organ

Sinister Crawling Invisible Ghost Hands: Spooktober 2025

In a hidden catacomb deep within a Mexican silver mine, the mine owner discovers an old silver box containing a mummified hand. When it starts moving of its own volition and drives him to replace his own hand with it, leading him to behave erratically—even murderously—his wife must face the question: is this the hand of the Devil himself? Such is the premise of Demonoid, a fun, goofy horror movie I watched near the beginning of October. That led to Sinister Hands (the hands in question belong to a swami who becomes the obvious suspect when his wealthy patroness’ husband is murdered during a séance) and Invisible Hands (featuring another grisly trophy). If I’d wanted to make a whole theme month out of it, I could have kept going with The Beast with Five Fingers, And Now the Screaming Starts, and (of course) The Hand. But regular readers know that I don’t usually plan that far in advance.

In the end, October was quite busy for me this year, but I did watch some spooky and seasonal selections throughout the month. I actually got to 31 entries, with the caveat that some of those were very short (the quasi-serial Invisible Hands is barely over twelve minutes strung together). I only got out to the movie theater once, to see the 25th anniversary re-release of Battle Royale, which I hadn’t seen before (I enjoyed it). There were some retro screenings like I’ve seen in the past, but my schedule didn’t allow me to go, so that was a bummer.

Nevertheless, I have compiled a list of varied styles, subject matters, and quality:

1. Dead of Night (Dan Curtis, 1977)

2. Demonoid (Alfredo Zacarias, 1981)

3. The Laughing Target (Motosuke Takahashi, 1987)

4. Evil Laugh (Dominick Brascia, 1986)

5. Track of the Moon Beast (Richard Ashe, 1976)

6. The Old Dark House (James Whale, 1932, rewatch)

7. What Waits Below (Don Sharp, 1984)

8. The Willies (Brian Peck, 1990)

9. Equinox (Jack Woods and Dennis Muren, 1970)

10. Death Becomes Her (Robert Zemeckis, 1992, rewatch)

11. Organ (Kei Fujiwara, 1996)

12. Battle Royale (Kinji Fukasaku, 2000) theatrical

13. Rubber (Quentin Dupieux, 2010)

14. Invisible Ghost (Joseph H. Lewis, 1941)

15. Young Hannah, Queen of the Vampires (Julio Salvador and Ray Danton, 1973)

16. The Deadly Spawn (Douglas McKeown, 1983)

17. Haunted House (Robert F. McGowan, 1940)

18. Sinister Hands (Armand Schaefer, 1932)

19. Invisible Hands (Denis Morella, 1991, rewatch) short

20. Scare Package (concept by Aaron B. Koontz and Cameron Burns, various directors, 2019)

21. Alligator (Lewis Teague, 1980)

22. Student Bodies (Mickey Rose, 1981)

23. The Bowery Boys Meet the Monsters (Edward Bernds, 1954)

24. TerrorVision (Ted Nicolaou, 1986, rewatch)

25. The Video Dead (Robert Scott, 1987)

26. Beetlejuice (Tim Burton, 1988, rewatch)

27. They Saved Hitler’s Brain (David Bradley, 1968)

28. The Violence Movie (Eric D. Wilkinson, 1988) short

29. Savage Vows (Bob Dennis, 1995)

30. The Mascot (Fétiche, aka The Devil’s Ball, Irene Starewicz and Wladyslaw Starewicz,1933) short

31. Something Wicked This Way Comes (Jack Clayton, 1983)

Best Movie: A fearsome, insatiable predator lurks around the margins of a community, at first picking off isolated victims, gradually becoming bolder. Eventually, a dedicated police officer and a scientific expert put the clues together and battle the monster, in the face of political opponents dedicated to business as usual. Yes, Alligator is basically another riff on Jaws, but it’s an accomplished imitator with enough going for it that it stands on its own. John Sayles’ screenplay is full of memorable turns of phrase and scene-stealing characters, and Lewis Teague brings the story vividly to life, with expressionistic lighting and claustrophobia-inducing camera angles in the sewers where the abandoned baby gator grew up, before bringing it out into the open for some very satisfying carnage.

Worst Movie: It makes sense for The Video Dead to be paired with TerrorVision: both are mid-‘80s features about weird things emerging from TV screens, with some nods to MTV-era youth culture. But the pairing does The Video Dead no favors: where TerrorVision is acidly funny, satirizing Cold War paranoia, Me Generation self-indulgence, and dopey monster movies, with big performances and colorful production, The Video Dead is drab, slow-paced, and is just downright dour for a movie about zombies from a haunted TV set. I don’t know if it’s impossible for a film with such a silly premise to successfully explore themes of grief and trauma, but The Video Dead sure isn’t that movie.

Scariest Movie: I was terrified by spiders as a kid, so I didn’t go out of my way to watch Something Wicked This Way Comes when it was released. By the time I was more interested in it (I read the Ray Bradbury novel on which it’s based a few years ago), it had become somewhat difficult to find, and had a reputation as one of those 1980s kids’ movies that were too dark and scary for their target audience, like Return to Oz. I don’t want to claim it’s scarier than really brutal movies aimed at adults, but it is pretty intense, with Jonathan Pryce as the Satanic Mr. Dark and Jason Robards as a man confronting his mortality both selling the high stakes of their conflict. And the spider scene is still shocking, like a left turn into Lucio Fulci territory, its suddenness as horrifying as the arachnid invasion itself.

Least Scary Movie: I have a fondness for the hour-length B-movies of the 1930s and ‘40s, many of which were “old dark house” mysteries, featuring strangers gathering at inns or stranded at remote country houses. In the early 1940s, quite a few of these hinted at supernatural phenomena but almost always ended up with rational explanations. I watched a couple of these films this October, and I actually enjoyed Haunted House the most. It’s a charming comedy about a pair of over-eager teenage detectives trying to help a friend accused of murder, and they do eventually end up in the “haunted” house of the title. But this isn’t even a mystery in the Scooby-Doo sense, with real-life criminals trying to frighten people away, as in so many of these films; it’s just an empty house with something hidden in it. As I said, this movie was fun, but scary? It’s not even trying to be.

Goriest Movie: This year there is only one contender for this honor: Organ begins as an expose of a black market organ harvesting ring in Tokyo, and that was probably the real-life inspiration for the film. But it quickly goes in a different direction, exploring the parallel stories of a deranged amateur surgeon who chops up bodies to fulfill his own warped desires, and the disgraced cop who lost his partner to the same man. Organ’s director, Kei Fujiwara, starred in Tetsuo: The Iron Man, and brings some of that film’s avant-garde sensibilities to her project, examining without pity the many ways in which flesh and the human body can fail or be destroyed. Also like Tetsuo, Organ is a little hard to follow, jumping chronologically and between characters in an almost stream-of-consciousness manner. But the plot is less important than the imagery, the most striking of which comes from the memories and imagination of the killer.

Funniest Movie: I watched a few horror comedies this past month, but none of them really blew me away. Student Bodies specifically spoofs the wave of slasher movies that followed the success of Halloween and Friday the 13th, and it has some laughs, but it’s pretty dated and scattershot as well; Evil Laugh, while not quite a comedy, is another meta slasher that includes a horror-fan audience surrogate character a few years before Scream made everyone into genre experts. Scare Package is probably the most satisfying, intentionally funny movie of the month, although even there it’s a mixed bag. It’s an anthology film and a tribute to the video stores of yore, with the frame story taking place in “Rad Chad’s Horror Emporium” and the individual stories purported to be video tapes from Chad’s shelves. Some entries play it more straight than others, but the chapter that has stuck with me is also the most mystifying: in “So Much to Do,” by Baron Vaughn, a woman goes to incredible lengths to avoid spoilers for her favorite TV show. It’s the kind of thing that probably wouldn’t work as a feature on its own, but it’s just right as a weird, funny interlude.

Weirdest Movie: Speaking of weird and funny, Rubber is my first film by Quentin Dupieux, who has a reputation as a provocateur. I wasn’t sure how I would feel about this one: even though I enjoy genre-challenging, fourth wall-breaking metanarrative, I get annoyed when I feel like I’m being jerked around, and Dupieux pretty much begins the film by announcing that he’s going to be jerking us around, and to expect things to happen for “no reason.” But I had a good time with this; the story of an abandoned car tire that somehow becomes sentient and goes on a killing spree, rolling across the southwest and blowing things up with unexplained mental powers, is a parody of absurd monster movies, and by itself there’s not much to it. But everywhere the tire rolls it gathers new characters and perspectives, and every time things threaten to fall into a predictable rut, the ground shifts, putting events in a different light.

I hope you had a great Halloween this year. Thanks for reading!

0 CommentsLeave a comment

Instruments of Death

“The Torture Garden: It’s where the Devil calls the tune . . . to play a concerto of fear!”

–Trailer for Torture Garden, 1967

danceofdeath

In honor of Halloween, it’s time to look at the spookier side of musical instruments, specifically the roles some have played in mystery and horror fiction.  On the one hand, the organ has the most sinister reputation of any instrument through its association with the Phantom of the Opera and his fictional descendants: there’s just something about the full organ’s portentous sound and the gloomy atmosphere of the Gothic cathedral that goes hand in hand with cobwebs and candlelight, so expect to hear many renditions of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor (or at least the opening bars) during October.  The organ, nicknamed “the king of instruments,” also fits nicely with the popular association of criminal masterminds with classical music: we like our villains to have refined taste, whether played by Vincent Price or Anthony Hopkins.  In the same way, the organist seated at his instrument, surrounded by ranks of keyboards, pedals, and organ stops ready at his command, is a neat visual shorthand for a master manipulator, sitting at the center of a web, controlling everything around him.  (In at least one case, the direct-to-video Disney sequel Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas, the organ is the villain, conniving to make others to do its will even though it cannot move from its place.)

Lon Chaney, Sr. in the 1925 film The Phantom of the Opera

Lon Chaney, Sr. in the 1925 film The Phantom of the Opera

Brian De Palma's 1974 update, Phantom of the Paradise

Brian De Palma’s 1974 update, Phantom of the Paradise

The violin, on the other hand, is often associated with the Devil, as in such pieces of music as Danse Macabre, L’Histoire du Soldat, and “The Devil Went Down to Georgia.”  In folk tales, the Devil enjoys wagers, betting his own gold fiddle against the souls of his opponents.  He may also bestow musical talent in exchange for a soul, a prominent part of the myth surrounding Tartini’s “Devil’s Trill” Sonata. Later, the great Italian virtuoso Niccolò Paganini was the subject of lurid rumors that he had sold his soul, and worse: Theosophy founder Madame Helena Blavatsky included Paganini in her story “The Ensouled Violin,” and graphically embroidered on the notion that the strings of Paganini’s violin were made from human intestine, and that his uncanny ability to mimic the human voice with his playing actually came from a spirit trapped within the instrument.

A similar story is part of the mythology of the Blues: Robert Johnson was supposed to have met the Devil at a crossroads at midnight, where he traded his soul for his legendary guitar-playing ability.  The legend formed the basis of the Ralph Macchio film Crossroads and was parodied on Metalocalypse (in the episode “Bluesklok”).  Interestingly, Elijah Wald, in his book Escaping the Delta, has shown that the same story was originally attributed to a Tommy Johnson and then transferred to Robert when his legend outpaced Tommy’s.  Naturally, the whole thing has roots in folklore: Wald points out, “When Harry Middleton Hyatt collected stories of musicians going to the crossroads to gain supernatural skills, as part of a vast study of Southern folk beliefs in the late 1930s, he reported as many banjo players and violinists as guitarists,” as well as an accordionist.

Why is there such a connection between fiddling and death?  In the Middle Ages, instrumental music was considered both profane and frivolous, closely associated with itinerant, always-suspect actors and minstrels and the drunken singers in taverns.  In depictions of Death (usually as a skeleton, the same as now), musical instruments were often a symbol of the sinfulness, vanity, and futility of all human activity, not just music.  (The popular image of Nero “fiddling while Rome burned” probably owes much to this symbolism, as the violin had yet to be invented in Nero’s day; likewise, contrast the supposed indolence of grasshoppers with the industry of ants.)   The image of a grinning skeleton “playing” his victims into the grave may have struck the medieval viewer as cruel irony, a just punishment, or as a warning.

The medieval dance of death.

According to one author, the connection between the violin and mortality was more than just poetic: in 2006, Rohan Kriwaczek published An Incomplete History of The Art of Funerary Violin.  According to Kriwaczek, there had once been a Guild of Funerary Violinists, whose work, repertoire, and indeed their very existence had been suppressed by the Vatican during the Great Funerary Purges of the 1830s and ‘40s.  After 1846, the few remaining members of the Guild went underground, and Kriwaczek, eventually entrusted with their legacy, was able to piece together this secret history and bring it to the public. Kriwaczek describes the Funerary Violinist as playing a potent intercessionary role:

In his tone the violinist must first convey the deep grief that is present in the gathering, and then transform it into a thing of beauty.  By the time he is finished, a deep and plaintive calm should have descended, and the bereaved should be ready to hear the eulogy. . . . The violinist’s is a position of great responsibility, akin in many ways to that of a priest or shaman, and should not be taken lightly.

Alas, the book was a hoax, supposedly concocted by Kriwaczek to increase his bookings as a violinist at—you guessed it—funerals.  Still, I can’t help but feel that Kriwaczek’s story, with its dueling Funerary Violinists, buried secrets, and cameos from outsized characters including composers, Popes, and virtuosi, would make a smashing TV program, a historical saga with more than a touch of gothic intrigue.

Sometimes the instrument is cursed: in the short “Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad” by the master of the English ghost story M. R. James, it’s an ancient bronze whistle (proving that another James title, “A Warning to the Curious,” could equally apply to almost all his stories):

He blew tentatively and stopped suddenly, startled and yet pleased at the note he had elicited. It had a quality of infinite distance in it, and, soft as it was, he somehow felt it must be audible for miles round. It was a sound, too, that seemed to have the power (which many scents possess) of forming pictures in the brain. He saw quite clearly for a moment a vision of a wide, dark expanse at night, with a fresh wind blowing, and in the midst a lonely figure–how employed, he could not tell. Perhaps he would have seen more had not the picture been broken by the sudden surge of a gust of wind against his casement, so sudden that it made him look up, just in time to see the white glint of a sea-bird’s wing somewhere outside the dark panes.

Just as frequently it’s a MacGuffin that activates the plot: a Stradivarius is as valuable as a van Gogh, and serves as well as any other objet d’art as the motivation in a murder mystery.  An example is the three-quarter sized Strad, the Piccolino, at the center of Gerald Elias’ mystery Devil’s Trill, the first of a series centered on violinist-sleuth Daniel Jacobus.  And despite its unusual varnish, the titular instrument of the 1998 film The Red Violin is haunted more by tragedy and human foibles than by any supernatural evil.

The weaponized instrument is an infrequent literary device, but there are a few examples: the murder in Dame Ngaio Marsh’s Overture to Death is accomplished by a revolver hidden inside an upright piano, rigged to fire when the pianist plays the third chord of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C-sharp Minor, a Rube Goldberg arrangement that sounds about as practical in real life as this:

Likewise, it doesn’t seem that it would be that hard to escape the vengeance meted out by the grand piano in “Mr. Steinway,” a section of the 1967 anthology film Torture Garden, based on stories by Robert Bloch.  In the story, the piano in question belongs to a prominent virtuoso, a gift from his mother, and his devotion to it is tested when a young lady (played by Barbara Ewing) enters his life.  The black wing shape of the piano is a looming presence in the film version, always in the background or casting its shadow over the doomed couple, and the Oedipal implications of the pianist’s relationship with his mother, never seen but personified by the piano, are left as unspoken subtext.  So far, so good, but by the time the piano lurches into motion and pushes the intruding girl out the window, we’ve entered the realm of delirious high camp.  The lesson: music is a jealous mistress.

Finally, as a bonus, I present one of the most bizarre (and gratuitous) examples of this trope, from the 1976 film The Town That Dreaded Sundown: death by trombone.  Happy Halloween!

0 CommentsLeave a comment