No, Not the Wolfman! The Other One. In the Cape.

I’ve seen countless American horror movies, dozens of Italian and English, several Spanish, at least two Australian, and one Irish. But I do believe I've now seen my first Swedish horror film.

“Vargtimmen” (“Hour of the Wolf”), an Ingmar Bergman film originally released in 1968, doesn't have anything to do with wolves. The title refers to the time of day, around 3:00 a.m., when people tend to die. So if you don't sleep at night, you might be okay.  Or at least that's what tortured artist Johan Borg (Max Von Sydow, of course) believes, and yet that also might be what drove him mad. Or maybe he wasn't crazy. Maybe it was all true.

This classic frame story (present-flashback-present) is one of the freakiest horror films I've ever seen. And I'm an Argento fan. It's freaky because it's so creepy, a word that gets thrown around a lot, but when your skin slinks off your body for a few laps around the living room while you're watching a movie, it's hard to find an appropriate synonym. I could say "ghoulish," and that would fit, as would "macabre" and "sinister." Each of these fright hues is represented in "Hour of the Wolf," but overall, this film was truly shudder-provoking, so I must go with "creepy."

It starts off a bit slow. Johan's wife Alma (Liv Ullmann, of course) is being interviewed by a filmmaker who has come to document Johan's strange disappearance.  She speaks directly into the camera for quite a while (it is Swedish), and makes a point of saying she and her husband were happy when they first came to the island. Then she hesitates, as if she's not exactly sure they really were, even though she repeats it, and they appear to be when we enter the flashback.

As the story unfolds, Johan tells Alma about some frightening characters he's seen when he's been out painting and sketching, and I am thoroughly hooked. Scared, too. He doesn't want to go to sleep, so he asks Alma to tell him a story. By way of narrative, she wonders aloud about something a friend had told her, that when a man and a woman have been together for many years, they begin to resemble one another. Not just in appearance, but in mindset, so that they even begin to think the same thoughts.

This is the heart of the film; Alma cannot be sure if his insanity caused her to become insane during their last night together, before he wanders off for the last time, or if he wasn't totally insane, that some of the unrealities occurred.

Being knocked off balance is a specialty of Mr. Bergman's.  But this was tilted-room-on-acid off balance.  The film at times makes you question your own sanity.  As in other Bergman films, it puts the viewer in the position of having to examine herself, uncomfortably, closely.  I can imagine how popular it would be with existentialists.  But you don't have to be one to appreciate this bizarre trip into the mind of a madman who seems all too familiar.

Scream All You Want

No one can hear you. Or is that just in space?

Horror Hallelujah! I do love me some horror. I watch it, read it, write it, occasionally eat it (but only by accident -- or on a dare), and now I'm writing about it. I've been a horror fan since the age of ten, when, after watching "Dracula" with my brother when my mom wasn't home, I awoke to his hot breath on my neck, and a pair of glow-in-the-dark fangs in his mouth. I was super mad, but after that, I pretty much sought out the scares. Go figure.

Soon, I was sneaking to my brother's bedroom door, sitting in the shadows, listening to our babysitter relate to him the plot of the latest "Night Gallery" episode. She'd already read me some dopey softcore fairy tale, telling me to go to sleep, not to listen to the story she would tell my brother because it would give me nightmares. Nightmares? So what? I wanted to know what twisted things the Rod Serling team had come up with this time.

Then I made sure the fairy tales I read were the authentic, gory Grimm stories. There were stories of cannibalism in there, for god's sake -- how could I not read them? For my third grade report on a current event, I chose a Newsweek story on Idi Amin, who was supposedly a real-life cannibal. I called it "Throne of Blood," and received an A-.

Deeper and deeper I dove in. "The Omen," "Blood and Black Lace," Stephen King...Oh, yes, I became a King fan in early junior high. Carrie was the first book of his I read, the best thing a scrawny, geeky, pariah of a tweenie could read. I grew out of the gawky phase and graduated to more mature subject matter when I read The Shining. That's when I found out what true horror writing is about: externalizing the nightmares of the psyche.

Although it's my favorite movie -- not just horror movie, movie period -- I can't recall when I first saw "Rosemary's Baby." Maybe it just feels like I've always known that movie. I believe it might have been in pre-adolescence, but I can't be sure. All I know is that anything having to do with Satan scared the crap out of me at the time, and this had my flesh doing a line dance all up and down my bones. I took the book out of the library and read it, and the movie is quite faithful. I read the book again a couple of years ago, and I wanted a creepy sequel, which never really came. Oh, Ira Levin wrote one, but it wasn't the sequel I would've written. I have a vague memory of a bad TV movie adaptation of it. I still imagine that I will write my own continuation of the tale (if I wouldn't get sued for it).

Somehow, real imagination seems to dry up for these authors and filmmakers the second+ time around. It definitely happened with "The Omen." "The Omen II" is great because of its unintentional camp worth, and I don't even remember "The Omen III," although there must have been one, because there was "The Omen IV." And Sam Neill is wonderful in it (he's wonderful in everything), very cold and sociopathic as any good anti-Christ should be. But there's so much more they could have done with the Anti-Christ rising in power. He was gaining substantial ground in politics in "The Final Conflict" (IV's subtitle), then he's basically dethroned before he ever really gets anywhere scary enough to demonstrate a serious threat to the world, which is what ought to happen for maximum screamage. Make him President, I say. Or Vice President. I could see that. I almost feel as if I have seen that.

And that's what's really had me screaming for that past...oh, seven and a half years? I wasn't alone, either. And who heard us? That's right. No one.