Is there something like intellectual horror film? I don't remenber where
I read that Last Year in Marienbad is a Zombie film, but it gives a
very accurate picture of the haunting quality of this film. I would also
refer to the film series Ju On - The Grudge as some kind of abstract
intellectual or episodic horror film, and I think this is the reason why
they scare me unlike anything else.
I don't find much of political implications in horror films. I wonder
why they don't treat political subjects head on, but there are some very
interesting moments in some films. Victor Halperin's White Zombie (1932)
has some very scary images of Zombies working in a mill, a very
impressive and also haunting impression of Fordism and modern forms of
slavery. But the film also creates a feeling of being totally alone in
the world. The nightmares (when I was young) were caused by a feeling of
being totally alone in the world. Horror films don't offer
transcendental point of views but they create a camera subject that is
both anonymous and monstrous.
I am still searching for that juvenile pleasure of having nightmares.
Psycho did that job when I was young and also Roman Polanski and Le
Locataire and Repulsion accomplished that goal. And both films made me
feel alone in the world. Cavell refers to the camera as generally being
outside of the world it records, but I think that some horror films give
significance to this form of being outside (which is no longer
transcendental?).
I think we should also go a little deeper into the question of
perception and horror films, addressing topics of frame compositions and
camera movements. Jack Clayton's The Innocence for example creates
horror by backgrounding the ghosts so that they are only vaguely to be
noticed - it is 'horror at the edge of perception' (I was scared a lot
by this film, but also by Blow Up and the way something unseen was made
visible in the photographer's dark room).
I would be very interested in thoughts about perception and intellectual
horror and films that transcend the boundaries between popular and art
cinema.
Herbert
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