Samford sought serenity
and found it at the end
he climbed atop a dead fruit tree
(they break but never bend)

Most of the first hour of I Am Legend follows the efforts of Robert Neville through his daily routine as the last man in Manhattan. Clever enough to maintain a reasonable facsimile of modern life, Neville spends his days fighting loneliness and avoiding the flesh-eating monsters that now occupy the city. These early scenes, particularly the exterior shots of the ruined city, are enjoyably convincing even if they crib from earlier, better films like ‘12 Monkeys’ and ‘28 Days Later.’

Building on the foundation laid by these earlier films is no crime, but unfortunately the second half of I Am Legend fails to develop any new ideas. Instead, our hero deteriorates after a personal tragedy and is saved (literally and figuratively) by the appearance of another human being.

The film almost ignores the one interesting element that develops in the second half, as one of the monsters (formerly humans, now vampire-like zombies) develops intelligence and begins to ape Neville, turning his own survival tactics against him. In one nice touch, Neville himself misses the first signs of this intelligence, misinterpreting the evidence to make it fit with his hypothesis that the monsters are becoming more feral.

The film drops the ball when it fails to follow up on this, and instead chases a cliche action sequence and an implausible happy ending. I Am Legend isn’t bad, particularly in the first hour, but the makers squandered the opportunity to make a great film.

Pierre Rabby talked a lot
of nothing much of any note
so his wife saved up and bought
a little shabby fishing boat.

Mrs. Rabby reached her goal
when the boat began to fill
with water from the little hole
she created with her gimlet drill.

We’re very excited to announce that the pilot episode of the new Strangetastic podcast is now available for download. Like the website, the Strangetastic podcast is devoted to the things that frighten us best. The first thirteen episodes are adapted from ghost stories in the book Ozark Superstitions by Vance Randolph.

If you’d like to check out the pilot episode, you can download it now!

Bryan, a former Mystery House guide himself writes with some cool stories about the mansion. Here’s a few from his email, and be sure to check out his blog for more of his perspective on the mansion.

“I also worked as a guide way back at the time of the Loma Prieta quake for about a year and a half, and came to many of the same conclusions along with many of my co-workers back then. Somewhere either buried at my folks’ house or in one of my closets I’ve still got the many photos I took of the locked-off areas, my old copy of the tour script, and a crude map I drew over time to try to get a better feel of how everything lined up between the floors (though probably horribly scaled). Did you notice that one of the locked areas near the front entrance has an exterior wall enclosed by the outer walls of the house? I know that this along with looking into the crawl-spaces you can get an idea what the original color scheme of the mansion was back then. I have to wonder if that one wall might (like the back porch) have also been a part of the original farm house, or if it was a prior extension that got swallowed up later.

“I always wanted to try sneaking into the crawl-space access panel hidden in the wall next to the door that leads to the easy-risers into the _________ [Editor's note: room name removed at Bryan's request] …a coworker revealed it’s location to me and had in turn found it when another co-worker had crawled out of it while they were cleaning! It was neat that you could see some of the enclosed rooftops through it.

“I also noticed that the structure of the original water tower can be found not only in the “hall of fires” but also forms part of the fourth story observation deck. The tallest remaining chimney got cracked at its base there in the Loma Prieta quake. I just got off work when the quake hit and was in the Century theater parking lot across the street…the palms and towers of the house were actually swaying in opposition as the ground buckled, and every car in the lot was bouncing on their shocks. Ironically, the one tour guide who was giving a tour at the end of the day when the quake hit was a new hire, and he acted quite admirably.

“I suspect the ‘flying buttress’ was concealing some sort of duct, as it leads to a vented small roof structure I could never quite figure out the function of.

Thanks Bryan, and give us a shout if you’re ever in the area and want to take a tour with us.

Editor’s Note: This review is the fifth in our series on folklore adapted to film. Past reviews are posted on our ‘Reviews’ page.

Directed by:
Matt Cooper (segment The Honeymoon)
Martin Kunert (segments The Hook and People Can Lick Too)
David Semel (segments The Campfire and The Locket)

“This young couple is out parked on a country road. The girl is real nervous and uneasy. It seems that there had been a report about an escaped criminal in the area. He was supposed to be dangerous, a mad killer. They called him “The Hook” because one of his hands was missing and he wore a hook in place of it. He was supposed to have used it on all of his victims. Anyway, the girl was real uneasy for some reason. Supposedly, they were not aware of the escaped killer. She kept saying she had an uneasy feeling but she did not know why. The guy finally got mad at her. He thought she was just making up excuses because she didn’t want to park. Finally he lost his temper and stepped on the gas. He really tore out of there fast. He didn’t say a word on the way home. When they get to the girl’s house, he just got out and went around to open her door. When he got to the door, there was a hook hanging on the handle.”

The Hook (1972)
from the Urban Legends Reference Pages

I first heard the story of the homicidal maniac with the hook hand in the first grade. It made a deep impression as a story, and I’m certain my parents found it annoying that I repeated it at every opportunity for the next several years.

I’m sure it’s no accident that the makers of Campfire Tales, an anthology film released on video in 1997, chose to open with this story. The story itself is so familiar to most people that it is no longer necessary to tell it. Simply mentioning the man with the ‘hook hand’ is enough to conjure up the plot in the mind of the audience, and over time the story has morphed from a cautionary tale to a parody of the urban legend genre. The opening sequence, filmed in black and white and set in the 1950s, sets up the framing story of four stranded teens telling scary stories around a campfire.

In addition to The Hook, Campfire Tales also adapts two of my favorite stories ‘The Boyfriends Death,’ here featuring a married couple on their honeymoon, and the creepiest legend of all time ‘People Can Lick Hands Too.’ The latter sequence updates the traditional tale of a killer lurking under the bed and impersonating the family dog by licking his intended victim’s hand with the modern conceit of the internet stalker.

Despite their familiarity, the stories manage surprising levels of suspense. Both The Honeymoon and People Can Lick Too feature a few good scares, but the most effective segment of the film is an original tale with no urban legend antecedent. The Locket, starring the late Glenn Quinn of Angel, is an original ghost story with strong atmosphere and performances.

If you can’t find time to tell your own stories around the fire, then check out Campfire Tales, a reasonable facsimile of the original.

Editor’s Note: This review is the fourth in our series on folklore adapted to film. Past reviews are posted on our ‘Reviews’ page.

When a Stranger Calls (1979)
Director: Fred Walton
Starring: Charles Durning and Carol Kane

The story goes like this: a teenaged girl is baby sitting two young children while their parents go out for the night. The phone rings, and the babysitter answers it, but the caller says nothing or makes a threat, or asks about the children before hanging up.

The girl shrugs off the call, but a few minutes later the phone rings again. The same man’s voice is heard, and then he hangs up again. The cycle repeats until the girl becomes frightened enough to call the police. The police tell her not to worry, but just to be safe they’ll try to trace the call.

A few minutes later, the phone rings again. The girl hesitates, but answers the call. This time it’s the police. Get out of the house right now, they tell her. The calls are coming from upstairs, and the caller is an escaped psychopath that has already murdered the children.

Folklorists find the first written versions of this story in the 1960s, and to me the story feels like a relic of the fifties and sixties. The concept of babysitting was relatively new, with the term itself not appearing until the late thirties. The idea of parents leaving their children alone with a stranger for a night out no doubt came with a lot of psychic baggage and a little bit of paranoia. This could account for why the children die in almost every version of the story, while babysitter escapes unharmed.

The 1979 version of “When a Stranger Calls” begins with a twenty minute sequence that adapts the urban legend. This opening works extremely well as a stand alone short film, with tension mounting as the film reveals details of the babysitter’s predicament with each phone call she receives. As the phone calls become more threatening, she gradually becomes more isolated. Each attempt she makes to seek help fails. She tries to reach the children’s parents at the phone number they left, but finds they’ve gone on to a late movie. She calls the police, but they refuse to take her seriously. By the time the source of the phone calls is revealed, she is completely alone in the dark house and brandishing a fireplace poker as her only hope of protection.

Unfortunately, the rest of the film fails to live up to the promise of its slasher film beginning. Once the murderer is discovered by the police, the film jumps ahead seven years and we find that the killer is now in an insane asylum. The original detective that investigated the murderer has retired and now works as a private investigator. When the killer escapes, the father of the murdered children hires the detective to track him down and kill him.

What follows is a revenge story that seems heavily influenced by the Scorcese’s Taxi Driver, with the vengeance fueled detective tracking the psychopath through the underbelly of Los Angeles. The film follows this story until the third act, when the detective fails to kill the psychopath and he escapes. The final act of the film returns to the slasher storyline of the film’s opening, as the escaped killer again targets Jill, now married with children of her own.

The film is worth watching, if only for the first twenty minutes. It was re-released on DVD in 2006 to coincide with the release of the remake.

Editor’s Note: This review is the third in our series on folklore adapted to film. Past reviews are posted on our ‘Reviews’ page.

Alligator
Directed by Lewis Teague
Starring Robert Forster and Robin Riker

One of the earliest urban legends I can recall hearing was that alligators practically clogged the sewer systems of most major cities. My second grade teacher told my class the story of baby alligators, purchased as pets at ‘gator farms’ in the Florida swamp, growing into monsters after being flushed into the pipes beneath New York city. Despite the distance between our rural texas town and New York, I convinced myself that our sewers were also filled with these reptilian threats and often hoped to catch a glimpse of one in the drainage ditches near our home.

I discovered the truth behind this story much later, when I found the book THERE ARE ALLIGATORS IN OUR SEWERS. And Other American Credos in my middle school’s library. The book introduced me to the subject of folklore, and also to the idea that maybe teachers weren’t to be trusted completely.

The story of sewer alligators is an old one, possibly as old as sewers, but its modern appearance can be traced to the 1930s. A New York Times article from 1935 describes the mysterious discovery of an alligator by several young men shoveling snow, but the lack of corroborating details suggests a hoax. Snopes.com lists news articles about urban alligator incidents going back to 1927, and the youth may have been inspired by these reports.

While the earliest versions of the story leave the origins of the beasts a mystery, the advent of the family road trip allowed for the ‘flushed pet’ explanation, and this is the version presented to us in the 1980 movie Alligator.

The film opens with a young girl visiting a Florida alligator farm on her family’s vacation. She brings home a baby alligator as a pet, but her father, for reasons I couldn’t quite grasp, flushes the poor thing down the toilet. The movie then adds a new twist to the story, when the alligator grows to Cadillac-size after dining on improperly disposed of pharmaceutical research animals.

Clearly taking its cues (and stealing its music) from Jaws, the movie turns the idea of ‘man versus nature’ into ‘man perverts nature and is killed by it.’ The movie also contains a fair dose of social commentary, and a pinch of satire, as the gator begins its feeding frenzy in the city’s ghetto neighborhoods, then works its way through various social strata until it attacks, in my favorite sequence, the garden wedding of a wealthy society couple.

For a monster movie about a giant alligator, the film displays a surprising level of craftsmanship, and a lot of its depth comes from the screenplay by John Sayles. Sayles began his screenwriting career working for schlock master Roger Corman, but also wrote the werewolf classic The Howling, and went on to write and direct the classic Lone Star.

The effects have aged as well as can be expected, at least as well as those in the various Jaws movies, but unfortunately other parts of the movie show their age. The most glaring example is the love story between the gruff-but-handsome police detective that discovers the monster and the beautiful-but-brilliant herpetologist that assists him. I’m not certain if their relationship was believable nearly three decades ago, but I found it laughable at best. Still, most of the performances in the film are fun, with the sort of manic character parts that movies from later decades eschew.

If you like monster movies, check out Alligator. If you like books about the things every good American believed in 1983, then check out THERE ARE ALLIGATORS IN OUR SEWERS. And Other American Credos.

The FATE Magazine blog linked to this today, and I found it worth my time.

I’ve seen a lot of ghost photographs over the years, and they mostly look like artifacts of poor photography and faulty equipment, but I’m fascinated by the idea of an art gallery displaying ghost Polaroids. I wish more people with an interest in the spooky side of life would apply themselves this creatively.

From LAist:

“The exhibit was a collection of Polaroids taken of ghostly forms and messages that appeared only on film in a Los Angeles home. I naturally expected the photographs to be a hoax. I believe in ghosts, monsters in my closet, Buddha and God at 4am when I hear a bump in the night. But otherwise, I’m a natural-born skeptic.

I spent the entire time in the gallery rolling my eyes and loudly debunking the “ghostly” writing on some of the Polaroids. The writing was just too clear. It is so easy to manipulate a wet Polaroid. You can write on them while you wait for them to develop. The ones that were a little creepier were the photos with smoky, ectoplasmic blobs. I was impressed by the sheer dedication of the work as an art project. Even if they were fakes, they were interesting, and my friend found some of the ghostly responses beautiful and profound”

Editor’s Note: This review is the second in our series on folklore adapted to film. Past reviews are posted on our ‘Reviews’ page.

The Harvest
Written and Direct by David Marconi
Starring Miguel Ferrer, Leilani Sarelle

“The crime begins when a business traveler goes to a lounge for a drink at the end of the work day.

A person in the bar walks up as they sit alone and offers to buy them a drink. The last thing the traveler remembers until they wake up in a hotel room bath tub, their body submerged to their neck in ice, is sipping that drink. There is a note taped to the wall instructing them not to move and to call 911. A phone is on a small table next to the bathtub for them to call.

The business traveler calls 911 who have become quite familiar with this crime.

The business traveler is instructed by the 911 operator to very slowly and carefully reach behind them and feel if there is a tube protruding from their lower back. The business traveler finds the tube and answers, “Yes.” The 911 operator tells them to remain still, having already sent paramedics to help. The operator knows that both of the business traveler’s kidneys have been harvested.”

-”The Kidney Thieves”
1996 email version collected by the Netlore Archive

By now, anyone with a passing interest in urban legends should be familiar with the story of the hapless businessman and his stolen kidney, but in the early nineties you needed to have an AOL account to hear about these things. Judging 1993’s ‘The Harvest’ on the basis of a now over-familiar plot device is unfair. On the other hand, basing your screenplay on an urban legend that had already made an appearance on Law and Order (in the 1991 episode Sonata for Solo Organ) comes with risks.

The version of the story presented in The Harvest pre-dates many of the familiar details of the story. Rather than waking up in a tub of ice, the victim in the film finds himself on a gurney under a pier near the beach where the organ thieves abducted him. According to Snopes.com, the tub of ice and the 911 operator didn’t appear in the legend until the mid-90s. Also matching earlier versions of the story, the protagonist finds himself in trouble after meeting a beautiful, but unfamiliar, woman.

The film itself suffers from what I term ’screenwriterism,’ the tendency of screenwriters that direct their own work to pack a film with their own daydreams, fantasies, and obsessions. I think every screenplay contains these, but when the writer and director are the same person there’s no critical filter to remove, ignore, or reinterpret these details, and they come across as more precious than interesting.

This movie takes screenwriterism to a new level.  The protagonist works as a struggling screenwriter, and his shabby treatment by Hollywood serves as both character motivation and a major plot point. The argument could be made that this is intentional on the part of the filmmaker, but it doesn’t mean he did it well.

For example (major spoilers), the organ theft (the ‘harvest’ of the title) plays an important part in the plot, but it seems to have little physical effect on the protagonist himself. Despite the foot-long wound in his lower back, the one-kidneyed hero of The Harvest finds the strength to fight off thugs, overdose on mescaline, and give the female lead oral pleasure while he drives her Volkswagen. The fact that all of this is revealed to be part his screenplay, written while recovering from the kidney theft, does not make it better.

I don’t recommend the movie, but if you can’t resist a good kidney heist story, then you can buy The Harvest at Amazon.com