Cursed Films: The Serpent and the Rainbow

This film probably couldn’t be produced anymore. There are just too many minefields to traverse when it comes to voodoo. Yet, for decades, the only zombies in movies were of the voodoo variety. In his book, Wade Davis tried to de-mystify the zombification phenomenon, but critics of Wes Craven’s adaptation consider it more of the same sensationalism. Yet, Craven and producer David Ladd strived for authenticity, filming on-location in Haiti. The resulting drama explains why The Serpent and the Rainbow is the subject of this week’s Cursed Films, on Shudder.

Unlike many Cursed Films subjects, most of the cast and crew on Serpent are still available to talk about it. The most notable exception is Craven, one of the most important directors of the genre. Understandably, Davis had mixed emotions when he signed on to direct that were largely justified.

Regardless, Craven and Ladd started filming in Haiti, which was an ambitious decision. On their first night, the crew was blessed in a real-deal ceremony. According to some interview subjects that blessing may have saved their lives. Despite the lack of a body count, the production had at least one “possession,” maybe even two—call it one and a half. That is a good deal of cursing. Plus, there was a full-scale riot.

Wes Craven’s Summer of Fear

Lois Duncan’s YA horror novels are a perfect example of the cyclical nature of book publishing. They were big hits when originally published in the 1970s and they were so perfectly suited to the current boom in teen horror, her publisher reissued key backlist titles with modernized text. Duncan’s sales also benefited from the hit movie adaptation of I Know What You Did Last Summer and its sequels, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, and Damn It, What You Did Two Summers Ago Still Pisses Me Off. However, horror auteur Wes Craven got first crack at Duncan’s oeuvre with the TV movie Summer of Fear (trailer here), which is now available on DVD and BluRay, from Doppelganger Releasing.

Before her orphaned cousin Julia Trent came to live with her family, Rachel Bryant lived a nearly idyllic life for an American teen. She got along freakishly well with her parents, had an attentive boyfriend, and was the odds-on-favorite to win the country club’s equestrian tournament. Strangely, her horse Sundance does not take to Trent when she arrives, for reasons Bryant will understand soon enough.

Before long, Trent steals away Bryant’s boyfriend and causes an accident that fatally breaks Sundance’s leg. How does she do that? Witchcraft. Bryant can see the remnants of it in the room they share, but proving it will be a trickier matter. She gets some sage advice from their neighbor, Prof. Jarvis, an expert in folklore’s darker manifestations, but that puts the kindly old man in Trent’s crosshairs.

It turns out witches cannot be photographed, much like vampires. Too bad they didn’t have cameras make during the time of the Salem Witch Trials, because they could have saved a lot of trouble. Bryant also might have made things easier for herself if she had bought a Polaroid instant camera, but whatever.

Summer of Fear has a reputation for being a diamond in the rough, because it combines the talents of Wes Craven, less than one year after The Hills Have Eyes, and Linda Blair playing Bryant five years after The Exorcist, in the first screen adaptation of Duncan’s work. Logic dictates it must be great, but it is really just a fairly typical TV movie.

Granted, the general level of performance is far superior to what you’d commonly find in that era’s movies-of-the-week. Blair is appealingly forceful, while Lee Purcell is eerily seductive and insidious as Trent. They also look somewhat similar, which makes it all creepier. Summer is additionally notable as the television debut of Fran “The Nanny” Drescher, who does indeed show quite promising energy and presence as Bryant’s bestie, nurse-in-training, Carolyn Baker.

Craven had the chops, so he managed to build to a reasonably tense climax, but the fact remains, Summer is never really scary, per se. Still, there is no question Summer of Fear is an interesting curio. You could even argue it holds historical significance. Mainly worth watching for retro nostalgia, Summer of Fear is now available for home viewing from Doppelganger Releasing.

The Girl in the Photographs: The Killing Eye

Some traditional cultures believe photography steals the soul. “O” in Beckett’s Film feared the camera’s eye precisely because it objectified him. Colleen is not too thrilled to have her picture taken either. That is because every photographer she knows is either a hipster jerkheel or a masked serial killer. The camera becomes an instrument of terror in Nick Simon’s The Girl in the Photographs (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Spearfish, South Dakota is a small, sleepy little town with an extraordinarily lazy sheriff’s department. For weeks, some perv has been leaving photos of what look like brutally murder women (which indeed they are) for Colleen to find. Since Sheriff Porter cannot verify they are indeed homicide victims, he treats it like an elaborate prank. Dude, seriously show a little initiative here.

Ultra-trendy fashion photographer Peter Hemmings (spelled just like David Hemmings, star of Antonioni’s Blowup) happens to be from Spearfish—far from it. However, he keeps up with the town news to make himself feel smugly superior. When he reads about the nasty photos, he believes a “fan” has been appropriating his lifeless looking aesthetic. Rather precipitously, he resolves to return to Spearfish to appropriate it right back with an uber-meta shoot, perhaps even featuring some locals. Colleen will be the obvious choice.

When Hemmings blows into town, thanks to the scrambling logistics of his long suffering assistant Chris, much hedonism ensues. Hemmings quickly develops an exploitative obsession with Colleen, while Chris’s romantic interest is much healthier. Frankly, she might as well leave with them for Los Angeles, since she just dumped her white trash boyfriend and her BFF has been violently murdered by her stalkers. Of course, you know those things that are guaranteed to get you killed in a horror movie? Hemmings and his models do a whole heck of a lot of them.

Photographs is billed as the final screen credit of the late, great Wes Craven, who served as co-executive producer. There are obvious echoes of the Scream franchise, obviously starting with the creepy masks donned by the two psycho-stalkers. However, the film drips with a caustically sarcastic attitude that really make the first two acts quite distinctive. Unfortunately, the balance of the film is pretty standard stalk-and-kill stuff, but that is often the case, even with the most ambitious genre outings.

Kal Penn is an acerbic stitch as the debauched prima donna Hemmings. Listening to his natural conviction riffing on drugs and exotic sex acts also probably gives us some insight into the Obama Administration. The world is much better off having him in films like Photographs. The way he masticates the scenery is a pleasure to behold. Unfortunately, only Miranda Raye Mayo really hangs with Penn as Hemmings’ contemptuous yet also jealous model-lover, Rose. She can deliver an acid-laced line with the best of them.

Still, there is something rather appealing about the chemistry Claudia Lee and Kenny Wormald develop as Colleen and Chris, even though we know from the start it will end in bloody tears. Even more frustratingly, Mitch Pileggi is almost totally wasted as Sheriff Porter, except to provide an apostolic link to Craven’s Shocker.

Dean Cudney, cinematographer on John Carpenter’s original Halloween, gives the film the right look and Simon wisely lets Penn and Mayo set their own pace. When they are sparking on screen together, it could be the slasher film Howard Hawks never made, but when the focus shifts to Colleen, the vibe becomes almost dreary. On balance though, there is plenty here for horror fans to work with. Recommended for the snarky parts, The Girl in the Photographs opens this Friday (4/1) in New York, at the Cinema Village.