Dot in the Sky (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dotinthesky) wrote2007-06-16 04:49 pm
dotinthesky) wrote2007-06-16 04:49 pm
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Shirley Jackson's Haunting
I was still a kid when I first read The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson. It was a version translated into Brasilian Portuguese, bought in a tiny shopping mall near the apartment I grew up in São Paulo (I asked the saleswoman for a ghost story because I wanted to give Agatha Christie a break.) I loved the novel even though I wasn't old enough to fully understand it.
A few years ago, while visiting Kevin's parents in Canada, we rented The Haunting (the 1963 version) from the nearest strip mall videostore. Kevin's mom told us later that it gave her nightmares (very understandable when you consider she lives in a remote farm). I was impressed at how faithful the film was to the novel and how it built the suspense purely on suggestion and on a few key scenes involving "the haunting". Many of the novel's themes -- unstable minds meeting an unstable house; "unnatural" sexuality in an "unnatural" house -- also survive in the film, making it a kind of perfect companion piece for Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. But, whereas Hitchcock's movie deals with dangerous human insanity in a remote location, The Haunting is about the power a place can have in destabilizing a person whose mind is weak. Hitchcock's psycho gets found out in the end while Hill House continues to stand after the characters are gone, with the implication that many more will meet a horrible fate there.
I bought the film on DVD over Christmas, when I saw it on sale, and last night we got the sour cream Pringles and chocolate biscuits ready before popping in the film. Although naive in some ways, and awkward in others (especially the interior monologues), the film still stands as one of the best ghost stories ever made. It's just so... classy. It's from a time when film-makers assumed their audience were intelligent and could come to their own conclusions, as well as tolerate plenty of dialogue between the characters. No blood and guts here.
I wish there were more ghost stories put to film, more creepy novels on the bestselling lists. Enough with all these chicklit novels and boring film franchises. Let's tell ghost stories to each other.
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An interesting companion piece to it is "The Legend of Hell House" (1973), starring Roddy McDowell. It was written by Richard Matheson as a homage to The Haunting, but he wanted to provide undeniably real ghosts.
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Good times...good times...
Re: Good times...good times...
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Yes, I noticed that when I did a search through Google yesterday. Near Stratford-upon-Avon (perhaps a nice destination for a day trip?)
An interesting companion piece to it is "The Legend of Hell House" (1973)
In the 80s, one of the TV channels in Brasil used to show horror movies late at night, during certain days of the week. When I got into horror, when I was around 10 or 11, I would sometimes stay up late to watch them (in the very off chance my parents were asleep.) I remember seeing ads for that movie but I never got to see it.
Do you remember a horror movie from the 70s about a boat that is discovered, with all of its passengers killed apart from a girl? She then tells of the horrors that befell the ship? I remember seeing this film but haven't managed to figure out what it's called.
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