Okay so one of my recent passions has been to watch horror movies from the 1960s to 1980s and frankly I think other people should do so as well. I began to notice a pattern with how these movies were different from decade to decade. This is most obvious in various movies inspired by the Haunting of Hill House in some way. What becomes most clear is that ghost hunting and Wicca had a huge influence from 1960s to 1980s on scary movies, but this influence is dropped in 1980s-1990s. This is one of the reasons I love stuff from the 1970s and neighbouring decades so much. It is so heavily influenced by my interests.
WARNING: SPOILERS
In the modern day ghost films, they consider what what would it be like to be face to face with a spirit made of ectoplasm. They use extremely real computer generated graphics to make it appear as real as possible. They achieve that in a way that surpasses everything before. In the past, video graphics were in their early stages and many attempts to create such FX have aged tremendously. Recent effects, however, are so realistic that you can hardly tell that it is computer generated at all.
Achieve realistic video graphic effect is so recent. Cast your mind back to the early Harry Potter films and Lord of the Rings: Return of the King and you will remember some scenes such as Quidditch and the Elephants. These scenes are so obviously computer generated and don’t look real at all. Cast your mind forward however, watch something relatively recently released, the Netflix take on the Haunting of Hill House series for example and although they are showing you images of something ethereal, you’re not sure where the computer generated effects end and the filming begins. The edges are blurred between FX and filmography. Side note, I always appreciated the FX of films like John Carpenter’s the Thing, where the camera was filming objects that actually existed and were not computer generated, but these were faked objects with slim, latex and paint and these haven’t aged quite so much as CGIs have.
If you want to see really bad CGI FX watch this clip from the 1999 Haunting
But these techniques didn’t really exist in the 60s and 70s so they had to rely on ideas to scare you. If you haven’t watched old movies go back. For example in the original in the Haunting of Hill House, entitled “the Haunting”, the 1963 version Nell is so pleased to be wanted by the ghosts that she is prepared to submit to their will and join them. The ghost wanted her so much it called her to join them and she was prepared to go with it and prepared to die in order to do so. The audience is confronted with the old aeon eagerness to die to be with one’s Lord and the realisation that they don’t know what will happen when you die, but they’re willing to go through it anyway. Isn’t that a scary though? You’re all hurtling towards something you don’t understand and saying “yes take me?”. Where does that feature in modern movies. They don’t need to introduce complicated ideas since they have CGI FX.
Since the FX of the modern day is so scary they don’t need to rely on these complicated ideas, so often I find them very neglected in modern films. Let’s look at some of the things neglected in modern scary movies. Things like doors suddenly closing or opening, unexplained banging, cold spots in a room, something that looked like it moved just out of sight and many things that could be explained easily, but which generally just don’t happen like that. The funny thing is all of these things occur in ghost hunting! That’s why I find it sad that they are so absent in the modern films. If the haunting in movies was like ghost hunting I could believe it. But 2 minutes into it being immediately face-to-face with a half-rotted, semi-transparent dead person is somewhat unrealistic.
Some amazing movies work by being as normal as possible and then slowly ramping up the unbelievable parts over time. The movie relies on something realistic and easily believable. It slowly has you suspend your disbelief as it introduces more and more things before it presents you with the demon in all its manifest glory at the end. This is almost like being inducted into a cult. You’re slowly brainwashed as you fall into a world that believes something so different from consensus reality outside of the cult.
When we look at the Haunting, Theodora introduces herself in 1963 with immediately guessing Elenor’s nickname “Nell” and a number of other attributes about Elenor. It is almost as if Theo is psychic, but it gets explained away as good guess. This is slowly blending the ordinary with the supernatural. When we watch the 1999 version this stuff has been removed. The first suggestion of psychics is infomercials at 3 am. The first supernatural thing is a tuning rod on a harpsichord tightening itself, statues that turn to face you and the terrible rendering of a ghosts face in a satin sheet in a way that looks unsatin-like and very obviously CGI, events which are so totally unnatural so it doesn’t blend the possible with the impossible. It says to allow for the slow suspension of belief.
One recent movie that I loved for this was “As above, so below”. Naturally I was drawn to this movie because its title is a Hermetic aphorism. This movie is a search for I think it was the holy grail or the philosopher’s stone or maybe both… it’s been a while. But they conclude that it is currently hidden in the Parisian catacombs. In entering the catacombs there’s no issue except the structure is unstable and prone to cave-ins and collapses. So suddenly you’re scared for the team about something that’s really realistic and sensible. No ghosts here. I almost began to think this wasn’t going to be supernatural at all. Soon they delve deeper into a level where there are people living the dark. People who might not have seen the light of day for a while. Their peculiar behaviour is very unsettling as it introduces a level of uncertainty for the characters. What if for these people killing and eating other people was okay? We don’t know how someone lives down there. Also something which are impossible start to happen. A ringing telephone plugged in to a wall of skulls. I mean it’s still common place a telephone right? But it’s weird. Soon they look like they’re on the trail of finding what they’re looking for and there isn’t a way back up. In fact the only forward is down. Okay this is seeming more and more like a trap and they must enter through a doorway in a very enclosed space in a collapsing catacomb with the immortal words from Dante’s inferno “Abandon hope all ye who enter here”. The words that in his vision of hell Dante saw written over the entrance. Soon the truly supernatural stuff is happening, but you’ve been scared half to death with perfectly mundane things before you reached this point. This is what the old 1960’s horror did. When it wasn’t filming tarantulas up-close to make them look like huge behemoths.
This began to seriously change in the 1970s and why? Wicca! Wicca was spreading like wildfire. Astrology, Ceremonial Magic and psychic research had gone from being something done by secret masonic groups and stage magicians to something like 25% of kitchen wives. You know how many people take up Pilates or Oprah’s wish boards? Well it was like the Pilates of the time. A lot of people were interested because they were told it was empowering and made them unique. Well because a lot of them were not devoted and it disappeared quickly like a fad. The numbers dwindled leaving only the serious devotees and those that liked to get lost in their delusions / dreams, but since art is a reflection on culture it had a huge effect on the culture of the time. A lot of the 1970s – 1980s movies about hauntings sought to explain the phenomena using techniques which were genuinely use by mediums. Also there was a push at the time for these beliefs to be respected as scientific so there were many attempts to find the physical equivalent to a haunting often an EMF or EMR or to talk about it in terms of psychic energy. These films are really worth watch for understanding how people of their time thought about spiritual stuff. It’s like how people were so scared of radiation and didn’t understand it so they were happy to make the leap of a man being bitten by a radioactive spider suddenly developing spider-like superpowers. Well it goes to show what people believed about spiritual things at the time so suddenly there is loads of bogus science, but it is worth listening to. By the time 1990’s has come around a lot of that bogus science has been debunked publicly and while people still believe in spirits they don’t believe science can explain them so it gets dropped from the media.
The Haunting [1963] – Scary ideas, things that can be explained but which are unusual, the effect of spirits on the minds of the people.
The Legend of Hell House [1973] – Spiritualism, Psychic energy, mediumship, ectoplasm, scientific means of dispersing psychic energy and exorcising the house.
The Haunting [1999] – Badly rendered visual effects, objects moving of their own accord, moving statues and architecture and a finale with the a ghost that looks like it is made out of a semi-transparent Plasticine.
The Haunting of Hill House [2010] – Good effects, hidden ghosts filmed in the background of other shots, mysterious rooms that no-one else knows about showing a lack consensus of perception and the 5 children representing the 5 stages of grief, but relies on effects from the get go to create fear.
So there we have it. The recognition of the techniques used to explore psychic phenomenon had a huge influence on haunting movies in 1960s which got more technical with the popularity of the New Age and Wicca movements in the 1970s and 80s, but soon faded out. These are worth watching not be the science and learning, but to understand what 1970 occult authors are talking about.