Lee + Hammer = Height of Horror Films

He has appeared in over 250 films. He has played villains in blockbuster film franchises such as Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and James Bond. He holds the world record for number of filmed sword fights. He has appeared with Laurence Olivier, and is an Italian aristocrat. He also got famous for doing horror films for the Hammer studios in London. Who is he? He is none other than Christopher Lee.

Christopher Lee has become one of the most successful and prolific actors of our time. The people at Oracle of Bacon counted, and they decided Kevin Bacon isn't the center of Hollywood. Christopher Lee is. Or at least he's number 2, just .00541 points behind Rod Steiger.

Christopher Lee is not only a great actor, he is also probably one of the reasons the Hammer Films in London became as successful as they were. Lee's talent and personal interest in the occult helped to drive the genre, aiding in the creation of some of the great horror films, including The Wicker Man and The Devil Rides Out.

Lee was a bit actor until he got a part in Hammer's first color film, The Curse of Frankenstein, in which he played the monster. Frankenstein was a success, and Lee landed a lead role in another Hammer film, Dracula. This film broke UK box office records, was considered to be the best Hammer film ever, and made Christopher Lee a star. Lee was considered to be one of the finest actors to ever play the role.

Lee was such a big draw for Hammer, that the studio ended up blackmailing the actor to appear in their subsequent Dracula films. According to Lee, the studio would tell him "Think of the people you'll put out of work if you don't do it!" Lee appeared in many films for Hammer in the following years.

Lee himself had a personal interest in the occult, and much of his private library is devoted to occult books. At his insistence, Hammer made two films based on the occult novels of Denis Wheately, including The Devil Rides Out and To The Devil a Daughter. Wheately was so impressed with Devil Rides Out that he gave Lee the rights to all his black magic books.

After To The Devil a Daughter, Lee veered away from the horror genre. Coincidentally, Hammer Films went bankrupt shortly after Lee left horror. It was also around this time that the British horror film itself began to die.

In the end, horror films, particularly British ones, probably owe a debt to Christopher Lee. He is clearly a talented actor. How else does one become the center of the Hollywood universe? It may not be coincidence that the horror film had its heyday while he was around. But it is also clear that Lee owes a debt to the horror film. Without it, he may never have been exposed to the world.

Film Screening Change, Spring Break and Exam

I just can't do it.

I cannot show the truncated version of The Wicker Man when we could have the chance to see a longer version (the extended release version is almost ten minutes longer than the theatrical release version).

However, since I do not have the longer version with me (and I was not aware Media Services only had the theatrical release version), we will postpone that screening until the week after break. Please complete the reading assignment by then. If you have time you might also wish to do a bit of research on the film Don't Look Now which was shown as a double bill with The Wicker Man, or view it if you have the chance. It deals with the paranormal in an interesting way that is certainly relevant to the course, and is a beautiful film besides.

Tomorrow, instead, we will watch Roger Corman's Masque of the Red Death. (Nice little blurb on this here; also see the linked article at right on the Black Lagoon website, which has some excellent short reviews of various occult films.)

During the week of March 25-27, we will watch The Omen. That should get us caught up with everything. We can watch some made-for-TV film clips as time allows.

Also: would you all rather have a take-home exam to be finished by the time you return from break? Or an in-class exam the week we return from break? If enough people weigh in before class tomorrow, I will see what I can do. The difference: for a take-home exam, you can use your readings and notes and have more time; it is sort of like writing four short essays. The in-class exam would require two short essays and a number of short-answer responses.

Dungeons and Dragons

Gary Gygax, the co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons (DnD), has passed away at the age of 69, as detailed in this article. Due to that reason I want to take a small moment to remember a great American past time. Not baseball, but the other one, the one under the bleachers practiced by the kids who didn't make the baseball team: Dungeons and Dragons.

For those who do not know what Dungeons and Dragons is, it is the first published Role Playing Game (RPG) in 1974. An RPG is a game where the players takes on the "Role" of another character, generally in a fantastic setting in which the player is now a hero. DnD in the most generic world (Greyhawk) is similar to a medieval Europe, except with a multitude of mythological beasts such as trolls and dragons which the players would interact with (generally fight and kill). Players would create their own characters, choosing things such as their races, (your basics, Human, dwarf, or elf) and class, such as Warrior or Wizard, with a multitude of rules that centered around the rolls of die. And not just your normal 6 sided dice, but everything from 4sides to 20sides (even 100 sided dice).
Dungeons and Dragons quickly caught on, spawning many other copy-cat games, like the similarly named Tunnels and Trolls. Dungeons and Dragons has itself taken many forms, quickly splitting into Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (ADnD). It is currently owned by Wizards of the Coast, who are working on a 4th edition of the game. Dungeons and Dragons is often cited as the basis of almost any and all Roleplaying Games that we have now. Yes, you closet World of Warcraft players out there, DnD is the forefather of your game (actually...thats a lie. WoW has to thank Battletech more for spawning Warhammer...but still DnD is very important and the main forefather of all MMoRPGs).

Now, to connect this to the occult and end in giving you some fun reading material...the various worlds and realms of Dungeons and Dragons also included entirely new pantheons of gods. Some of these pantheons resembled or took directly from multitudes of pagan gods, or were entirely new constructs, but almost never did they circle around a singular Christian God.
So in the '80's, with the fear of everything occult in nature, DnD was also definitely picked on. Many believed that Dungeons and Dragons was actually being used to help corrupt our youth, a process to select specific individuals to be initiated. The very pagan notions of DnD wasn't helped when a few cases of teen suicide occurred by kids who were known to have played DnD. Obviously, the kids committed suicide because of the game and not due to the fact they were alienated and showed signs of chemical imbalances before hand...it was the game (oh yeah, and any kid who listens to Metallica practices SRA). The evils of DnD were all detailed in Christian pamphlets, such as this one by Jack Chick. No seriously, read it...propaganda at its best, detailing both how DnD leads to suicide and FORCES you to become an evil Satan worshiping heathen that ends in a cry for burning all Witches with bible quotes to boot.

The stigma from this hung heavy for quite awhile. Luckily, since the 2000's quite a few various big names have openly, and with pride, admitted to be huge DnD players. One of these notablye characters is Joss Whedon, who referenced DnD multiple times in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Xander, Giles, and Andrew play it). The antithesis of the assumed DnD player may be the most vocal though; Vin Diesel, who has multiple rants about his love for the game (the first two block quotes are about DnD), and had a laugh riot with Conan O'brien about it. So finally, after 30 years, its okay to say "I play a roleplaying game, and enjoy it."
I know a few of you do. So take this moment to also say "Thank you Gary Gygax. Without you I wouldn't be playing WoW or Final Fantasy."

The Mysterious Bohemian Grove

I don't know if any of you are familiar with Alex Jones, the famous conspiracy theorist, but he has some interesting (true? who knows...) things to say about the Bohemian Grove and the all-male occult practices that go on there. The Bohemian Grove is a campground in Monte Rio, CA and it belongs to a private men's club out of San Francisco called the Bohemian Club. Every year this club hosts a three week camp out and important men from all over the globe attend.

Some quick background, the Bohemian Grove was established shortly after the club's inception in 1872, so it's obviously been around a while. Though the powerful men who attend are urged to leave outside issues "at the door," the Grove is famous for deals that were done during the camp out--even the Manhattan Project was planned in September of 1942. The wait list for the club is 15-20 years with fees of over $25,000. They say that all that takes place inside the grove is entertainment, such as plays where the women are played by men in drag, but for all it's high class secrecy many believe that occult rituals take place. In this picture above you can see Regan and Nixon in the Grove, so to say men such as our country's leader are playing with the occult, well, that's mighty interesting in my opinion. There are reports of men in black and red robes sacrificing something to a huge owl statue, or something like that.

Alex Jones brings these theories to a new level. He infiltrated the grove during a camp out in July 2000 and filmed what he saw. This Article, while maybe not a credible source, has some really interesting things to say about what he found. He confirms that there is a stone owl statue and the ritual takes place praising the owl god Moloch. Jones says he saw a body wrapped up tightly, which begged for mercy and was burned. Apparently Jones caught all of this on video tape and a series on the Bohemian Grove aired in the UK. I haven't seen any of it but I'd be really interested to know if any of this is true or if George Bush is hanging out there sacrificing people.

The Wicker Man

This website devoted to The Wicker Man is an excellent resource, which includes a PDF copy of the infamous and oft-cited 1977 article on the film from Cinefantastique magazine.

There is a great deal of information on the 'Net devoted to this film. Some of the best examples are:

The various versions of The Wicker Man

Nuada, The Wicker Man Journal

Gary Carpenter's "The Wicker Man - Settling the Score"

Something Wicker This Way Comes", an article by critic Mark Kermode

A collection of writings and press from Compulsion Online

and

The Yahoogroups discussion list

michael bay makes gold out of corn doodie

we were ALL forced to sit through rosemary's baby (the WHOLE THING!) so we all know what a piece of garbage it is. this is why i was so excited today when i found out that michael bay, savior of cinema, was going to remake it into something watchable. i only assume it's gonna kick a lot of ass because the creative genius behind transformers and bad boys 2 has never made anything that wasn't worthwhile, so why should his take on even a horrible and BORING movie like rosemary's baby be any different?

shocktillyoudrop.com has reported that bay's production company, platinum dunes, is in talks with paramount for the remake rights of the stinker (http://www.shocktillyoudrop.com/news/topnews.php?id=5008). platinum dunes also did remakes of the snoozefests texas chainsaw massacre, the amityville horror, and the hitcher, so we know they do good things. bay is also (thank god!) doing a remake of the birds. my mom tried to get me to watch that once and there's like, no music or gore or anything! the first hour of the movie was, like, some crappy love story, too. the birds weren't even made by computers! they, like, didn't have computers back then, or something, i don't know. but, yeah, they were so fake looking.

you have to hand it to michael bay. it takes a lot of talent to take movies as mind bogglingly dull as the texas chainsaw massacre and make it as fucking cool and bloody and fast and crazy as that new one. it'll be interesting to see how he makes rosemary's baby good, b/c like, nothing happens in that movie. NOTHING! like, we don't get to see any devil worshippers stabbing people in the eyes and eating their guts or some shit. it's just that dumb broad walking around reading books and walking around and shit. at the end of the movie, like, you don't even get to see the devil baby! we wait the whole damn movie to see some crazy devil baby and all we get is some queer jap dude with a camera! that's fuckin' gay, dude. i mean, i guess the movie had some tits, but still, that was like, one minute out of like a three hour movie.

i hope they cast jessica biel as rosemary. she's hot and has way better tits than that maya farrow chick.

here's my dvd review of transformers.

Rock and Roll and the occult, just friends or something more?

First of all, I don't know if any of you have ever actually tried to find an examination of rock and roll and the occult that DOESN'T reach the conclusion that the Beatles want you to rape and murder in the name Satan, but let me tell you that it is by no means an easy task.

However, after wading through several pages worth of people trying to convince me that Satanists, the British military, and record companies were all banding together to wage a war on judeo-christian values, I finally managed to come upon what I think is a pretty unbiased and informative paper on the topic.

Firstly, did you know that when people say rock and roll can trace its' roots back to African tribal music it's actually more specifically tracing its' roots back to the kind of music played to honor various tribal and voodoo gods? So in short, rock and roll actually owes its' very beginnings to the occult.

However, after that admittedly impressive first introduction the otherworldy influence took a mulligan from the rock scene as men like Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley came into prominence (though while the devil himself may have been on break, the perennial party poopers on the right were always keen to try and bring old scratch back into the picture.) but came back again in the sixties with your friend and mine Aleister Crowley making an appearance on the cover of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper album.

However, it wasn't until the seventies that the "Rock 'n' Roll= Satan" train really started to get rolling. The first major (and public) link between the two forces came with the alliance of Kenneth Anger and Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones, an  interest in the occult that was fostered in the stones by self proclaimed spell caster named Anita Pallenberg  and carried over into songs like "Sympathy for the Devil."

And for those not content with a history lesson, the paper goes on to advance a variety of reasons as to why popular musicians seem so eager to incorporate occult themes into their work. And while he advances a variety of theories that are all at least partially correct, I personally think the theory that it is merely a reflection and reaction to society of the time that carries the most weight. 

As was stated earlier, the first really overt link between the occult and rock came in the seventies, a period in time when Occult films like "The Omen" and "The Exorcist" were gaining particular prominence. This trend continued in the eighties where more "extreme" bands with occult influenced  like Iron Maiden could be considered comprable in style to more graphic occult films like "House by the Cemetery" or "The Evil Dead." 

When considered in this context, it seems fair to say that when one wants to consider the link between the occult and rock 'n' roll, one should really look no further than the societal context of the piece in reference to its' time of release because that very arguably seems to be the most decisive factor. And now that this opinion has been advanced over the internet, I'm sure even the staunchest opponents of the occult and rock 'n' roll will be sure to give it a read and lay down their arms so we can move on into a new age of peaceful coexistence.

....But, you know, I'm sure we gotta give it a few days to sink in.