 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
October 12, 2006
|
|||||
|
|
|
|||
|
October 12, 2006 |
|||||
 |
|
Professors want to scare you silly at ‘Celluloid Scream’
When the movie screen gets dim, the music sinks, and you can’t see what lurks around the corner, film buffs Jerry Holt and Jon Saari are certain our minds are hard at work creating the ghastliest ghosts and goriest goblins to rival any produced on screen. But some films elicit fear of the unknown better than others, and in the spirit of Halloween, the two Antioch University McGregor professors have chosen some of the most terrifying classic horror films ever, to present at their “Scary Movie Fest for the Thinking Person,” otherwise known as “The Celluloid Scream” next week at the Little Art Theatre. From Monday, Oct. 16, through Friday, Oct. 13, Saaristein, the mechanical green version of Saari, and Holtula, the black-caped version of Holt, will pre-spook the audience with haunting lectures followed by a film, beginning at 3 p.m. each afternoon at the theater. On Friday, at the same time, McGregor graduate student Ivy Roberts will show her own short horror film and then introduce her favorite horror film of all time, a surprise she hopes will bait a crowd. The “diabolic duo” of Holt, dean of Liberal Studies at McGregor, and Saari, a professor in the Individualized Liberal and Professional Studies program, will use the series to address the historic and cultural significance of terror in the cinema as part of the McGregor Institute for Intellectual Development (MIIND) that began in June. The series of week-long seminars, modeled after the Chautauqua Institute in New York, is open to students and community members who wish to engage in educational experiences. From an analytical point of view, according to Holt, fear comes from the unknown. In his opinion, modern horror films show audiences way too much explicit blood and gore to truly terrify. That is why he and Saari have chosen to screen the classic horror films, the ones that lead, suggest, imply and leave the core of the horror to the audience’s terrific imagination. Saari will open the scarefest on Monday afternoon with the 1956 classic, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, directed by Don Siegel. Saari first saw the film when he was 10 years old and became fascinated, he said, with the thought of his soul being taken over by aliens in his sleep. It was later that he learned to respect the film as an allegory against McCarthyism, another sensation of that era that was “scaring the hell out of America,” he said. Next up on Tuesday is Holt’s pick, The Innocents, a black and white British film directed by Jack Clayton in 1961. Deborah Kerr plays the governess of two children at a remote estate, where mysterious inhabitants cause Kerr (and viewers) to wonder if the ghosts in the house are real or her own Freudian apparitions. In the context of film history, Holt said, The Innocents was made at the end of the romantic period, when realism began to dominate the screen. The blur between the two traditions further obscures the mystery of the haunting film. Wednesday evening, otherwise known as church night, Saari presents the 1983 innovation, “Christine,” about a 1958 Plymouth Fury that seduces an outcast teenage boy and joins him in terrorizing the townspeople. John Carpenter, who directed and wrote the score for this auteur film, adapted for screen the original story by Stephen King. Thursday is Holt’s final film, Don’t Look Now, a 1973 film directed by Nicolas Roeg about a husband and wife who travel to Venice and begin to see fleeting images of what they believe is their daughter who drowned the previous summer. The film questions the role of religion between God and man, Holt said, and it also contains one of his favorite love scenes and promises what he describes as one of the greatest, most horrifying final scenes in the history of film. On Friday, Roberts will present her film titled Mirror Stage, a grotesque portrayal of the ritual rights of passage of two teenagers negotiating the boundaries between reality and the supernatural world. The appeal, even the compulsion, of watching horror films and having the “living daylights scared out” of you, is curious, said Roberts, who believes it allows people to experience indirectly a transition such as death, which is normally quite inaccessible. Holt and Saari waxed philosophic on the horror film phenomenon as well. From their perspective, classic horror represents fear of the unknown, the darker side of God, Holt said. Neither man has much tolerance for the overly demonstrative slice and dice genre that commercial films use for shock and sensation. They agreed it’s what you don’t see lurking in the shadows between dreams and memory that is truly terrifying. All six films of “The Celluloid Scream” will be shown from a DVD and projected onto the big screen. Admission for each lecture and film is $6, or three showings for $15 and five showings for $20. Group prices are also available. Free popcorn will be offered to those who arrive in costume. Contact: lheaton@ysnews.com
|
|
