{"id":344,"date":"2004-12-29T00:46:00","date_gmt":"2004-12-29T00:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=344"},"modified":"2004-12-29T00:46:00","modified_gmt":"2004-12-29T00:46:00","slug":"344","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=344","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

What makes a creepy movie creepy<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Devil Rides Out<\/em><\/a>, one of the classic Hammer Studios<\/a> horror films, is supposed to be scary. It’s based on a novel by occult-horror writer Dennis Wheatley and stars Christopher Lee<\/a> (Saruman in Lord of the Rings<\/em>). I watched it recently, and I learned that the main attribute of British ceremonial magicians, “black” and “white,” is that they spend much time driving from one country house to another in vintage Rolls Royces and Morgans. It’s a yawner.<\/p>\n

Then there is Brigham City<\/em><\/a>, a low-budget but taut thriller from Zion Films<\/a>, a company serving a largely Mormon audience. <\/p>\n

On one level, it’s a modern “Western,” with a rural sheriff confronting a baffling string of murders. Richard Dutcher plays the sheriff with one sustained weary expression. No doubt he is<\/em> weary, because he is also the producer, director, and screenwriter.<\/p>\n

Because of his LDS religious convictions, Dutcher created a PG-13 movie without gratuitous sex and violence and not one curse word–even in the bar scenes. Some other directors might profit by watching it: violence that is barely off-screen or understated can still be chilling. But something else was more chilling than the killings.<\/p>\n

The sheriff, you see, is also a Mormon bishop. At one point, he summons all the men in this mostly Mormon town for a house-to-house search for one of the victims. To paraphrase The Treasure of the Sierra Madre<\/em><\/a>, “We don’t need no search warrants. I don’t have to show you any steenkin’ search warrant!”<\/p>\n

Merely to lock out the civilian searchers brings down the sheriff’s wrath. When one man does so, he is thrown against the wall of his house. The searchers do find something embarrassing in his home–but it has nothing to do with the murders. In fact, none of the house searches turns up any useful evidence at all.<\/p>\n

I don’t think that Dutcher intended this lesson of what happens when spiritual and temporal power are identical to be the scary part of the movie, but it is. <\/p>\n

At the end, the man whose secret was disclosed is shown sitting in a pew at the Sunday sacrament meeting. He has nowhere else to go. And of course his secret will be known to everyone via the gossip grapevine. Oh well, what’s a little Inquisition on the ward? It’s not like he questioned the archaeology<\/a> of the Book of Mormon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What makes a creepy movie creepy The Devil Rides Out, one of the classic Hammer Studios horror films, is supposed to be scary. It’s based on a novel by occult-horror writer Dennis Wheatley and stars Christopher Lee (Saruman in Lord of the Rings). I watched it recently, and I learned that the main attribute of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6xQTg-344","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1911,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1911","url_meta":{"origin":344,"position":0},"title":"The Horror! The Horror!","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 23, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"At The Witching Hour, Peg surveys some lists of best Halloween films. For pagan-themed horror films, or those including witches, at any rate, you can't beat The Wicker Man, The Craft, Practical Magic (Griffin Dunne, 1998), The Exorcist (William Friedkin, 1973), Rosemary's Baby (Roman Polanski, 1968), The Devil Rides Out\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Halloween\"","block_context":{"text":"Halloween","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=halloween"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7405,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7405","url_meta":{"origin":344,"position":1},"title":"The Blue Moon Made Me Do It","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 5, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"A northern Florida sheriff speculates that the deaths of a family were \"ritualistic\" murders. \"The time of death on Tuesday also coincides with what's referred to as a blue moon, which occurs every three years.\" According to the Associated Press version, linked above,\u00a0 which \"faith or religion\" the sheriff had\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":732,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=732","url_meta":{"origin":344,"position":2},"title":"Unspeakable blasphemous horror","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 5, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"From \"The Heroic Nerd,\" a review essay by Luc Sante in The New York Review of Books, discussing works by and about H.P. Lovecraft:He was also frightened of invertebrates, marine life in general, temperatures below freezing, fat people, people of other races, race-mixing, slums, percussion instruments, caves, cellars, old age,\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9556,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9556","url_meta":{"origin":344,"position":3},"title":"“A Completely Alien Society”: The Making of “The Wicker Man”","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 30, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"The Wicker Man, made in 1973 and starring Christopher Lee as Lord Summerisle, Edward Woodward as Sergeant Howie of the West Highland Police, and Britt Ekland as Willow, the Aphrodite Pandemos of Summerisle, is remembered simultaneously as \"the best British horror film ever\" and one of the favorite movies of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"movies\"","block_context":{"text":"movies","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=movies"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9799,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9799","url_meta":{"origin":344,"position":4},"title":"Feeding My Little Archive to Bigger Ones","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 19, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Brilliant idea of the day: clean my desk. No, I don't mean just shove things to the edges and sweep up the crumbs, I mean uncover some mahogany! I spent the last two weeks of August crashing to meet a deadline for a special issue of the Journal of Religion\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"new religious movements\"","block_context":{"text":"new religious movements","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=new-religious-movements"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":647,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=647","url_meta":{"origin":344,"position":5},"title":"Gallimaufry: Tab Clearing","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 13, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Having been knocked down by a head cold the past week, I am just cleaning out some old links. \u2022 Should you use digital cameras for ghost-hunting? I notice that a lot of the ghost-hunting articles in Fate magazine count \"orbs\" as evidence of spirits. But are they just artifacts\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=344"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}