Posted on

31 Days of Fright: The Howling

T.C., very literally a wolf in sheep's clothing.

T.C.: very literally a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

This January, in support of the Toronto Rape Crisis Centre / Multicultural Women Against Rape, friends and family have raised over $1,000, which means I have to watch and write about thirty-one horror movies. I’ll watch (on average) one movie a night, many of them requested by donors, after which I’ll write some things about said movies on this website. Be forewarned that all such write-ups will contain spoilers! Today’s film is the early ‘80s werewolf classic, The Howling, directed by modern B-movie great, Joe Dante (Gremlins, Innerspace). The Howling was a request from donor, friend, and one of the National Magazine Awards organizers, Richard Johnson. Again, I rented the movie from the good people at Queen Video.

What happens:

In the year 1981, everyone was making werewolf films. Not only did Roger Corman acolyte Joe Dante direct The Howling, but two other werewolf classics – An American Werewolf in London and Wolfen – were released that same year. The film’s opening credits run over television static and a background cacophony of audio. The sequence is fitting, as much of The Howling concerns television station KDHB, its reporters, and producers. At the moment, pop-psychologist, Dr. George Waggner (The Avengers‘ Patrick Macnee!) is being interviewed about his book The Gift, in which he insists that humans should not completely repress their animal natures. As he discusses his book on camera, our protagonist, Karen White (Dee Wallace), news anchor for KDHB, is playing the part of bait in a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse with a local serial killer, “Eddie the Mangler.”

Karen and Eddie have had an ongoing series of telephone conversations. In conjunction with the local police, Karen and the gang at KDHB have orchestrated a sting operation, during which Karen will be monitored and rigged with an audio wire. At least two officers are following her, and the news team are listening in from a nearby truck. Karen’s husband, Bill Neill (Christopher Stone, looking not unlike John Holmes), a health-club entrepreneur, waits in the truck with the producers, becoming increasingly nervous with this dangerous stunt. In a neighbourhood populated only by porno theatres and massage parlours, Karen waits by a pay phone (remember those?) marked with a happy face sticker until the call from Eddie comes. She answers and receives instructions from Eddie (who the audience can’t really see, but can sense is very sweaty). Around this time, the audio feed goes spotty and cuts out in the news truck. Producer Chris Hallorhan (Dennis Dugan) says all the neon lights are affecting the audio. (Is that a thing that happens?)

Karen enters a sex shop, quickly clearing out the store of its few male patrons. She walks until she sees another happy face sticker, her indication to enter that private viewing room. The film that plays in the room (which we only see in flashes) depicts a violent gang rape. Eddie, standing in the shadows, creeps up behind Karen and instructors her to “just watch.” Once he’s talked further about their special connection, he asks Karen (in a voice becoming more animalistic) to turn to see him. She gasps as she faces Eddie, but before we in the audience can see what he looks like, Eddie is shot. One of the two police officers who were following Karen opens fire on the door from which they heard screaming and shoots Eddie to death. Karen has been traumatized by the assault, and her startled reactions to the ambulance lights and the police who interview her reflect her emotionally fragile state. However, she claims not to remember anything about what happened in that private room.

The effects of the assault on Karen linger, progressing to night terrors. She and Bill are unable to be intimate (if you know what I mean), given her level of trauma. Meanwhile, two of the news producers, Chris and Terri Fisher (Belinda Balaski), follow up on a tip from a teacher who claims to have taught a weird kid named Eddie once. They go to this Eddie’s building and let themselves into his filthy apartment, wallpapered with news clippings of murders and (presumably) his own drawings, including one of Karen. Bizarrely, he also seems to have an affinity for drawing wolf-men and -women. They take the drawings to Dr. Waggner, who notes the similarities of killers and artists, as they make use of similar regions of their brains. The producers wonder if there might be enough material for a special, “The Mind of Eddie Quist.” Karen, meanwhile, returns to work, but freezes like a deer in the headlights her first moment in front of the news camera.

Our hero, Karen White, a little worse for wear after her face-to-face with a serial killer.

Our hero, Karen White, a little worse for wear after her face-to-face with a serial killer.

Dr. Waggner, knowing a psychological issue when he sees one, books an appointment, during which they try to recover Karen’s memory of the event. The attempt fails, and Waggner recommends she attend The Colony, his psychiatric retreat in the country. Karen and Bill soon make their way to The Colony, set in an idyllic woodland. Their very first night, The Colonists (?) are hosting some sort of combination beach cookout / country hoedown, which gives Karen and Bill the opportunity to meet their fellow compatriots. The partygoers include the owner of a nearby cattle ranch, Charlie Barton (Noble Willingham); an old man who belongs in a David Lynch film, Erle Kenton (John Carradine); and a friendly couple, Donna (Margie Impert) and Jerry (James Murtaugh). Oh, and an alleged nymphomaniac who looks like Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, Marsha (Elisabeth Brooks). And her brother, T.C. (Don McLeod), who looks like an escapee from the Texas Chain Saw Massacre family. Minutes into the cookout, Erle attempts to kill himself. It’s a good group!

Karen has trouble sleeping in their bungalow – and it’s not just the night terrors! She hears howling from the misty forest outside, but Bill assures her they’re normal wilderness sounds: “You were raised in L.A. The wildest thing you ever heard was Wolfman Jack!” She’s sure there’s something outside the bungalow, so she goes to investigate, but fails to find T.C. hiding in the bushes. (Eep.) The next day, Sheriff Sam Newfield (Slim Pickens) introduces himself as the law in these parts to Karen and Donna after their tennis game.

Back in the city, plucky reporters Chris and Terri go to the morgue to take a closer look at Eddie’s body. Only one problem: his body is completely missing, and the inside of the morgue drawer’s been completely scratched up! At The Colony, Karen and Donna smoke on the deck, but are distracted by some very strange-sounding cows. With Jerry’s rifle, they head into the woods to investigate, only to find a mutilated cow. Sheriff Sam Newfield and a deputy find them in the woods and tell them they’ve found another cow just like it. Something dangerous is living in the outskirts of The Colony. The next day, Karen participates in a group therapy session while Bill decides to tag along with the other men as they go hunting – much like Elmer Fudd – for rabbits. Bill’s never hunted before, but – unusual for a vegetarian – he’s willing to learn. Turns out he’s a natural!

Chris and Terri expand their investigation, and it takes them to an occult bookshop where they seek information on – you guessed it – werewolves. While they decide on the best werewolf guides to purchase, the bookstore owner does some werewolf mythbusting, contending that real werewolves aren’t affected by the moon– they can shapeshift whenever they’d like. But he’s certain silver bullets do kill them. He even has a case of authentic silver bullets on display.

At the tail end of the their hunt, Bill asks the nearly feral T.C. what he should do with the rabbit. T.C., full of wisdom, declares, “You kill something you don’t eat, that’s a sin.” He suggests Bill visit his sister, Marsha, and she’ll cook it for him. But it’s not rabbit that’s Marsha is interested in eating, and she puts the moves on the strapping Bill Neill. Moves that Bill readily shuts down. Weirded out by the sexually aggressive Marsha, Bill heads back to his bungalow through the woods alone. And that’s when he’s attacked by a werewolf, who claws open his shoulder before fleeing. Bill, however, is unaware it was a werewolf attack: “It happened so fast, I didn’t see what it was.” As a matter of course, Dr. Waggner gives him a rabies shot in the stomach. Karen wants to leave The Colony right away, but the good doctor advises against it.

Marsha and Bill Neill, who embarrassing dressed for completely different movies.

Marsha and Bill Neill, who embarrassingly dressed for very different parties.

Reporters (and couple) Chris and Terri watch television in bed together – they’re a regular Maury Povich and Connie Chung! – when they get a late-night phone call from Karen, who informs them that Bill was bitten by a wolf. This information is relayed exactly the moment when the werewolf movie they’re watching explains how a person becomes a werewolf. Terri leaves for The Colony the next morning, bringing her friends a meal from the outside world. Unfortunately, she forgot that Bill was a vegetarian, but he doesn’t seem to mind, voraciously digging into the meat. That night, Karen starts feeling randy, but Bill is still groggy from the rabies shots. Or is he? Because late that night, while Karen is asleep, Bill walks into the woods in just his robe for a midnight tryst with Marsha in the forest. Karen awakes to find Bill gone, and Terri awakes to weird howling sounds, which she records with her audio equipment. What she’s recording, in fact, are Bill and Marsha doing the wolf nasty. They begin to drool and slowly transform into wolves during their lovemaking session, eventually turning into full-on cartoon wolves. (Not kidding.)

Terri walks the grounds of The Colony the next day and makes a startling discovery: the scene at the lake before her is identical to one of Eddie Quist’s landscape drawings. Eddie Quist has been to The Colony! Terri continues on her Colony walkabout, coming across a cabin in the woods with some interesting decor choices (animal skins, bone wind chimes). She lets herself in and finds a door marked with a happy face sticker (ulp!) that leads to a private study filled with illustrations. This must be Eddie Quist’s cabin! And unfortunately, Terri isn’t alone. The cabin begins to shake and a massive werewolf bursts through the wall. Terri leaps through the window and grabs a hatchet from the wood pile for protection. The werewolf corners her under the deck of the cabin and begins to maul her from behind. But the resourceful Terri chops off the werewolf’s hand in a gory effect – one that gets even better as the claw pulses and throbs and turns back into a human hand. Terri flees and finds refuge in Dr. Waggner’s office, where she uses the telephone to call Chris.

At the other side of The Colony, Karen awakes from yet another nightmare. She notices fresh scratches across her husband Bill’s back, and he denies they’re new. He claims they were from the animal attack. Karen accuses him of sleeping with Marsha and he responds by smacking her across the face. (We no longer like Bill.) Terri, in her phone call to Chris, claims Eddie Quist is alive and at The Colony. Chris suggests she look in Dr. Waggner’s files under “Quist.” Not only does Terri find a file for Eddie Quist, but files on Marsha and T.C. Quist, as well. (Uh oh.) That’s when a wolf hand grabs the file from her hands. Chris is helpless as he hears the werewolf attack his girlfriend on the other end of the telephone. He hangs up to call the sheriff’s office, but he’s too late. Though Terri temporarily blinds the werewolf with a bright light, the massive werewolf eventually chokes Terri and tears into her throat.

Chris, unwilling to leave this rescue in the hands of a bumbling local sheriff, runs to the occult bookstore and buys the entire case of silver bullets before hopping into his sports car. Back at The Colony, Karen drops in on Dr. Waggner’s office, where she finds Terri’s dead body, torn asunder. She tries to use the phone, but it’s been disconnected. That’s when a mostly-human Eddie Quist (Robert Picardo) emerges from under a sheet, a bullet wound still in his head. He tells Karen he wants to give her a piece of his mind, then literally digs into a wound in his forehead (gross!) with his finger, and picks out the bullet. Then begins one of the longest wolf transformations in history, with Eddie’s skin pulsing and slowly becoming more vulpine in the time it takes to brew a fresh pot of coffee. All while Karen waits and watches in horror. (It’s inordinately long, but a very effective practical effects scene, nonetheless.)

Karen reaches behind her to find the jar of acid that Dr. Waggner, like most therapists, always keeps on his desk. Once Eddie is fully transformed, she tosses the acid at his face and races to her car. But she’s grabbed by Jerry and Charlie Barton, who forcibly bring her to a barn on The Colony grounds. The entire Colony is there, milling around Terri’s flayed body displayed on a table. Marsha seems to preside over the ceremony. Inexplicably, a head on a pike stands behind her. Meanwhile, we witness Chris driving like a madman to arrive at The Colony before he’s too late.

Terri realizes there's only so much reading about werewolves in theory will help.

Terri realizes there’s only so much reading about werewolves in theory will help.

Completely disoriented by the scene in the barn, Karen is relieved when she spots Dr. Waggner. But his face tells her she shouldn’t be. Everyone in The Colony is a werewolf, Dr. Waggner included. “The Gift” referenced in his book is lycanthropy. As Karen tries to figure out how to escape, the assembled werewolves argue over their future direction: should they start hunting people again or keep to their current course of eating cattle? (It’s like a werewolf strategic plan meeting.) Marsha eventually overrules the cattle-proponent doctor, and informs him (with a scratch across his face) that Karen is theirs now. The wolf-people advance on Karen, and T.C. demonstrates how Terri wounded him, showing her his bloody stump.

Chris arrives at The Colony and first heads to Waggner’s office, where he’s startled by Eddie, who easily wrests his rifle from him. Eddie is in his human form now, but the acid attack has left his face a bloody mess. Eddie, revelling in his power over the seemingly helpless Chris, tells the man what he did to Terri, and plays an audio recording of her final moments. The wolf man passes the gun back to Chris, confident it will have no effect on him. But Eddie wasn’t expecting the rifle to be filled with bullets with an atomic number of 47. Chris shoots Eddie in the neck as he begins to transform into a wolf, then moves on to the barn.

When he arrives at the barn, the Colonists are about to kill Karen. Chris lifts his rifle, warning them he’s loaded it with silver bullets. “Silver bullets, my ass,” scoffs Jerry, mere seconds before dropping like a sack of potatoes. In his career as a news producer, Chris has apparently become an expert marksman, and he handily picks off the angry Colonists one-by-one as they approach. With some fancy footwork, Chris and Karen lock the remaining Colonists, all transforming into wolves, in the barn and douse it with gasoline. The wolves frantically attempt to escape the burning barn, but are trapped. Karen tearfully informs Chris that Terri is dead, and Bill (absent from the barn meeting) has probably been killed, too. They go to Chris’s Mazda and drive away from The Colony.

But, as Taylor Swift might ask, are they out of the woods yet? They most certainly not. The sheriff (half-transformed into a wolf!) has set up a roadblock and opens fire on our heroes. (I should note that this wolf cop predates the movie of the same name by over three decades.) Chris quickly outguns the sheriff, but he and Karen must flee from his car, about to explode from all the gunplay. They get in the police cruiser, but it fails to start. In moments, the car is surrounded by werewolves who try to bash their way into the car. Just when things are becoming overly grim, the car starts and Karen and Chris drive off. But one werewolf remains attached to the car. It breaks through the back windshield and sinks its jaws into Karen’s shoulder just Chris shoots it. In death, the wolf transforms back into Karen’s missing husband, Bill.

The next day, Karen – who survived the ordeal – is back at the television studio, shooting the evening news. The program opens with a story about a forest fire near a psychiatric retreat called The Colony, where police have found evidence of a “Guyana-like spectacle.” When it’s Karen’s turn to read the news, she takes the station head by surprise with a sudden editorial. She tells the many people watching at home that there exists a secret society of werewolves, and she’s going to prove it. Karen begins to transform into a wolf on camera, in front of millions of home viewers. Chris then runs onto the set with a rifle – must be an open-carry state – and shoots Karen dead, right on the six o’clock news.

The final scenes of the movie show audience reaction to this werewolf transformation, with the majority of home viewers believing it to be a hoax done with impressive special effects. Certainly no one in the bar seen at the end was convinced by Karen and Chris’s stunt. And in that very same bar, a young woman orders a burger, rare. The camera pans up and we see the ground-beef enthusiast is none other than Marsha Quist, alive and well. The camera zooms in on a burger being cooked and the end credits begin.

The Howling asks viewers the important question: Would you trust John Steed as your therapist?

The Howling asks viewers the important question: Would you trust John Steed as your therapist?

Takeaway points:

  • What differentiates The Howling from some of its fellow werewolf movies is the focus on pop-psychology. The ostensible leader of a wolf pack is a TV therapist, advising people to get in touch with their animal nature. This premise serves as an excellent joke, of course, but also demonstrates the filmmakers’ doubt of psychology’s dubious claims. What else could a therapy retreat be but a haven for a murderous werewolf cult? At the same time, the filmmakers also present a very thoughtful, realistic portrayal of post-traumatic stress disorder in the story arc of Karen White (see below) So, rather than dismissing therapy entirely, The Howling seems to suggest that psychological trauma is very real, but one must be careful of the self-described experts (like Dr. Waggner) who will promise to cure you of it.
  • For an over-the-top monster movie, The Howling gets a lot right about post-traumatic stress. I make no claims to be an expert on PTSD, but if you compare Karen White’s ordeal with similar horror-movie heroines, her assault really affects her in a realistic way. The events of The Howling leave their scars. Karen is a strong character, but that doesn’t mean her trauma isn’t always present. She is uncomfortable in intimate moments with Bill after the film’s opening assault. Nightmares plague her. And – though, as I say, I have no great knowledge of this experience – the scene with the police and EMTs that immediately follows Eddie’s shooting seemed one of the better visual representations of coping with trauma in film.
  • Perhaps moreso than even Quentin Tarantino, director Joe Dante is the king of film references. Not only is the movie populated by some of his favourite character actors, it’s also filled with visual wolf gags, from Chris reading Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and Bill reading a novel by Thomas Wolfe to the Wolf-brand chili the sheriff eats. Additionally, nearly all the characters in The Howling are named after directors of other werewolf movies, such as George Waggner (who directed The Wolf Man), William Neill (director of Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man), and Terri Fisher (who directed The Curse of the Werewolf … or, rather, Terence Fisher did).
  • Another neat tidbit about The Howling is how it takes a very And Then There Were None, drawing-room mystery premise – multiple residents of a retreat, one of whom is probably a killer – and takes it to an over-the-top extreme. The werewolf murderer is not just one of The Colony patients, nor is it a dastardly duo (a la Scream). Instead, literally everyone except our protagonist is a murderer.
  • Somehow, The Howling has seven (!) sequels.

Truly terrifying or truly terrible?: More scary than terrible. It’s not terrible at all. The Howling is a well-made movie, and features some really impressive makeup work – the standout being the severed T.C.’s wolf hand transforming back into a human one. At the same time, it’s not a movie that will keep you up at night for a week. The Howling is a solid werewolf flick with some thought behind it.

Don't be surprised when you see more outfits like this at Wimbledon in a few years.

Don’t be surprised when you see more outfits like this at Wimbledon in a few years.

Best outfit: At a certain point, I stopped keeping track and just wrote in my notes, “All the outfits in this movie are amazing.” Shot in that heady transition period between 1970s and ’80s fashion, The Howling has no shortage of incredible wardrobe choices. I was about to award Bill’s white jacket the top spot until I saw Karen White’s tennis outfit.

Best line: “Not all of us have money for a Mazda. Some of us actually have to work for a living!” – a motorist to Chris (harkening back to when Mazda was synonymous with luxury)

Best kill: A gunshot through the neck is usually a strong contender, and when you pair it with a villain who has just spent the past three minutes transforming into a werewolf, it’s even better.

Unexpected cameo: This movie is overflowing with amazing cameos, from Joe Dante stalwart Dick Miller as the bookshop owner to a nearly unrecognizable Robert Picardo – the holographic doctor from Star Trek: Voyager – as Eddie Quist. Plus, Slim Pickens (the guy who rides the atomic bomb in Dr. Strangelove) and Kevin McCarthy (from the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers) make appearances. But most unexpected was the recently deceased star of Designing Women and Dave’s World, Meshach Taylor (!), as a young detective.

Unexpected lesson(s) learned: If The Howling is to be believed, werewolves never believe you when you warn them you’ve loaded your gun with silver bullets. They’ll never take your word for it. You actually have to shoot them. Additionally, there’s a very thin line between artist and uncontrollable murderer.

Most suitable band name derived from the movie: The Colony

Next up: The Exorcist III (1990).

Posted on

31 Days of Fright: Stir of Echoes

Kevin Bacon sees dead people.

Kevin Bacon sees dead people.

This January, in support of the Toronto Rape Crisis Centre / Multicultural Women Against Rape, friends and family have raised over $1,000, which means I have to watch and write about thirty-one horror movies. I’ll watch (on average) one movie a night, many of them requested by donors, after which I’ll write some things about said movies on this website. Be forewarned that all such write-ups will contain spoilers! Today’s film is the millennial freak-out, Stir of Echoes, starring the ubiquitous Kevin Bacon and directed by David Koepp (Secret Window! Premium Rush!). And it’s based on a novel by Richard Matheson! Who knew? My friend and fellow Giller Light Bash committee member, Elizabeth Barker, was a big donor to my fundraiser. She saw Stir of Echoes at a sleepover when she was fourteen and still hasn’t recovered. I rented the film from my friends at Queen Video.

What happens:

I have never seen Stir of Echoes before, though I must have seen the trailer about a hundred times as a teenager. When I informed someone I’d be watching Stir of Echoes, a friend said, “That’s the one where Kevin Bacon is digging a hole, right?” Which was also about as specific as my memory was of the trailer. Stir of Echoes: a movie about the existential dread of Kevin Bacon digging a hole. As the opening credits begin, we hear a child hum “Paint It Black,” which music fans will know as the spookiest of all the Rolling Stones’ songs. The movie opens with working-class father, Tom Witzky (Kevin Bacon) strumming guitar in the background as his young son, Jake (Zachary David Cope) plays in the bath. Jake stops and turns to no one to ask, “Does it hurt to be dead?”

Tom, missing this entirely, heads downstairs where his wife, Maggie (Kathryn Erbe) and sister-in-law, Lisa (Illena Douglas), have been having a conversation, during which Lisa has correctly guessed that Maggie is pregnant. Lisa is vaguely new-agey, wearing shirts with mandalas and reading volumes into astrology, so she sensed her sister’s expectant state. This is news to Tom, and he’s less than happy to hear it. Tom works as an electrician and imagines he’ll have to take on a lot of overtime to provide for this second child, which makes Maggie unhappy: “You get home so late, and it’s like you’re in a trance. You’re useless to me.” (Horror movie writers are pretty good at foreshadowing.)

Tom says he’ll stop fooling around with the band he’s playing with and grow up. He’s facing a bit of a mid-life crisis, depressed about still being a phone lineman: “I never wanted to be famous. I just never expected to be so … I don’t know, ordinary.” Leaving a baby monitor on in the sleeping Jake’s bedroom, Tom, Maggie, and Lisa head over to a rocking Carlsberg-years’ party in their Chicago neighbourhood. There they meet up with nearby neighbours, Frank (Kevin Dunn) and Sheila (Lusia Strus), whose teenaged son is a local football hero. As partygoers leave and things get a bit more intimate, talk naturally turns to hypnosis. Tom is a doubter, but Lisa is convinced hypnosis works – she’s even a bit of an amateur hypnotist. Tom, feeling self-conscious when Lisa says he’s close-minded and conservative, dares her to hypnotize him. Despite her wariness, she agrees.

In his hypnotic state, Lisa tells him to envision a large, empty movie theatre with blurry letters on a white screen. Gradually, he moves closer until he can see the words on the screen: SLEEP. Suddenly, Tom sees flashes of violence in his own house and he wakes from his trance. His assembled friends laugh: Tom was easily hypnotizable. Lisa even stuck a safety pin through his hand. He didn’t feel a thing and instead talked about his childhood bully. Disturbed by the visions he saw, Tom leaves and takes Maggie with him. His attempts at sleep are first interrupted by more troubling visions, then by his amorous wife. She mounts Tom, and while they make the beast with two backs, his visions get more disturbing: blood spattering, teeth scattering across a wood-panelled floor, fingernails ripping from their fingers. Tom pulls Maggie off him, unable to continue in his panicked state.

Sheep? Steep? What is the movie screen trying to tell him?

Sheep? Steep? What is the movie screen trying to tell him?

Tom goes to the bathroom for a glass of water, but finds his mouth is bleeding. He slowly pulls a rotting tooth from his mouth. But when he blinks and looks back in the mirror, his mouth is fine! He heads downstairs to distract himself with some television, but as soon as he sits on the couch, a ghostly woman appears and reaches out to him. The spooked Tom heads back upstairs where he finds Jake on the landing, who advises, “Don’t be afraid of it, Daddy.” The next morning, Tom calls his sister-in-law (from a telephone pole) and demands to know what she did to him while he was hypnotized. She confesses she gave him a post-hypnotic suggestion, but it was just a small one: that when he awoke, his mind would be open.

At this point, it’s pretty clear that little Jake is talking to ghosts. When Maggie talks with her sister on the phone, lamenting how hard it is to find a babysitter, Jake – upon the suggestion of the unseen Samantha – suggests an option: Debbie. Debbie Kozac (Liza Weil) arrives that night and Tom immediately gets negative vibes from her. (Whenever he looks her way, the film stock literally goes negative.) Maggie and Tom leave for the local high school football game, but Tom senses danger whenever he looks at a red light. Alone with the spooky kid Jake, Debbie hears him talking to someone on the baby monitor. She goes to him and asks who he’s talking to, and when Jake answers “Samantha,” something in Debbie snaps. She starts to interrogate Jake, shaking him, hoping to find out how he knows about Samantha.

Several blocks away, Tom’s visions of danger become too strong, too frequent. He shoves through the crowd at the game and races home – Maggie following close behind – to find Jake and Debbie are completely gone! Tom and Maggie follow his startling visions to the train station where they find Debbie and their kidnapped son. A scuffle breaks out, but Tom and Maggie retrieve their child from the teary Debbie. Debbie took Jake to the train station because her mom works there. Her sister, Samantha (Jennifer Morrison), who may or may not be developmentally delayed, went missing months ago and she wants to know why this child seems to know all about her. At this point, a cop intervenes, and Debbie flashes a picture of her sister. Even though the girl is clearly the ghost Tom saw on the couch, he pretends he’s never seen her. To end things amicably, Tom and Maggie don’t press charges.

Later, Tom reveals Samantha is the girl he saw on the couch, and asks Maggie who suggested to use Debbie as a babysitter. Accordingly, he has a lot of questions for his son. Jake refuses to answer. In time, Jake answers in a demon voice not his own, “Don’t ask the boy any more questions. Talk to me.” Given a tiny taste of the supernatural, Tom is like a dog with a bone. He starts badgering Jake, clapping in his child’s face to get his attention. Maggie makes him stop and Tom is left by the television, trying to recreate the actions that caused him to see ghost Samantha in the first place.

Looks like this ghost just had a bright idea!

Looks like this ghost just had a bright idea!

A few days later, at a neighbourhood tailgate, Tom, now popping pills and looking more rangy than Kevin Bacon usually does, starts asking his neighbours and his landlord, Harry (Conor O’Farrell), about Samantha Kozac. Maggie grows concerned for her husband, who’s started skipping work and sleeping on the couch for twelve hours at a time. Awaking from one of those luxurious sleeps, he finds his neighbour, Frank, distraught in his living room. He follows Frank to his house and hears gunshots from inside. When he enters, his sees Frank’s son, Adam (Chalon Williams) who calmly shows him a pistol. Adam, unprovoked, shoots himself in the head and smears the blood all over his face. As you might have guessed, this was all a dream. But when Tom wakes a second time, everything progresses exactly as it did in his dream. The only thing absent is the distraught Frank. He pays a visit to Frank’s house, just in case, and again hears gunshots. Adam has shot himself (in the chest?), and Tom is the first person to find him. He screams for help and the ambulance arrives just in time.

Meanwhile, Maggie has taken Jake for a walk, during which Jake is drawn to a bagpiper in the nearby cemetery. (Or maybe he’s just drawn to the cemetery itself. Hmm.) Jake catches the attention of a large police officer who’s in the cemetery for an official funeral. He follows Maggie and Jake, during which he comments that Jake’s “got the eyes on him … X-Ray.” He says Jake has special sight, and one of his parents must, too. Maggie says she’s never seen a vision, so the officer, Neil (Eddie Bo Smith, Jr.), hands Maggie a business card and says – in the most sexually creepy way imaginable – “Tell Daddy to come see me tonight.”

Back at home, Tom noodles on his guitar. Jake gets up from his toys and guides him in playing a few chords. “Why do I know that song?” he wonders. Maggie tells Jake he’s going out to the movies, but she takes her hunting knife with her. (She knows Batman’s origin story, I guess.) But she’s not going to the movies at all; she’s instead paying Neil a visit to find out what’s happening to her husband. She visits Neil’s apartment, hidden in a darkened alley, and he greets her at the door in a dashiki. Some sort of group session is happening in his place and they’re anxious for him to shut the door. Closing the door behind him, Neil informs Maggie of her husband’s condition: “He’s a receiver now.” Tom is receiving glimpses from the other side, like being in a dark tunnel with an intermittently working flashlight. Her son Jake, he says, is the same, but has a “better flashlight.” (This is a remarkable prognosis from someone who has never met Tom and only briefly seen Jake.) Neil warns her if this Samantha is a ghost, she wants something, and if her family doesn’t do what she wants, the ghost may never go away.

Later that night, while Tom is manically rifling through his CD collection for the tune Jake gave him, Maggie draws a bath and the ghost comes along to watch. Or rather, ghost Samantha arrives to turn Maggie’s bathwater cold. So cold, Maggie is forced to go to the basement and check the furnace. While Maggie attempts to re-light the furnace in the basement, the ghost controls young Jake’s television choices (she really wants him to watch Night of the Living Dead) and grants Tom another vision. This time, it’s clearly Samantha inside his house, though the house is under construction. Maggie comes up from the basement and sees Tom in the middle of a trance. She embraces him to break the spell.

Near the end of his rope, Tom goes to Lisa (who has just smoked a bowl with her friend) and demands that she hypnotize him again and undo whatever she did. She tries, but this time, when Tom finds himself in a massive theatre, there’s another moviegoer. That moviegoer is Samantha, who roughly grabs him as he approaches her chair. Tom is then shocked by a vision of Samantha being shoved into a plastic bag. The movie screen now has a new message: DIG. Tom awakens from the hypnotic trance and immediately downs a beer. “I’m supposed to dig,” he declares to Lisa.

Diggin' a hole, 'cuz that's the way you treat him. (Joke for the Big Sugar fans reading this.)

Diggin’ a hole, ‘cuz that’s the way you treat him. (Joke for the Big Sugar fans reading this.)

Maggie comes home from her nursing job to find dirt tracked all over the floor and the fridge jam-packed with cartons of Minute Maid. She follows the dirt to the backyard where Jake and Tom are digging a few massive holes. Maggie is perplexed, but Tom, shirtless and looking leaner and meaner than an inner-city Olympic swimmer, explains, “What exactly don’t you understand? I’m supposed to dig.” All this inexplicable digging leads to a spat between Tom and Maggie. Tom sees this vision quest as the most important thing he’s ever done and won’t stop, but Maggie is more than a little frustrated because the ordinary life Tom is so sick of is the one he shares with her. Shortly after their big blow-up, Maggie and Tom make up. She opens a letter from her brother Steve, who has informed her that their grandmother was just admitted to the hospital. (Even in 1999, who puts this in a letter?) Tom has a premonition that Maggie’s grandmother has already died, and a phone call moments later confirms it. That guy is really becoming quite the receiver!

Maggie and Jake drive to the funeral (which I guess is happening immediately?), leaving Tom behind to dig his holes. Not that his wife is overly happy about that. Tom has been using water to soften the dirt of the yard, and when the water cuts out, he has to go to his basement to check what the problem is. But did Samantha just want him to come to the basement? He follows a hunch and takes a pick-axe to the concrete floor of the basement before realizing he might need more firepower. (I mean, Tom’s arms are impressive, but not that impressive.) He makes a quick excursion to the hardware store for a jackhammer and air compressor, then gets back to his midnight toil.

By the time Maggie calls him from her grandparents’ house, the basement looks like the spot where a bomb was detonated. Tom and Maggie reconcile over the phone, and Tom pretends he’s given up on digging (which he definitely hasn’t). Maggie calls his bluff and offers to drive home and pick him up so he can be at the funeral. Jake, frightened to return home, stays with his aunt Lisa. Tom returns to his basement labour when he has an epiphany: what if he dug sideways? He starts hammering down the basement wall and soon makes grim discovery: a teenager’s blackened corpse, sans one tooth, hidden under some plastic sheeting. He’s no detective, but he’s pretty sure that’s Samantha Kozac.

Tom grabs the corpse’s hand and immediately witnesses Samantha’s murder in his mind. Two neighbourhood teenagers – Adam and Kurt – lured the unpopular Samantha into the Witzky home while it was under renovation. Kurt (Steve Rifkin) is the landlord Harry’s son; this predates the Witzky’s move-in. The two guys have been drinking and start to romance Samantha, but become aggressive very quickly. When she demands they stop what is fast becoming a sexual assault, Kurt shoves her to the ground (knocking out a tooth) and handcuffs her. Samantha starts screaming and Adam yells to “shut her up.” They crank the stereo, which, insultingly, blasts Canadian pop-punk jokesters Gob’s cover of “Paint It Black.” (They can’t even treat Samantha to the original in her dying moments.) They cover her with some plastic sheeting, shortly after which she suffocates in a horrible sexual assault turned deadly.

Recovering from the flashback, Tom climbs out of the basement and viewers see the one murderer who didn’t shoot himself spying from the window. Tom visits his neighbour Frank, who is watching over his convalescent son, Adam, and says he needs to show him something in his basement. Frank is shown the girl’s corpse, and Frank at first denies it could be Kurt and Adam. Tom notes that the corpse is holding a hank of someone’s hair in her hand, and it could easily be tested for DNA. Then Frank tearfully confesses he’s known Kurt and Adam killed Samantha for months. He helped them hide her body. Unsurprisingly, he whips out a pistol and fires it into the air, chasing Tom away. As Tom scurries away, a second gunshot rings out and the basement falls silent.

Moments after Frank has apparently ended his own life, the landlord and his son Kurt ring the front doorbell, feigning concern with the unorthodox renovations he’s been doing. Tom – now with two dead bodies in his basement – tries to discreetly make them leave, but they’re not having it. Tom realizes why they’ve arrived and as Harry goes for his gun, Tom smacks him with the lamp. But the two men subdue him, and just as Harry is about to kill him, execution-style, with a throw-pillow-silenced gun, there’s a honking from outside. Maggie has arrived to give Tom a ride!

Luckily, Maggie realizes there’s something not quite right afoot and she takes the hunting knife from her bag – the one Jake reminded her to take – and enters her house. She’s attacked by Kurt and his dad, but she also gets a few good shots in, stabbing Kurt in his foot, Adventures in Babysitting style. But just as the villains get the upper hand and are about to kill Maggie, Frank emerges from the basement, very much alive, and shoots them both. Samantha Kozac’s soul is released from the house and Frank, even with all that’s happened, maintains they still live in a decent neighbourhood. A denouement follows in which Maggie and Tom, now on much better terms as husband and wife, pack up a U-Haul and move to a new neighbourhood. But as they drive past rows of houses, their son Jake hears the spirits speaking to him again, clearly leading the way for Stir of Echoes 2: The Homecoming (I guess).

Tom learns all about improper ghost storage in Stir of Echoes.

Tom learns all about improper ghost storage in Stir of Echoes.

Takeaway points:

  • It’s impossible to watch Stir of Echoes and not think about The Sixth Sense. Both have similar premises: a child who can see dead people, those dead people impel him to carry out work in the physical plane. With the help of a father (or father figure), they bring the ghost’s killer to justice. They both were released in the summer 1999, and they both employ the idea of ghosts being cold – characters’ breath becomes visible in the presence of the dead. The primary difference is that the father figure in one movie is a ghost himself, and the other one is Kevin Bacon. The Sixth Senseseemed to bury (get it?) this film, which has been largely forgotten.
  • The murder of Samantha, and particularly the reaction of the parents of the teenage rapists and murderers, has all sorts of parallels to the University of Missouri, Vanderbilt, the University of Ottawa – the many, many college sports rape scandals of the past decade. When Frank confesses he knew what his son did, but says it was an accident, and that “those kids have their whole lives ahead of them,” it’s chilling. Chilling because that’s what parents, defence attorneys, and news pundits say in every single one of these cases. Chilling because people think that’s a reasonable response to such horror.
  • Stir of Echoes is unusual because – unlike most horror movie protagonists –Tom, like a firefighter running into a burning building, moves towardthe horror. Disillusioned by his ordinary life, he eventually sees his supernatural visions as his ticket to the more-than-ordinary. Solving the case of this ghost girl becomes the mission of his life. So, unlike most horror heroes, he embraces the horror, doing everything he can to make the ghosts return.
  • The inclusion of the song “Paint It Black” is strange. It becomes a theme – in fact, it was the only other thing I remembered from the trailer: “Paint It Black” and Kevin Bacon digging a hole. It’s the song that plays when Samantha is killed, and while Lisa hypnotizes Tom, she has him imagine everything in the movie theatre painted black. But there’s not a real thematic connection of the song to the movie.
  • More importantly, how did Frank recover? He seems to have shot himself in the basement, then he returns, deus ex machina, to save the day. What did he shoot while he was alone in the basement? The wall? Samantha’s corpse? Did he try to shoot himself and screw it up, much like his son? They offer no explanation whatsoever.
  • Fun fact: Debbie Kozac, while babysitting Jake, is reading The Shrinking Man, another book by Richard Matheson.
  • Can we have a moment of appreciation for Kevin Bacon’s impressive Minute Maid triple-take? (Somebody please put this on the internet.)

Truly terrifying or truly terrible?: Parts of Stir of Echoes are terrifying, certainly. Most of Tom’s spooky visions and his second hypnosis session, in particular, are future nightmare fuel. But partway through the movie, Stir of Echoes becomes more of a mystery than a horror movie.

Tell me you can picture Illena Douglas on the cover of Women & Songs, Vol

Tell me you can’t picture Illena Douglas on the cover of Women & Songs, Vol. 5.

Best outfit: Shout out to Tom Witzky’s Social Distortion shirt. (I didn’t think you were that fashionable Tom, but I was wrong.) But you can’t top Lisa’s pitch-perfect, late-90s, occult

Best kill: The central kill, an attempted rape turned murder, is extremely unsettling. So while it’s the most vivid, it’s far from the ‘best.’ It is satisfying to watch one of the rapist-murderers stabbed through the foot, then shot, though.

Unexpected cameo: Debbie Kozac, Jake’s babysitter and Samantha’s sister, is played by Liza Weil, best known to Gilmore Girls fans as Paris Geller! So great! (Weirdly, the character of Lisa, played by Illena Douglas, apparently has the last name ‘Weil,’ as well. Or as weil. Lisa Weil.)

Unexpected lesson(s) learned: Did you know that making dirt wet makes it easier to dig? I didn’t! Grave-digging tips from Kevin Bacon! That’s why you watch Stir of Echoes.

Most suitable band name derived from the movie: That’s a hard one. Post-Hypnotic Suggestion? Better Flashlight? Or – based on a throwaway comment from Lisa – Gift Boner?

Next up: The Howling (1981).