Today is Friday the 13th and that means absolutely nothing to me. Seriously, nothing. But for a lot of people, it means bad luck and for some other people, it means horror, principally because of a series of horror movies titled after this illustrious and ultimately meaningless combination of day and date that happens every so often in a calendar year. When I think of those horror movies, the Friday the 13th ones, I mean, I think Little Horror. When I think of Poltergeist, airing today on TCM, I think Big Horror. Little Horror and Big Horror have absolutely nothing to do with quality and everything to do with budget and effects. Sometimes, I like one, sometimes the other. But no matter which I may like on any given Friday the 13th, I always pretty much believe little horror is the right way to go about it. Let’s look at this a little more closely.
What I mean when I call Poltergeist Big Horror and Friday the 13th Little Horror is this: In Poltergeist, a man tears his face apart in a mirror, ghosts stream down a flight of stairs, a massive demon head protrudes from a closet, a hallway stretches to infinity, a giant monster prevents a mother from saving her children, a tree tries to eat a little boy, and, finally, an entire house collapses upon itself into a singularity. In Friday the 13th, a lot of campers get killed. Back in 1982, Poltergeist could only have been visually successful with those effects with the full weight of a studio’s budget behind it. Friday the 13th, then and now, could have been made by anyone with a 16mm camera and latex and fake blood. Nowadays, it’s a lot easier for anyone with access to effects software to produce their own effects, better than those in Poltergeist, but there’s still Big Horror and Little Horror and I still prefer the smaller variety (even though I’m not particularly fond of either examples I’ve just given).
I suppose my problem with Big Horror is that the budget often overwhelms the mood. I’d be much more willing to take the ride in Poltergeist if there were a little less going on. Every time I’ve seen the movie (admittedly, not too many times), I always think that the daughter’s initial rescue, where she and mother lay safe, and covered in goo, in the bathtub, is the perfect and natural ending for the movie. When Zelda Rubinstein announces, “This house is clean,” roll credits and bring up the lights: The movie is over. Instead, we get, basically, a whole other movie, giving the term “Overkill” it’s go-to reference in the dictionary (“Overkill: In excess of what is required or suitable to achieve an end. See Poltergeist.”). And so, back to the original point at the top of this paragraph, the mood is killed. It becomes a spectacle filled extravaganza and horror really truly depends on mood.
Take zombie movies (please!). World War Z would be Big, Night of the Living Dead and even the more recent 28 Days Later would be Little. I actually liked World War Z well enough but it felt like an action movie to me. Night of the Living Dead has always felt like a horror movie to me. But it’s not just about how many effects are done or how big the budget is, it’s about how they’re done. I am Legend relied on questionable CGI for effects that would have been much more, er, effective, with simple makeup, like 28 Days Later. The whole look of the movie was distracting, quite frankly. It was going for Big when it should have gone for Little.
Vampires aren’t immune from this either. Francis Ford Coppola took the story of Dracula and made it into an epic. Hammer Studios, on the other hand, with Horror of Dracula and Brides of Dracula kept everything Little, giving us mood, some blood, and a few flashes of fangs. I find those tales of Dracula, along with Nosferatu, to be far better, and far more entertaining, than Bram Stoker’s Dracula could ever be.
How about sci-fi horror? Well, that’s tough because, so often, effects and sci-fi go together. I can’t sit here and say I don’t think Ridley Scott’s Alien is a masterpiece because that would be a lie. I think it’s one of the best sci-fi horror movies ever made, and it’s big. Other times, like the 1956 and 1978 iterations of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the alien menace is told in a decidedly low level, and highly effective, way. I like both and can go with Big Horror more in a sci-fi setting but still, it depends on mood and Ridley Scott did a damn fine job of keeping the mood absolutely on point in Alien. And that’s because he went Little when it counted. In other words, yes, there are big outer space and alien landscapes special effects but when the alien is pursuing its victims throughout the ship, it’s all done in a simple, old-fashioned horror movie kind of way, where the menace is unseen until it’s too late.
Whether it’s Little Horror or Big Horror, mood is the main thing. Big Horror can sometimes achieve mood but it’s fighting against its own sense of proportion to get there. On the other hand, Little Horror can get quite carried away with easy shortcuts to mood, like the built-in eeriness of finding lost footage (for instance, the S.A. Andree’s ill-fated balloon expedition to the North Pole that disappeared, only to have the long dead expedition found decades later and developing the photographs of their last days), which can be effective (Blair Witch Project, the first Paranormal Activity) or tiresome (everything else). But when horror keeps it simple, and little, it succeeds more often than not. That’s when I enjoy it the most, big time.