Film Notes: A Selection of Recent(ish) Obscure(ish) Horror Films

Horror has a (well-earned) reputation as a wastebin genre. Here are a few horror-adjacent films, largely without jumpscares, musical stings, and cheap tricks. They're on the fringe of the genre, where it starts to become something else.

The Vast of Night (2019)

This is probably the finest film I've seen this decade. Not necessarily the best, or the worthiest, but a film I'd like to show to other filmmakers as an example of how to do it properly. I regret not seeing it in a theatre.

It's... OK to do a period film with modern dialogue. Shakespeare did it; you can too. But there's something impressive about a film that manages, on a relatively low budget, to seamlessly recreate a time and a place. There's never a sense you're looking at a set, that lighting guys and boom mikes are just out of view. You're there. These aren't costumes, they're clothes. These aren't actors. They're people. The dialogue is what it should be.

The long shots. The soundtrack. The framing, the lighting, the haircuts. The sound shoes make. Someone loved every part of this film. 

The Vast of Night is the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind wishes it could be. It's, in my view, the greatest UFO film of all time. Better than Contact, better than Fire in the Sky, better, even, than Incident at Raven's Gate. It's Andrew Patterson's directorial debut, and it is very impressive. I'll follow their career with interest. Do online gambling sites let speculate in director futures? 

A Whale (2024)

This film deserves a wider audience I'm not sure if it'll ever get an English release, or even a wide theatrical release, but it really should.

It's unsettling without being frightening. It is well paced, well shot, and, as far as I can tell, well planned. It is a streamlined film. It respects the viewer's time and intelligence, which feels rare these days. It integrates CGI without spectacle and without bravado. I've seen the wretched Underwater (2020) recommended as a cosmic horror film; there's simply no comparison. Perhaps one day, budgets will be distributed according to talent.  

Ashkal, the Tunisian Investigation (2022)

This is only superficially an investigative horror film. It's deeper, and has a lot more to say, but if you only take the superficial aspects, it's a superb contribution to the genre.

I'm a little leery of using of real-world tragic events as supernatural framing devices. Is it necessary to create a secret history where the hand of the devil (or local equivalent) is visible, when human causes and human desires are all that is required? Adding a secret purpose to a death camp implies the real purpose is insufficiently horrifying.

But, viewed from a sufficient distance, this is possibly the perfect Delta Green movie. Up there with the first season of True Detective.

Yellow Veil Pictures

Not one film, but a film distribution company with a well curated selection.  

 Side Note: Oh God, Not Another Casting Call

A surprising number of intriguing sci-fi / horror films turn out to be Inside Holllywood pictures. You know the type; films made by people trapped inside the reality-warping California ecosystem, written by people unable to see beyond the walls of their cage. Examples include but are not limited to Somnium (2025), Touch Me (2025), The Endless (2017), Something in the Dirt (2024).

Something in the Dirt was particularly disappointing, as it had some real potential before devolving into self-congratulatory / self-deprecating Hollywood inside baseball slop. These films aren't cosmic horror films. They're films about trying to make it in Hollywood, or life in California, with a vague framing device to sell tickets. They're inherently shallow. 

Maybe David Lawson Jr. et. al. need to take a sabbatical and work somewhere. Get out in the real world. Put a boom mic on their shoulder and walk east, until someone says "that's a weird looking golf club". 

 But outside of the Hollywood bubble, the films Yellow Veil Pictures picks up are generally pretty good. Without Name (2016) has elements of Algernon Blackwood's The Trees. The Spine of Night (2021) is an OSR darling. I can't imagine being nostalgic for TV commercials, but Buffet Infinity (2025) is a film consisting largely of small-town TV commercials. I think shorter films, like the Local 58 series, have already thoroughly explored the analog horror genre, but it was still enjoyable. 

Backrooms (2026) & I Saw The TV Glow (2024).

Both films are good; Backrooms surprisingly so, given the perils of adapting a vague vibe into a film. They could be entries in a new, loosely defined subgenre: the horror of repetition and of a wasted life. This isn't the main theme of either film, but it is present. 

We all have our loops. Our habits. Behaviors that keep us walking in circles. Reaching for the same solutions over and over again. Thinking each time will take you somewhere new, but they don't. And still, it's the neural pathway of least resistance. A path you made. - Backrooms, 2026.

Time wasn't right. It was moving too fast. And then I was 19. And then I was 20. I felt like one of those dolls asleep in the supermarket. Stuffed. And then I was 21. Like chapters skipped over on a DVD. I told myself, "This isn't normal. This isn't normal. This isn't how life is supposed to feel. - I Saw the TV Glow (2024).

This isn't the active invariant time loop horror of Timecrimes (2007), Triangle (2009), or Primer (2004), or even the disjointed self-examination of The Hourglass Sanatorium (1973).

This is a passive, unconscious looping. Patterns repeating themselves. Proustian, perhaps. Not the horror of change, but the horror of a lack of change, at the lack of one's ability to change. The sense of time slipping forward while repeating itself. Something closer to Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, or possibly Asako Yuzuki's Hooked. It's not a new fear or a new idea, but it seems to be resonating with today's audiences (whatever that means).

There are probably other films that fit this category. A friend suggested M. Night Shyamalan's [The Beach That Makes You] Old (2021). That friend was sentenced to watch Death Bed: the Bed that Eats (1977) sober.

There's a pop psychology link between an era's horror movie fears and its real-world preoccupations (well, at least for mainstream America). Zombies and the local other, alien abductions and the cold war, etc. Is the perception of time and the futility of human endeavour the new frontier of horror?

Film Notes: An Eclectic Film Festival

Over the last few years, I've had the opportunity to watch a lot of films. Here are some of the best that you may not have seen.

It's difficult to judge the obscurity of films these days. People who are really into films say things like "What!? You haven't seen the classic film Doprdele by Jan Nevyslovitelné? It won the Bismuth Medal at the 1975 Northern Lativan Film Awards and has four positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes!" 

Hopefully a few of these films will be delightful revelations.

I haven't provided detailed reviews. There's not much I can say that someone else hasn't said. If you want to read a plot summary, go find one. I typically don't read summaries before I watch a film. If you trust my judgement, go watch the films without further research, then report back. Imagine you've won a ticket to a very odd film festival.

1: Hungarian Films of the '60s

Az ötödik pecsét - The Fifth Seal - 1963

I cannot adequately describe this film. Some films make you forget that you're watching a film. Some films make you forget that you exist at all.

NFI had a beautiful restored print of Az ötödik pecsét on youtube... which is now, for some reason, private. Oh well.

A tanú - The Witness - 1969

Possibly the greatest example of svejking ever committed to film. The first time I saw the Socialist Ghost Train scene I laughed so hard I pulled a muscle in my neck.

A tizedes meg a többiek - The Corporal and the Others - 1965

Available here. A philosophical war comedy. So many half-baked schemes. So many unintended consequences.

2: Extremely Good Mid-Budget Sci-Fi

It's easy to make a terrible low-budget sci-fi film. Oddly, it's even easier to make a terrible sci-fi film with a few million dollars. With a student film budget, creators don't have enough rope to hang themselves. With a massive budget, they can afford to both make and correct mistakes. With a few million dollars, an inexperienced filmmaker can get ambitious... and create a truly appalling mess. When that doesn't happen, it's worth noting.

Incident At Raven's Gate - 1988

A great example of how to achieve unsettling effects on a tight budget, backed up by solid writing and casting. Some films are frustrating to watch because you can see the missed opportunities. With Incident At Raven's Gate, you can marvel at the missed failures. Every time you expect the film to go wrong, to break immersion, botch a scene, or feel cheap and rushed, it doesn't, and that's something special.

Prospect - 2018

Sci-fi films often try to create the illusion of a deep and convincing world. They often fail, or their attempts are clumsy and obvious. Prospect succeeds. I do want to know more. I can imagine other stories, other possibilities.

The film is a love letter to props without being self-indulgent. It's also the first film in a new genre: "fatherly Pedro Pascal helps a youth navigate a hostile world." See: the Mandalorian (2019) and The Last of Us (2023). It all started with Prospect.

The sound mixing is the film's only major flaw. Dialogue is difficult to understand. It's frustrating to create a deep world with its own vocabulary and idioms and then exclude the audience. But Pascal's mumbled homespun patter is also part of the film's charm.

I hope Zeek Earl and Matt Acosta make another feature film one day, but even if they don't, they should be proud that Prospect will be remembered extremely fondly. You can feel the care and effort that went into the film. An algorithm didn't demand this film. A CGI sweatshop didn't churn out the effects. 

3: Historical French Language Films I Thought I Would Never Rewatch And Yet Have Rewatched Several Times

I wouldn't say I recommend the films in this category, or that you'll enjoy watching them. Is it possible for a film to travel so far into boredom that it approaches brilliance? Perhaps it's a different kind of highly refined boredom. Not the predictable action of paint drying. Not the trivial manipulation of emotions with stirring music and clumsy dialogue and people in rubber monster masks. But craft, like watching a woodworker or a sculptor.

Malmkrog - 2020

A turn-of-the-century dinner party film where everyone has a sword hanging over their heads. The futility of drawing-room philosophy. The splitting of dead hairs.

La mort de Louis XIV - The Death of Louis XIV - 2016

In contrast, La mort de Louis XIV has minimal dialogue, and relies on lighting, costuming, texture, and pacing to achieve... whatever it set out to achieve. It's a film about death, and death is rarely exciting.

4: Moderately Surrealist Films Set Indoors

Bunker Palace Hôtel - 1989

A film that does almost everything well, from lighting to props to rapid characterization to its overarching concept. Bunker Palace Hôtel has pacing issues, but it's still well worth watching. 

waydowntown - 2000

waydowtown and Primer (2004) would make a good double feature. You could even bill them as early 2000s costume dramas. 

If you want more films in this category, see High-Rise (2015) or The Exterminating Angel (1962).

5: Pre Code Films Where The Endings Are the Most Memorable Part (But You Have To Watch The Whole Film)

"Code" refers to the Hollywood Production Code, which banned anything vaguely suggestive, interesting, or controversial. For a more thorough list, see this post from The Toast (RIP).

I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang - 1932

If you've seen it, you know. If you haven't, you must see it.

Gold Diggers of 1933 - 1933

Lavish musical numbers, a plot to support them, and some snappy dialogue.

Doctor X - 1932

The 2021 restored tinted print, with its brilliant emerald and orange-pink hues, is amazing. You might need time to acclimatize to the comic relief subplot. Just think of it as Shakespeare.

Film Notes: Ascension (2021)

Ascension (2021) is one of the best films I've seen in the past decade.

Tradition

Holy Scripture presents a kind of mirror to the eyes of the mind, so that our inner face may be seen in it. There we learn our own ugliness, there our own beauty.

-Pope Gregory I

I'm not an expert in direct cinema / cinéma_vérité or whatever you call observational cinema. Comparisons to the trilogy of Chronos (1985), Baraka (1992), and Samsara (2011) are inevitable, but Ascension comes off very favorably. Samsara is a coffee table book. A tourism film. It's apolitical guided meditation. It's about the world, but it's not of the world.

Ascension is less frenetic and less spiritual. It resembles Le Sang des bêtes (1949). The camera doesn't blink, doesn't look away. Le sang des bêtes is no more about blood than Ascension is about plastic packaging... and no more about France than Ascension is about China.

The eeriness of the everyday. The unexamined world. Ascension is full of small details. Tiny gestures. Adjusting a collar. Idly rolling a pen. Layers of theming. Skin tones. Hair. Screens. Plants. Water. Plastic bags, wrapping and unwrapping. Fixation. Control. In comparison, the theming and transitions of Samsara feel clumsy and detached.

I'm not doing a very good job explaining it. Whoever you are, and whatever you believe, you'll have something to talk about after watching Ascension.

Tone

There's no artificial grain or tint (see, in contrast, Steel Town (2016)). There's no grey-green dystopian filter. Colours are bright and real without being oversaturated in editing. 

And it's so well framed! There's real craft on display here. This is Jessica Kingdon's first feature film, though her short film Commodity City (2017) showcases some of the same techniques and themes.

The soundtrack by Dan Deacon is good. It doesn't rely on its discordant tones for impact. It supports the film without steering the viewer. It's nice to see that Dan is still involved in interesting projects.

Maybe Ascension has power because it feels real and relevant, in this age of sequels, remakes, back-catalogues, aging risk-adverse producers, and permanent nostalgia.

Context

To what degree should direct cinema be supported by outside commentary? Does knowing more about the filmmaker's background and motivations make the film more interesting, or is it purely optional? Clearly, other people have had the desire to dig deeper after watching Ascension. Like any thought-provoking documentary, the film feels unbelievable. Was any of the dialogue scripted or prompted? Are the participants aware they are being filmed?  How was the camera hidden? In a world where cameras are ubiquitous and everyone expects to be filmed at all times - for surveillance or for marketing - does it really matter?

Final Notes

Ascension made $17,000 at the box office. I know 2021 was a bad year for films and theaters, but that seems ridiculous. You can (and probably should) watch it online at one of these festivals.

Microfiction + Film Notes: Dune 2021

 

Take It To The Top

 "I'm sorry!" he squealed, holding his hands in the air. "It's not my fault!"

"What to you mean?" I said, doing my best to seem grim and resolved. In truth, my murderous rage had been replaced with a mixture of regret and pity. 

"I... well, there's no easy way to say this," he said, "but I automated my job a few years ago. The quarterly reviews are written by a program that takes your metrics and assigns them sentences from a lookup table. I know I shouldn't have done it, but it was..."

"Motherfucker!" I exclaimed, and he dove for the floor. When he cautiously stuck his head back up, I was already sitting, gun in my lap, giggling away. "You lazy bastard, I knew it! I thought you just copy-pasted old reviews."

"I did at first," he said, apologetically, "but this was quicker. You were a good worker, for what it's worth. Never had any complaints."

"That's because I automated my job years ago," I chuckled.

"That makes sense. Anyway, I wasn't the one who fired you. Not really. I got an email from the Department Manager saying we needed to cut staff, and I picked your name at random. Downsizing, the email said. I guess it's contagious because they fired me next. Look," he said, gesturing around the office. For the first time, I noticed the lack of decorations and the tragically overstuffed banker box in one corner. "It's my last day."

"Well let's go talk to the DM," I said. 

[Three Days Later]

"And it turns out nobody is responsible! Even the people who write the programs don't fully understand the programs. And what I want to know is," I said, waving an admonishing finger, "what you're doing about it! Is this the plan for your creation?"

God leaned forward, stroking His beard with one hand. "You aren't going to like this," He said, "but..."

Silicone Dreams

Silicone! Glass made flesh! A magical substance that bonds metal to glass, glass to plastic, plastic to cloth, cloth to wood, wood to metal. The alchemists dreamed of a universal solvent; instead, we created a universal glue. Secreted into every joint of a modern home, the connective tissue of whatever architecture is calling itself these days. Imagine a world where things had to fit together instead of nestling in a squamous bed of all-engulfing silicone. Cracks sealed, gaps filled, the home becomes a perfect capsule.

Lignin, that miracle polymer, made plants into titans. A few ambitious and temperamental bacteria eat lignin. Termites and cows don't; they're just sacs full of bacteria. That's how we got coal; the lag between lignin and anything that could eat lignin. We talk of rot as if it were some inevitable law, but rot is far more unnatural than rust. 

A tree can remain a tree only so long as it lives, pumped full of antifungal chemicals and healing sap. When defenses fail, rot sets in, and fungi have their day. But silicone will never rot, never be devoured by ambitious bacteria, at least not in the forseeable human future. Give it a few million years. Plastics and resins can burn and have some tasty-looking bonds; they'll be the first to go, but little pellets of silicone will roll around the world long after we are gone.

Or maybe, filled with regret, we will give bacteria a head start via directed evolution and turn them loose on the world. Silicone erodes easily but doesn't rot. Imagine a silicone beach bubbling between your toes. Squishy sand, immortal, vulnerable to light and time but not life. Silicone, reeking of acetone like a dying monk or casting off clouds of acetic acid, stimulating the appetite while remaining implacably inedible. All hail the glass made flesh!

Notes on Dune (2021)

Dune (2021) features concrete, the distant future, genetic memories, Navigators, and musings on human evolution. It had a 165 million USD budget and is 2.5 hours long. Dune is full of noise. Incredible, visceral sounds. Jumps from darkness to blinding light. It's not quite a hostile filmgoing experience, but I did feel like a pea in a tin can by the end of it. At least I could understand most of the dialogue. Cinematography by Greig Fraser (of Rogue One fame), using a lot of the same visual textures (for good or for ill). 

The Last and First Men (2020) features concrete, the distant future, genetic memories, Navigators, and musings on human evolution. It had a budget of [not much] and is 1 hour long.

The Last and First Men consists of a thrumming score, narration, an oscilloscope, and long black-and-white shots of the monuments of Yugoslavia. These monuments are famous on the internet. They're usually presented without context, mislabeled, or given entirely fictitious histories.

Is their use in The Last and First Men appropriate? I think so. The film is about deep time. Using decaying monuments whose meaning is largely forgotten, makes sense. It's hard to argue that they're being exploited for profit; the film grossed less than $10k at the box office.

The Last and First is a quiet, contemplative, hypnotic, arty film. As science fiction, it's as dated as its source material, but so is Dune. 

It's been a long time since I read the books and I don't have access to a local copy of the film, so these notes might be less coherent than usual.

Et tu, Brutalism?

Are the ships in Dune brutalist, or do they merely appear to be? Can a structure be brutalist without the context of the brutalist movement? Brutalism, as Kate Wagner says, is as much a "big mood" as a formal style linked to a particular period and to specific architects.

I don't know. It's not my area of expertise.

It's interesting that a concrete starship with crazing and pour layers and lumps of aggregate feels right - even intriguing - in 2021, but would have been completely ridiculous in the '70s. "You can't just film a retaining wall and pretend it's a space ship. Space ships are sleek and colourful, or if they're not, they're at least clearly technological."

Dune also has a peculiar blend of high and low technologies. Some ships hover as if by magic. Some require balloons. Some require wings. Some feel like they're steered by holographic controls or mind-links. Some have buttons and toggle switches like a '60s helicopter. It's all a bit odd. Why use flappy ornithropters or hot air balloons when the spice harvester scout pods hover like many indie developers without any visible means of support? The divide is not consistent; the high-resource Sardaukar use balloon-ships. What are the rules of this setting?

Low Gravitas Warning Signal

The film can't decide if it's using formal language or not. Some conversations are stylized, some are full of contractions and generic Hollywood filler dialogue. All the actors are competent, but there's a tiny nagging sense that they're winking at the camera and saying "we're in a film, isn't this all a bit silly".

This is odd because Dune is an immensely serious film. There's no comic relief. I don't mean Whedon-esque quips and banter, I mean anything that relieves tension and allows the film to build momentum again. The closest it comes is landscape shots. If you're going to go full serious, commit! Put the Opera back in Space Opera. Write dialogue that uses the English language to its full extent, and get some classically trained actors to deliver it. They're used to saying very silly things with gravitas.

Containment and Contentment

It would be interesting to see a film that contains its own sequels, in the form of flash-forwards and prophecies. We know how Dune plays out. Revenge. Blood. Triumph. Etc. We might not know the details (and some of those details are fucking weird, but the basic plot is clearly and unambiguously given to us in the first film. We don't need to see the love story; we've seen it. We don't need to see the revenge-murders; we can imagine them them. It's a retelling of the same story. We know how it ends.

It would be amazing (and impossible) for Dune Parts 2 and 3 and Maybe More to take a different direction. Dune (2021) isn't telling a story. It's portraying historical events. Any deviation feels like alt-history. Sure, scenes get cut and details get changed, but it's still Dune, in the same way that the Christmas Carol is the Christmas Carol. But they could do it. They could introduce a twist or two that nobody who's read the books or seen the other films expects. Give the Spacing Guild a subtle plot of their own. Introduce another Great House. Change Paul's attitude towards the Golden Path. Bring back Thinking Machines. They won't (the cowards), but they could.

It's also interesting that this version of the story cuts the CHOAM corporation, or any corporate aspects, out of the script. It's an entirely feudal affair, not capitalism-as-feudalism. There's still talk of profit and loss, but no directorships or all-consuming commercial power. Imperialism is fine as long as it's the right kind of imperialism. Resource extraction is fine as long as it's done by nice people.
 

Ambivalent Schemes

The Atreides are nice to the Fremen because they want to use them. Their strategy is subtler than the Harkonnen burn-and-oppress tactics, but they're not winning hearts and minds for their own sake. They want an army for ambitious political reasons; the Fremen could be manipulated to be that army. The film vaguely presents this as a good thing. Rebellion against the system is only intolerable until the system can utilize the rebellion.

"The Holy war is spreading across the universe like an unquenchable fire. A warrior religion that waves the Atreides banner in my father’s name. Fanatical legions worshiping at the shine of my father’s skull."

It's not their cause. It's just another move in the game of the great houses. Will the sequels address this in any meaningful way? Probably not. Critique the savior-narrative, but still go along with it, because it's fine as long as you feel guilty.

Film Notes: Old Dark Houses

Magical Murder Mansion is today's (2021/10/07) DriveThruRPG Deal of the Day. I don't usually do sales but it is October, the month of creaking mansions, secret passages, and elaborate deathtraps. (If it's not 2021/10/07, then it's not on sale).

While writing Magical Murder Mansion, I decided to watch as many Old Dark House films as I could find. You know the type:

• There's a House.
• It is Old and Dark
• Some Guests arrive.
• There is a Murder.

Optional extras include but are not limited to:

The Reading of the Will, the Secret Passage, Disguises, The Creature in the Attic, the Storm, Spy-Holes, the Escaped Lunatic and/or Convict, The Lights Going Out, A Blood-Curdling Scream, etc, etc.

ODH films were (and presumably still are) cheap to make. You need a handful of sets, generic props, a small cast, and minimal special effects (an exterior model and some rain). With a cell phone camera and a couple of lights, you could probably bang out a ODH picture in a couple of weeks. I'm not sure why you would, but it's a thought.

I also prefer black and white ODH films, so Clue (1985) and the Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) are out. The houses don't feel as dark when the film is in colour, and the flaws in set design (and scriptwriting, acting, directing, etc.) are more obvious. ODH films aren't haunted house films. There's no ghost (though fake ghosts might appear) and no explicitly supernatural setup. There's just a house, a storm, and some pressing reason for a few characters to come to sudden inexplicable ends. 

Here are some films that might be worth watching, ordered by release year. Most of them are in the public domain. I've tried to link to the highest quality videos I can find. This isn't an exhaustive list (there are a lot of ODH films).

The Old Dark House (1932)

 Full film (though may not be a public domain upload).

A bit of horror, a bit of mystery, a bit of comedy, and a bit of romance (or at least melodrama). Classic '30s snappy dialogue, wandering accents, pre-code nightdresses, and the origin of a dozen cliches. Not as bloodthirsty as later films, but plenty of tension.

The characters are surprisingly complex. Mr. Pendrel is excellent. His mild sarcastic nihilism has aged well.

Mr. Femm: "Mr. Penderel, I will give you a toast that you will not appreciate, being young. I give you illusion."
Mr. Penderel: "Illusion? Ha, I am precisely the right age for that toast, Mr. Femm."
Mr Femm: "Oh, I presume you are one of the gentlemen slightly, shall we say, battered by the war?"
Mr. Penderel: "Correct, Mr. Femm. War generation slightly soiled, a study in the bittersweet, the man with the twisted smile. And this, Mr. Femm, is exceedingly good gin."

The Thirteenth Guest (1932)

 Full film

Standard period-appropriate detective/cop noir-lite humour and the usual snappy dialogue. Pre-code, but nothing too scandalous. The villain wears a disguise even in their secret switch-throwing/victim observation room, which is a nice touch. Can't properly electrocute people unless you're dressed in a set of old silk drapes.

The Ninth Guest (1934)

Full film

The Ninth Guest predates Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None and has a bit more social bite. There's a party (in a swank apartment, not a decrepit old mansion, but we'll let it slide). The guests (redolent with motives) are invited by a mysterious telegram. An elaborate deathtrap snaps shut. If you liked this film, check out The Exterminating Angel (1962), available through Criterion.

There seems to be some sort of ODH guest-based decay curve. We start with a Thirteenth Guest in 1932,  but by 1934, we're down to the Ninth Guest. Which one is the Missing Guest (1938)? By 1943 there's just The Ghost and the Guest left (presumably, an Unknown Guest). Who can solve this Mystery of the Thirteenth Guest? Wait just a few more years for in 1947, a Guest Is Coming; an Unexpected Guest. Can they solve it? No. Nobody can.

Look, I told you there were a lot of Old Dark House pictures!

The Rogues' Tavern (1936)

Full film

Post-code, not particularly threatening, and churned out at a pace that makes a fun counterpoint to Barton Fink. The director (Robert F. Hill) made 16 films in 1936 (!) and two of them were ODH pictures. No soundtrack or ambient noise to fill the yawning gulfs in the pacing. It's not a good film, but it's useful as a benchmark (and a cautionary tale). 

And Then There Were None (1945)

 Full film

The best-known film version of one of the most popular mysteries of all time deserves a place on this list, for the sake of completeness if nothing else. A rival studio rushed out Fog Island, if you want a low-budget version of the same story with the serial numbers filed off.

House on Haunted Hill (1959)

Full film

The first film where the characters (at least a few of them) are genre aware. It's an Old Dark House theme party. Several elaborate plots, some highly questionable relationship dynamics, and an exterior set that doesn't match the interior at all. Also, a vat of acid.

The Bat (1959)

Full film

Not a standard ODH picture (in that there's other locations involved and nobody's trapped), but well worth watching anyway. Cornelia Van Gorder isn't a hapless protagonist who faints at a death threat or three. When the film tosses her the idiot ball, she punctures it with a knitting needle and gets down to business. Everyone else panics (and/or dies); she plans. The 1930 version is good too, and has some very impressive camera work for the time.

Dark and Stormy Night (2009)

The final film on the list is a loving parody of the genre. Everyone clearly had fun making it, let alone writing the truly ridiculous dialogue. Skip the trailer and go straight to the film. With this film, the less you know the better.

Have I missed any black and white Old Dark House pictures that are worth watching? Don't bother listing them if you haven't seen them (there are other websites for that), but if you have, post a link in the comments.

Podcast Notes: OMGWTFBIBLE

This is a bit of an unusual post for this blog. Regularly scheduled content will resume at some point.

I'm a sucker for ambitious projects. OMGWTFBIBLE is as ambitious as it gets.

In a monthly (hah!) podcast, David Tuchman translates the Torah into modern English and makes jokes about it. You might think people would be upset, but it turns out no, it seems to be fine. The translation might be irreverent, but it's also respectful... and respectable scholarship.

And now it's over (for now). The last episode was posted on March 14th. Here's an interview from 2013, for additional context.

It's a huge amount of effort for a fairly obscure project. It's a hard sell. "Want to listen to the whole Bible?" "No." "Fair enough."

There's also a potential level of awkwardness. "Is it OK to laugh at this? Is this for me?" All I can say is give it a listen and find out. If you find it heinously controversial, leave me out of it. Go directly to the source.
 

Pseudosocial Relationships

One basic podcast formula (among many) is the Sage and the Muddler (the analyst and the colour commentator), who are Friends. If the podcast is interview-focused, the Muddler is the host and the Sage is the guest. In a recurring podcast, the Muddler and the Sage have ongoing explanatory banter.

The audience is invited to be a silent Friend, sitting on the couch nearby, laughing at the witty remarks without having to perform any social obligations. They are drawn into a warm, happy space where their friendship is secure and does not need to be actively maintained.

Podcasts often give their followers a special name. The PeanutPals. The Bearcubs. The Ahistorical Legion. Listeners are invited to an inner ring, a secret club, a collective fandom. It's not evil or wrong, it's just really common.

OMGWTFBIBLE doesn't do any of that. The audience is kept at arms length. Guest readers are sometimes scholars who run rings around Tuchman, sometimes muddlers of the highest order who, faced with an unexpected biblical name, pause, grin, and try their best.

It's refreshing. The parasocial relationship, and the podcast itself, is secondary to The Work.
 

The Work

Translation is difficult. Translating the bible is proverbially difficult. Some people... don't try to do their best. This list of issues with the NIV translation is well worth reading. Anyone saying "this is what the Bible actually says" should be treated with suspicion. That's a degree of confidence bordering on insanity. Literalism is impossible. The text is a mess. Footnotes and parentheticals are pretty much mandatory.
 
Tuchman insists his version is a "loose translation" and it definitely is... in a sense. Sure, Tuchman plays with word order and punctuation, and deliberately substitutes synonyms where it be funny, but the substitutions and changes are revealing. They highlight the ambiguous bits and the weird edges of stitched narratives. They're scholarship. It's presented as humour, but it's not lazy humour.

There's beauty. There's truth. There's personal growth. And there's a lot of really weird stuff.

In the final episode, Rabbi Sam Reinstein says "I just love that you made this your own. We're not trained to do this [...] to own the texts, not to just learn it as something somebody else wrote or was given to you."
 

In interviews and in the translation itself, Tuchman charges straight at the Big Capital Letter Issues... and sometimes rebounds off with a chorus of shrugs and sighs, but hey, an attempt was made. Conversations with guests are often deeply personal. The interview style isn't polished or pablum. The questions mean something because the host is genuinely interested in the answers; the guests offer unpolished answers. It's never confrontational. There are no "gotcha" interview questions, but there are questions that make the guests think.

Sometimes there are stories of extraordinary adventures and good works. Sometimes its just people being people, thinking about their lives, trying to make sense of the world.
 

Selected Episodes

Listening to the podcast in order (or just the Bible bits) is probably the best plan, but if you feel like listening to a sample episode before committing:

• The Exodus episodes with Mordechai Levovitz are my favorites. They always cheer me up.
• The episode with Tuchman's father is touching.
  
• From the more recent series, the mystery guest episode has some excellent pacing choices and great chemistry.
• Steve DeSiena does his best, despite "several gins" and a whole lot of names.
• Dvora Meyers is so done with Covid. So done.
  

Chapter and Verse

The Bible can feel like a series of disconnected statements. Numbering verses doesn't help. How many other books do you read where every line is punctuated with a number, and every story split into arbitrary chapters after it was written? Reading Bibles are handy. These days, with word processors and free texts, you can make your own at home.

OMGWTFBIBLE is an unabridged translation. Tuchman had to translate, and someone had to read, the whole thing. A lot of Bible-related works rely on greatest hits, selected sections, or summaries. This doesn't, and it's what originally drew me to the podcast. It doesn't take the easy road.

The Future

Tuchman says he's taking a break from translation for an indefinite period, and I can't blame him.

But if there's more OMGWTFBIBLE, I'd love to see Mordecai Lebowitz read Jonah. Or anyone, really. Jonah is great. So overdramatic.

I'd love to see Tuchman's translation of Ezekiel, the swearingest prophet who ever cursed a curse. Seriously, a potential translation of Ezekiel would turn the air blue and make Tarantino say "that's a bit much".

Side Note: Ezekiel bread. It's a thing you can buy. It's deliberately framed as a biblical health food... drawn from the prophetic performance art of Ezekiel. People who sell the bread mention Ezekiel 4:9. They don't mention Ezekiel 4:12, where God says to use human excrement as fuel. As Tuchman says, "Oh God, you are a nut." These days, the instructions would be "make a mash of all the old mouldy vegetables at the bottom of the fridge and cook it over a diesel fire." It's deliberately bad, weird, performance-art-as-shameful-prophecy food. Not health food. The opposite of health food. This is why context is important.

Or Ezra. That'll be an interesting ride, particularly if Tuchman goes straight into Malachi, and explores the antagonistic relationship between the two books. Or Job... in general.

Side Note: The canonical order(s) of the books in the Bible isn't nessesarily the only reading order. Starting in the garden and ending in Revelations is a sensible plan, but reading them in publication order (for lack of a better term) is interesting too. You get a sense of ideas developing and chronology shifting. I don't think Tuchman needs to stick to a strict book-by-book order for the future of this project (if there is one), especially for disconnected stories.

Or whatever the heck is going on with Shamgar the Last Action Hero.

Final Notes

OMGWTFBIBLE is, as far as I can tell, delightfully non-monetized. There are no ads, no patreon, no tiered subscriber list. Sponsorship of a long-form Bible translation podcast would be... tricky. "If Nadab and Abihu had used SkillShare, they would  have known not to offer a sacrifice with strange fire. Use the code MOLOCH for 15% off." Or maybe instead of Raid: Shadow Legends, it could be sponsored by Smite?

Yeah. I don't think that would work.

There was a crowdfunding campaign back in 2014 that raised $2,432. Split over 61 episodes and 9 years of work that's... not enough money.

There are vague hints of a potential dead tree form of the translation, so keep an eye out for that.

Otherwise, I don't know. The hardest part of any ambitious project is getting anyone to care.

Edit: 2021/04/09
"I don’t really make OMGWTFBIBLE for anyone, it’s really just so that it exists in the world. So it’s incredible when someone out there totally gets what you’re doing." -David Tuchman

"To elicit perfect comprehension is perhaps to be expected only once." -Barbara W. Tuchman, Preface to The Guns of August

Film Notes: Conspiracy (2001)

Conspiracy is a film about an hour-and-a-half meeting.

In this time of social isolation, watching a film about an hour-and-a-half catered meeting might actually have some appeal, if only on nostalgic grounds.

Conspiracy is not a documentary. It's fictionalized, but based on as many facts as possible. The original German version, Die Wannseekonferenz (available online here) is very good, but loses something in subtitles, and possibly in subtlety of language (though the camera work, lighting, and pacing in Die Wannseekonferenz are superb). They're different films.

I don't intend to summarize Conspiracy. If you can, watch it, then read this post. If not, read a summary and try to keep up, but please don't comment until you've seen the film.

"Fridge Logic" is the term for continuity errors and leaps of logic that only occur to an audience after the film is over, and when they're at home staring at the fridge. It worked in the theater, but an hour or so later it stopped making sense. J. J. Abrams is a master of fridge logic. Most GMs are the same; as long as the players nodded along and rolled some dice, internal inconsistencies are unimportant.

Conspiracy has reverse fridge logic. Instead of staring at your fridge thinking of inconsistencies, you'll be thinking of parallels. A turn of phrase. An implication. An eye movement. The way a character lurks just outside a conversation. A moment you recognize from real life.
 

Terror and Horror

• Terror: feeling of dread and anticipation. The tell-tale heart, the looming presence, the slow walk up the stairs. Your heart pounds
• Horror: feeling of shock and fright. The jump scare, the crash of lightning, the scream. Adrenaline surges.

There are no moments of horror in Conspiracy. No special effects. Barely any tension, as conventionally shown in films. It's just a meeting. Artillery and barbed wire fences are imagined, not shown, and that makes it all the more terrifying. The coldest possible dread.

I am fascinated by stories that aren't stories. Conspiracy is a superb example. I've been trying to cite it properly for years; instead, I merged all the notes into this article.
 

The Devil and the Law

"And when the last law was down and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat?"

There are two theories about what the Law, with a capital L, is for.

The first theory says the Law should apply to everyone, without bias and without prejudice. The king and the peasant, devil and the deep blue sea. The fact that it does not is a failure of society and a failure of the Law. 

The second theory is that there must be in-groups whom the Law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the Law binds but does not protect.1

The second proposition is, in a world without divinely appointed kings, indefensible. It's also remarkably useful as a predictive tool. If people subscribe to the second theory - and many people do, often without realizing it - any apparent inconsistencies between their goals and their actions disappear when this axiom is applied. Choice here, but not there? Freedom for us, but not them? Who gets human rights? What speech is free? It's not hypocrisy, it's the oldest possible belief system. For us, not for them.

Conspiracy has everyone behaving as if they subscribed to the first option while transparently following the second. Sometimes willingly, sometimes accidentally. "Any legal code worthy of the name restricts the enforces of the law as well as its subjects; there are some things you cannot do." So says... Wilhelm Stuckart, in the film at least.

Believing you follow the first theory while secretly cleaving to the second is extremely dangerous.
 

The Law and the law

One of the supreme ironies of humanity is that virtually every awful event has been perfectly legal. The law is a tool, and like a hammer it can be used to drive a nail or split a skull. Almost every positive change, in the modern world at least, has been due to illegal action.

The recognition that the law is not just is ancient. Consider the story of Noah (not that Noah, the other one).

Then the daughters of Zelophehad came forward. Zelophehad was son of Hepher son of Gilead son of Machir son of Manasseh son of Joseph, a member of the Manassite clans. The names of his daughters were: Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah. They stood before Moses, Eleazar the priest, the leaders, and all the congregation, at the entrance of the tent of meeting, and they said, “Our father died in the wilderness; he was not among the company of those who gathered themselves together against the Lord in the company of Korah, but died for his own sin; and he had no sons. Why should the name of our father be taken away from his clan because he had no son? Give to us a possession among our father’s brothers.” 

Moses brought their case before the Lord. 

And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: The daughters of Zelophehad are right in what they are saying; you shall indeed let them possess an inheritance among their father’s brothers and pass the inheritance of their father on to them.

-Numbers 27 or Numbers 36 or Joshua 17. 2

The Book of Numbers, with all respect, can be really fucking boring. But this story is important. It's so important it was included three times. Five women said the law was not just. And God, the wrathful Old-Testament God if you're into that sort of thing, who not 11 chapters earlier dropped Korah and his followers down the express elevator to Sheol, changed the law. Even if it's just a story, it shows it was important to the authors.

Or if you'd prefer a more modern interpretation, consider Sir Robert Peel's Principles of Policing.

7. To maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and that the public are the police, the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.

Or everything Terry Pratchett wrote.

The Law, with a capital L, lives in peoples' heads. And when the law, as written, with a lowercase l, or the implementation of the law, clashes with the Law in people's heads, people will seek redress.
 
I'm cynical enough to believe that the Law in people's heads is just as subject to propaganda, pressure, time, and trickery as anything else. It runs on the same meat; it evolved from the same lizards. Fascist rhetoric often seeks to divide the world into people who listen to the (i.e. our) Law and people who don't, and it usually works. But for good or for ill, the law and the Law match, or face the consequences.
 

A Chain of Inevitability

Wooden-headedness, the source of self-deception, is a factor that plays a remarkably large role in government. It consists in assessing a situation in terms of preconceived fixed notions while ignoring or rejecting any contrary signs. It is acting according to wish while not allowing oneself to be deflected by the facts. It is epitomized in a historian’s statement about Philip II of Spain, the surpassing wooden-head of all sovereigns: “No experience of the failure of his policy could shake his belief in its essential excellence.” 

-Tuchman, The March of Folly

If you work, you have been at a meeting where something was presented as inevitable. And perhaps it was. In the grand scheme of things, very few events are actually inevitable, but it is often convenient to frame them that way. Starting from a position of inevitability allows focus. We are opening a new branch office in Omaha; how should we go about it? Climate change is a threat facing humanity; how should we combat it? Etc.

But for every useful application of inevitability, there is a dark application. X is a threat to our security, therefore we must. X meets our criteria, therefore we must. X is vital to our interests. And so the chain of inevitability proceeds, marching towards terror and disaster, because if the first cause if inevitable, no one wants to break the chain. No one wants to force a fundamental reevaluation of priorities, a complete rewrite, a total overhaul. Just sign your name on the dotted line, do your part, and move on.

It is difficult to combat self-deception in an organization if people in the organization are willing to be deceived. Since self-deception can lead to success - as gamblers know all too well - it can be difficult to step out of line. It's still a useful principle to keep in mind.
 

I Could Have Sworn This Was An RPG Blog

Yeah yeah yeah. It's not like your monitor is running out of ink.

Watching a film with actors displaying the peak of their skill is valuable. Watching a story that isn't a story is valuable. Grappling with an idea that defies acceptance is valuable. Watching superbly crafted language - nobody actually spoke the way people in the film speak, but nobody spoke the way Shakespeare had them speak either - is valuable.

Knowing is not the same as acting. Woe unto you, etc.

1. As formulated by Frank Wilhoit here, and cited by Fred Clark here. You don't need to agree with the conclusions Wilhoit draws to appreciate the succinct formula.

2. Or Sesame Street, 1983, if you'd prefer.