Seytan

     So, here's the thing... I actually did not know that Turkey had a habit in the '70s and '80s of completely remaking American movies because it was cheaper than getting a print shipped over from the United States.  That's just not something I ever thought would be that big of a problem, at least not so much that you'd have to completely remake the entire movie shot for shot, with all new sets, actors, and "special effects".  Nevertheless, that's what they did, and it was also apparently an easy way to culturally appropriate motion pictures for the Turkish People so that subtitles wouldn't always be such a bother and so that they could have a slice of cinema that they could call "theirs", even though it was a blatantly obvious plagiarism at its very worst.  This was done with tons of American movies, including Superman, Jaws, Indiana Jones, Star Wars, Rambo, etc.  And being the huge success that it was, The Exorcist fell into the category of movies that simply must be remade into a cheap ripoff and shown in every theater in Istanbul.  They renamed it Seytan, which means "devil" in Turkish.

     Now, one would think the first question that arises would be "How can a cinematic masterpiece like The Exorcist be completely remade"?  Well, remakes happen all the time, and although it hasn't been officially remade...yet, The Exorcist definitely has more than its share of sequels and ripoffs.  The biggest ripoff of The Exorcist that I've seen to date has got to be the movie Abby, a blaxploitation film made in 1974, the same year that Seytan was made.  The Exorcist came out in 1973, so these people wasted no time cashing in.  And though it's a very obvious remake of The Exorcist, only with Black people, Abby still has a sense of originality to it that Seytan has absolutely none of.  While the demon in Abby got changed to a jive-talking sex demon and the exorcism took place in a discotheque, in Seytan truly nothing was changed.  The priest was changed to a doctor but that was only the cultural appropriation at work.  The Catholic overtones had to be changed to Islam in order for the storyline to be relevant I guess.  Some of the more graphic elements in The Exorcist were tamed down and the language was a little less harsh, but I really think that was because it was just too embarrassing for the actors to recreate.  How Linda Blair did it in the first place was a miracle in itself.  

     Even though it sounds like a boring endeavor with an equally boring product, and trust me, in many ways it is, it still has a cult following because of the sheer oddity of it.  A curiosity piece that still has to be seen to be believed.  The "special effects" that are recreated are a special treat.  The head spinning scene was among my favorites.  The vomit still looks like pea soup but has a tinge of blue to it.  And the scene where Gul (simply Turkish for "girl") takes a leak at the top of the stairs had me in stitches because the little girls' legs were so hairy that I really thought it was part of the special effects, even though it wasn't.  As of now, Seytan can be found on YouTube, but finding a version with English subtitles is rare.  A copy was released on DVD in 2007 with English subtitles, but the quality of the print is downright deplorable.  An English dubbed version exists but given the language that exists in the original, repeating toned-down versions of it just adds to the lunacy of what's being seen.  

     Much like when Abby was released, when William Friedkin found out that his movie had been remade/ripped off AGAIN, he wasn't happy, but like all things, a bell can't be unrung.  Once a movie is made, it's gonna get out there, no matter who you have to sue to try and stop it.  And now we can find it on free platforms to enjoy making fun of at our leisure.  Honestly, if you've already seen The Exorcist though, you don't even need the subtitles, you already know exactly what's going on and will find every single scene completely foreign yet strangely it's exactly the same.

     

     I'd heard about this quirky little gem when searching for mockumentaries, and even though it was a bit hard to locate, it didn't disappoint.  I always love a good backstory and this one has it in spades.  It was meant to be just a bit of Halloween fun by the BBC, but it ultimately turned out to be a complete disaster.  It caused quite a commotion when it was shown and as a result, the BBC hasn't aired it since.  You see, even though it had all the hallmarks of a mockumentary and even had a disclaimer at the beginning letting everyone know that it was faked for entertainment purposes, a lot of people took it seriously and were subsequently traumatized by thinking that it was real and there were even a few fatalities involved.  Apparently, most people tuned in a few seconds too late and missed the disclaimer, therefore believing that what they were viewing was the real thing.  Having well-known BBC personalities starring in it made the film all the more believable and realistic, and being billed as a "live broadcast" it had audiences convinced that what they were viewing was happening in real-time, even having a working phone number that you could call into, therefore adding about as much realism that the BBC could come up with.

     The story is pretty basic actually.  Just what you might expect from a ghost mockumentary.  For those of you familiar with the Enfield Poltergeist Haunting, you'll definitely see some major similarities and Ghostwatch was surely inspired by the case.  A family consisting of a single mother and two young daughters are being tormented by a ghost they call "Mr. Pipes", a name given to the ghost because it makes noises like the clanking of old pipes.  The family has also claimed that the previous owner died by suicide in the home and whose corpse was soon eaten by his own cats.  They claim that the bulk of the haunting seems to reside in the basement, said place of the previous owners' death and where he became Fluffy's dinner when the vittle tin went dry.  Amazingly, this area becomes known as the "glory hole".  No really, that's what they actually call it.  Some other creepy stuff went down in the area too, something about a cult nearby, some unsolved murders, and I think even a baby farm.

     The case has already gained much media attention and a TV station has decided that it would be a great idea to do a live broadcast of a ghost-hunting exhibition at the home on Halloween night.  Showcasing all the cool equipment they have with infrared cameras and microphones that can catch the faintest of ghostly whispers, etc.  The reporters are so sweetly innocent that you find yourself really wanting them to experience something terrifying that'll scar them for the rest of their lives and destroy their TV careers forever.  Or is that just me?  The main hosts of the show who are keeping tabs on everything from back at the station studio and a few of the reporters were well-known TV personalities, lending quite a bit of credence to the reality of this being an actual live broadcast.  

      In the studio along with the show's host is a paranormal investigator who gives us the lowdown on hauntings, poltergeists, and supernatural phenomena.  She displays broken crockery that has shattered under extreme temperature change which apparently can only be done by a ghost and some other video tidbits proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that ghosts are a reality.  And though presented with basic debunking facts, she insists that spectral apparitions are common and that the haunting being investigated by the TV station is real and will be proven so by this presentation.  

     The ghost watch starts off pretty tame with only a bump or clang here and there that is soon discovered to be something simple and harmless, but soon weird things begin to happen.  A mysterious wet spot appears on the ceiling, the TV becomes staticky, and one of the girls starts behaving strangely.  The TV crew is guided through the house and told gruesome stories about the history of the property when a loud clanging can be heard.  Upon looking for the source of the sound though, it's discovered that one of the young girls is doing it on purpose and faking the ghost sounds, throwing the credibility of the whole haunting into question.  But just when everyone is about to give up on the whole thing and all look pretty embarrassed, the oldest daughter ends up with mysterious cuts all over her face and has become almost catatonic.  The enraged mother declares that this couldn't possibly be faked and that the haunting is real.  With new evidence to support the case, the ghost watch continues and more unexplained creepy things begin to happen, each more inexplicable than the last, when finally in the midst of utter chaos, the studio loses contact with the crew at the house.  

     The situation back at the studio is becoming crazy too, with poltergeist activity occurring there as well.  The paranormal investigator that has been co-hosting the show tells us that by having viewers call in and share their ghost stories they have formed a sort of huge televised seance where ghosts can now travel into the studio and possibly into the viewers' own homes through their TVs.  Cameras at the station have begun to flicker, papers are flying around, and the main host appears to be just wandering around and possibly possessed.  All of this is presented in a pretty realistic way and I can see how this would look convincing to someone who didn't catch the disclaimer at the beginning of the show that lets you know that this is most definitely for entertainment purposes only.

     Anyway, the show was a hit, only not exactly as planned, or maybe too well planned depending on how you look at it.  You see, the general audience can be quite gullible, and the people who freaked out over the War of the Worlds broadcast still exist, and pretty much the same thing happened here.  Having actual well-known television personalities involved in the plot lent a huge amount of credibility to the broadcast and I'm sure that being shown on Halloween night added to the anxiety people already feel when just a little bit spooked.  And a great many people in the audience thought it was all real.  There was an actual call line that went with the show where people could share their own personal ghost stories, but instead, the line was bombarded with calls from people wanting to know if this was really happening or not.  So much so that the line got clogged with callers and most people were redirected to a busy signal, adding to the panic already beginning to occur.

     A public admission of the show's inauthenticity and an apology by the network couldn't contain the damage already done.  Audience members lost their minds in the typical fashion and thought every pipe clank or board creak was a ghost, a poltergeist, a demon, or basically the devil himself.  People sued for developing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and there was even a suicide.  A teenage boy suffering from mental health problems apparently seemed to prefer the idea of being a ghost himself and took his life citing Ghostwatch as the inspiration for his undertaking.  The BBC has obviously never aired the broadcast again and doesn't even like to talk about it, considering it a true embarrassment.  A documentary called Ghostwatch: Behind the Curtains was produced in 2012 and chronicles the making of Ghostwatch and the subsequent public reaction that followed.  After watching so many found footage films that were done well and were quite believable due to clever advertising like The Blair Witch Project, it's hard to be impressed by one, but a film like Ghostwatch is actually better if you know the trivia behind the film before watching.  When you know that it caused such a crazy reaction from such a huge amount of the viewing audience and that there were lawsuits and actual deaths involved, the movie itself carries a lot more gravity.

     
 

 

     So I was browsing through some old cult films that had made their way onto YouTube and came across this little gem from 1979.  I can't believe I made it this long without finding this film and making it a part of my collection here on Cultarama, because it truly deserves a coveted spot amongst the best of the best.  It boasts a faded star in Chuck Conners, who had wanted to reinvent himself and leave his square-jawed cowboy persona in the past.  A soon-to-be semi-famous, yet mostly topless star in Tanya Roberts, who for all her physical endowments and icy blue eyes cannot act her way out of a wet paper bag.  And a young professionally trained actress named Jocelyn Jones, who has gone on to be what many consider a film industry treasure and has taught some of the most accomplished actors out there, in addition to being a #1 bestselling author.  How she found her way into this freakshow of a movie is anyone's guess.

     It begins as your typical "omg, we have a flat tire, guess we'll have to stop at some desolate location and get murdered" setup with your average group of young and pretty victims.  Shortly before our new victims arrive, we get to see the bizarre murder of a previous victim who also picked the wrong roadside tourist attraction to attempt a call for help when dealing with a faulty car.  He enters a room and is confronted with laughing mannequins and poltergeist-like activity with bottles being thrown at him etc, until a flying pipe finally seals his fate.  Stephen King himself praised this terrifying opening scene in his nonfiction book about horror films Danse Macabre, and I definitely concur with Mr. King, it is truly intense and sets the tone for the next hour and twenty minutes.

     As our attractive visitors make it to Slausen's Lost Oasis roadside attraction, they neglect to notice a sign that says the attraction is closed to the public.  Despite this, when they arrive at The Lost Oasis they are greeted by Mr. Slausen who owns the place.  After being caught skinny dipping in a small lake on the property, the female members of the group (why is it always the women who skinny dip, are men in horror films not allowed to do this?) follow him into the attraction where he shows them his collection of animatronic mannequins and other nightmare fuel he's surrounded himself with.  He then pulls some dialogue straight out of Psycho by telling them that since the new highway has been built, no one comes to see his creepy collection.  Yeah, that's why.  When asked about the mansion behind the museum, he tells our young ladies that his brother Davy lives there and that he lives in the museum.  Eileen, the sassiest of the bunch, decides that Davy is the better choice of a helper than Mr. Slausen, being that he lives in a mansion and all, strikes out on her own and is therefore the first killed.  She is attacked by a combination killer that resembles the perfect marriage between Leatherface and Michael Myers with Carrie-like telekinetic abilities and finishes her off while all the mannequins laugh.

     We then have Becky, played by Tanya Roberts, going to look for her friend, making her the obvious second victim.  She finds Eileen but it appears she's been turned into a mannequin herself.  Hard to tell since the entire place is jam-packed with them.  Eileen turns around revealing her new plastic facade, scaring Becky in what is the worst jump scare reaction ever caught on film.  You'd think instead of leaping towards her, she just turned around and was like "Hey girl, killer or something around, might wanna head for the car". She gets caught and is taken to the cellar and tied up, where Jerry the only guy in the group is also tied up along with a girl who's evidently been captured and tortured for some time now and is just praying to hurry up and meet her maker, cuz she's over it.  "Plasterface" goes on about how he's Mr. Slausen's much more handsome brother, yet comes off completely gay about it.  The doll mask and blonde wig he's wearing don't help.  He's also evidently telekinetic and can move things.  

     Molly, the only girl left and the last surviving victim if there ever was one, escapes only to learn that Plasterface and Mr. Slausen are the same man with a split personality in yet another Psycho reference.  In addition to Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is invoked many times as well.  Both stories originate from the story of Ed Gein, and the similarities cannot be denied, only cheaply copied.  There's even a scene with Molly (the blonde) running through the woods yelling "Jerry!!" which is a scene taken verbatim from Texas Chainsaw.  Oh yeah, Becky gets killed with an ax, anyway...  

     Mr. Slausen has by now taken a keen liking to Molly and wants her to replace his dead bride.  Even though he confesses that he killed her and his own brother, cuz they were "whoring around" behind his back.  Personally, I wouldn't miss someone like that, but that's just me.  Mr. Slausen puts a doll face on Molly and smooches her pretty hard in what is a most uncomfortable scene before Jerry comes to the rescue.  But has he really?

     Molly cries out for Jerry to kill Mr. Slausen but he then gets his arm removed, then his head, etc, revealing that he too is another mannequin made to look alive by our telekinetic villain.  While Mr. Slausen is enjoying freaking Molly out to the fullest, she somehow dares to grab an ax and hit him in the neck, effectively killing him and all the laughing mannequins, who with their creepy oversized mouths, FINALLY shut the hell up.  The next morning we see Molly flying down the highway (guess she got the tire fixed, good for her) with all her mannequin friends in the backseat.  A look of fresh insanity on her face as her ratty blonde hair flaps in the cool breeze.

     The trivia for this film was abundant, but I'll only highlight the better ones.  The score, which the director hated but used anyway because it cost an entire 1/6 of the film's total budget, was done by the composer who scored Carrie only a few years prior.  Being that it's about a telekinetic misfit I guess is just a coinkinkidink.  Horror scream queen Linnea Quigly makes a brief cameo as a mannequin, but being that they all look the same, I still have no idea which one was her.  Chuck Conners insisted on using his kids' names in the credits for the actor who played Davy because no one wanted to give away the twist ending.  All in all, I thought it was a great film.  It had its flaws like every movie but the goofs were actually rather rare.  The premise of the telekinetically controlled mannequins and dolls was a great touch when creating a film experience destined to give people nightmares for years.  Yours truly included, I hate dolls.

     So, we come to that age-old decision, is it camp, classic, and basically does it fit into the archetype cult film status that we've all come to know and love.  Usually, big-budget films that were very popular and did well in the theater don't necessarily fit under a cult classic label, but some stories actually do it quite well. Dracula is a little different in that it's one of the few multilayered posts I've done, something that takes up a whole universe and has a mythos to it.  Many horror movies with all their remakes, sequels, prequels, miniseries, and alternate storylines also have that air of existing within its own universe, much like the earlier movies by John Waters starring Divine had their own connected universe as well.  Similar.   

     Anyway, I had just finished the Bram Stoker original novel and fondly remembered the fancy remake starring Winona Ryler and Gary Oldman, but how long had it been since I saw the original 1931 Tod Browning film version of Dracula with the vampire legend himself Bela Lugosi?  So I gave it a rewatch and I guess you could say it was classy, but only by the standards of the time, otherwise it was quite campy.  Movies in general were still relatively new and campy crap was always gonna sneak in there somewhere.  From the cheap bats on strings to armadillos being used at Castle Dracula instead of rats (in Transylvania, seriously?).   Having seen Bela in his most revered and prized lifetime role (in death too, he was buried in his Dracula costume and cape), it's not a far cry to see him drifting into cheap Ed Wood films.  Even though we loved them for their absurdity, it was sad to know that it was mostly because of Bela's heroin addiction which had caused him to have to work well past retirement age while being in terrible health as the only real reason that he starred in them.  Bela's Dracula/overlord role in Ed's Glen or Glenda, a movie that couldn't decide whether to be a horror movie or a serious attempt at explaining transexualism, is totally a treasure to behold.  And for all his efforts to try and provide his idol and friend a job, Ed Wood tried his very best, too bad it always came out has his very worst.  Even though Bela's acting isn't all that great in Dracula, it was just such a sexy role that I think most people really didn't care and it propelled him into super stardon, at least for a short while.  When stars fall on hard times, some turn to drugs and alcohol, some turn to doing porn or Ed Wood films.  Bela kinda did both...but with a completely alluring Hungarian accent.

     Bela carried his own without a doubt, but when it came to acting Renfield stole the show.  I mean that laugh was creepiness personified.  The rest of the cast faded into the background.  For as much a part as she plays in the book, I always expect the character of Lucy Westenra to be as over-the-top girlie girl as possible and for Mina Harker to be the quintessential woman of virtue, but the 1931 film missed these two character opportunities by a mile.  The rest...meh.  I much more enjoyed the culty camp factor, which was plentiful.

     In the 1992 remake, both the original movie and the book were merged pretty seamlessly into a whole new film with the exception of one huge change.  The secret romance between Mina Harker and Count Dracula.  It may not have been anywhere in the book or original movie, but it made for a much more interesting love story, albeit an atypical one, but still had tremendous merit and made for some delicious dialogue and quotes that will live on in infamy.  "I've crossed oceans of time to find you". You so crazy you coulda jus called.  Personally, I really liked the remake and it's new plot twist.  Something about turning Mina from a goody two shoes into a vampire slut cheating on her husband was much more appealing, especially since Jonathan Harker was a bit of a real estate bore anyway.  The cinematography and costumes were well worth the overall effort, which I believe took away several awards for each.  

     Overall, I think the book was a bit simplistic, but it had a unique tone to it throughout.  It's separated into three basic parts.  Jonathan Harker's initial experience with Count Dracula in Transylvania, the death and resurrection of Lucy Westenra, and the final showdown between Jonathan Harker, Professor Van Helsing (plus a few extra henchmen) and Count Dracula.  The ending is rather anticlimactic and the characters are a little one sided, but the imagery and symbolism are what make it a classic among classics.  The baptism of blood sequence in the book where Mina drinks the spurting blood of Count Dracula, then bitches about how unclean she feels afterwards even though she seemed to enjoy it, just screams of regretted fellatio.  And then of course in the days of HIV, the whole taboo of unclean blood received through a form of sexual pleasure takes on a brand new symbolism.  It's metaphoric horror themes like these that make a classic endurable throughout the ages, and Dracula is one of the best.  Campy, classy, and very cult, on many levels, both in writing and in film.