Danse Macabre Continued
Part Two: in which our narrator is startled by his own reflection, and attempts to regain his composure.
The times has come to pause and take a deep breath. An abyss has opened up before me and, in accord with my nature, I am compelled to leap.
It takes considerably more time to write at length about Castle of Blood than it does to view it. I have been writing as though the film is unfolding in front of us, but of course what I am really doing is relying on memory of my previous viewing (and the countless viewings over the years) and the spotty notes from that session, along with impressions collected and stored over time. I think I know this film like an old friend but, arriving at a point where the mechanics of plot and interactions of various characters begin to develop in a possibly confusing, sometimes convoluted manner, I thought it wise to refresh myself with one more viewing. One more look certainly couldn't hurt, and might provide an additional bit of clarity, make me surer of my bearings.
Clarity, indeed! What becomes clear within moments is that I am the butt of my own joke and the proof of my own point.
Seeing a film in repeated viewings, we bring something different to the experience each time, a slightly different quality of perception within a slightly different context. This time I have brought with me all the notions that have been clattering around my head and on the page in the writing of this piece. I am expecting to see on the screen some reflection of what I have put on paper.
What I find is that I put too much trust in what I think I see and hear; that my memory does not necessarily reflect actuality; that, when I begin to set my thinking in a certain direction, I will invent reasons to support that thinking. In short, I will perceive what it is convenient for me to perceive. This, of course is what I have been saying all along is true of us all, yet I manage to be startled when the evidence betrays my own guilt. That evidence is not, mind you, thoroughly devastating, but it is goddam nigglingly annoying.
Here is what I begin to find when I press "play" this time:
Blackwood does indeed speak of his castle, not of his "estate." Estate is a word I apparently have put in his mouth because I desired certain connections to be made. How could I have got that wrong? I sit up straight, determined to pay attention. The movie's barely started; will I find my error compounded?
I try to make out inscriptions on the markers as Foster repeats for me his passage through the graveyard. Names are mostly obscured, indistinct, but at least part of one name is clearly visible - Alert. The letters on this stone are plain to read. I instantly interpret this as a stunningly synchronistic personal message. Yes, I will be more alert.
Here comes that damned black cat. I have claimed that Foster paid it no regard; in fact, he pokes playfully at it with a stick.
Four flames burn from the candle holder, not the mystical three out of which I have made so much. I offer myself the (only modestly comforting) note that, because of the angle of the shots, there are moments when it appears to be three.
I have to press "pause."
I feel as Alan Foster must feel, startled by his own reflection. Faced with my own misapprehensions, I am left feeling foolish, childish. I can go back, of course, do some simple revision and rewriting (rather in the way that we all tend to revise our personal histories for public consumption); I can destroy the evidence, pretend I didn't think I saw what I thought I saw. How would that change the nature of what I'm trying to do?
This project seemed a simple enough idea - just relate what I see and how I respond to it. Ask a few pertinent questions, draw a few obvious parallels; try to show how fucked-up-beyond-all-recognition our crazed "civilization" has made us, have a little fun doing it. Maybe this detour was unplanned, but it may, after all, prove fortuitous. Maybe the best way to demonstrate how fucked-up our perceptions can be is to clearly display how fucked-up my perceptions can be. This film has taken a significant place in my consciousness; I've invested a fair amount of time and thought in it. Yet I turn out to be writing about a film that exists, at least in part, only in my imagination; in my unsound perception.
No matter what the subject of our speech, we really only can ever describe ourselves and our ways of seeing; reveal much more of what lies within us than what lies without. So here I am, revealed in my naked foolishness; humbled.
I decide not to replay the part of the flick where the word (name) "Alert" appears. Am I sure, even now, of what I thought I saw? If the word does indeed appear on a tombstone, I have chosen to invest in it a very personal meaning. I have chosen to regard it as a message, even though that message indicates a need to distrust all messages. If I go back and look again, will I find what I think I saw? If the word did not appear, would I have invented it, out of the material at hand, to suit my purpose?
If I am capable of mis-seeing and misinterpreting the events of a film to which I have been paying repeated attention, questions automatically arise concerning the validity of any of my everyday observations, and any judgments or conclusions based on those observations. Apparently, even when describing the simplest occurrences, I'm making stuff up.
It makes my brain hurt. Does the content of the film determine my response, or does the response I make (or desire) determine the content I perceive? The truth, I contend, is a dance. It has not been my intention to wrestle any particular meaning from this film, nor to impose any structure of meaning on it. That would be the equivalent of putting my dancing partner in a strait-jacket. What really interests me is why I enjoy dancing with this partner so much. I'm not so much concerned with dissecting this flick like a high-school biology student attacking a dead frog, as I am in understanding my own relationship with it. Inherent in that relationship are all the possibilities and ambiguities within the film, coupled with all the possibilities, inclinations and frailties within me.
I learn to understand movies by watching movies. Equally, I come to understand myself by watching myself watch movies, seeing how I interact with them.
It's a dance, but who's leading?
The focus keeps shifting between the value of the inkblot and the value of my interpretation of it.
Whose dirty pictures are these, anyway? Why, I guess they're mine. I don't know how to see what someone else intends me to see, only what I'm able to see. If much of what I bring to the inkblot is my own bullshit, maybe there's reason for gratitude 'cause, without my bullshit, it would only be an inkblot. The question of what is really contained in this film is a dubious one. For me, the essential question remains: what do I see when I look? That's when things get really weird.
Watching movies is easy, passive, anyone can do it - just relax into the energy flow from the screen to your eye, let whatever is on the surface flow over you, past you, into oblivion. Absorb only as much as you care to take in. But that's for mundane folk, and not where the big fun is. I'm here not just to watch movies, but to see them, in my own peculiar, eccentric, unique way. To see movies is not a passive experience. It is an active inquiry, reversing the polarity of energy from my eye to the screen. It is a probing, delicate in one moment, crude in the next, into what is underneath the story, behind the flickering images, between the fucking frames. It is an attempt to apprehend the invisible alongside the visible, in an admittedly and happily subjective way.
I ain't here to be a reviewer, a critic, a scholar or historian.
I'm here to read the runes, roll the bones, gaze into the crystal, interpret your dreams, catalog the omens. The guts of the sacrificial animal are spilled in the dirt. The shaman brings to them all his experience, his intuition, his craft, his vision, his spirit; and with his whole being he calls forth meaning. To those without the vision, it's only guts in the dirt. To the shaman, there is always more than what is apparent.
Existence offers us many opportunities for understanding. There is something to be learned from everything: how the stars traverse their courses, the moon through it's phases; from how the grass grows or the clouds form; from the way the cards fall, the bones roll, the entrails spill; from the way we make electrons dance on a screen for our amusement. I am called to be here with my hands in this pile of guts, trying to read the story of why I'm here with my hands in this pile of guts.
Film makers are often surprised by audience response to their creations; amazed, sometimes annoyed that viewers find in their product the oddest notions, the most curious themes, the most unintended subtexts, the most ridiculous messages or absurd morals. But a film is not an equation, not a composition of elements that add up to the same total for everyone, every time.
A film without a viewer is a composite of substances void of meaning, existing only as a potential. Meaning arises only in the context of relationship, and our capacity to understand, interpret, process our experience. A movie is a reel of film, or a sequence of digital signals, or whatever coming technology may next capture the dance of illusion for us, but it is also only runes waiting to be cast, yarrow sticks awaiting a toss, a system of divination to which we each bring whatever questions are most pressing. Movies provide us a tool, but the tool itself shows us little; how we use it shows us everything.
This flick can never mean for you what it means to me, in this or any other moment. It will not mean the same for me when I am finished here. As Poe awaits a death that doesn't exist, I write about a movie that doesn't exist. But, what should I be writing about? A sequence of digital signals?
So: deeply humbled, but too ignorant or foolish to know when to quit, I return to this macabre danse like a spirit bound by its haunt.
It is a pattern of shifting realities. Edited of several scenes, dubbed into English and retitled Castle of Blood, the film was released to the drive-in circuit where I first saw it, back in the sixties. The missing portions (which do assist in our understanding of the film) have been restored to the DVD version I am watching, but the audio track is derived from the French dubbed version. Characters sometimes begin their discourse in one language and finish it speaking another, with an assist from sudden subtitles. Of course, not only do we hear a different language, we are also treated to an entirely different voice from an entirely different actor. The effect can't help but be surreally bizarre, lending yet another level of disorientation to the proceedings.
My own level of disorientation is at a new peak. I have no idea what might wait in then castle, lurking. I failed to mention the language shifts earlier (they begin in the first reel, splitting Poe's dialog between dubbed English and dubbed French) because I have become used to experiencing the film in this way; I've been conditioned to take it for granted. We learn not to notice the things we take for granted.
One of Foster's early remarks in reproval of Poe is: "No one ever returns from the dead." Though Foster takes this for granted, even first-time viewers will assume he'll be shown his error by film's end. In a sense, Poe himself has returned from the dead to appear in this flick; thus Foster's very first words are spoken to the dead (as will be his last).
What are we doing here, if not communing with spirits? I might as well be the ghost of my former self, trapped here by unfinished business with this film. And, for all I know, things are just starting to weird up. I have made a note of Foster's self-assuring line, "I intend to win this wager!" Before the night is put to rest, both Foster and I are likely to be just trying to escape with our lives.
The name inscribed on the tombstone is Alert. I am relieved simply to have seen what I thought I saw. I vow to pay heed to this reminder. The inscription on all our markers might rightfully read: "I should have paid more attention."
I note this time through that the shutter do bang, and the curtains do move, though they do not dance in quite the spirited fashion I had described. Funny - it seems so much more interesting the way I told it. Blowing curtains are one of the little visual staples in the Gothic recipe and, while not vital to the meal, they are often, like the sprig of parsley on the plate, essential to proper presentation.
It's a challenge to properly focus. I want to pay attention to precisely what's occurring on screen, but I'm distracted by the processes of my own thinking; seduced by what's happening in my own head. I seem to be as interested in watching myself watch this movie as I am in the movie itself. At the same time, every trivial detail of design, every trite and trashy line of dialogue seems to call for closer scrutiny; every image seems to whisper enchantingly, "Take me, use me, make sense of me..."
There is sudden music; a door flies open; a roomful of dancing revelers is revealed. Just as suddenly the door swings shut, the music ceases. Racing expectantly to re-open the door, Foster finds only a dusty, cobwebbed room, vacant of all but a large, swooping bat he must dodge. We never see this bat again, but just as the black cat hinted at the presence of the occult, so the bat suggests something of the nature of the dancers. Let us play a quick word-association game: I say "bat;" you say...yes, of course. And now we need not speak the word.
It has been brought to our attention by the music of their dance that the castle is not without occupants. As Foster, at the decaying harpsichord, attempts to re-create that music, the hand of Elizabeth Blackwood falls on his shoulder.
The unexpected touch of an unknown hand (sometimes gloved, clawed or otherwise deformed) to the shoulder is about as mossy a horror cliche as any extant, an unwelcome reminder that we may never be as alone as we think we are (and not in a good way). Most often it is utilized as a cheap (often effective, if entirely unimaginative) preliminary warning (promise) of further jolts; just a startle designed to tease.
I must be cautious here not to drool while caught in the fervor of description but, if Alan Foster is startled, he must be quite pleasantly so, for the face he turns to gaze upon is that of the Goddess of Italian Horror, Barbara Steele. So much has been written about the hauntingly dark charms of that elegant, delicately sculpted visage that it seems like adolescent effusiveness to even begin to describe the effect of her appearance. With Foster, we are caught up between momentary alarm and dawning delight. With him we drink in her other-worldly beauty; but her mesmeric, wide-eyed gaze would as likely drink us in, and we would surrender willingly, obliviously, to be swallowed in that compelling look. Whose heart (and lust) could fail to be magnetized? Er...sorry...but it is Barbara. We'll just call her Elizabeth from here on.
She explains that she is Lord Blackwood's sister; that "to him I am dead," that she has "left his world." She is well aware of Foster's wager, asks if he is afraid of her. He says he has no fear, but I recall that he only fears the living.
As they speak of "the night of the dead," a sudden draft extinguishes the candles. It is the only time in the film that we see Elizabeth laugh - when Foster's lights go out. The dubbed laughter is awkwardly sinister, a spook-house laugh, but Foster is quickly put at ease. After all, he jests, he had been expecting to spend the night with a "horrible ghost." His expectations arise from his preconceptions; he believes he would recognize a ghost if he encountered one, even though he professes that no such thing exists. He is incapable of recognizing what is in front of him because it does not conform to his belief system or his expectations. This is a founding principle of the ghost story; it is how we are, how our minds work, how our perceptions work; we see what we are capable of seeing, what we are conditioned to see, or what we desire to see. The truth is most often hidden in plain sight. We do not see it, rather only what we have made of it.
When asked if the stories about the castle are "real or fantasy," Elizabeth responds that it is, "...a lot of coincidence, little reality." The same might be said of my various interpretations of what's going on here - a little nudge from reality inspiring a cascade of coincidental associations. Like the coincidental formation of stars into galaxies? Or like the mad careening of bumper-cars at a carnival ride? Feels like both.
Elizabeth escorts Alan to his room, where their excruciatingly sappy flirtations are interrupted by Julia (the lady of the shimmering portrait), whose arrival signals that at last the plot and pace will shift up a gear.
There is little time now to linger over matters not essential to negotiating our way through this befuddling maze of people (living or dead) and events (past or present). Foster spends much of the remainder of this film in a state of wide-eyed, slack- jawed stupefaction and near-paralyzed bewilderment. If we are not careful, so shall we. We hew closer to the (often dreary and uninviting) path of synopsis here, lest we be forever lost.
There is some obvious but undefined tension between Liz and Julia; their conversation is ripe-to-bursting with unspoken history.
They leave Foster alone long enough for him to browse a copy of an old book: "Introduction to Metaphysical Medicine," authored by one Dr. Carmus.
Elizabeth returns to Alan's room, and the pair fall to the bed, embracing and declaring undying love. Liz keeps slapping Alan with unsubtle clues like,"You will give me life," and, "Help me live again," but Foster is uncomprehending, caught in desire. Resting his foggy noggin on her bosom, he is dismayed to feel no heartbeat; filled with astonished disbelief when Elizabeth finally speaks plainly: "I'm dead, Alan."
Suddenly a figure appears, looking as though he'd just stepped from the cast of the Hercules flick being filmed on the neighboring set, all bare chested and ripped. Apparently he doesn't care that Liz is already dead; he flings himself upon her and stabs her anyway. Foster chases this figure into the corridor and shoots him with the pistol Blackwood has provided for self-defense, but the body vanishes. Elizabeth has also disappeared and Foster searches the castle for her, muttering to himself that none of this is possible.
Just then, of course, another door opens and the world-weary voice of Dr. Carmus intones for us that which seems a certainty: "Everything is possible here tonight," the good doctor assures us, "you need not be concerned." That's a relief, Doc.
Carmus will will serve as our tour guide through this labyrinth of unfoldments. To me, his name immediately suggests a play on the word "karma," the "us" tacked on the end suggesting it is "our karma" we are concerned with. The concept of karma, stated as simply as possible, is that our thoughts, words and deeds have unavoidable repercussions and consequences; that the consequences of our past inform our present, just as the consequences of our present will inform our future. The present, in short, is the fruit of the past and the seed of the future. Karma is the engine that keeps the wheels of life and death turning in the castle. It is the only kind of law that matters - the kind that is self-enforcing.
Foster had thought Carmus dead. Carmus will only say that he has "..stopped surviving in your world." Like Elizabeth, he is careful to merely imply what Foster will refuse to confront directly.
Carmus abides in the castle in continuation of his studies of survival beyond death. He tries patiently to elucidate his theories to the skeptical Alan, but who can take seriously a guy who keeps a live snake sealed in a box inside a cabinet? Or is the snake a spirit too? I don't know what the hell Carmus is jabbering about, and there's no time to spend figuring it out.
He shows Foster the graves of the castles (former?) inhabitants, including that of Elizabeth; tells Foster they are "victims of their destiny" who will soon be reliving their final moments.
"Tell me of Elizabeth," begs the frantic Foster. But the clock chimes. and the hour is upon us.
"Every death is repeated tonight," offers Carmus. "Words have no meaning. Look in there!"
He may be right. I'm not sure what my own words mean anymore, not sure what they signify except maybe the spontaneous combustion of neurons gone haywire. I don't sympathize with Foster, but I empathize. Both of us are in over our heads.
The camera is freed to tell its own tale. We pan to the ball room for a little back-story. What is played out, as we observe along with Foster and Carmus, serves the expositional function of a flashback, while presumably being re-enacted for us in the present by unwitting players. As lucidly as I can relay it, this is what we discover -
Elizabeth is married to William, but is having an affair with hot-tempered gardener Herbert.
She is also lusted after by the lesbian Julia.
In the bedroom, Liz and William make the beast-with-two-backs.
Herbert, in a fit of homicidal jealousy, murders William.
Then, while Herbert is having his way with Liz, Julia slips in and bashes his skull.
As Julia tries to console/seduce Elizabeth, Liz stabs her to death with a letter opener.
Carmus blithely observes, while Foster gapes in stunned astonishment.
As quick as Foster can exclaim, "I don't want to see," everyone but he vanishes, and soon Foster is vainly searching room to empty room, looking for anyone, yelling to no one: "This is a play, I say, no more than that!" Of course it is. It is the play of dreams commenting on the play of life. Shakespeare makes a similar observation: something about all the world being a stage, all the players strutting self-importantly about, awaiting the final curtain. In the context of this film, these players are all allowed multiple curtain calls. In the context of my life they also make repeated curtain calls, calling for my attention with the insistence of banging shutters.
Foster has expressed the literal truth when he says he does not want to see. Like most of us, he is determined not to see what is in front of him; he will cling relentlessly to whatever interpretation of events causes him the least discomfort. We might expect another door to creak open at this point, and we will not be disappointed, as the fate of Dr. Carmus awaits our witness.
The good doctor carries a candelabra, naturally, and seems to think himself alone. We watch as he is distracted from his studies by an insistent noise, follow him along winding corridors, to and through yet another creaking, banging door; down to the dusty, fetid crypts, down past carven sarcophagi, brushing away cobwebs as we go, deep into the dark and festering interior of the castle.
I am intended to be caught up in Foster's story, to identify with him as the "normal" protagonist. In truth, I begin to feel a deeper kinship with Carmus! Foster has stumbled into his situation out of ignorance and pride, with the dismissive arrogance of the man who thinks himself "educated;" on a whim and in pursuit of other objectives entirely. He is not on a quest to discover truth, he's just looking for an entertaining story, as will be most viewers of this film. Carmus and I are here with a will and a purpose, intent on proceeding as far into the darkness as fortune permits. We want to know, Carmus and I, and in order to know are both willing to go to lengths convention deems too far.
Even now, Carmus is prying away at the unknown, uncovering that which is concealed, the heavy stone lid of a sarcophagus sliding slowly and noisily aside. What waits within looks extremely dead.
The cadaver is gray and crumbling ('course, it would be gray in a black'n'white flick), human only in outline; sockets black and hollow, teeth bared in grimace, hair like coarse strands of brittle web, lips like ash. The subtlest suggestion of breasts lend a disturbingly female aspect. As we watch, the driest of rasps initiates a slight movement of the chest in a cruel mimicry of breath.
A creeping fog oozes in to envelope everything as Carmus backs off in horror. What to him has been a puzzle for the intellect is now met in physical manifestation, and even the prober of mysteries is revulsed by his own discovery.
He returns to his familiar study, where at his desk a human skull resides atop some books.
It is interesting to me, how provocative a symbol is the skull of man. Universally recognized as an emblem of mortal peril and death, we expect to encounter skulls as standard fright-flick paraphernalia; they are inherently spooky. At Halloween we decorate our houses with their replicas. Often we make such decorations cute or comical, in order to remove the sting from what they represent. Looking at a skull, we look at our own fate - an empty architecture of bleached bone once upholstered in flesh and from which a living entity once gazed. Every skull is a mirror reflecting our future. When we hang a cute cardboard skull on our door to welcome trick-or-treaters, we are telling ourselves a comforting lie about what it represents. In horror films, as in life, comforting lies will not save us.
Even in horror flicks, skulls do not appear casually or at random. They are placed, carefully and appropriately, in specific contexts. The lab of every scientist, mad or otherwise, must be equipped with at least one. No professor's library, no doctors study, no magicians lair, no occult ceremony would be complete without the ritual skull.
As the former residence of the brain, skulls are quite naturally linked with knowledge, and we see them in the habitats of knowledge seekers. We find them displayed in cabinets, adorning shelves, decorating desktops and worktables. And we find them, more often than not, displayed alongside, among or on top of books; usually very old, musty books, worn with generations of handling or crumbling from disuse of forgotten or forbidden lore. It is as if they warned us silently, these ever-present skulls, of the dangers that inescapably accompany knowledge, like the symbol of skull and bones on a bottle of poison.
What we seek, we seek at our own peril, as well as our potential enlightenment. Seen simultaneously as containers of knowledge and warnings of extreme hazard, the skulls in horror films seem to remind us that the greatest threat to our survival is the content of our own heads.
...and then Herbert slits Carmus' throat from behind, bending over the wound to quaff the flowing blood. Haven't we already seen Herbert killed twice, once by Alan, once by Julia? Or was it his ghost we saw killed? How many ways can one guy kill and be killed? Is this the ghost of his ghost? I can't keep track, confess my inadequacy to the task of explaining the mystery of this movie. The dead are dead, except when they're alive...or is it the other way 'round? Like Foster, my mind won't grasp it. Unlike Foster, I don't think the mind is supposed to.
"You have seen how I met my destiny," announces Carmus, in the fleeting moment between reappearing and vanishing again.
We are pressing our limits, Foster and I, listening to the cynical laughter of ghosts echoing through an empty house. I'm ready to laugh along with the spirits, but just now that damned front door is creaking open again.
<<Part One |||| FInal Chapter>>
The times has come to pause and take a deep breath. An abyss has opened up before me and, in accord with my nature, I am compelled to leap.
It takes considerably more time to write at length about Castle of Blood than it does to view it. I have been writing as though the film is unfolding in front of us, but of course what I am really doing is relying on memory of my previous viewing (and the countless viewings over the years) and the spotty notes from that session, along with impressions collected and stored over time. I think I know this film like an old friend but, arriving at a point where the mechanics of plot and interactions of various characters begin to develop in a possibly confusing, sometimes convoluted manner, I thought it wise to refresh myself with one more viewing. One more look certainly couldn't hurt, and might provide an additional bit of clarity, make me surer of my bearings.
Clarity, indeed! What becomes clear within moments is that I am the butt of my own joke and the proof of my own point.
Seeing a film in repeated viewings, we bring something different to the experience each time, a slightly different quality of perception within a slightly different context. This time I have brought with me all the notions that have been clattering around my head and on the page in the writing of this piece. I am expecting to see on the screen some reflection of what I have put on paper.
What I find is that I put too much trust in what I think I see and hear; that my memory does not necessarily reflect actuality; that, when I begin to set my thinking in a certain direction, I will invent reasons to support that thinking. In short, I will perceive what it is convenient for me to perceive. This, of course is what I have been saying all along is true of us all, yet I manage to be startled when the evidence betrays my own guilt. That evidence is not, mind you, thoroughly devastating, but it is goddam nigglingly annoying.
Here is what I begin to find when I press "play" this time:
Blackwood does indeed speak of his castle, not of his "estate." Estate is a word I apparently have put in his mouth because I desired certain connections to be made. How could I have got that wrong? I sit up straight, determined to pay attention. The movie's barely started; will I find my error compounded?
I try to make out inscriptions on the markers as Foster repeats for me his passage through the graveyard. Names are mostly obscured, indistinct, but at least part of one name is clearly visible - Alert. The letters on this stone are plain to read. I instantly interpret this as a stunningly synchronistic personal message. Yes, I will be more alert.
Here comes that damned black cat. I have claimed that Foster paid it no regard; in fact, he pokes playfully at it with a stick.
Four flames burn from the candle holder, not the mystical three out of which I have made so much. I offer myself the (only modestly comforting) note that, because of the angle of the shots, there are moments when it appears to be three.
I have to press "pause."
I feel as Alan Foster must feel, startled by his own reflection. Faced with my own misapprehensions, I am left feeling foolish, childish. I can go back, of course, do some simple revision and rewriting (rather in the way that we all tend to revise our personal histories for public consumption); I can destroy the evidence, pretend I didn't think I saw what I thought I saw. How would that change the nature of what I'm trying to do?
This project seemed a simple enough idea - just relate what I see and how I respond to it. Ask a few pertinent questions, draw a few obvious parallels; try to show how fucked-up-beyond-all-recognition our crazed "civilization" has made us, have a little fun doing it. Maybe this detour was unplanned, but it may, after all, prove fortuitous. Maybe the best way to demonstrate how fucked-up our perceptions can be is to clearly display how fucked-up my perceptions can be. This film has taken a significant place in my consciousness; I've invested a fair amount of time and thought in it. Yet I turn out to be writing about a film that exists, at least in part, only in my imagination; in my unsound perception.
No matter what the subject of our speech, we really only can ever describe ourselves and our ways of seeing; reveal much more of what lies within us than what lies without. So here I am, revealed in my naked foolishness; humbled.
I decide not to replay the part of the flick where the word (name) "Alert" appears. Am I sure, even now, of what I thought I saw? If the word does indeed appear on a tombstone, I have chosen to invest in it a very personal meaning. I have chosen to regard it as a message, even though that message indicates a need to distrust all messages. If I go back and look again, will I find what I think I saw? If the word did not appear, would I have invented it, out of the material at hand, to suit my purpose?
If I am capable of mis-seeing and misinterpreting the events of a film to which I have been paying repeated attention, questions automatically arise concerning the validity of any of my everyday observations, and any judgments or conclusions based on those observations. Apparently, even when describing the simplest occurrences, I'm making stuff up.
It makes my brain hurt. Does the content of the film determine my response, or does the response I make (or desire) determine the content I perceive? The truth, I contend, is a dance. It has not been my intention to wrestle any particular meaning from this film, nor to impose any structure of meaning on it. That would be the equivalent of putting my dancing partner in a strait-jacket. What really interests me is why I enjoy dancing with this partner so much. I'm not so much concerned with dissecting this flick like a high-school biology student attacking a dead frog, as I am in understanding my own relationship with it. Inherent in that relationship are all the possibilities and ambiguities within the film, coupled with all the possibilities, inclinations and frailties within me.
I learn to understand movies by watching movies. Equally, I come to understand myself by watching myself watch movies, seeing how I interact with them.
It's a dance, but who's leading?
The focus keeps shifting between the value of the inkblot and the value of my interpretation of it.
Whose dirty pictures are these, anyway? Why, I guess they're mine. I don't know how to see what someone else intends me to see, only what I'm able to see. If much of what I bring to the inkblot is my own bullshit, maybe there's reason for gratitude 'cause, without my bullshit, it would only be an inkblot. The question of what is really contained in this film is a dubious one. For me, the essential question remains: what do I see when I look? That's when things get really weird.
Watching movies is easy, passive, anyone can do it - just relax into the energy flow from the screen to your eye, let whatever is on the surface flow over you, past you, into oblivion. Absorb only as much as you care to take in. But that's for mundane folk, and not where the big fun is. I'm here not just to watch movies, but to see them, in my own peculiar, eccentric, unique way. To see movies is not a passive experience. It is an active inquiry, reversing the polarity of energy from my eye to the screen. It is a probing, delicate in one moment, crude in the next, into what is underneath the story, behind the flickering images, between the fucking frames. It is an attempt to apprehend the invisible alongside the visible, in an admittedly and happily subjective way.
I ain't here to be a reviewer, a critic, a scholar or historian.
I'm here to read the runes, roll the bones, gaze into the crystal, interpret your dreams, catalog the omens. The guts of the sacrificial animal are spilled in the dirt. The shaman brings to them all his experience, his intuition, his craft, his vision, his spirit; and with his whole being he calls forth meaning. To those without the vision, it's only guts in the dirt. To the shaman, there is always more than what is apparent.
Existence offers us many opportunities for understanding. There is something to be learned from everything: how the stars traverse their courses, the moon through it's phases; from how the grass grows or the clouds form; from the way the cards fall, the bones roll, the entrails spill; from the way we make electrons dance on a screen for our amusement. I am called to be here with my hands in this pile of guts, trying to read the story of why I'm here with my hands in this pile of guts.
Film makers are often surprised by audience response to their creations; amazed, sometimes annoyed that viewers find in their product the oddest notions, the most curious themes, the most unintended subtexts, the most ridiculous messages or absurd morals. But a film is not an equation, not a composition of elements that add up to the same total for everyone, every time.
A film without a viewer is a composite of substances void of meaning, existing only as a potential. Meaning arises only in the context of relationship, and our capacity to understand, interpret, process our experience. A movie is a reel of film, or a sequence of digital signals, or whatever coming technology may next capture the dance of illusion for us, but it is also only runes waiting to be cast, yarrow sticks awaiting a toss, a system of divination to which we each bring whatever questions are most pressing. Movies provide us a tool, but the tool itself shows us little; how we use it shows us everything.
This flick can never mean for you what it means to me, in this or any other moment. It will not mean the same for me when I am finished here. As Poe awaits a death that doesn't exist, I write about a movie that doesn't exist. But, what should I be writing about? A sequence of digital signals?
So: deeply humbled, but too ignorant or foolish to know when to quit, I return to this macabre danse like a spirit bound by its haunt.
It is a pattern of shifting realities. Edited of several scenes, dubbed into English and retitled Castle of Blood, the film was released to the drive-in circuit where I first saw it, back in the sixties. The missing portions (which do assist in our understanding of the film) have been restored to the DVD version I am watching, but the audio track is derived from the French dubbed version. Characters sometimes begin their discourse in one language and finish it speaking another, with an assist from sudden subtitles. Of course, not only do we hear a different language, we are also treated to an entirely different voice from an entirely different actor. The effect can't help but be surreally bizarre, lending yet another level of disorientation to the proceedings.
My own level of disorientation is at a new peak. I have no idea what might wait in then castle, lurking. I failed to mention the language shifts earlier (they begin in the first reel, splitting Poe's dialog between dubbed English and dubbed French) because I have become used to experiencing the film in this way; I've been conditioned to take it for granted. We learn not to notice the things we take for granted.
One of Foster's early remarks in reproval of Poe is: "No one ever returns from the dead." Though Foster takes this for granted, even first-time viewers will assume he'll be shown his error by film's end. In a sense, Poe himself has returned from the dead to appear in this flick; thus Foster's very first words are spoken to the dead (as will be his last).
What are we doing here, if not communing with spirits? I might as well be the ghost of my former self, trapped here by unfinished business with this film. And, for all I know, things are just starting to weird up. I have made a note of Foster's self-assuring line, "I intend to win this wager!" Before the night is put to rest, both Foster and I are likely to be just trying to escape with our lives.
The name inscribed on the tombstone is Alert. I am relieved simply to have seen what I thought I saw. I vow to pay heed to this reminder. The inscription on all our markers might rightfully read: "I should have paid more attention."
I note this time through that the shutter do bang, and the curtains do move, though they do not dance in quite the spirited fashion I had described. Funny - it seems so much more interesting the way I told it. Blowing curtains are one of the little visual staples in the Gothic recipe and, while not vital to the meal, they are often, like the sprig of parsley on the plate, essential to proper presentation.
It's a challenge to properly focus. I want to pay attention to precisely what's occurring on screen, but I'm distracted by the processes of my own thinking; seduced by what's happening in my own head. I seem to be as interested in watching myself watch this movie as I am in the movie itself. At the same time, every trivial detail of design, every trite and trashy line of dialogue seems to call for closer scrutiny; every image seems to whisper enchantingly, "Take me, use me, make sense of me..."
There is sudden music; a door flies open; a roomful of dancing revelers is revealed. Just as suddenly the door swings shut, the music ceases. Racing expectantly to re-open the door, Foster finds only a dusty, cobwebbed room, vacant of all but a large, swooping bat he must dodge. We never see this bat again, but just as the black cat hinted at the presence of the occult, so the bat suggests something of the nature of the dancers. Let us play a quick word-association game: I say "bat;" you say...yes, of course. And now we need not speak the word.
It has been brought to our attention by the music of their dance that the castle is not without occupants. As Foster, at the decaying harpsichord, attempts to re-create that music, the hand of Elizabeth Blackwood falls on his shoulder.
The unexpected touch of an unknown hand (sometimes gloved, clawed or otherwise deformed) to the shoulder is about as mossy a horror cliche as any extant, an unwelcome reminder that we may never be as alone as we think we are (and not in a good way). Most often it is utilized as a cheap (often effective, if entirely unimaginative) preliminary warning (promise) of further jolts; just a startle designed to tease.
I must be cautious here not to drool while caught in the fervor of description but, if Alan Foster is startled, he must be quite pleasantly so, for the face he turns to gaze upon is that of the Goddess of Italian Horror, Barbara Steele. So much has been written about the hauntingly dark charms of that elegant, delicately sculpted visage that it seems like adolescent effusiveness to even begin to describe the effect of her appearance. With Foster, we are caught up between momentary alarm and dawning delight. With him we drink in her other-worldly beauty; but her mesmeric, wide-eyed gaze would as likely drink us in, and we would surrender willingly, obliviously, to be swallowed in that compelling look. Whose heart (and lust) could fail to be magnetized? Er...sorry...but it is Barbara. We'll just call her Elizabeth from here on.
She explains that she is Lord Blackwood's sister; that "to him I am dead," that she has "left his world." She is well aware of Foster's wager, asks if he is afraid of her. He says he has no fear, but I recall that he only fears the living.
As they speak of "the night of the dead," a sudden draft extinguishes the candles. It is the only time in the film that we see Elizabeth laugh - when Foster's lights go out. The dubbed laughter is awkwardly sinister, a spook-house laugh, but Foster is quickly put at ease. After all, he jests, he had been expecting to spend the night with a "horrible ghost." His expectations arise from his preconceptions; he believes he would recognize a ghost if he encountered one, even though he professes that no such thing exists. He is incapable of recognizing what is in front of him because it does not conform to his belief system or his expectations. This is a founding principle of the ghost story; it is how we are, how our minds work, how our perceptions work; we see what we are capable of seeing, what we are conditioned to see, or what we desire to see. The truth is most often hidden in plain sight. We do not see it, rather only what we have made of it.
When asked if the stories about the castle are "real or fantasy," Elizabeth responds that it is, "...a lot of coincidence, little reality." The same might be said of my various interpretations of what's going on here - a little nudge from reality inspiring a cascade of coincidental associations. Like the coincidental formation of stars into galaxies? Or like the mad careening of bumper-cars at a carnival ride? Feels like both.
Elizabeth escorts Alan to his room, where their excruciatingly sappy flirtations are interrupted by Julia (the lady of the shimmering portrait), whose arrival signals that at last the plot and pace will shift up a gear.
There is little time now to linger over matters not essential to negotiating our way through this befuddling maze of people (living or dead) and events (past or present). Foster spends much of the remainder of this film in a state of wide-eyed, slack- jawed stupefaction and near-paralyzed bewilderment. If we are not careful, so shall we. We hew closer to the (often dreary and uninviting) path of synopsis here, lest we be forever lost.
There is some obvious but undefined tension between Liz and Julia; their conversation is ripe-to-bursting with unspoken history.
They leave Foster alone long enough for him to browse a copy of an old book: "Introduction to Metaphysical Medicine," authored by one Dr. Carmus.
Elizabeth returns to Alan's room, and the pair fall to the bed, embracing and declaring undying love. Liz keeps slapping Alan with unsubtle clues like,"You will give me life," and, "Help me live again," but Foster is uncomprehending, caught in desire. Resting his foggy noggin on her bosom, he is dismayed to feel no heartbeat; filled with astonished disbelief when Elizabeth finally speaks plainly: "I'm dead, Alan."
Suddenly a figure appears, looking as though he'd just stepped from the cast of the Hercules flick being filmed on the neighboring set, all bare chested and ripped. Apparently he doesn't care that Liz is already dead; he flings himself upon her and stabs her anyway. Foster chases this figure into the corridor and shoots him with the pistol Blackwood has provided for self-defense, but the body vanishes. Elizabeth has also disappeared and Foster searches the castle for her, muttering to himself that none of this is possible.
Just then, of course, another door opens and the world-weary voice of Dr. Carmus intones for us that which seems a certainty: "Everything is possible here tonight," the good doctor assures us, "you need not be concerned." That's a relief, Doc.
Carmus will will serve as our tour guide through this labyrinth of unfoldments. To me, his name immediately suggests a play on the word "karma," the "us" tacked on the end suggesting it is "our karma" we are concerned with. The concept of karma, stated as simply as possible, is that our thoughts, words and deeds have unavoidable repercussions and consequences; that the consequences of our past inform our present, just as the consequences of our present will inform our future. The present, in short, is the fruit of the past and the seed of the future. Karma is the engine that keeps the wheels of life and death turning in the castle. It is the only kind of law that matters - the kind that is self-enforcing.
Foster had thought Carmus dead. Carmus will only say that he has "..stopped surviving in your world." Like Elizabeth, he is careful to merely imply what Foster will refuse to confront directly.
Carmus abides in the castle in continuation of his studies of survival beyond death. He tries patiently to elucidate his theories to the skeptical Alan, but who can take seriously a guy who keeps a live snake sealed in a box inside a cabinet? Or is the snake a spirit too? I don't know what the hell Carmus is jabbering about, and there's no time to spend figuring it out.
He shows Foster the graves of the castles (former?) inhabitants, including that of Elizabeth; tells Foster they are "victims of their destiny" who will soon be reliving their final moments.
"Tell me of Elizabeth," begs the frantic Foster. But the clock chimes. and the hour is upon us.
"Every death is repeated tonight," offers Carmus. "Words have no meaning. Look in there!"
He may be right. I'm not sure what my own words mean anymore, not sure what they signify except maybe the spontaneous combustion of neurons gone haywire. I don't sympathize with Foster, but I empathize. Both of us are in over our heads.
The camera is freed to tell its own tale. We pan to the ball room for a little back-story. What is played out, as we observe along with Foster and Carmus, serves the expositional function of a flashback, while presumably being re-enacted for us in the present by unwitting players. As lucidly as I can relay it, this is what we discover -
Elizabeth is married to William, but is having an affair with hot-tempered gardener Herbert.
She is also lusted after by the lesbian Julia.
In the bedroom, Liz and William make the beast-with-two-backs.
Herbert, in a fit of homicidal jealousy, murders William.
Then, while Herbert is having his way with Liz, Julia slips in and bashes his skull.
As Julia tries to console/seduce Elizabeth, Liz stabs her to death with a letter opener.
Carmus blithely observes, while Foster gapes in stunned astonishment.
As quick as Foster can exclaim, "I don't want to see," everyone but he vanishes, and soon Foster is vainly searching room to empty room, looking for anyone, yelling to no one: "This is a play, I say, no more than that!" Of course it is. It is the play of dreams commenting on the play of life. Shakespeare makes a similar observation: something about all the world being a stage, all the players strutting self-importantly about, awaiting the final curtain. In the context of this film, these players are all allowed multiple curtain calls. In the context of my life they also make repeated curtain calls, calling for my attention with the insistence of banging shutters.
Foster has expressed the literal truth when he says he does not want to see. Like most of us, he is determined not to see what is in front of him; he will cling relentlessly to whatever interpretation of events causes him the least discomfort. We might expect another door to creak open at this point, and we will not be disappointed, as the fate of Dr. Carmus awaits our witness.
The good doctor carries a candelabra, naturally, and seems to think himself alone. We watch as he is distracted from his studies by an insistent noise, follow him along winding corridors, to and through yet another creaking, banging door; down to the dusty, fetid crypts, down past carven sarcophagi, brushing away cobwebs as we go, deep into the dark and festering interior of the castle.
I am intended to be caught up in Foster's story, to identify with him as the "normal" protagonist. In truth, I begin to feel a deeper kinship with Carmus! Foster has stumbled into his situation out of ignorance and pride, with the dismissive arrogance of the man who thinks himself "educated;" on a whim and in pursuit of other objectives entirely. He is not on a quest to discover truth, he's just looking for an entertaining story, as will be most viewers of this film. Carmus and I are here with a will and a purpose, intent on proceeding as far into the darkness as fortune permits. We want to know, Carmus and I, and in order to know are both willing to go to lengths convention deems too far.
Even now, Carmus is prying away at the unknown, uncovering that which is concealed, the heavy stone lid of a sarcophagus sliding slowly and noisily aside. What waits within looks extremely dead.
The cadaver is gray and crumbling ('course, it would be gray in a black'n'white flick), human only in outline; sockets black and hollow, teeth bared in grimace, hair like coarse strands of brittle web, lips like ash. The subtlest suggestion of breasts lend a disturbingly female aspect. As we watch, the driest of rasps initiates a slight movement of the chest in a cruel mimicry of breath.
A creeping fog oozes in to envelope everything as Carmus backs off in horror. What to him has been a puzzle for the intellect is now met in physical manifestation, and even the prober of mysteries is revulsed by his own discovery.
He returns to his familiar study, where at his desk a human skull resides atop some books.
It is interesting to me, how provocative a symbol is the skull of man. Universally recognized as an emblem of mortal peril and death, we expect to encounter skulls as standard fright-flick paraphernalia; they are inherently spooky. At Halloween we decorate our houses with their replicas. Often we make such decorations cute or comical, in order to remove the sting from what they represent. Looking at a skull, we look at our own fate - an empty architecture of bleached bone once upholstered in flesh and from which a living entity once gazed. Every skull is a mirror reflecting our future. When we hang a cute cardboard skull on our door to welcome trick-or-treaters, we are telling ourselves a comforting lie about what it represents. In horror films, as in life, comforting lies will not save us.
Even in horror flicks, skulls do not appear casually or at random. They are placed, carefully and appropriately, in specific contexts. The lab of every scientist, mad or otherwise, must be equipped with at least one. No professor's library, no doctors study, no magicians lair, no occult ceremony would be complete without the ritual skull.
As the former residence of the brain, skulls are quite naturally linked with knowledge, and we see them in the habitats of knowledge seekers. We find them displayed in cabinets, adorning shelves, decorating desktops and worktables. And we find them, more often than not, displayed alongside, among or on top of books; usually very old, musty books, worn with generations of handling or crumbling from disuse of forgotten or forbidden lore. It is as if they warned us silently, these ever-present skulls, of the dangers that inescapably accompany knowledge, like the symbol of skull and bones on a bottle of poison.
What we seek, we seek at our own peril, as well as our potential enlightenment. Seen simultaneously as containers of knowledge and warnings of extreme hazard, the skulls in horror films seem to remind us that the greatest threat to our survival is the content of our own heads.
...and then Herbert slits Carmus' throat from behind, bending over the wound to quaff the flowing blood. Haven't we already seen Herbert killed twice, once by Alan, once by Julia? Or was it his ghost we saw killed? How many ways can one guy kill and be killed? Is this the ghost of his ghost? I can't keep track, confess my inadequacy to the task of explaining the mystery of this movie. The dead are dead, except when they're alive...or is it the other way 'round? Like Foster, my mind won't grasp it. Unlike Foster, I don't think the mind is supposed to.
"You have seen how I met my destiny," announces Carmus, in the fleeting moment between reappearing and vanishing again.
We are pressing our limits, Foster and I, listening to the cynical laughter of ghosts echoing through an empty house. I'm ready to laugh along with the spirits, but just now that damned front door is creaking open again.
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