a rare treat: beautifully filmed, beautifully performed, faithful to the spirit of the nineteenth-century original. One special pleasure for me was realizing that Jane, for all of her prim Victorian ways, is a strikingly modern young woman. Despite her low-key manner, she always makes do, for the simple reason that she\u2019s smart, she\u2019s tough, and she knows her own mind. Self-respect and self-reliance are essential parts of her character. And, although she\u2019s never less than conventionally proper, it\u2019s quite clear in Wasikowska\u2019s performance that the fires of passion burn within. <\/p>\n

Jane Eyre tells the story of a young governess who gets far more than she bargained for when she reports for work at a musty old country manor. In fact, it\u2019s easy to see Charlotte Bronte\u2019s 1847 novel as part of the long tradition of haunted house stories, in which something (or someone) lurks in the shadows, ready to strike when least expected. <\/p>\n

Roger Corman paid homage to this same tradition in 1960, when he adapted \u201cThe Fall of the House of Usher,\u201d an eerie short story by Edgar Allan Poe. House of Usher, the lead-off film in Corman\u2019s ambitious (if bargain-basement) Poe cycle for American International Pictures, vaulted Roger to a new level of critical respect, while also winning him fans among impressionable teenagers worldwide. In 2005, House of Usher became the only Corman feature to be welcomed into the National Film Registry, a project of the Library of Congress. I had the pleasure of breaking that news to Roger myself: it was a great day for his enduring legacy. <\/p>\n

While shooting his Poe films, Corman was discovering Sigmund Freud. Haunted house movies, from Roger\u2019s Freud-infused perspective, capture a child\u2019s fear of the unknown, symbolizing a tiny tot alone in the darkness, confounded by the mystery of what\u2019s happening behind his parents\u2019 locked door. When interviewed by my former colleague Adam Simon for an Italian TV documentary, Roger stretched this idea even further. For Adam\u2019s camera, Roger wandered through the dark, decrepit Concorde studio, lantern in hand, solemnly intoning: \u201cTo me the house is a woman\u2019s body. The hallways, the stairways, the corridors are the vagina. I as a teenaged boy am immensely desirous of penetrating those hallways, yet at the same time I am a little bit fearful about the journey.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Freudian explanation helps me understand the attractiveness of horror films to postpubescent audiences (though heaven knows I\u2019ve never been a teenage boy!). Still, there\u2019s another reason that low-budget filmmakers love haunted house movies. In a nutshell, they\u2019re cheap to shoot. Just one big set, with lots of nooks and crannies, and little need for a cast of thousands. Add some things that go bump in the night, and you\u2019re good to go.<\/p>\n

by Beverly Gray<\/p>\n