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haptalaonI'm sketching out a new tradition, and creating a quasi "holy book" for it made up of books, films, music and so on, things which capture the mood and essence. So I'm watching/reading some potential additions, and up now is the 1969 adaptation of The Owl Service
It seems like a likely prospect: rural horror based on a children's book from the early 70s combines several factors which come up again and again on the list. Plus, Owl Service was complained about by parents on the basis it was too frightening for children.
And errrr holy smokes, the mood of the piece is midway between "porn" and "video nasty" - just like what I imagine the Exorcist or Last House on the Left to feel like.
The story is about three children cooped up together in an isolated mansion - but they've accidentally cast adults who do not pass as children at all, giving the whole thing an uncanny vibe from the off. The posh step-brother has a Kray twin/queer sexual predator vibe. The weird step-sister has been wearing nothing but a loose shirt over bare legs, and writhing in bed so far, and has the dull-eyed spaceiness of a drug-addicted sex victim on the verge of a demonic posession. A sort of Welsh Laura Palmer.
(I don't think this impression of Alison as sexual is just me, by the by; because most of the photos I can find of the show pre-uploaded online are ones of her. I feel like this might have been a Princess Leia Gold Bikini formative moment for a generation of British kids watching telly after tea.)
It's all shot in an unsettling way, those lovely 70s rich blacks and vivid colours making it look cheap, like something you're not supposed to be watching. Perhaps I've just got the horn, but it all feels disturbingly sexual to me - the writhing, the jump-cut to a half-naked man fondling the hole in a standing stone, the phallic imagery of the snooker cue or the kid standing over Alison on her bed and thrusting at the ceiling with a spear. The 70s visual trope of staging multiple bodies in frames make them seem hemmed in, brooding, over-close to one another like so:
Genre is built on expectation; we feel most comfortable watching films when we kinda "know" where we stand, what the tropes are, what the possibilities of the plot are. The image quality and the budget give it the same feel as cheaply produced, quick-buck, easy-sell genres - like porn, like video nasties, even like modern lo-fi horror cinema. I know this is based on a children's book, but the visual qualities of the show gives me the genre expectations for those other genres, and I am genuinely expecting it to explode into violence or sex at any minute. Like...
And...
That, combined with how unsettling it is as an audience member to be unsure of the genre what is watching, to be unsure of the possibilities and pathways a plot might follow. Is horrifying.
(I think I'm additionally being influenced by the visual association between Alison and bright red. In The Sixth Sense, this was used as a visual cue for ghosts. And I saw Sixth Sense when I was very young, and it had a huge impact on me - both in that it was the first film I saw and understood was "good", was "directed" and "artistic", rather than being a thing you pass time with, and the fact I'm still talking about it with my therapists two decades later, and occasionally take running leaps into the bed. Cheers, M Night. Thank you for everything, the good and the bad.)
Anyway, I don't know what the hell I'm watching, but I am l o v i n g it. It's definitely cool to see children's television which is consciously directed and artsy. But mostly I'm digging it because the vibe is so unsettling, and because there's nothing creepier than made-for-children television that completely misses the mark.
I'm a conesseur of that kind of media. I think because I love horror, but my terror bar is actually far too low to watch "real" horror films made for adults. Anything genuinely scary can trigger actual panic attacks, or loss of sleep which lasts for weeks, and in some cases, imagery lodging for decades, upsetting me in non-fun ways. But this sort of unexpectedly terrifying children's television is perfect - creepy enough to enjoy the feeling of fear, without making me uncomfortable after the film is done. And I think also, just as "creepy children" are a horror staple (because it's an uncanny valley, because it subverts our closely-held notions of children as innocent and safe), I get a similar experience off creepy children's media inherently. And it also taps into creepy experiences like our memories and nostalgia, and our experiences of seeing things that frightened us as children - but which now are half-remembered, and maybe we dreamed them.
But I have to say, even by the standards of my "inappropriately adult children's media" collection - The Owl Service is weird. Definitely the most unsettling of the bunch - and I'm only halfway through episode 1.
It seems like a likely prospect: rural horror based on a children's book from the early 70s combines several factors which come up again and again on the list. Plus, Owl Service was complained about by parents on the basis it was too frightening for children.
And errrr holy smokes, the mood of the piece is midway between "porn" and "video nasty" - just like what I imagine the Exorcist or Last House on the Left to feel like.
The story is about three children cooped up together in an isolated mansion - but they've accidentally cast adults who do not pass as children at all, giving the whole thing an uncanny vibe from the off. The posh step-brother has a Kray twin/queer sexual predator vibe. The weird step-sister has been wearing nothing but a loose shirt over bare legs, and writhing in bed so far, and has the dull-eyed spaceiness of a drug-addicted sex victim on the verge of a demonic posession. A sort of Welsh Laura Palmer.
(I don't think this impression of Alison as sexual is just me, by the by; because most of the photos I can find of the show pre-uploaded online are ones of her. I feel like this might have been a Princess Leia Gold Bikini formative moment for a generation of British kids watching telly after tea.)
It's all shot in an unsettling way, those lovely 70s rich blacks and vivid colours making it look cheap, like something you're not supposed to be watching. Perhaps I've just got the horn, but it all feels disturbingly sexual to me - the writhing, the jump-cut to a half-naked man fondling the hole in a standing stone, the phallic imagery of the snooker cue or the kid standing over Alison on her bed and thrusting at the ceiling with a spear. The 70s visual trope of staging multiple bodies in frames make them seem hemmed in, brooding, over-close to one another like so:
Genre is built on expectation; we feel most comfortable watching films when we kinda "know" where we stand, what the tropes are, what the possibilities of the plot are. The image quality and the budget give it the same feel as cheaply produced, quick-buck, easy-sell genres - like porn, like video nasties, even like modern lo-fi horror cinema. I know this is based on a children's book, but the visual qualities of the show gives me the genre expectations for those other genres, and I am genuinely expecting it to explode into violence or sex at any minute. Like...
That, combined with how unsettling it is as an audience member to be unsure of the genre what is watching, to be unsure of the possibilities and pathways a plot might follow. Is horrifying.
(I think I'm additionally being influenced by the visual association between Alison and bright red. In The Sixth Sense, this was used as a visual cue for ghosts. And I saw Sixth Sense when I was very young, and it had a huge impact on me - both in that it was the first film I saw and understood was "good", was "directed" and "artistic", rather than being a thing you pass time with, and the fact I'm still talking about it with my therapists two decades later, and occasionally take running leaps into the bed. Cheers, M Night. Thank you for everything, the good and the bad.)
Anyway, I don't know what the hell I'm watching, but I am l o v i n g it. It's definitely cool to see children's television which is consciously directed and artsy. But mostly I'm digging it because the vibe is so unsettling, and because there's nothing creepier than made-for-children television that completely misses the mark.
I'm a conesseur of that kind of media. I think because I love horror, but my terror bar is actually far too low to watch "real" horror films made for adults. Anything genuinely scary can trigger actual panic attacks, or loss of sleep which lasts for weeks, and in some cases, imagery lodging for decades, upsetting me in non-fun ways. But this sort of unexpectedly terrifying children's television is perfect - creepy enough to enjoy the feeling of fear, without making me uncomfortable after the film is done. And I think also, just as "creepy children" are a horror staple (because it's an uncanny valley, because it subverts our closely-held notions of children as innocent and safe), I get a similar experience off creepy children's media inherently. And it also taps into creepy experiences like our memories and nostalgia, and our experiences of seeing things that frightened us as children - but which now are half-remembered, and maybe we dreamed them.
But I have to say, even by the standards of my "inappropriately adult children's media" collection - The Owl Service is weird. Definitely the most unsettling of the bunch - and I'm only halfway through episode 1.
