Danse Macabre
What is presented here, for the first time anywhere in the world, ladies and gentlemen, for your amusement and enlightenment, and at no price of admission whatsoever, is a select portion of the original manuscript out of which The Castle website evolved (ever-so-slightly edited for coherence). That project, and this one, possess a dual intent - to explore what horror films mean in the context of the culture at large, and to discover what they mean to me, personally, and why. We interact with movies both as members of a social structure and in a specific sociocultural context, as well as through our specific and unique viewpoints as individuals. Movies are marvelous containers for meaning, whatever the intent of their makers may be, but the meaning they may contain is entirely reliant on the meaning we are capable of bringing to it.
All art is a collaborative effort between those who create it and those who experience it: the Mona Lisa is a different painting for each of us. We see the beauty and power of Van Gogh's Starry Night because our perceptive apparatus has been conditioned to see it. His contemporaries were conditioned differently; thus Van Gogh dies broke and broken.
What follows is a primitive attempt to examine the cognitive processes at work as I experience a particular film - what do I see in it, why do I see it that way? How and why do I connect with it in the particular way I do? The film chosen is unlikely to be regarded as a "great" film in any way, by anyone; likely to be granted the status of art by few; yet, by virtue of my undiminished attraction to it over the years, seems the perfect prospect for this examination.
Of course, it may also be possible that what lies ahead is simply an examination of the workings of a deranged mind. You'll have to decide that for yourself. Proceed at your own risk...
Where nothing is as it seems.
When I was ten years old, all I really wanted out of life was to stay up late and watch horror movies. Crouched on the living room rug with a bowl of popcorn, three feet from the magical transporting cathode-ray tube, I partook of the special intoxication available only to an eager innocent of that era encountering the classic Universal Monsters for the first time.
Last night I sat on my living room rug, three feet from the window-of-wonders, notebook in hand, scribbling hasty observations about a film I first encountered at the drive-in, the greater part of a lifetime ago. It is one of those films (yes, there are a few) to which I return with the regularity and devotion of a monk returning to his scriptures; in reverence, and in search of further revelation.
Lao Tzu (legend has it) wrote the Tao Te Ching to sum up his understanding of the universal forces at work within and without us.
Antonio Margheriti made Danse Macabre, otherwise known to devotees of Gothic exploitation fare as Castle of Blood.
Yes, yes, I know: to compare these two texts, so seemingly remote from each other, is outlandish and absurd on the face of it; perhaps just an attention grabbing device on the part of the desperate author. Maybe. The Tao is a timeless work of ancient origin, possibly the greatest book ever written (more honestly useful in its first page than the Christian bible in its entirety); a work which outlines directly the principles upon which our very existence is founded, explaining exactly how things work, with a clarity achievable only through purest poetry. It is a work which few understand at the deepest level. Castle of Blood is a modestly budgeted, black & white, gothic spook-fest; an Italian-French co-production from the early sixties, concocted as a commercial venture to please the not-too-discriminating tastes of unsophisticated audiences everywhere. Presumably, anyone can understand it.
Lao Tzu was responding to a plea to report all he understood of the nature of "reality," for the benefit of all the world.
Antonio Margheriti was churning out genre product to make a living.
We all do what we can.
Some folk (even educated, articulate, successful, cultured folk) could examine the Tao Te Ching and honestly find nothing in it but mystical nonsense and metaphysical claptrap. Some folks could examine Castle of Blood and find nothing in it but silly genre nonsense and tired metaphysical claptrap. There is little in either text to support consensus reality, what we ordinarily think of as the "real" world. And I find myself revisiting both as though embarking on a sacred pilgrimage. Each text, in its own way and in its own time, sustains me, reminding me of things I tend to habitually forget. Each, in its peculiar way, slakes a thirst to sip of something genuine in a wasteland of bullshit. Each text invokes in me recognition of its authenticity, feels like the comforting company of an old friend.
Already, though, there is difficulty - the notebook is, perhaps, not quite so useful as I had imagined it might be. The attentive viewing of a film and the thoughtful taking of notes are activities in which, I discover, I am unable to simultaneously engage. The division of attention required is respectful to neither task. The hasty notes are often illegible, sometimes impenetrable; perhaps it's just as well. Film and page each deserve complete attention in their time, but the real movie is in my head.
So join me now...the room is lit only by a few scattered candles and the seductive glow of the screen, a beacon from another dimension extending its invitation to enter. We are about to be transported to the realm of Castle of Blood where, much like our more familiar world, nothing at all is what it seems. This is what I see...
We begin with a murky title card, signifying fog, or smoke, or clouds or whatever form of obscurity you might prefer; just a twisting pattern of grays over which appear the credits (which are also, by their deceptive nature, meant to obscure our perceptions even further), bolstered by "Ritz" (usually billed as "Riz") Ortolani's rich score, instantly recognizable as "horror movie music." The title is revealed to us as Danse Macabre, which roughly translates as "death dance" or "dance of the dead." It is a perfect title for a horror movie. We all dance our way through life, trying not to stumble or embarrass ourselves, learning the moves from our teachers, our partners, or through our own mis-steps. Whether we believe we call our own tune or step to another's call; whether we do the routines as we have been taught them and with painstaking precision, or whether we whirl in spontaneous ecstasy, the dance can only have one end for us all.
The flick was released over time to various venues, under various titles, via various distributors. I saw it at the "53 Drive-In", a local temple of exploitation, under the unambiguous, consumer-friendly, expectation-arousing title, Castle of Blood, shorn by censor's scissors, for the undoubted protection of my fragile sensibilities, of its forbidden lesbian references. If it were a choice between two flicks, about which you knew nothing, which title would you spend your jack on? In any case, we are already, realize it or not, in a realm where identity is uncertain; the titles impart different imagined qualities to the same content.
The credits are a fabric of deceit. This is true, to some degree, of all films; in European films of the era, especially so. It is a list of suspects. Some of the names used are actual names of participants: the name Barbara Steele appears prominently, since it was, and remains, one of the film's primary selling points and principal attractions. Hubba-hubba. Other names are pure fabrications, made up to satisfy the curious demands of international co-production. Others are possible mistakes, misspellings, or pseudonyms of uncertain purpose or origin. On my DVD version, the director’s credit does not even appear on the Danse list, only on the alternate Castle credits given as an extra. The Castle of Blood credits are positioned over a still shot of London Bridge; the director is listed as Anthony m. Dawson, Margheriti's anglicized other self. I have heard the devil mixes truth with lies, the better to deceive us, but also know that the tellers of parables use lies to point to truth. Beginning with the credits, the nature of truth is obscured.
Our story opens with a traveler afoot upon a foggy street. Just so; I can't help but think, "Where else?" We all begin on a foggy street. The teaching stories of diverse spiritual traditions often focus on a traveler on the road, the road serving as metaphor for the path of life and the journey we must all make upon it. This traveler is on a paved street; it is society's path, the path of the civilized, cultured man. We recognize it as our path also.
The traveler moves through the same fog as we: the fog of conditioning and illusion with which our society blankets us, obscuring all but the direction chosen for us. He is looking for something, as are we all. He passes a driverless coach along the way, and enters a public house. A hanging sign advertises it's name: The Four Devils. Neither he nor we spare much attention for the coach, though it is the vehicle that will carry him to his demise, and us to witness it. He is as ignorant of the proximity of death as we, and as unknowing of the means by which he will meet it.
His name, we will learn, is Alan Foster. He is a journalist; a reporter and, like us, has arrived in search of a good story, descending the taverns subterranean stairway to find it. Not a minute into the story and already we are lurking beneath the surface of things. Foster is also a word meaning to harbor, support or encourage. It may also mean to cherish or cling to something. Foster is an ordinary man who, like most of us, harbors the beliefs and attitudes of the dominant culture of his day; clings to comforting notions of his own sophistication, and the superiority of the modern intellect over other, more subtle modes of understanding. He also shares his first name, in altered spelling, with the immediate object of his quest, that most illustrious practitioner of the macabre tale, Mr. Edgar Allan Poe. Two characters sharing a name; two aspects of one character? Our character?
Poe is holding court at table, imbibing of spirits and the mesmerized attention of his eager listeners, as he narrates, with dramatic gusto, the tale of Berenice. His feverish, first-person account is delivered with the intensity of a madman's confession, as though he had himself just now lived the tale and was desperate to unburden himself of it.
Foster tells Poe he is impressed with this fiction, but Poe rebukes him, insisting that he, himself, is but a journalist, that his stories recount actual events in the real world. His tales, he insists, are "pure truth."
All words are lies in the sense that they are mere symbols, representations of something rather than the thing itself. In practice, they reveal the perceptions of the speaker far more accurately than the nature of that which they are meant to represent. In conversation, we delineate ourselves far more clearly than the presumed object of our speech. If there is a "pure truth," it remains inaccessible through language. Poe may be interpreted as saying that his fictions convey the spirit of truth with more authenticity than any supposed "objective" reporting, which merely wallows in the conventions of consensus" reality."
We are in a London pub, and Poe's presence here is an amusing conceit. No historical record exists (to my meager knowledge, anyway) of such a visit. Nor does the film seem to be derived from any particular work of Poe's, though the credits (those unreliable indicators of truth) would have us believe otherwise. Castle of Blood is no more interested in delivering a genuine representation of Poe's work to the screen than most other attempts to exploit the power of that name to sell tickets, but it does seem to me to be faithful to the spirit of the master and progenitor of that form we have come to call the horror story. The film is so saturated with his influence that it can't resist the delight of presenting his physical manifestation.
Poe's acquaintance, Sir Thomas Blackwood, is introduced, and the gentlemen engage in conversation concerning the nature of death, and what, if anything, survives after. Poe claims. "I am waiting for something that does not exist: my death!" Taking him in jest, Foster is quick to point out the obvious reality of death, but Poe warns not to confuse death with the tomb. Blackwood contributes that he owns an estate haunted by the spirits of those who've met disturbing ends there, and who return each year on the "night of the dead" to re-enact their fates. No one spending the night of the dead within the castle has ever survived 'til morning. Ah, now we see the premise of our story.
That very night is upon us, that very hour approaches - the 1st of November, twixt midnight and dawn. Blackwood, as his custom dictates, is looking for someone to accept a wager: spend the night in the castle and be alive in the morning to collect. Foster is smugly comfortable in his skepticism. His only fears, he allows, are of the living. If he can continue his interview with Poe during the coach ride to the destination, and if the wagered sum can be brought within his means (for journalists are rarely men of wealth - just ask Poe, who in real life could not have afforded travel abroad), the challenge is taken and the bet is on. As the trio depart the tavern for coach and castle, Poe pauses to regard a large animal skull mounted on the wall. As he exits, he seems to give it a knowing nod and the hint of a sardonic smile.
The first dialog spoken in the film belongs to Poe. They are from the published prose of the actual Edgar Poe, spoken by the fictional Poe of the film. The "real" Poe, the historical figure, the brilliant writer; the wretchedly miserable, vulnerably sensitive, poverty stricken, grievously flawed human being of a time far removed from us, is long gone, no more with us than some forgotten cave-dwelling ancestor. But something remains; something survives his death, even if that something is as much our creation as his remnant. That something survives in our consciousness, manifests itself in our on-going attempts to re-create, re-interpret, re-imagine and recapture his melancholy vision. The energies expended by Poe, brought into being through Poe, through his investigations into darker mysteries, still circulate in our world, in our time; still move us in our imaginings, still inspire us to fear, wonder, awe, and further investigation of our own. The residual energies of a formerly living entity as an active influence on our lives: is this not the definition of a ghost?
I have come to this film because I need stories to live fully. Alan Foster has come to a London tavern to get a story in order to make a living. We each get a "real" Poe story (or, at least, a few representative lines) from a fictional Poe, before we begin the "real" story of the movie, which is a fiction inspiring real questions. Foster has come for a true story about Poe; by the end, the truth which Foster is unwilling to face will become fodder for Poe's fiction, which Poe claims is not fiction at all. Got that? Foster decides that, since he's committed to this goofy venture, he will write his own "true" tale, which he will entitle "Castle of Terror", and which might easily have been an alternate title for this flick.
In the coach, Poe declares, "Reality is always just beyond one's reach." Now, maybe Poe is just a drunk on a metaphysical rant. Or maybe, just maybe, he is seriously describing his function: that his work is intended to make accessible that which is ordinarily inaccessible - reality itself.
Ordinary fictions reduce the mysteries of life to a kind of familiar gruel, conforming to the mundane expectations of consensus reality. They mimic what is already false, becoming imitations of a lie, thus doubly false. Poe's fiction defies such stifling limitations and embraces what lies beyond, vaulting the barricades of intellect to explore the darkest caverns of the heart or deepest pits of the psyche.
Poe also offers his theory on that subject most suited to poetry, the death of a beautiful young woman. To the poet and the spiritual seeker as well, truth is another word for beauty. The inevitable vulnerability of that innocent beauty to the overwhelming onslaught of corruption and malfeasance is fuel for Poe's creative fire, the metaphor arising from his own personal tragedies.
But, 'lo! Our destination is at hand and, with Alan Foster, we are obliged to enter if we would meet our destiny.
Past the wrought-iron gate stands the castle, its gardens a tangle encompassing the castle's own graveyard, through which we now pass. Through the density of fog and darkness we cannot envisage the entirety of the structure. Its outline is vague, it's brooding walls of stone and silent, shadowed towers seeming to lean threateningly toward us out of the night. And as we pause at the threshold, hesitant to proceed, unwilling to turn away, we may pause also to ask ourselves again what the hell we are doing here.
On consideration: we're here because where else could we be?
We have always lived in the castle.
We abide in it now. It is the locus for the forces with which our origins and destinies are entwined, as entangled as the castles own gardens; for entities that manipulate us toward their own ends, out of their own motives and interests, be they benign or inimical.
The film's title fixes the image of a castle in mind's eye, but the word is unspoken and we never quite see enough, never quite get the proper perspective to bring it into definition. Lord Blackwood refers to it as his estate, which implies not merely a physical space but many other possible forms of inheritance. In body and mind, we are made up largely of what we have inherited. This inheritance is genetic, familial, social, cultural, environmental; involving every aspect of our identity, character and state of being.
The castle is imposing as edifice and useful as obvious metaphor for both societal and psychological structures. Constructed by the powerful few, at the cost of the many, it is the standing symbol of that power and of the order it maintains. We are born into this society or that one; under dominion of this castle or that; subject to the values, customs, traditions, laws, judgments and punishments of its Lords, whose elite position, wealth and authority are sustained by those same values, judgments and punishments. Along with its protective walls and defensive towers, the castle also provides spaces to house us (along with the other livestock), storehouses to feed us, stalls in which we may practice our (approved) craft or conduct our (approved) trade; chambers in which we may worship whatever gods are approved by the Lords, dungeons (many, many dungeons) in which we may be imprisoned when we do not meet with the Lord's approval, and (not least importantly) an impressive array of, shall we say, implements of persuasion, with which to ensure compliance and maintain required levels of fear and submission. From opulent abodes, the privileged, regaled in extravagance, conspire in unchecked avarice, while Lords and would-be-Lords plot each other's murder.
We have always lived in The Castle.
We are vaguely aware of just enough of its history to know that much of its history is hidden, and that much of what we receive as history is at best willfully narrow interpretation, often disingenuous, frequently unadulterated propaganda or mere cunning lies. Many rooms and passageways are kept dark or sealed off entirely - to bring illumination there is to risk curses and the wrath of formidable entities. Rumors are spun, late night stories whispered of the horrors not to be spoken of, or the fate of those who enquire too deeply. Most are content to shrug off the rumors or mock the tellers of tales, seeking comfort in conditioned routines, carrying on with assigned drudgeries. Some few of us, compelled by our nature, feel obliged to shine our little light about and have a peek at what's behind the curtain.
Metaphors are only containers for whatever meaning we are able to bring to them. Yet they are spacious, roomy enough to hold as many varieties of (sometimes conflicting) meaning as we are able to invest. If The Castle is useful as a macro-cosmic social symbol. it stands equally well for the microcosmic fortress of the ego, or the many vaulted mansion of our individual consciousness. I may choose to see a tour of the castle as an architectural tour of our cultural legacies and situations, or as a tour of the architecture of my own inner being.
Sometimes (as famously noted by Dr. Freud) a cigar is only a cigar. A castle is only a castle - a quaint relic of a heritage largely ignored or romanticized. Then again, sometimes a castle is whatever I need it to be. In exploring the castle I explore the world in which I find myself, as well as, perhaps, discovering something of the "I" who thinks himself an explorer. What better device could we ask to propel a story?
We move through a world of unfolding images. Perhaps I have been neglectful in not noting earlier that these images unfold in a photographic process we somewhat inaccurately describe as "black and white." Accepted terminology, of course, if incorrectly descriptive, for what we are seeing is an endlessly shifting portrayal in all the shades of gray that lie between these extremes. This world is not multi-hued but, like a moving representation of the Tao, is a fluctuating balance of opposites, a dance of illumination and shadow that, in its simple effect, has a primitive potency unique to the method, impacting us at some primal level of perception, in ways different from what can be attained by any palette of colors. I remain uncertain whether this picture was produced in black and white for aesthetic or financial reasons (color film being a more expensive option), but the reason to be grateful for the choice lies with the artfully executed photography which attains and sustains the quality of a dream. Margheriti made other Goth chillers in lavish color (including, several years later, a remake of this one under the title Web of the Spider), but none have the same hypnotic hold on me.
Onward we prowl, through untended clusters of growth that seem to catch at Foster, past the little graveyard where are tenanted the earthly remains of those souls with whose destinies Foster is about to be entangled.
He stoops to retrieve a delicate lace shawl from the ground where it has sometime fallen. It is a sign of gentility, of femininity, left for him to notice upon a grave, as a coy young lady may begin her seduction of a gentleman by dropping her kerchief.
Foster is being shadowed by a black cat whose presence, as we approach entry to the castle, serves both as traditional signifiers of ill omen and as reminder, if merely by unspoken reference to the famous tale of that name, that we are still in Poe territory. Foster sees the cat, disregards it. The feline has no particular function within the story. He never (as we have come to expect from such films) jumps out from off-screen to supply a cheap and timely jolt. No character speaks of him; he simply appears and disappears a time or two, on view the way a Halloween cut-out decorates a window, just to help supply a certain atmosphere. He carries with him all the associations we have learned that connect cats to death, resurrection and the occult: that they are endowed with death-cheating abilities; that they live a succession of lives; that they draw our breath from us in our sleep; that they are omens of bad fortune, the companions of sorcerers, the familiars of witches. He is Death's Agent, accompanying us whether we pay him regard or not. He is one of many time tested, shop-worn props on display, each containing an unspoken story of its own, each freighted with dark associations. (And I find it utterly, hopelessly irresistible at this point to make the vulgar, perhaps uncalled for observation that Alan Foster's fatal weakness may not be his curiosity or his bravado, but his desire for pussy.)
Locating a small torch to light his way, Foster makes entry to the castle by way of a loudly creaking door. Doors seem to exist in horror movies to perform several specific functions. They conceal something, keep something locked out of sight, often something vastly unpleasant. They open mysteriously, inviting entry while inspiring fear. They creak and groan, as if long dis-use has made the opening painful and difficult. They have a tendency to slam shut unexpectedly behind us, leaving us trapped.
Who doesn't want to know what's behind a locked door? Doors are a barrier to knowledge, or an access to it. We can be shut out or shut in. In the context of a horror film, we may pass through a doorway seeking resolution of some mystery of great personal urgency, forced to penetrate the barrier to the unknown to obtain our knowledge or insight. Our treasure. We are in search of truth, and in our investigations we must exit the realm of what we think we know and, surrendering to uncertainty, pass into other, perhaps forbidden or forbidding, realms. The door creaks and groans loudly, painfully when we do that, because we use that door so seldom, and we never think to lubricate the hinges. We abide in comfortably familiar spaces, confronting the unknown usually only when it bursts through the door upon us, or we stumble upon it in our unwitting blindness. In these environs it can be act of faith, of great courage or great foolhardiness, to merely, innocently, open a closed door; an act of bloody peril to pry at a locked one. Having stepped through, we often find the door slammed shut behind us, leaving us with the understanding that we can never go back whence we came, never return to old ways of seeing. We cannot un-know what we have come to know, even if the knowledge terrifies us or drives us mad.
One of the things we notice as we enter the castle is a standing suit of armor, our first hint of the castle's furnishings. In films of a certain era, every spook-house or mystery mansion seemed to feature one as standard factory equipment. It is absolutely appropriate and predictable that we should find one here; we expect to, in the same way we could expect to see the black cat. It is just another trope, a device to remind us what kind of movie we're watching, what kind of mood we're supposed to be in. But this is a game of free association we're playing, as you might by now have deduced. What associations do you bring?
Like the black cat, the armor plays no part in advancing the story (though it does, later, come crashing down - a significant symbolic event in itself), and it is unlikely we are meant to pay it any but the most perfunctory attention. But sometimes it's the things we're not meant to think about that prove most interesting. It's here because it belongs here (as do we) - where the hell else would you expect to find a suit of armor (other than a museum or on some nerd at the Renaissance Fair)? Might there be some reason, other than its stature as a reliable genre prop, for it to be the first thing we encounter on entering the castle? Or, to put the question another way: why is this a standard genre prop to begin with? Entering the mystery, why must we pass a suit of armor?
Well, for starters. We all wear one. It serves as identifier and protection, as surely as the metal suit distinguished and shielded it's medieval wearer. We have been taught by the followers of Freud to call it an ego, and we utilize it in much the same way the knight bears his armor - as a way to define and protect the persona we present to others, while our true visage remains concealed and our vulnerabilities shielded from expected unpleasantness. We wear it because we perceive ourselves as embattled and, though it helps protect us from attack, our natural movement is restricted, our natural grace made clumsy by its weight, our natural relationship with the world inhibited. Our armor helps to allay our fears and provides us with a sense of personal security, continuity and history, but it makes it nearly impossible for us to break into joyous, spontaneous dance. To whatever extent the world cannot touch us, we are unable to touch the world. We act in the world at the same time as we are disconnected from it.
A suit of armor stands for the past, comes to us out of the past, forged by the values and experiences of the past. Our egos are also forged in the past, shaped by our history and our responses to that history, by the values, standards and concepts we inherit, and by our reactions to those values; by attitudes we take for granted and are not even aware we have. And our egos prepare us for the struggles of the present about as much as a suit of armor prepares us for a swim in the ocean. In fact, we are swimming in the ocean of existence while trying to wear suits of armor. No wonder so many feel as though they are drowning.
Just within the door of the castle, stands the armor suit. It has the shape of a man, the aspect of a soldier. The stance of a guardian. Beneath the protective shell, behind the lifted visor, if we examine closely, we will find nothing but a hollowness, an emptiness. Who is guarding, and what is to be guarded? What do we find when we prize open the visor of our egos, seeking what lies beneath our layers of armor? Let the mystics answer: out of emptiness all things arise; to emptiness all things return. But then, it's just a suit of armor, and we must not linger, but move on.
On consideration: we're here because where else could we be?
We have always lived in the castle.
We abide in it now. It is the locus for the forces with which our origins and destinies are entwined, as entangled as the castles own gardens; for entities that manipulate us toward their own ends, out of their own motives and interests, be they benign or inimical.
The film's title fixes the image of a castle in mind's eye, but the word is unspoken and we never quite see enough, never quite get the proper perspective to bring it into definition. Lord Blackwood refers to it as his estate, which implies not merely a physical space but many other possible forms of inheritance. In body and mind, we are made up largely of what we have inherited. This inheritance is genetic, familial, social, cultural, environmental; involving every aspect of our identity, character and state of being.
The castle is imposing as edifice and useful as obvious metaphor for both societal and psychological structures. Constructed by the powerful few, at the cost of the many, it is the standing symbol of that power and of the order it maintains. We are born into this society or that one; under dominion of this castle or that; subject to the values, customs, traditions, laws, judgments and punishments of its Lords, whose elite position, wealth and authority are sustained by those same values, judgments and punishments. Along with its protective walls and defensive towers, the castle also provides spaces to house us (along with the other livestock), storehouses to feed us, stalls in which we may practice our (approved) craft or conduct our (approved) trade; chambers in which we may worship whatever gods are approved by the Lords, dungeons (many, many dungeons) in which we may be imprisoned when we do not meet with the Lord's approval, and (not least importantly) an impressive array of, shall we say, implements of persuasion, with which to ensure compliance and maintain required levels of fear and submission. From opulent abodes, the privileged, regaled in extravagance, conspire in unchecked avarice, while Lords and would-be-Lords plot each other's murder.
We have always lived in The Castle.
We are vaguely aware of just enough of its history to know that much of its history is hidden, and that much of what we receive as history is at best willfully narrow interpretation, often disingenuous, frequently unadulterated propaganda or mere cunning lies. Many rooms and passageways are kept dark or sealed off entirely - to bring illumination there is to risk curses and the wrath of formidable entities. Rumors are spun, late night stories whispered of the horrors not to be spoken of, or the fate of those who enquire too deeply. Most are content to shrug off the rumors or mock the tellers of tales, seeking comfort in conditioned routines, carrying on with assigned drudgeries. Some few of us, compelled by our nature, feel obliged to shine our little light about and have a peek at what's behind the curtain.
Metaphors are only containers for whatever meaning we are able to bring to them. Yet they are spacious, roomy enough to hold as many varieties of (sometimes conflicting) meaning as we are able to invest. If The Castle is useful as a macro-cosmic social symbol. it stands equally well for the microcosmic fortress of the ego, or the many vaulted mansion of our individual consciousness. I may choose to see a tour of the castle as an architectural tour of our cultural legacies and situations, or as a tour of the architecture of my own inner being.
Sometimes (as famously noted by Dr. Freud) a cigar is only a cigar. A castle is only a castle - a quaint relic of a heritage largely ignored or romanticized. Then again, sometimes a castle is whatever I need it to be. In exploring the castle I explore the world in which I find myself, as well as, perhaps, discovering something of the "I" who thinks himself an explorer. What better device could we ask to propel a story?
We move through a world of unfolding images. Perhaps I have been neglectful in not noting earlier that these images unfold in a photographic process we somewhat inaccurately describe as "black and white." Accepted terminology, of course, if incorrectly descriptive, for what we are seeing is an endlessly shifting portrayal in all the shades of gray that lie between these extremes. This world is not multi-hued but, like a moving representation of the Tao, is a fluctuating balance of opposites, a dance of illumination and shadow that, in its simple effect, has a primitive potency unique to the method, impacting us at some primal level of perception, in ways different from what can be attained by any palette of colors. I remain uncertain whether this picture was produced in black and white for aesthetic or financial reasons (color film being a more expensive option), but the reason to be grateful for the choice lies with the artfully executed photography which attains and sustains the quality of a dream. Margheriti made other Goth chillers in lavish color (including, several years later, a remake of this one under the title Web of the Spider), but none have the same hypnotic hold on me.
Onward we prowl, through untended clusters of growth that seem to catch at Foster, past the little graveyard where are tenanted the earthly remains of those souls with whose destinies Foster is about to be entangled.
He stoops to retrieve a delicate lace shawl from the ground where it has sometime fallen. It is a sign of gentility, of femininity, left for him to notice upon a grave, as a coy young lady may begin her seduction of a gentleman by dropping her kerchief.
Foster is being shadowed by a black cat whose presence, as we approach entry to the castle, serves both as traditional signifier of ill omen and as reminder, if merely by unspoken reference to the famous tale of that name, that we are still in Poe territory. Foster sees the cat. disregards it. The feline has no particular function within the story. He never (as we have come to expect from such films) jumps out from off-screen to supply a cheap and timely jolt. No character speaks of him; he simply appears and disappears a time or two, on view the way a Halloween cut-out decorates a window, just to help supply a certain atmosphere. He carries with him all the associations we have learned that connect cats to death, resurrection and the occult: that they are endowed with death-cheating abilities; that they live a succession of lives; that they draw our breath from us in our sleep; that they are omens of bad fortune, the companions of sorcerers, the familiars of witches. He is Death's Agent, accompanying us whether we pay him regard or not. He is one of many time tested, shop-worn props on display, each containing an unspoken story of its own, each freighted with dark associations. (And I find it utterly, hopelessly irresistible at this point to make the vulgar, perhaps uncalled for observation that Alan Foster's fatal weakness may not be his curiosity or his bravado, but his desire for pussy.)
Locating a small torch to light his way, Foster makes entry to the castle by way of a loudly creaking door. Doors seem to exist in horror movies to perform several specific functions. They conceal something, keep something locked out of sight, often something vastly unpleasant. They open mysteriously, inviting entry while inspiring fear. They creak and groan, as if long dis-use has made the opening painful and difficult. They have a tendency to slam shut unexpectedly behind us, leaving us trapped.
Who doesn't want to know what's behind a locked door? Doors are a barrier to knowledge, or an access to it. We can be shut out or shut in. In the context of a horror film, we may pass through a doorway seeking resolution of some mystery of great personal urgency, forced to penetrate the barrier to the unknown to obtain our knowledge or insight. Our treasure. We are in search of truth, and in our investigations we must exit the realm of what we think we know and, surrendering to uncertainty, pass into other, perhaps forbidden or forbidding, realms. The door creaks and groans loudly, painfully when we do that, because we use that door so seldom, and we never think to lubricate the hinges. We abide in comfortably familiar spaces, confronting the unknown usually only when it bursts through the door upon us, or we stumble upon it in our unwitting blindness. In these environs it can be act of faith, of great courage or great foolhardiness, to merely, innocently, open a closed door; an act of bloody peril to pry at a locked one. Having stepped through, we often find the door slammed shut behind us, leaving us with the understanding that we can never go back whence we came, never return to old ways of seeing. We cannot un-know what we have come to know, even if the knowledge terrifies us or drives us mad.
One of the things we notice as we enter the castle is a standing suit of armor, our first hint of the castle's furnishings. In films of a certain era, every spook-house or mystery mansion seemed to feature one as standard factory equipment. It is absolutely appropriate and predictable that we should find one here; we expect to, in the same way we could expect to see the black cat. It is just another trope, a device to remind us what kind of movie we're watching, what kind of mood we're supposed to be in. But this is a game of free association we're playing, as you might by now have deduced. What associations do you bring?
Like the black cat, the armor plays no part in advancing the story (though it does, later, come crashing down - a significant symbolic event in itself), and it is unlikely we are meant to pay it any but the most perfunctory attention. But sometimes it's the things we're not meant to think about that prove most interesting. It's here because it belongs here (as do we) - where the hell else would you expect to find a suit of armor (other than a museum or on some nerd at the Renaissance Fair)? Might there be some reason, other than its stature as a reliable genre prop, for it to be the first thing we encounter on entering the castle? Or, to put the question another way: why is this a standard genre prop to begin with? Entering the mystery, why must we pass a suit of armor?
Well, for starters. We all wear one. It serves as identifier and protection, as surely as the metal suit distinguished and shielded it's medieval wearer. We have been taught by the followers of Freud to call it an ego, and we utilize it in much the same way the knight bears his armor - as a way to define and protect the persona we present to others, while our true visage remains concealed and our vulnerabilities shielded from expected unpleasantness. We wear it because we perceive ourselves as embattled and, though it helps protect us from attack, our natural movement is restricted, our natural grace made clumsy by its weight, our natural relationship with the world inhibited. Our armor helps to allay our fears and provides us with a sense of personal security, continuity and history, but it makes it nearly impossible for us to break into joyous, spontaneous dance. To whatever extent the world cannot touch us, we are unable to touch the world. We act in the world at the same time as we are disconnected from it.
A suit of armor stands for the past, comes to us out of the past, forged by the values and experiences of the past. Our egos are also forged in the past, shaped by our history and our responses to that history, by the values, standards and concepts we inherit, and by our reactions to those values; by attitudes we take for granted and are not even aware we have. And our egos prepare us for the struggles of the present about as much as a suit of armor prepares us for a swim in the ocean. In fact, we are swimming in the ocean of existence while trying to wear suits of armor. No wonder so many feel as though they are drowning.
Just within the door of the castle, stands the armor suit. It has the shape of a man, the aspect of a soldier. The stance of a guardian. Beneath the protective shell, behind the lifted visor, if we examine closely, we will find nothing but a hollowness, an emptiness. Who is guarding, and what is to be guarded? What do we find when we prize open the visor of our egos, seeking what lies beneath our layers of armor? Let the mystics answer: out of emptiness all things arise; to emptiness all things return. But then, it's just a suit of armor, and we must not linger, but move on.
We approach a window where shutters bang in the wind and curtains flutter like dancing spectres. The castle is a testament to the will of man to shape nature to his needs. Nature, in her indifference to our will, reminds us loudly that she is always waiting, always ready to burst upon us, insistently battering at our artifices and facades, seeking any opening through which to reclaim us. The shutters bang to draw our attention, the curtains caper like playful ghosts; that which animates them is invisible in all but effect, as is that which animates us. Foster's rational mind is shuttered also to forces beyond his ken and therefore invisible to him. Those shutters also will be blown open by an invisible wind that will have soon him capering in his own macabre dance.
Foster finds a small candelabra, lights it's three candles from his small torch, douses the torch in the ashes of the fireplace. I see the single flame of the torch as the light of the inquiring self, the "I" who seeks. Once we've ventured past the armor of our egos, once the shutters have banged open and we see the curtains flutter in the wind, what then? Spiritual traditions are filled with tripartite images, reminding us we are three in one: body, mind, spirit; Father, Son, Holy Ghost; Buddha on a tricycle, yadda, yadda, yadda - three lights flowering from one stem. Three modes of experience: through the senses, through the intellect, through intuition. No time to reflect, must follow Foster...
There is some weird business with a large clock - it chimes, yet it's pendulum is still. Or does it move only when Foster is not looking? He checks his watch against the clock, seems somehow reassured - what do I make of this, some hint about the relative nature of time? No time to consider, for the time is nigh for (fanfare, please) Foster's first fright!
It arrives as he is startled by his own reflection in a full length mirror. We have been waiting for a fright, have been conditioned by our genre experience to expect something to jump out at Foster or at us; for the protagonists fear to be our fear. But it is an odd moment - we can easily see it is only a mirror; we are not ourselves startled, we merely observe Foster's momentary shock as he encounters the unexpected image of himself. But may we not all be startled by the image we encounter upon honest self-examination?
He begins a reassuring monologue with himself, in the way that we all keep talking to ourselves, convincing ourselves that nothing is really wrong, that we need only trust our rational sensibilities, our logic, and all will be explained, all understood. But now he encounters another disturbing image: the portrait of a beautiful young woman that seems somehow to shimmer with it's own life, unsettling him and provoking him to question his senses.
Now he seats himself and begins to take his own notes. At this moment, both he and I are driven to the comfortable familiarity of the written word, the carefully noted observation. Whether words can bear the burden of quantifying and relating our experience remains to be seen.
A brief intermission here.
If I had a philosophy (and I will resolutely claim otherwise), it might be summed up simply in this way: life is a party - come as you are, and bring your own. Don't try to be anyone but yourself, and if you expect to get anything, bring some. You want love, bring it. You want respect, bring some. You want meaning? Carry it with you when you come. I have brought a certain state of mind to this film, a certain willingness to surrender to it, be intoxicated by it. Once I make the decision to see this flick as some kind of weird allegorical fable, it takes on a whole new aspect, acquires whole new layers of content, rich with as much meaning as I can bring. It ceases being mere presentation and becomes a creative interaction; a metaphysical chemistry is going on. I am not passively receiving this film, absorbing whatever might be the intent (if any) of it's makers - I am it's co-creator. It is my effort, my energy that brings it to life.
A film director works from basic information (a script), using the elements at his disposal to make visible something greater than what is contained on the page.
I am working from basic information (the finished film projected on screen), using the elements at my disposal to fashion something beyond what is apparent on the screen. It becomes a kind of romance, as each frame begins to coax from me an inquiry, each image seduces me to enter it's mystery and fuck with it until I reach a climax of understanding.
How much do I want to make of all this? How far am I prepared to go? Is it utterly loony to devote this kind of attention and analysis, clumsy as it may be, to this cheap piece of Eurotrash effluence? I begin to think of Charlie Manson, brain aflame with psychedelics in the California night, gleaning secret personal messages from the lyrics of Beatles songs; enveloped in grandiose apocalyptic visions and murderous reflection; plotting bloody mayhem and discovering catalysts for his psychotic impulses in a pop ditty describing a piece of playground gear. We can understand a lot about ol' Charlie by understanding what he heard in a song: Helter Skelter, indeed.
And, indeed, you may think me mad.
I'm reminded of the hoary old joke about the psychiatrist administering a Rorschach test: his client sees naked women in every inkblot. "You're obsessed with sex," is the shrink's diagnosis. "Me?" responds the outraged client, "they're your dirty pictures!"
These shifting patterns of gray at which a stare may be nothing more than a flickering Rorschach test, but the question remains: whose dirty pictures are they. anyway?
Part Two>>
All art is a collaborative effort between those who create it and those who experience it: the Mona Lisa is a different painting for each of us. We see the beauty and power of Van Gogh's Starry Night because our perceptive apparatus has been conditioned to see it. His contemporaries were conditioned differently; thus Van Gogh dies broke and broken.
What follows is a primitive attempt to examine the cognitive processes at work as I experience a particular film - what do I see in it, why do I see it that way? How and why do I connect with it in the particular way I do? The film chosen is unlikely to be regarded as a "great" film in any way, by anyone; likely to be granted the status of art by few; yet, by virtue of my undiminished attraction to it over the years, seems the perfect prospect for this examination.
Of course, it may also be possible that what lies ahead is simply an examination of the workings of a deranged mind. You'll have to decide that for yourself. Proceed at your own risk...
Where nothing is as it seems.
When I was ten years old, all I really wanted out of life was to stay up late and watch horror movies. Crouched on the living room rug with a bowl of popcorn, three feet from the magical transporting cathode-ray tube, I partook of the special intoxication available only to an eager innocent of that era encountering the classic Universal Monsters for the first time.
Last night I sat on my living room rug, three feet from the window-of-wonders, notebook in hand, scribbling hasty observations about a film I first encountered at the drive-in, the greater part of a lifetime ago. It is one of those films (yes, there are a few) to which I return with the regularity and devotion of a monk returning to his scriptures; in reverence, and in search of further revelation.
Lao Tzu (legend has it) wrote the Tao Te Ching to sum up his understanding of the universal forces at work within and without us.
Antonio Margheriti made Danse Macabre, otherwise known to devotees of Gothic exploitation fare as Castle of Blood.
Yes, yes, I know: to compare these two texts, so seemingly remote from each other, is outlandish and absurd on the face of it; perhaps just an attention grabbing device on the part of the desperate author. Maybe. The Tao is a timeless work of ancient origin, possibly the greatest book ever written (more honestly useful in its first page than the Christian bible in its entirety); a work which outlines directly the principles upon which our very existence is founded, explaining exactly how things work, with a clarity achievable only through purest poetry. It is a work which few understand at the deepest level. Castle of Blood is a modestly budgeted, black & white, gothic spook-fest; an Italian-French co-production from the early sixties, concocted as a commercial venture to please the not-too-discriminating tastes of unsophisticated audiences everywhere. Presumably, anyone can understand it.
Lao Tzu was responding to a plea to report all he understood of the nature of "reality," for the benefit of all the world.
Antonio Margheriti was churning out genre product to make a living.
We all do what we can.
Some folk (even educated, articulate, successful, cultured folk) could examine the Tao Te Ching and honestly find nothing in it but mystical nonsense and metaphysical claptrap. Some folks could examine Castle of Blood and find nothing in it but silly genre nonsense and tired metaphysical claptrap. There is little in either text to support consensus reality, what we ordinarily think of as the "real" world. And I find myself revisiting both as though embarking on a sacred pilgrimage. Each text, in its own way and in its own time, sustains me, reminding me of things I tend to habitually forget. Each, in its peculiar way, slakes a thirst to sip of something genuine in a wasteland of bullshit. Each text invokes in me recognition of its authenticity, feels like the comforting company of an old friend.
Already, though, there is difficulty - the notebook is, perhaps, not quite so useful as I had imagined it might be. The attentive viewing of a film and the thoughtful taking of notes are activities in which, I discover, I am unable to simultaneously engage. The division of attention required is respectful to neither task. The hasty notes are often illegible, sometimes impenetrable; perhaps it's just as well. Film and page each deserve complete attention in their time, but the real movie is in my head.
So join me now...the room is lit only by a few scattered candles and the seductive glow of the screen, a beacon from another dimension extending its invitation to enter. We are about to be transported to the realm of Castle of Blood where, much like our more familiar world, nothing at all is what it seems. This is what I see...
We begin with a murky title card, signifying fog, or smoke, or clouds or whatever form of obscurity you might prefer; just a twisting pattern of grays over which appear the credits (which are also, by their deceptive nature, meant to obscure our perceptions even further), bolstered by "Ritz" (usually billed as "Riz") Ortolani's rich score, instantly recognizable as "horror movie music." The title is revealed to us as Danse Macabre, which roughly translates as "death dance" or "dance of the dead." It is a perfect title for a horror movie. We all dance our way through life, trying not to stumble or embarrass ourselves, learning the moves from our teachers, our partners, or through our own mis-steps. Whether we believe we call our own tune or step to another's call; whether we do the routines as we have been taught them and with painstaking precision, or whether we whirl in spontaneous ecstasy, the dance can only have one end for us all.
The flick was released over time to various venues, under various titles, via various distributors. I saw it at the "53 Drive-In", a local temple of exploitation, under the unambiguous, consumer-friendly, expectation-arousing title, Castle of Blood, shorn by censor's scissors, for the undoubted protection of my fragile sensibilities, of its forbidden lesbian references. If it were a choice between two flicks, about which you knew nothing, which title would you spend your jack on? In any case, we are already, realize it or not, in a realm where identity is uncertain; the titles impart different imagined qualities to the same content.
The credits are a fabric of deceit. This is true, to some degree, of all films; in European films of the era, especially so. It is a list of suspects. Some of the names used are actual names of participants: the name Barbara Steele appears prominently, since it was, and remains, one of the film's primary selling points and principal attractions. Hubba-hubba. Other names are pure fabrications, made up to satisfy the curious demands of international co-production. Others are possible mistakes, misspellings, or pseudonyms of uncertain purpose or origin. On my DVD version, the director’s credit does not even appear on the Danse list, only on the alternate Castle credits given as an extra. The Castle of Blood credits are positioned over a still shot of London Bridge; the director is listed as Anthony m. Dawson, Margheriti's anglicized other self. I have heard the devil mixes truth with lies, the better to deceive us, but also know that the tellers of parables use lies to point to truth. Beginning with the credits, the nature of truth is obscured.
Our story opens with a traveler afoot upon a foggy street. Just so; I can't help but think, "Where else?" We all begin on a foggy street. The teaching stories of diverse spiritual traditions often focus on a traveler on the road, the road serving as metaphor for the path of life and the journey we must all make upon it. This traveler is on a paved street; it is society's path, the path of the civilized, cultured man. We recognize it as our path also.
The traveler moves through the same fog as we: the fog of conditioning and illusion with which our society blankets us, obscuring all but the direction chosen for us. He is looking for something, as are we all. He passes a driverless coach along the way, and enters a public house. A hanging sign advertises it's name: The Four Devils. Neither he nor we spare much attention for the coach, though it is the vehicle that will carry him to his demise, and us to witness it. He is as ignorant of the proximity of death as we, and as unknowing of the means by which he will meet it.
His name, we will learn, is Alan Foster. He is a journalist; a reporter and, like us, has arrived in search of a good story, descending the taverns subterranean stairway to find it. Not a minute into the story and already we are lurking beneath the surface of things. Foster is also a word meaning to harbor, support or encourage. It may also mean to cherish or cling to something. Foster is an ordinary man who, like most of us, harbors the beliefs and attitudes of the dominant culture of his day; clings to comforting notions of his own sophistication, and the superiority of the modern intellect over other, more subtle modes of understanding. He also shares his first name, in altered spelling, with the immediate object of his quest, that most illustrious practitioner of the macabre tale, Mr. Edgar Allan Poe. Two characters sharing a name; two aspects of one character? Our character?
Poe is holding court at table, imbibing of spirits and the mesmerized attention of his eager listeners, as he narrates, with dramatic gusto, the tale of Berenice. His feverish, first-person account is delivered with the intensity of a madman's confession, as though he had himself just now lived the tale and was desperate to unburden himself of it.
Foster tells Poe he is impressed with this fiction, but Poe rebukes him, insisting that he, himself, is but a journalist, that his stories recount actual events in the real world. His tales, he insists, are "pure truth."
All words are lies in the sense that they are mere symbols, representations of something rather than the thing itself. In practice, they reveal the perceptions of the speaker far more accurately than the nature of that which they are meant to represent. In conversation, we delineate ourselves far more clearly than the presumed object of our speech. If there is a "pure truth," it remains inaccessible through language. Poe may be interpreted as saying that his fictions convey the spirit of truth with more authenticity than any supposed "objective" reporting, which merely wallows in the conventions of consensus" reality."
We are in a London pub, and Poe's presence here is an amusing conceit. No historical record exists (to my meager knowledge, anyway) of such a visit. Nor does the film seem to be derived from any particular work of Poe's, though the credits (those unreliable indicators of truth) would have us believe otherwise. Castle of Blood is no more interested in delivering a genuine representation of Poe's work to the screen than most other attempts to exploit the power of that name to sell tickets, but it does seem to me to be faithful to the spirit of the master and progenitor of that form we have come to call the horror story. The film is so saturated with his influence that it can't resist the delight of presenting his physical manifestation.
Poe's acquaintance, Sir Thomas Blackwood, is introduced, and the gentlemen engage in conversation concerning the nature of death, and what, if anything, survives after. Poe claims. "I am waiting for something that does not exist: my death!" Taking him in jest, Foster is quick to point out the obvious reality of death, but Poe warns not to confuse death with the tomb. Blackwood contributes that he owns an estate haunted by the spirits of those who've met disturbing ends there, and who return each year on the "night of the dead" to re-enact their fates. No one spending the night of the dead within the castle has ever survived 'til morning. Ah, now we see the premise of our story.
That very night is upon us, that very hour approaches - the 1st of November, twixt midnight and dawn. Blackwood, as his custom dictates, is looking for someone to accept a wager: spend the night in the castle and be alive in the morning to collect. Foster is smugly comfortable in his skepticism. His only fears, he allows, are of the living. If he can continue his interview with Poe during the coach ride to the destination, and if the wagered sum can be brought within his means (for journalists are rarely men of wealth - just ask Poe, who in real life could not have afforded travel abroad), the challenge is taken and the bet is on. As the trio depart the tavern for coach and castle, Poe pauses to regard a large animal skull mounted on the wall. As he exits, he seems to give it a knowing nod and the hint of a sardonic smile.
The first dialog spoken in the film belongs to Poe. They are from the published prose of the actual Edgar Poe, spoken by the fictional Poe of the film. The "real" Poe, the historical figure, the brilliant writer; the wretchedly miserable, vulnerably sensitive, poverty stricken, grievously flawed human being of a time far removed from us, is long gone, no more with us than some forgotten cave-dwelling ancestor. But something remains; something survives his death, even if that something is as much our creation as his remnant. That something survives in our consciousness, manifests itself in our on-going attempts to re-create, re-interpret, re-imagine and recapture his melancholy vision. The energies expended by Poe, brought into being through Poe, through his investigations into darker mysteries, still circulate in our world, in our time; still move us in our imaginings, still inspire us to fear, wonder, awe, and further investigation of our own. The residual energies of a formerly living entity as an active influence on our lives: is this not the definition of a ghost?
I have come to this film because I need stories to live fully. Alan Foster has come to a London tavern to get a story in order to make a living. We each get a "real" Poe story (or, at least, a few representative lines) from a fictional Poe, before we begin the "real" story of the movie, which is a fiction inspiring real questions. Foster has come for a true story about Poe; by the end, the truth which Foster is unwilling to face will become fodder for Poe's fiction, which Poe claims is not fiction at all. Got that? Foster decides that, since he's committed to this goofy venture, he will write his own "true" tale, which he will entitle "Castle of Terror", and which might easily have been an alternate title for this flick.
In the coach, Poe declares, "Reality is always just beyond one's reach." Now, maybe Poe is just a drunk on a metaphysical rant. Or maybe, just maybe, he is seriously describing his function: that his work is intended to make accessible that which is ordinarily inaccessible - reality itself.
Ordinary fictions reduce the mysteries of life to a kind of familiar gruel, conforming to the mundane expectations of consensus reality. They mimic what is already false, becoming imitations of a lie, thus doubly false. Poe's fiction defies such stifling limitations and embraces what lies beyond, vaulting the barricades of intellect to explore the darkest caverns of the heart or deepest pits of the psyche.
Poe also offers his theory on that subject most suited to poetry, the death of a beautiful young woman. To the poet and the spiritual seeker as well, truth is another word for beauty. The inevitable vulnerability of that innocent beauty to the overwhelming onslaught of corruption and malfeasance is fuel for Poe's creative fire, the metaphor arising from his own personal tragedies.
But, 'lo! Our destination is at hand and, with Alan Foster, we are obliged to enter if we would meet our destiny.
Past the wrought-iron gate stands the castle, its gardens a tangle encompassing the castle's own graveyard, through which we now pass. Through the density of fog and darkness we cannot envisage the entirety of the structure. Its outline is vague, it's brooding walls of stone and silent, shadowed towers seeming to lean threateningly toward us out of the night. And as we pause at the threshold, hesitant to proceed, unwilling to turn away, we may pause also to ask ourselves again what the hell we are doing here.
On consideration: we're here because where else could we be?
We have always lived in the castle.
We abide in it now. It is the locus for the forces with which our origins and destinies are entwined, as entangled as the castles own gardens; for entities that manipulate us toward their own ends, out of their own motives and interests, be they benign or inimical.
The film's title fixes the image of a castle in mind's eye, but the word is unspoken and we never quite see enough, never quite get the proper perspective to bring it into definition. Lord Blackwood refers to it as his estate, which implies not merely a physical space but many other possible forms of inheritance. In body and mind, we are made up largely of what we have inherited. This inheritance is genetic, familial, social, cultural, environmental; involving every aspect of our identity, character and state of being.
The castle is imposing as edifice and useful as obvious metaphor for both societal and psychological structures. Constructed by the powerful few, at the cost of the many, it is the standing symbol of that power and of the order it maintains. We are born into this society or that one; under dominion of this castle or that; subject to the values, customs, traditions, laws, judgments and punishments of its Lords, whose elite position, wealth and authority are sustained by those same values, judgments and punishments. Along with its protective walls and defensive towers, the castle also provides spaces to house us (along with the other livestock), storehouses to feed us, stalls in which we may practice our (approved) craft or conduct our (approved) trade; chambers in which we may worship whatever gods are approved by the Lords, dungeons (many, many dungeons) in which we may be imprisoned when we do not meet with the Lord's approval, and (not least importantly) an impressive array of, shall we say, implements of persuasion, with which to ensure compliance and maintain required levels of fear and submission. From opulent abodes, the privileged, regaled in extravagance, conspire in unchecked avarice, while Lords and would-be-Lords plot each other's murder.
We have always lived in The Castle.
We are vaguely aware of just enough of its history to know that much of its history is hidden, and that much of what we receive as history is at best willfully narrow interpretation, often disingenuous, frequently unadulterated propaganda or mere cunning lies. Many rooms and passageways are kept dark or sealed off entirely - to bring illumination there is to risk curses and the wrath of formidable entities. Rumors are spun, late night stories whispered of the horrors not to be spoken of, or the fate of those who enquire too deeply. Most are content to shrug off the rumors or mock the tellers of tales, seeking comfort in conditioned routines, carrying on with assigned drudgeries. Some few of us, compelled by our nature, feel obliged to shine our little light about and have a peek at what's behind the curtain.
Metaphors are only containers for whatever meaning we are able to bring to them. Yet they are spacious, roomy enough to hold as many varieties of (sometimes conflicting) meaning as we are able to invest. If The Castle is useful as a macro-cosmic social symbol. it stands equally well for the microcosmic fortress of the ego, or the many vaulted mansion of our individual consciousness. I may choose to see a tour of the castle as an architectural tour of our cultural legacies and situations, or as a tour of the architecture of my own inner being.
Sometimes (as famously noted by Dr. Freud) a cigar is only a cigar. A castle is only a castle - a quaint relic of a heritage largely ignored or romanticized. Then again, sometimes a castle is whatever I need it to be. In exploring the castle I explore the world in which I find myself, as well as, perhaps, discovering something of the "I" who thinks himself an explorer. What better device could we ask to propel a story?
We move through a world of unfolding images. Perhaps I have been neglectful in not noting earlier that these images unfold in a photographic process we somewhat inaccurately describe as "black and white." Accepted terminology, of course, if incorrectly descriptive, for what we are seeing is an endlessly shifting portrayal in all the shades of gray that lie between these extremes. This world is not multi-hued but, like a moving representation of the Tao, is a fluctuating balance of opposites, a dance of illumination and shadow that, in its simple effect, has a primitive potency unique to the method, impacting us at some primal level of perception, in ways different from what can be attained by any palette of colors. I remain uncertain whether this picture was produced in black and white for aesthetic or financial reasons (color film being a more expensive option), but the reason to be grateful for the choice lies with the artfully executed photography which attains and sustains the quality of a dream. Margheriti made other Goth chillers in lavish color (including, several years later, a remake of this one under the title Web of the Spider), but none have the same hypnotic hold on me.
Onward we prowl, through untended clusters of growth that seem to catch at Foster, past the little graveyard where are tenanted the earthly remains of those souls with whose destinies Foster is about to be entangled.
He stoops to retrieve a delicate lace shawl from the ground where it has sometime fallen. It is a sign of gentility, of femininity, left for him to notice upon a grave, as a coy young lady may begin her seduction of a gentleman by dropping her kerchief.
Foster is being shadowed by a black cat whose presence, as we approach entry to the castle, serves both as traditional signifiers of ill omen and as reminder, if merely by unspoken reference to the famous tale of that name, that we are still in Poe territory. Foster sees the cat, disregards it. The feline has no particular function within the story. He never (as we have come to expect from such films) jumps out from off-screen to supply a cheap and timely jolt. No character speaks of him; he simply appears and disappears a time or two, on view the way a Halloween cut-out decorates a window, just to help supply a certain atmosphere. He carries with him all the associations we have learned that connect cats to death, resurrection and the occult: that they are endowed with death-cheating abilities; that they live a succession of lives; that they draw our breath from us in our sleep; that they are omens of bad fortune, the companions of sorcerers, the familiars of witches. He is Death's Agent, accompanying us whether we pay him regard or not. He is one of many time tested, shop-worn props on display, each containing an unspoken story of its own, each freighted with dark associations. (And I find it utterly, hopelessly irresistible at this point to make the vulgar, perhaps uncalled for observation that Alan Foster's fatal weakness may not be his curiosity or his bravado, but his desire for pussy.)
Locating a small torch to light his way, Foster makes entry to the castle by way of a loudly creaking door. Doors seem to exist in horror movies to perform several specific functions. They conceal something, keep something locked out of sight, often something vastly unpleasant. They open mysteriously, inviting entry while inspiring fear. They creak and groan, as if long dis-use has made the opening painful and difficult. They have a tendency to slam shut unexpectedly behind us, leaving us trapped.
Who doesn't want to know what's behind a locked door? Doors are a barrier to knowledge, or an access to it. We can be shut out or shut in. In the context of a horror film, we may pass through a doorway seeking resolution of some mystery of great personal urgency, forced to penetrate the barrier to the unknown to obtain our knowledge or insight. Our treasure. We are in search of truth, and in our investigations we must exit the realm of what we think we know and, surrendering to uncertainty, pass into other, perhaps forbidden or forbidding, realms. The door creaks and groans loudly, painfully when we do that, because we use that door so seldom, and we never think to lubricate the hinges. We abide in comfortably familiar spaces, confronting the unknown usually only when it bursts through the door upon us, or we stumble upon it in our unwitting blindness. In these environs it can be act of faith, of great courage or great foolhardiness, to merely, innocently, open a closed door; an act of bloody peril to pry at a locked one. Having stepped through, we often find the door slammed shut behind us, leaving us with the understanding that we can never go back whence we came, never return to old ways of seeing. We cannot un-know what we have come to know, even if the knowledge terrifies us or drives us mad.
One of the things we notice as we enter the castle is a standing suit of armor, our first hint of the castle's furnishings. In films of a certain era, every spook-house or mystery mansion seemed to feature one as standard factory equipment. It is absolutely appropriate and predictable that we should find one here; we expect to, in the same way we could expect to see the black cat. It is just another trope, a device to remind us what kind of movie we're watching, what kind of mood we're supposed to be in. But this is a game of free association we're playing, as you might by now have deduced. What associations do you bring?
Like the black cat, the armor plays no part in advancing the story (though it does, later, come crashing down - a significant symbolic event in itself), and it is unlikely we are meant to pay it any but the most perfunctory attention. But sometimes it's the things we're not meant to think about that prove most interesting. It's here because it belongs here (as do we) - where the hell else would you expect to find a suit of armor (other than a museum or on some nerd at the Renaissance Fair)? Might there be some reason, other than its stature as a reliable genre prop, for it to be the first thing we encounter on entering the castle? Or, to put the question another way: why is this a standard genre prop to begin with? Entering the mystery, why must we pass a suit of armor?
Well, for starters. We all wear one. It serves as identifier and protection, as surely as the metal suit distinguished and shielded it's medieval wearer. We have been taught by the followers of Freud to call it an ego, and we utilize it in much the same way the knight bears his armor - as a way to define and protect the persona we present to others, while our true visage remains concealed and our vulnerabilities shielded from expected unpleasantness. We wear it because we perceive ourselves as embattled and, though it helps protect us from attack, our natural movement is restricted, our natural grace made clumsy by its weight, our natural relationship with the world inhibited. Our armor helps to allay our fears and provides us with a sense of personal security, continuity and history, but it makes it nearly impossible for us to break into joyous, spontaneous dance. To whatever extent the world cannot touch us, we are unable to touch the world. We act in the world at the same time as we are disconnected from it.
A suit of armor stands for the past, comes to us out of the past, forged by the values and experiences of the past. Our egos are also forged in the past, shaped by our history and our responses to that history, by the values, standards and concepts we inherit, and by our reactions to those values; by attitudes we take for granted and are not even aware we have. And our egos prepare us for the struggles of the present about as much as a suit of armor prepares us for a swim in the ocean. In fact, we are swimming in the ocean of existence while trying to wear suits of armor. No wonder so many feel as though they are drowning.
Just within the door of the castle, stands the armor suit. It has the shape of a man, the aspect of a soldier. The stance of a guardian. Beneath the protective shell, behind the lifted visor, if we examine closely, we will find nothing but a hollowness, an emptiness. Who is guarding, and what is to be guarded? What do we find when we prize open the visor of our egos, seeking what lies beneath our layers of armor? Let the mystics answer: out of emptiness all things arise; to emptiness all things return. But then, it's just a suit of armor, and we must not linger, but move on.
On consideration: we're here because where else could we be?
We have always lived in the castle.
We abide in it now. It is the locus for the forces with which our origins and destinies are entwined, as entangled as the castles own gardens; for entities that manipulate us toward their own ends, out of their own motives and interests, be they benign or inimical.
The film's title fixes the image of a castle in mind's eye, but the word is unspoken and we never quite see enough, never quite get the proper perspective to bring it into definition. Lord Blackwood refers to it as his estate, which implies not merely a physical space but many other possible forms of inheritance. In body and mind, we are made up largely of what we have inherited. This inheritance is genetic, familial, social, cultural, environmental; involving every aspect of our identity, character and state of being.
The castle is imposing as edifice and useful as obvious metaphor for both societal and psychological structures. Constructed by the powerful few, at the cost of the many, it is the standing symbol of that power and of the order it maintains. We are born into this society or that one; under dominion of this castle or that; subject to the values, customs, traditions, laws, judgments and punishments of its Lords, whose elite position, wealth and authority are sustained by those same values, judgments and punishments. Along with its protective walls and defensive towers, the castle also provides spaces to house us (along with the other livestock), storehouses to feed us, stalls in which we may practice our (approved) craft or conduct our (approved) trade; chambers in which we may worship whatever gods are approved by the Lords, dungeons (many, many dungeons) in which we may be imprisoned when we do not meet with the Lord's approval, and (not least importantly) an impressive array of, shall we say, implements of persuasion, with which to ensure compliance and maintain required levels of fear and submission. From opulent abodes, the privileged, regaled in extravagance, conspire in unchecked avarice, while Lords and would-be-Lords plot each other's murder.
We have always lived in The Castle.
We are vaguely aware of just enough of its history to know that much of its history is hidden, and that much of what we receive as history is at best willfully narrow interpretation, often disingenuous, frequently unadulterated propaganda or mere cunning lies. Many rooms and passageways are kept dark or sealed off entirely - to bring illumination there is to risk curses and the wrath of formidable entities. Rumors are spun, late night stories whispered of the horrors not to be spoken of, or the fate of those who enquire too deeply. Most are content to shrug off the rumors or mock the tellers of tales, seeking comfort in conditioned routines, carrying on with assigned drudgeries. Some few of us, compelled by our nature, feel obliged to shine our little light about and have a peek at what's behind the curtain.
Metaphors are only containers for whatever meaning we are able to bring to them. Yet they are spacious, roomy enough to hold as many varieties of (sometimes conflicting) meaning as we are able to invest. If The Castle is useful as a macro-cosmic social symbol. it stands equally well for the microcosmic fortress of the ego, or the many vaulted mansion of our individual consciousness. I may choose to see a tour of the castle as an architectural tour of our cultural legacies and situations, or as a tour of the architecture of my own inner being.
Sometimes (as famously noted by Dr. Freud) a cigar is only a cigar. A castle is only a castle - a quaint relic of a heritage largely ignored or romanticized. Then again, sometimes a castle is whatever I need it to be. In exploring the castle I explore the world in which I find myself, as well as, perhaps, discovering something of the "I" who thinks himself an explorer. What better device could we ask to propel a story?
We move through a world of unfolding images. Perhaps I have been neglectful in not noting earlier that these images unfold in a photographic process we somewhat inaccurately describe as "black and white." Accepted terminology, of course, if incorrectly descriptive, for what we are seeing is an endlessly shifting portrayal in all the shades of gray that lie between these extremes. This world is not multi-hued but, like a moving representation of the Tao, is a fluctuating balance of opposites, a dance of illumination and shadow that, in its simple effect, has a primitive potency unique to the method, impacting us at some primal level of perception, in ways different from what can be attained by any palette of colors. I remain uncertain whether this picture was produced in black and white for aesthetic or financial reasons (color film being a more expensive option), but the reason to be grateful for the choice lies with the artfully executed photography which attains and sustains the quality of a dream. Margheriti made other Goth chillers in lavish color (including, several years later, a remake of this one under the title Web of the Spider), but none have the same hypnotic hold on me.
Onward we prowl, through untended clusters of growth that seem to catch at Foster, past the little graveyard where are tenanted the earthly remains of those souls with whose destinies Foster is about to be entangled.
He stoops to retrieve a delicate lace shawl from the ground where it has sometime fallen. It is a sign of gentility, of femininity, left for him to notice upon a grave, as a coy young lady may begin her seduction of a gentleman by dropping her kerchief.
Foster is being shadowed by a black cat whose presence, as we approach entry to the castle, serves both as traditional signifier of ill omen and as reminder, if merely by unspoken reference to the famous tale of that name, that we are still in Poe territory. Foster sees the cat. disregards it. The feline has no particular function within the story. He never (as we have come to expect from such films) jumps out from off-screen to supply a cheap and timely jolt. No character speaks of him; he simply appears and disappears a time or two, on view the way a Halloween cut-out decorates a window, just to help supply a certain atmosphere. He carries with him all the associations we have learned that connect cats to death, resurrection and the occult: that they are endowed with death-cheating abilities; that they live a succession of lives; that they draw our breath from us in our sleep; that they are omens of bad fortune, the companions of sorcerers, the familiars of witches. He is Death's Agent, accompanying us whether we pay him regard or not. He is one of many time tested, shop-worn props on display, each containing an unspoken story of its own, each freighted with dark associations. (And I find it utterly, hopelessly irresistible at this point to make the vulgar, perhaps uncalled for observation that Alan Foster's fatal weakness may not be his curiosity or his bravado, but his desire for pussy.)
Locating a small torch to light his way, Foster makes entry to the castle by way of a loudly creaking door. Doors seem to exist in horror movies to perform several specific functions. They conceal something, keep something locked out of sight, often something vastly unpleasant. They open mysteriously, inviting entry while inspiring fear. They creak and groan, as if long dis-use has made the opening painful and difficult. They have a tendency to slam shut unexpectedly behind us, leaving us trapped.
Who doesn't want to know what's behind a locked door? Doors are a barrier to knowledge, or an access to it. We can be shut out or shut in. In the context of a horror film, we may pass through a doorway seeking resolution of some mystery of great personal urgency, forced to penetrate the barrier to the unknown to obtain our knowledge or insight. Our treasure. We are in search of truth, and in our investigations we must exit the realm of what we think we know and, surrendering to uncertainty, pass into other, perhaps forbidden or forbidding, realms. The door creaks and groans loudly, painfully when we do that, because we use that door so seldom, and we never think to lubricate the hinges. We abide in comfortably familiar spaces, confronting the unknown usually only when it bursts through the door upon us, or we stumble upon it in our unwitting blindness. In these environs it can be act of faith, of great courage or great foolhardiness, to merely, innocently, open a closed door; an act of bloody peril to pry at a locked one. Having stepped through, we often find the door slammed shut behind us, leaving us with the understanding that we can never go back whence we came, never return to old ways of seeing. We cannot un-know what we have come to know, even if the knowledge terrifies us or drives us mad.
One of the things we notice as we enter the castle is a standing suit of armor, our first hint of the castle's furnishings. In films of a certain era, every spook-house or mystery mansion seemed to feature one as standard factory equipment. It is absolutely appropriate and predictable that we should find one here; we expect to, in the same way we could expect to see the black cat. It is just another trope, a device to remind us what kind of movie we're watching, what kind of mood we're supposed to be in. But this is a game of free association we're playing, as you might by now have deduced. What associations do you bring?
Like the black cat, the armor plays no part in advancing the story (though it does, later, come crashing down - a significant symbolic event in itself), and it is unlikely we are meant to pay it any but the most perfunctory attention. But sometimes it's the things we're not meant to think about that prove most interesting. It's here because it belongs here (as do we) - where the hell else would you expect to find a suit of armor (other than a museum or on some nerd at the Renaissance Fair)? Might there be some reason, other than its stature as a reliable genre prop, for it to be the first thing we encounter on entering the castle? Or, to put the question another way: why is this a standard genre prop to begin with? Entering the mystery, why must we pass a suit of armor?
Well, for starters. We all wear one. It serves as identifier and protection, as surely as the metal suit distinguished and shielded it's medieval wearer. We have been taught by the followers of Freud to call it an ego, and we utilize it in much the same way the knight bears his armor - as a way to define and protect the persona we present to others, while our true visage remains concealed and our vulnerabilities shielded from expected unpleasantness. We wear it because we perceive ourselves as embattled and, though it helps protect us from attack, our natural movement is restricted, our natural grace made clumsy by its weight, our natural relationship with the world inhibited. Our armor helps to allay our fears and provides us with a sense of personal security, continuity and history, but it makes it nearly impossible for us to break into joyous, spontaneous dance. To whatever extent the world cannot touch us, we are unable to touch the world. We act in the world at the same time as we are disconnected from it.
A suit of armor stands for the past, comes to us out of the past, forged by the values and experiences of the past. Our egos are also forged in the past, shaped by our history and our responses to that history, by the values, standards and concepts we inherit, and by our reactions to those values; by attitudes we take for granted and are not even aware we have. And our egos prepare us for the struggles of the present about as much as a suit of armor prepares us for a swim in the ocean. In fact, we are swimming in the ocean of existence while trying to wear suits of armor. No wonder so many feel as though they are drowning.
Just within the door of the castle, stands the armor suit. It has the shape of a man, the aspect of a soldier. The stance of a guardian. Beneath the protective shell, behind the lifted visor, if we examine closely, we will find nothing but a hollowness, an emptiness. Who is guarding, and what is to be guarded? What do we find when we prize open the visor of our egos, seeking what lies beneath our layers of armor? Let the mystics answer: out of emptiness all things arise; to emptiness all things return. But then, it's just a suit of armor, and we must not linger, but move on.
We approach a window where shutters bang in the wind and curtains flutter like dancing spectres. The castle is a testament to the will of man to shape nature to his needs. Nature, in her indifference to our will, reminds us loudly that she is always waiting, always ready to burst upon us, insistently battering at our artifices and facades, seeking any opening through which to reclaim us. The shutters bang to draw our attention, the curtains caper like playful ghosts; that which animates them is invisible in all but effect, as is that which animates us. Foster's rational mind is shuttered also to forces beyond his ken and therefore invisible to him. Those shutters also will be blown open by an invisible wind that will have soon him capering in his own macabre dance.
Foster finds a small candelabra, lights it's three candles from his small torch, douses the torch in the ashes of the fireplace. I see the single flame of the torch as the light of the inquiring self, the "I" who seeks. Once we've ventured past the armor of our egos, once the shutters have banged open and we see the curtains flutter in the wind, what then? Spiritual traditions are filled with tripartite images, reminding us we are three in one: body, mind, spirit; Father, Son, Holy Ghost; Buddha on a tricycle, yadda, yadda, yadda - three lights flowering from one stem. Three modes of experience: through the senses, through the intellect, through intuition. No time to reflect, must follow Foster...
There is some weird business with a large clock - it chimes, yet it's pendulum is still. Or does it move only when Foster is not looking? He checks his watch against the clock, seems somehow reassured - what do I make of this, some hint about the relative nature of time? No time to consider, for the time is nigh for (fanfare, please) Foster's first fright!
It arrives as he is startled by his own reflection in a full length mirror. We have been waiting for a fright, have been conditioned by our genre experience to expect something to jump out at Foster or at us; for the protagonists fear to be our fear. But it is an odd moment - we can easily see it is only a mirror; we are not ourselves startled, we merely observe Foster's momentary shock as he encounters the unexpected image of himself. But may we not all be startled by the image we encounter upon honest self-examination?
He begins a reassuring monologue with himself, in the way that we all keep talking to ourselves, convincing ourselves that nothing is really wrong, that we need only trust our rational sensibilities, our logic, and all will be explained, all understood. But now he encounters another disturbing image: the portrait of a beautiful young woman that seems somehow to shimmer with it's own life, unsettling him and provoking him to question his senses.
Now he seats himself and begins to take his own notes. At this moment, both he and I are driven to the comfortable familiarity of the written word, the carefully noted observation. Whether words can bear the burden of quantifying and relating our experience remains to be seen.
A brief intermission here.
If I had a philosophy (and I will resolutely claim otherwise), it might be summed up simply in this way: life is a party - come as you are, and bring your own. Don't try to be anyone but yourself, and if you expect to get anything, bring some. You want love, bring it. You want respect, bring some. You want meaning? Carry it with you when you come. I have brought a certain state of mind to this film, a certain willingness to surrender to it, be intoxicated by it. Once I make the decision to see this flick as some kind of weird allegorical fable, it takes on a whole new aspect, acquires whole new layers of content, rich with as much meaning as I can bring. It ceases being mere presentation and becomes a creative interaction; a metaphysical chemistry is going on. I am not passively receiving this film, absorbing whatever might be the intent (if any) of it's makers - I am it's co-creator. It is my effort, my energy that brings it to life.
A film director works from basic information (a script), using the elements at his disposal to make visible something greater than what is contained on the page.
I am working from basic information (the finished film projected on screen), using the elements at my disposal to fashion something beyond what is apparent on the screen. It becomes a kind of romance, as each frame begins to coax from me an inquiry, each image seduces me to enter it's mystery and fuck with it until I reach a climax of understanding.
How much do I want to make of all this? How far am I prepared to go? Is it utterly loony to devote this kind of attention and analysis, clumsy as it may be, to this cheap piece of Eurotrash effluence? I begin to think of Charlie Manson, brain aflame with psychedelics in the California night, gleaning secret personal messages from the lyrics of Beatles songs; enveloped in grandiose apocalyptic visions and murderous reflection; plotting bloody mayhem and discovering catalysts for his psychotic impulses in a pop ditty describing a piece of playground gear. We can understand a lot about ol' Charlie by understanding what he heard in a song: Helter Skelter, indeed.
And, indeed, you may think me mad.
I'm reminded of the hoary old joke about the psychiatrist administering a Rorschach test: his client sees naked women in every inkblot. "You're obsessed with sex," is the shrink's diagnosis. "Me?" responds the outraged client, "they're your dirty pictures!"
These shifting patterns of gray at which a stare may be nothing more than a flickering Rorschach test, but the question remains: whose dirty pictures are they. anyway?
Part Two>>