In today’s Shocktober Double Feature, we will be chilled by a seriously haunted house, a creepy séance, an evil old witch, and David McCallum! It’s The Changeling and The Haunting of Morella!
THE CHANGELING (1980)
I came to discover this movie after reading of it in the wonderful reference book DVD Delirium, which begins its review of The Changeling by saying “Now this is how you do a scary ghost story.” As it turns out, I couldn’t agree more. This relatively obscure Canadian sleeper from 1980 is a real chiller, indeed. In it, widower George C. Scott moves to a huge, beautiful mansion in Seattle and gradually comes to realize that the house’s nightly banging noises, breaking windows and other assorted strangenesses are not simply due to necessary home improvements! The restless spirit of a child, it seems, is clamoring for attention… This picture, directed by Peter Medak, really did surprise me. It features many startling moments, an effectively creepy score, beautiful sets and art direction, and (need I even say?) sterling performances from Scott, Melvyn Douglas and Trish van Devere. This is the kind of film, I must add, that should be turned up loud, as there is a lot of almost subliminal weirdness going on on the soundtrack … especially during the seance scene, one of the scariest I’ve ever witnessed. This film deserves its pantheon place alongside the other truly scary haunted-house flicks, such as The Haunting (1963), House on Haunted Hill (1958) and The Legend of Hell House (1973). Watch it on a hot summer night when your AC is on the fritz; it’ll chill you to the bone in no time, for sure!
THE HAUNTING OF MORELLA (1990)
If the blind recluse Gideon Locke seems a tad depressed and bewildered in Jim Wynorski’s The Haunting of Morella, I suppose he’s got reasonable enough cause. Seventeen years earlier, his beautiful wife Morella had been crucified and eye-gouged to death for the crime of witchcraft (in an opening scene that still pales in comparison with the similar one in Mario Bava’s 1960 horror classic Black Sunday), and now, his look-alike daughter Lenora is beginning to show signs of possession. This by-now-familiar storyline has been padded out with gratuitous (but always welcome!) nudity, lesbianism, mucho gore and various gross-out FX to the point where any resemblance to Poe‘s short short story “Morella” is glancing at best. This being a production of the late great Roger Corman, the film has been put together on the cheap, but typical for Corman, still manages to look handsome enough. In her dual roles as Morella and Lenora, Nicole Eggert proves something of a mixed blessing. She is OK in the evil witch role, but hardly seems a proper young 19th century British lass; more like a whiny Valley girl. As her towering and murderess governess, Lana Clarkson literally stands out in this cast. Her nighttime waterfall tryst with servant girl Maria Ford is a hoot and a half, as I’m not certain that Frederick’s of Hollywood existed 200 years ago! Best of all, of course, is my main man, David McCallum, as Lenora’s reclusive father. Blind, unkempt and constantly rattled, he is here as different a character as can be imagined from supercool U.N.C.L.E. agent Illya Kuryakin. Anyway, while nothing great, The Haunting of Morella should prove just fine for an evening’s entertainment. Oh … I just love the name of the actor who passes sentence on Morella in the film’s opening scene: Clement von Franckenstein!
COMING ATTRACTIONS: A hideous neck fetus! A levitating old biddy! A spelunking disaster! Albino bat creatures! It’s The Manitou and The Descent, in the Shocktober Double Feature #22…
The Changeling is everything you say it is Sandy. It is well-crafted and low-key in a way that lends considerable realism. The way George C. Scott’s character interacts with the ghost stands out and has always struck me as being spot on: he treats the entity like it is a person. Which it/he is. Ghosts so rarely are granted such consideration. I have re-watched this one regularly and it stands up well to repeated viewings. That in itself has to be a mark of how good it is.