The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2022: The Watcher in the Woods (1980), directed by John Hough

 

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune: 'Somebody's Watching Me' by Rockwell

       The 1980’s are often romanticized, chiefly by weirdos, as a time that was great for business, but that wasn’t exactly the case for Disney. In fact most of the decade was sort of a crapshoot for them, exemplified by a string of middling attempts to move the needle at the box office. Tron, The Great Mouse Detective, The Black Cauldron, while some of these films over the years have gained a level of cult notoriety they certainly impress audiences at the time, especially when you had Don Bluth kicking around giving people films that had some metaphorical teeth without sacrificing the animation quality. It wasn’t until the tail end of the decade that The Mouse was able to right the ship, first with Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and then a year later with The Little Mermaid,  but it’s strange to consider a world where Disney is most associated with failures and missteps than with anything good. Well actually  it’s not, but I’m sure at the time Joe Public were like ‘wowee, good thing these guys don’t own my favorite film franchise and never will.’

       As I said though, several of these films that proved to be a bomb for Disney at the time have in recent years been looked upon with different eyes. Tron, for example, went from the poster child of Disney turds and ended up becoming a full-fledged franchise, albeit a minor one. So in the spirit of bringing things to light that Disney would rather forget I decided to grab a film from the peak of the Dark Ages and see how it plays. Live action too, so you know it’s going to go well.

       Released in 1980, The Watcher in the Woods was written by Brian Clemens, Harry Spalding and Rosemary Anne Sisson, directed by John Hough and Vincent McEveety and produced by Ron Miller through Walt Disney Productions, based on the novel “A Watcher in the Woods” by Florence Engel Randall. Lynn-Holly Johnson stars as Jan Curtis, who along with little sister Ellie (Kyle Richards), mother Helen (Carroll Baker) and father Paul (David McCallum) managed to snag themselves a secluded manor in the English countryside on the cheap from its owner and their neighbor Mrs. Aylwood (Bette Davis). There’s always gotta be a catch though, which Jan begins to experience immediately after entering the house. Strange lights, bizarre hallucinations, Ellie getting possessed, your typical crazy ghost shit. The common thread throughout these incidents however is Karen Aylwood, Mrs. Aylwood’s teenage daughter who disappeared thirty years ago under mysterious circumstances. What happened to Karen, and how does it tie into these supernatural events? The answers to those questions and some prime voyeurism await in The Watcher in the Woods.

       If the phrase ‘Disney made a horror film’ doesn’t fill you with confidence, I can hardly blame you. Disney has built their empire off of a dedication to family-friendly, culturally appropriated content, so attempting something different and interesting is bound to make them stumble. If you were to give them some credit however, it is that they found something that could conceivably fit within their wheelhouse. There are no monsters in The Watcher in the Woods, no psychopathic killers, simply some spooky happenings ala Amityville Horror and a POV tracking shot (reminiscent of Friday the 13th and Evil Dead) that implies some sort of malicious intelligence. Not enough to stir the loins of any serious gorehound out there, in fact the entire film is quite tame on the violence front, but the film does manage an eerie, alien atmosphere that a more direct film might not have kept up with in favor of explosive thrills. You’re not sure what the Watcher in the Woods is, and at the end of the film you’re still not sure, and that sort of faux-Lovecraftian ‘things beyond our mortal understanding’ comes off as fairly unique.

       As far as casting goes, it’s serviceable. It speaks to the state of Disney’s attempts at live action at this point that the film's biggest names, David McCallum, Carroll Baker and Bette Davis would have been good catches two decades before this movie was released, and naturally they’re barely in the thing. The rest of the cast do their job, and that’s about as much as I can say. I’ve definitely seen worse child acting in my day, and it’s a small cast so they likely had an easier time getting the performance the director wanted.

       If you’ve ever seen an episode of Rod Serling’s second show, Night Gallery, The Watcher in the Woods. Entertaining surely, but when comparing it to the stuff that came before there’s an aura of ‘cheapness’ that radiates from the thing. Like they found a mansion in the woods, great but they do 99 percent of the filming during the day so that it is as unscary as possible, and they don’t even bother making the forest seem scary outside of one scene that we never return to again. That, combined with the simplistic effects (hope you think blue flashes of light are scary), the loss of tension through lack of violence, the acting, the music (even thirty plus years ago slowed down children’s music feels cliche), it all combines into something that didn’t need to be a theatrical film, and indeed doesn’t even last the 90 minutes like its peers. Were this made 20 years later it would fit right in with the best of the Disney Channel Original Movies, but as is it sticks out, and not in the good way.

       Based on that description however, I’m going to give The Watcher in the Woods a mild recommendation. Sometimes you want to watch a horror movie but maybe you’ve got a kid in the house, or a partner who’s not good with the genre, or maybe you yourself aren’t the best with it but you want to get into it. That’s where The Watcher in the Woods comes in, as it’s the most mild of mild salsa type horror films that still has enough going for it to make it interesting. Outside of those circumstances however I don’t know if there’s much to entice a moviegoer beyond the novelty of a Disney horror, and the moviegoers of the time would seem to agree with me. There have definitely been worse movies to come out Disney’s mouse hole though, so if you’re interested go for it.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2020: Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), directed by Robert Aldrich

 

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: "Don't Worry Baby", by The Beach Boys

      The film industry is one that loves to play both sides against the middle. For every movie that plays up how fabulous Hollywood is and how show business is glamorous, there’s a movie that says that it is a lie, and that Hollywood is in fact bad and how show business is very much not glamorous. For every Singing In the Rain, there’s a Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, or Showgirls and so on and on. The natural  assumption would then be to go the middle route and assume that it’s just average, capable of experiences both good and bad, but I think that’s the sucker’s bet. Given the recent outings of several executives and talent as rapists and molesters, and given the nature of the country it inhabits, I think it’s more than fair to assume that the film industry really is an veritable charnel house for hopes and dreams and the fact that anything half-way decent ever gets made at all is something of a small miracle. The same can be said of all industries really, but seems more acute in the case of the arts, a field supposedly built on the ideas of self-expression and creativity. Aside from internet film blogging  that is, which prides itself on featuring neither of those things.

You might notice that those anti-show biz film examples I gave prominently star and feature women, and I don’t think that’s a coincidence. Aside from the aforementioned rapists and molesters, female actors also have to deal with the fact that their careers generally have a much shorter expiration date than their male counterpart. Doors that were wide open at 18 and 19 are increasingly closed when you’re pushing 40, which isn’t an easy pill to swallow if you have gotten a taste of the spotlight in the past. That stories of substance abuse, excessive cosmetic surgery, and eating disorders are so common should come as no surprise, because that is the type of environment that is supported, if not outright endorsed by the Hollywood establishment. Which sounds shitty, but only because it is in fact really shitty and unlikely to change without sweeping socioeconomic changes. Charnel house of hopes and dreams, remember?

Which brings us to today’s film, 1962’s Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, adapted from the novel by Henry Farrell, with a screenplay by Lukas Heller and directed by Robert Aldrich, who Thunderblog buffs might recall from Kiss Me Deadly. In the year 1917 there was no bigger name in entertainment than that of Baby Jane Hudson, the song & dance moppet supreme and the apple of her father’s eye, much to the chagrin of her sister Blanche. By 1935 the Baby Jane star had collapsed in favor of Blanche Hudson, the up and coming Hollywood starlet, at least until a violent incident with a car ended both their careers. These days however you don’t see much of the Hudson sisters; Jane (Bette Davis) has become a bitter, emotionally unstable alcoholic and the now-paraplegic Blanche (Joan Crawford) has become a shut-in (although not necessarily by choice). But that’s not Baby Jane’s bag, jack! She’s a star! She’s meant to be on a stage, basking in the adulation of her fans, not wasting away in some dusty old house! Which is exactly what she’s going to do, just as soon as she gets rid of some dead weight.

      Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? is one of the earlier entries I’ve seen so far of a subgenre I’ve dubbed invalid thrillers, for lack of a better term. Basically films wherein the protagonist is incapacitated at the start of the story and subsequently tasked with surviving a dangerous situation, thus giving otherwise mundane tasks an increased sense of tension than they would otherwise have. Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window is perhaps the most famous example of what I’m talking about here, although much of that film is about unraveling the mystery and attempting to entrap the criminal. Baby Jane on the other hands settles firmly on the more ‘psychological’ side of things, emotional manipulations, acts of torture, and so on. If you’ve ever seen Misery, or the hundreds of Misery parodies and pastiches that followed, you’ve got some idea of what you’re in for with this film here.

      As was the case with Misery, Baby Jane is a film that is carried on the backs of its cast. Victor Buono makes his proper introduction in this film, who you might recall as King Tut from the Adam West Batman series or the face you picture in your mind’s eye when you imagine a fat Jason Siegel, but the ones you came to see are Crawford and Davis. Both veterans of the silver screen by the year 1962, winners and nominees of multiple Academy Awards, and both actors who were no doubt feeling Hollywood’s dagger pressing against their back at this stage in their career, putting in the work that proved that they hadn’t lost a step. Particularly in the case of Bette Davis; Crawford does great work as Blanche, the frazzled, frail victim, but there’s so much meat on that Baby Jane bone that Davis chews to bits. Her portrayal of Baby Jane Hudson is a Batman rogue before that really meant something, and considering the Batman: The Animated Series would eventually introduce a villain named ‘Baby Doll’, I don’t think I’m the only one who thought so. On the one hand she’s a spiteful, vindictive harridan, capable of acts of great malice with no sense of remorse. Yet flip the coin and she’s a child, or rather an adult desperately trying to recapture her childhood, the only time in her life when she was happy, the only time she felt loved and the world seemed to make sense. She’s loathsome but at the same so pathetic that you can’t help but pity her. A tragic villain played to perfection, it’s no wonder that she would eventually get a Best Actress nomination for the role. That she didn’t win and that it would prove to be her last ever Best Actress nomination is a shame, even though she was one of the most prolific players in the best acting nomination game at that point, because the more I stew on it the more fascinated I become with it. A bit of a slow burn but then really kicks your ass into gear.

      As wild as Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? can get though, there’s something...personable about it that Misery lacks. Now I’ve only caught some of that film so I can’t make any in depth comparisons, but Misery has always had a bit of a pretentious air about it. A novelist writing a novel about how it’s so hard being a rich and successful novelist because some people like your work TOO much and get obsessive about it, and then they made it a movie. Not exactly relatable. The personal lives of Golden Age Hollywood actresses might seem at first to be the same here, but the Hollywood aspect isn’t really the focus of Baby Jane, it’s just a good set piece. Really the film is about these sisters who were set against each other from the very beginning, and how that resentment and bitterness rippled outwards and drastically altered the entire course of their lives, and that to this day they’ve trapped themselves in this quagmire of toxicity and familial obligation. Because if they didn’t have each other, they’d have no one. I think the film tends to present things a bit more one-sided than how I’ve described it, but there are definitely points throughout the film where it shows that neither woman is without sin. Which I like, it adds a layer of depth to the story beyond whatever morbid fascination there is in watching the early 60s equivalent of  torture porn. From a simple thriller to a Shakespearean tragedy.

      Just about the only thing I didn’t care for all that much is the score, composed by DeVol. Typical orchestral fare for the time, and I do love “I’ve Written A Letter to Daddy” as a leitmotif, but occasionally it feels like it has two gears for every case: Twilight Zone drama and My Mother The Car cheeze. Scenes that don’t seem all that dramatic are suddenly very dramatic, and the lighthearted moments feel like Lucille Ball is about to step in from off-screen, that sort of thing. It tap dances along the line between drama and melodrama, and not only on the side that I think it intended.

      Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? is an easy recommendation from me. Loved the story, loved the acting, and it feels like a novelty to have a movie starring older women, about older women, that’s something besides Steel Magnolias or what have you. If you liked Kiss Me Deadly, if you liked Psycho and other Hitchcock works, then I think you’ll get a kick out of this movie. And while you’re leaving to go watch this fine film, don’t forget to stop at the lobby and pick up your very own life-sized King Thunderbird doll, only 3.95 each! Sure to bring a smile to your face and a financial burden on your family.