how it works and what it consists of
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Home is perhaps the most unsafe place on earth. In any case, if you find yourself in a horror movie, then you can be sure that everything is definitely not all right with you. The walls here not only talk, but also bite, ghosts are hiding in the attic, a maniac is waiting in the basement, and you should never fall asleep in your own bed, even in extreme cases. Stanislav F. Rostotsky assembled an exemplary house of horrors, recalling the creepiest locations in the history of cinema.
roof
“Q.” Larry Cohen, 1982
In the floor plans of the world’s horror films, rooftops are most often marked as the safest place (for example, during a zombie apocalypse). But there are exceptions, like Larry Cohen’s film, which crossed a police thriller with the creature feature genre: a New York detective finds out that a series of ritual murders and bloody incidents on rooftops (here a window cleaner was left headless, there a sunbather was gutted) are interconnected. And over Manhattan stretched the wings of a real “feathered serpent,” an unknown flying reptile, which some descendants of the Aztecs revered as the god Quetzalcoatl. Cheap and cheerful trash, which nevertheless pleased the important critic Leonard Maltin (who rated it on a par with, for example, Tarkovsky’s “Stalker”) and had a tangible influence on such classics of the genre as the second “Predator” and “Invasion of the Dinosaurs” by Bong Chun Ho. However, the picturesque panoramas of New York rooftops (not excluding the Chrysler Building, on the top of which Quetzalcoatl un-divinely laid a huge egg) in any case are much more impressive than the ridiculous, albeit bloody, special effects.
attic
“Flowers in the Attic.” Geoffrey Bloom, 1987
In fact, the attic in the case of the Foxfort family mansion is not so much an attic as an attic. Spacious enough to hang, say, a swing there. Another question is why they are needed there. Having lost her husband and home, a woman with four children of different ages returns to her native land to her oppressive mother and father, who is in a permanent state of “patient No. 1.” To receive an inheritance, you need to be patient a little, and before that, under no circumstances tell the patriarch about your grandchildren. In the meantime, it’s better for them to sit locked up in the attic (or attic). Fans of the bestselling novel by Virginia Andrews, a heartbreaking mixture of Shirley Jackson, Jacqueline Susann and Deniskin’s story “Twenty Years Under the Bed”, were extremely dissatisfied with the film adaptation, reproaching the film for simplification (!) and vulgarity (!!), but if in Bloom’s version (later the book and its sequels have been filmed more than once) and some nuances are missed, then it corresponds one hundred percent to its advertising slogan: “Greed. Deprivation. Incest. Cruelty”.
elevator
“Elevator”. Dick Maas, 1983
Today, “bad elevators” can be found in horror films all over the world, from Japan (“Elevator from Hell”, 2004) to Finland (“Dark Floors”, 2008), and in Hollywood none other than M. Knight spoke out on this issue Shyamalan (“Devil”, 2010). But the best and, apparently, the first statement on this topic should be considered the film by the Dutchman Maas, which received the Grand Prix at the festival of science fiction and horror in Avoriaz. There was no diabolism: dangerous oddities in the operation of elevator equipment are explained in the spirit of early Michael Crichton by microchip failures and vague hints at artificial intelligence, but this did not make “Elevator” any less creepy. A special mention deserves the soundtrack consisting of gloomy electronic elevator music in the spirit of John Carpenter – and, as in the case of Carpenter, written by the director himself. In 2001, Maas remade his biggest hit overseas with Naomi Watts in one of the main roles. It turned out well, and Watts, who is afraid of elevators in real life, looked organic, but after September 11, a film about people dying in a skyscraper elevator was considered inappropriate and was not released into wide release.
walls
“Don’t be afraid of the dark.” John Newland, 1973
Old walls are suitable not only for walling up a dead body or a living cat (preferably a black one). Within the walls of a Victorian mansion with a bad reputation, where the Farnhams (Jim Hutton and Kim Darby) move in, live ominous creatures, small, sharp-toothed and red-eyed, who do not intend to sit quietly in the corners forever. Filmed for television in just two weeks, this original and effective psycho-folk horror was quickly recognized first as a cult classic, and then as a classic, and was awarded a big-budget remake in 2010. Unfortunately, Guillermo del Toro, who became the initiator, co-producer and one of the screenwriters of the new version, clearly rewrote a lot “for himself” (despite the fact that the director was a certain debutant Troy Nixey, who has not shown himself in any way since then). Among other things, making the main characters (Guy Pearce and Katie Holmes) happy with a little daughter. And as a result, scenes from married life heavily mixed with Freudianism (in the original, only one wife sees the creatures for the time being, so it’s time for the husband to doubt her normality) gave way to completely harmless running around by the whole family from some overly naughty goblins.
kitchen
“Serial Mom” John Waters, 1994
Actually, in the ideal kitchen of the ideal Baltimore housewife (and part-time serial killer) Beverly Sutphin, a single murder is committed: at the very beginning, having noticed a fly circling around perfectly toasted toast during the ideal family breakfast, Beverly arms herself with a fly swatter and turns the gaping insect into a disgusting stain on perfect wallpaper – and then it just comes to the title: “directed by John Waters.” From this moment on, there is hardly any doubt that many more murders await the respectable public ahead of those who, like a fly, do not correspond to the “serial mother’s” ideas of impeccability, including the use of a wide variety of kitchen utensils and even food products. So it will be. But the most impressive and symbolic will still be the first one. Happening in broad daylight, in an idyllic interior that looks like it came straight out of the pages of Town & Country, Cooking Light, Good Housekeeping or any of the other household glosses that Waters has faithfully subscribed to over the years.
bedroom
“A Nightmare on Elm Street”. Wes Craven, 1984
In the literal sense of the word, the bed scenes of the death of Freddy Krueger’s two first victims – Tina, whom Freddy cut into pieces, throwing her body against the walls, and Glen, from whose torn chest a bloody fountain hit the ceiling – were filmed using a device invented by special effects master Jim Doyle (he He also developed Freddy’s glove), a design called a “rotating room”, which allows actors to walk (or roll) on the walls, and liquids flow from bottom to top. This technology was subsequently used in films like The Fly and Interview with the Vampire, and a quarter of a century later it was used again in connection with dreams by Christopher Nolan. His Inception won, among others, an Oscar for visual effects. Doyle and his revolving room, of course, never dreamed of any Oscars. Which, of course, is a shame, but by and large it is not surprising. For, unlike Nolan’s colossus, the first “Nightmare” was a radically low-budget production, so this revolutionary design had to be rotated manually when filming truly unforgettable episodes. In the style of the carousel from “Dunno on the Moon”.
bathroom
“Psycho”. Alfred Hitchcock, 1960
As for the bath as such, several worthy candidates come to mind, ranging from Kubrick’s “The Shining” to the same “A Nightmare on Elm Street.” But there was, is and will be only one shower in the history of world cinema. The 45-second murder scene of Marion Crane was filmed over the course of a week using 78 shots and 52 takes, and one cannot but agree with Francois Truffaut, who considered it a piece of jewelry. He, however, believed that the next episode, in which Norman Bates tries to hide the traces of the crime, was filmed “even better and more harmoniously.” Maybe so, but in the mass consciousness it was the murder scene that not only became iconic, but grew to the level of an independent cultural phenomenon. In 2017, Alexander O. Philippe directed the documentary film “78/52” with the subtitle: “78 shots and 52 takes that changed cinema forever.” The duration of this incredibly thorough, but no less fascinating study is 1 hour 31 minutes, which is 120 times longer than the episode to which it is, in fact, dedicated.
children’s
“Children’s room”. Alex de la Iglesia, 2006
There are as many children’s horror films as there are for children, but most often they differ only in the style of the cradle, over which the next boogeyman crawling out of the closet is bent. But sometimes something much more interesting happens here. As, for example, in this not the most famous, but worthy of close attention Spanish television film, shot by Alex de la Iglesia himself. Having moved with his wife and newborn son to a new (actually old) house, sports journalist Juan begins to feel a strange and very disturbing presence in the area of the children’s room. Armed with a radio and then a video baby monitor, Juan receives irrefutable evidence and at first blames ghosts, but is soon forced to admit that what is taking place in his nursery is not otherworldly machinations, but a “conflict of two probabilities.” And all the terrible things that he initially believed to be echoes of the past are, in fact, yet to happen. Or is it not? In general, as a person knowledgeable in these matters warns Juan, “you shouldn’t try to save Schrödinger’s cat. If you try, you might end up stuck in a box forever.”
basement
“House on the edge of the cemetery.” Lucio Fulci, 1981
The exemplary Boyle family, similar to the Lutzes from “The Amityville Horror,” leaves New York and settles on the outskirts of Boston in a house that, according to all documents, is listed as the Oak Mansion, but is known locally as the “Freudstein House” of ill memory. A tightly boarded up basement is discovered in the house, in which, as the Boyles soon learn, live not only aggressive bats (the scene of the killing of one of them has, perhaps, no analogues either in disgust, or in absurdity, or in completely unbearable duration), but also the former owner of the house himself, Dr. Freudstein, turned into a necrorealistic cadaver. Despite everything, “The House on the Edge of the Cemetery” remains one of the most subtle (no matter how strange this definition may sound in relation to the once officially banned film, where in the first five minutes a girl’s head is pierced with a knife in a close-up), even elegiac masterpieces of Fulci (not least thanks to the magical music of Walter Rizzatti). And even the quote from Henry James at the end seems somehow disconcertingly appropriate.
foundation
“Poltergeist”. Tobe Hooper, 1982
One day, the Freelings in full force, including their beloved dog, discover that some kind of riot of spirits is going on in their country house: furniture flies from side to side, the daughter is almost sucked inside the TV, and the son is almost kidnapped by a living creature. There’s a tree in the backyard. And while waiting for the desperate family to learn that all the troubles are connected with the fact that their house, contrary to all divine and human laws, was built on the site of a destroyed Indian cemetery, otherworldly rage will reach the point that the desecrated dead will rise from the ground, like during the Last Judgment. The film, based on a script by Steven Spielberg (there were rumors that he had a much greater hand in directing than is commonly believed) was released simultaneously with Spielberg’s “E.T. And he made it clear that before trying to establish contacts with alien intelligence, it would be a good idea to take your eyes off space and look at your feet. At least to make sure that the pit for your pool is not spread out on someone’s old, alien, but not at all unresponsive bones.
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