The Changeling (1980)
The
Changeling (1980)
When I was but a
wee lad, Horror immensely popular, but outside the movie industry no one seemed
to know how to market it. Supernatural fiction in bookstores was shelved in the
Mystery section. As I was a fan of Stephen King, the absurdity of this was
obvious. Of his first four novels, “Carrie” (1974), “’Salem's Lot” (1975), “The
Shining” (1977) and the “The Stand” (1978), though contained crimes a plenty,
only “’Salem’s Lot” bore much structural similarity to what we would normally
define as a Mystery. Of the others, both “Carrie” and “The Shining” bore
comparison with a number of classic Thrillers (especially Noirs) that explored essentially
decent Protagonists decend into Criminality, but those have always been a
challenging, rare-ish breed of book. Today, if a non-Supernatural Thiller explored
the same themes a King, it would be a toss-up if the label would be “Mystery”
or “Horror.” That was King’s first history-making achievement -- he didn’t
create Horror fiction, but he did, almost single-handedly, create the Horror Genre
in popular literature.
At the
tender age, though I recognized the absurdity, I didn’t have a long-view
understanding as to why. This brings us to King’s second history making
achievement -- he proved that there were vast realms of Horror that there was
an audience for that publishing left untapped. You see, King was grand-fathered
into “Mystery” from an era when the only acceptable tale of Supernatural Horror
was the traditional Ghost Story, which is structured closely along the lines of
that of the traditional Cozy-Mystery. They could sit side-by-side on the same
shelf without absurdity, and were in fact often written by the same people
(Note: Author Nora Roberts Ghost Stories are still sometimes shelved like that
today). King was among the first American writers in about three generations
who was able to detach the Fantastic from the more popular Science Fiction
market (it was a bold move by his first publisher, Doubleday, not to market the
first novel, “Carrie,” as SF).
What was the
source of King’s great insight about what America wanted, but wasn’t getting?
Well, among other things, he watched movies.
The
traditional Ghost Story is a mystery, and best demonstrated by Dorothy
Macardle’s novel “Uneasy Freehold” (1941) which became what was perhaps the
first real Masterpiece Haunted House film “The Uninvited” (1944). There is a Murder
to solve which is intertwined with an Inexplicable to solve, there is Detective
work, uncovering of Family Secrets and Scandals, because the Mystery and Ghost are
one in the same, best expressed by horror novelist Anne Rice, “hauntings have
nothing to do with ghosts finally; they have to do with the menace of
memory."
Film seemed
to have lost faith in the menace of memory by the late 1970s, purging itself of
that breed menace and exploring others. This was demonstrated in the fact that
fewer-and-fewer Crime films could be considered proper Mystery films; there was
a lull in Agatha Christie adaptations, and when the revival of her filming
came, in the early 1980s, TV started to trump the cinema in the Crime Genre.
And in Horror film, gothic trimmings began to disappear, leading Actor Vincent
Price to look for other types of dramatic roles. Also, the
Christie-and-British-detective-influenced Italian Gaillo body-count film was
steadily giving way to be more economically-plotted American Slasher Film.
In the
process, we lost something, because a great Ghost Story/Haunted House film is
something deeper and richer than even the very best of the Monster movies and
more violent explorations of our relationship with humanities Evil.
“The
Changeling” arrived at a near-low pint. The prior year, 1979, did have a
popular Haunted House film, “Amityville Horror”; in the year of this film,
1980, there was a King adaptation, “The Shining,” would at least embrace the Haunted
House’s tropes though in no way a traditional Ghost Story; but the real story
was how Horror cinema saw itself being redefined in 1980 by the indifferently
made, utterly moronic and pointless “Friday the 13th” whose vile
influence hangs over us even today. A rule of thumb is that a film is only
truly successful when it pulls in 2 ½ times it budget, “The Changeling” failed
to do that, though it didn’t really fail ($12 million worldwide v a $6.6 mill
budget), while the risible “Friday the 13th” with a much lower
budget, pulled in upwards of 72-times the initial investment.
“Amityville
Horror” appears to have a two-fold connection to “The Changeling.” First, I
have no doubt the success of the former helped in securing financing for the
latter. Second, both are fictional accounts of wholly bullshit allegedly true Ghost
Stories. “Amityville...” made “based on a true story” that the center of their
marketing campaign despite the very public debunking of the Jay Anson’s and
George and Kathy Lutz’s transparent hoaxing. “The Changeling’s” story was
inspired by the legends surrounding the Henry Treat Rogers Mansion in Denver,
Colorado, but in this case the filmmakers and distributors chose not to be
tacky and treated the fiction just as that, fiction. I see integrity in that.
Much of what
follows concerns the audience’s indifference to the traditional Ghost Story, Haunted
House film, but fear not, we would eventually learn it how to make a good
haunting again. In Japan, in 1998, Hideo Nakata’s “Ringu” (1998) created a
whole new sub-Genre of traditional-leaning Ghost Stories that swept the whole
of Asian cinema and finally impacted America. In 1999 three American films,
“The Sixth Sense,” “The Blair Witch Project,” and “Stir of Echoes,” had real
audience impact. But in late 1970s and through the ‘80s there was a long fallow
period which started about the time American people soured on the Vietnam War,
Rock and Roll got confused with something Revolutionary, and Watergate
trivialized traditional Eeriness much like the rise of Adolf Hitler trivialized
the classic-era Universal Monsters generations prior.
This film
concerns John Russell (George C. Scott), a Composer who is Haunted by the un-Supernatural.
In the stunningly executed opening scene, a mundane complication escalates to
an irreversible tragedy: A car breaks down on an ice-covered road. Only mildly
annoyed, Russell walks to a nearby phone-booth and calls for a tow truck. From
that vantage point he is forced to watch helplessly as his wife and child die.
I would be hard pressed to find a similar sequence of nearly so much power
(maybe the opening of “The Believers” (1987)).
John moves
to Seattle, into the magnificent Stimson-Green Mansion, to forget the past. But
once there, someone, something, trying to reach him from the Other Side. He’s
awakened every morning at exactly 6:00 a.m. by repeated pounding coming from
the pipes of the old house. An old music box in the attic room plays a song
Scott composed only that morning. One thing done very effectively in this film,
it builds Quiet Menace, and then chooses to make some specific thing REALLY
loud.
John chooses
to ignore these first few incidents, but the house’s other, Unseen Resident,
continues to demand his attention. The turning point comes in the film’s most
famous sequence -- A memento of his lost daughter, a rubber ball, comes
bouncing down the hall stairway, seemingly of its own volition. John, bound up
in a crippling Stoicism, can’t articulate the rage he feels that the past that
won’t let him go, drives to a bridge and throws the ball into a river. Once he
gets home, the same ball comes bouncing down the stairs at him again.
John
surrenders, and calls in a Medium (Helen Burns) for a Séance. The Séance gives
Russell the first clues about the Poltergeist’s identity. Important in ways he
fails to recognize, the Ghost, though that of a child, is not his daughter. The
most fateful mistake he makes his he doesn’t consider why the entity was, to
this point, so dishonest in the way it offered itself up to him. That’s when
the Mystery-novel part of this film really begins.
I got to
say, Actor Scott did a bold thing, breaking the tradition of over-acting in Ghost
movies. At first his self-control is his resistance to the Uncanny. When he
finally accepts it, he continues to distance himself from his emotions through Detective
busyness. This suggests that his out-of-touch-ness with the immediacy of all
these Impossibilities is why this smart man was so played for a pawn.
John digs
though dusty bookshelves in record halls, consults with local historians,
pieces together clues laid out by the ghost. There’s another, more modern
house, haunted by the same entity, because there’s the remains of an old well
on that property that holds the key to a now seventy-year-old Crime. Despite
all the generations that have gone by, these revelations will have consequences
on the living, notably a well-respected senator, Joseph Carmichael (Melvyn
Douglas).
It is at
this point the film falters. Watergate trivialized tradition eeriness much like
Hitler trivialized the classic era Universal monsters, and insidiously,
Watergate infected this film, causing the script to diverge from the story late
in the running. This movie is ultimately about three things--the Victimization
of an Innocent, the calling in Rage for Revenge from Beyond the Grave, and the Sins
of the father being visited upon the son. The Ghost, murdered in total
innocence, was a rightly sympathetic figure. But there comes a point when that
sympathy should’ve been withheld, because the John is being manipulated into
unwittingly enabling the punishment of Joesph - but Joesph is also Innocent, he
is being punished for something he not only didn’t do, but has no knowledge of.
Though the Guilty are dead, the Victim, also dead, cares not a lick. The Victim,
who would be truly Monstrous had the film not distracted itself, wants its
pound of flesh, and is not too picky from whom it takes it from.
Put more
simply, the film takes on a conspiratorial tone, making Innocent Joesph Guilty
for no other reason than he’s a powerful Politician, though everything else
going on says the opposite. There’s a bullying, Constitution-stomping, Policeman
(John Colicos) appearing in only one scene, serving only to make Carmichael a Villain,
and give the Ghost someone to kill (this is far too good a film to have
characters introduced for no other purpose that providing a Body-Count). After
so much exquisite story-telling, the movie suddenly turns silly.
It was
scripted by William Gray and Diana Maddox, from a story by Russell Hunter. The
music, by Rick Wilkins, is exceptional--creepy, scary, but also deeply sad.
Unusually listenable it is also unusual in that it was released on a CD years
after the film itself disappeared from theaters.
It was
directed by the eclectic and unpredictable Peter Medak, who has helmed both
triumphs and trash all across the genre landscape: the wickedly funny Satire
“The Ruling Class” (1972), a Politically Charged Historical Drama “Let Him Have
It” (1991), dumber-than-cheese Monster Movie “Species II” (1998), Martial Arts
actioner “Romeo is Bleeding” (1993), etc. He clearly loved the old house,
filling the movie with wide-angle shots making many of the interiors look
wraparound. Throughout there are wonderful shots. There’s a wicked bit were a
teenager looks through his bedroom window at the old-ruined well – cut to the
well looking back at him. Seattle (really, Vancouver, Canada, pretending to be
Seattle, USA) rarely look better, and more sinister, at the same time.
This film’s
long-term influence was greater than its initial appreciation. I already
mentioned Hideo Nakata. His films, the “Ringu” trilogy (1998 through 2005) and
“Dark Water” (2002) share the central themes of Victimized children taking
revenge on both the Guilty and the Innocent, both exploit the water-motif, and
“The Rinu” has several very specifically similar compositions. As Mr. Nakata is so clearly a
devoted student of this film and was one of the men who transformed
(read: redeemed) Horror cinema, “The Changeling” takes on a lot of historic
importance.
Trailer:
The Changeling (1980)
ORIGINAL TRAILER [HD 1080p]
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