The Guardian (1990)

Here we have a movie in which a dull American couple with a new baby hires an English nanny, which turns out to be a bad idea. Not just because, as the audience knows from a pre-credits sequence, this particular nanny has a penchant for sacrificing babies to a tree; but because their first reaction to having a child is to turn its care over to a complete stranger immediately.

At least the nanny loves her tree.

The movie actually opens with a disclaimer telling us that not all trees are evil. At first I thought this might be an in-joke, referring to the disclaimer before co-writer/director William Friedkin's earlier movie Cruising which started with a disclaimer stating that not all homosexuals are extreme S&M fetishist serial killers, but by the time the movie finished I was convinced that it was earnestly meant. This is an earnestly stupid movie.

Friedkin has made some terrific movies including The French Connection, To Live and Die in L.A. and (most relevant here) The Exorcist. The Guardian has no good dialogue, no good acting, weak cinematography, terrible music (by Jack Hues from '80s band Wang Chung) and a terrible story full of plot holes. Friedkin has said that the movie is an attempt to create a modern-day version of a Grimm's fairy tale, but it fails miserably in this respect as well. Even the gore scenes are dull.

The movie was originally by Stephen Volk (who also wrote the insane Ken Russell-directed Gothic, the silly but fun Joanna Pacula vehicle The Kiss, and Ghostwatch) and this is the worst movie I've seen from him. As his script was rewritten by Friedkin, I'm reluctant to pass any of the blame on to Volk.

The story involves a woman who is either a Druid or a tree-spirit (the movie seems a bit confused about this) who has to sacrifice babies to a malevolent tree for reasons that are unclear. The babies need to be less than 20 days old, or else their "baby genes" will have turned into "normal genes" and presumably the tree won't want them anymore.

In one of the more memorable scenes, she is hanging with the baby in the woods when three cartoonish rapists appear seemingly out of nowhere and threaten her with a big knife. She lures them to the tree, which then kills them in gruesome fashion. They are impaled, eaten (yes by a tree) and spontaneously combust. Later she goes back to the tree so it can heal the rather nasty stab wound she received during the fracas; it's unclear as to why she needs to leave and come back to do this, except that it allows an uninteresting minor character to follow her and see what she's up to, so that she can send her magic wolves to eat him.

I'm unsure why a tree spirit can command magic wolves, unless it's just to add to the supposed fairy-tale ambiance that the director needed to explicitly point out before I noticed that it was there.

There is a rather stupid scene where the father takes the baby and runs off into the woods while the nanny flies after him and the mother drives alongside in the family four-wheel drive. (Finally explaining why wealthy city & suburb dwellers drive those sorts of vehicles - I guess the fear of tree-worshipping nannies is more prevalent than I had assumed.) It concludes with her driving her car full-force into the nanny, who slams into the tree and seemingly dies. The parents are then furious when the cop on the case (played by the irritating husband from Candyman don't take their story seriously.

The finale of the movie involves the mother fighting the nanny for the baby while the father goes at the tree with a chainsaw. When the father cuts off a tree limb, the nanny's leg falls off. That was the best part of the entire movie - an unintentional laugh.

This movie, in case I have not been clear enough, is quite aggressively bad. It is not so-bad-it's-good, nor is there a case for critical appraisal. I fell asleep the first time I tried to watch it.

Also, what the hell is up with evil trees in horror movies? I've already written about Poltergeist but off the top of my head I can also think of The Woods, Evil Dead & Evil Dead 2 and From Hell It Came, and I'm sure there's plenty more.

If you want a good Grimm's fairy tale for adults movie, see A Company of Wolves (directed by Neil Jordan, based on stories from The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter).

Poltergeist (1982)

"So I'll watch Poltergeist," I thought. "It's rated PG, it's written & produced by Steven Spielberg, it's kiddie horror. There's no violence, nobody dies, it's a ghost story. Should be good for a laugh."

Holy shit. This movie seems specifically designed to cause nightmares. Did I forget that Spielberg previously directed Duel and Jaws? Did I disregard that director Tobe Hooper was best known for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre? I'd seen it before, but obviously I forgot about the clown, the tree, the scene where the guy looks into the mirror and sees...

I'll backtrack. I didn't forget about any of these things at all, but Poltergeist is certainly more relentless than I remember it being. The story involves a bland '80s American family living in a boring house in a cookie-cutter suburb, whose lives are invaded by ghosts that first create a little fun, then maliciously target their children, especially their five-year-old daughter.

Spielberg touches abound throughout the movie (there was considerable controversy about how much of the movie was really directed by Hooper) from the lovable family dog to the huge amounts of then-impressive special effects to the general "sitcom-America" setting. There's also a heavy dose of the sadism that was particularly prevalent in his movies of the '80s, including his propensity to do horrible (though non-lethal) things to kids, and of course his usual complete lack of sexuality.

It seems to be a 'message' movie to a certain extent: the parents voted for Reagan (or at least read books about him) and smoke dope around their kids, the dad is a real estate agent, and they are perfect examples of '80s consumers. There is a definite sense that they are being punished for all of this. I'm all in favour of ghosts that torment Right-voting capitalists, though your mileage may vary. It also seems relevant that the kid-snatching ghosts come out of the television.

It's a contemporary ghost story in more ways than one. One interesting thing about it is that the haunted house is actually very new. According to the back-story, the house was built five years earlier and this is the first family that have lived there. There is an explanation for where the ghosts are coming from, but it's very unusual to set a ghost story in a house without some kind of Terrible Past. Even Hill House, a mere 80 years old, has plenty of nastiness in its relatively short history.

Speaking of that Shirley Jackson story, Poltergeist is yet another descendant, as it features a team of supernatural detectives getting out of their depth. But those characters are here played mostly for laughs.

All of this is secondary to the fact that this is the movie where that scary-looking tree outside your window, and that incredibly creepy clown doll that you really wish your aunt hadn't given to you, really are trying to kill you. The movie seems to be saying "Hey kids, you know how your parents said that all those things you're scared of are really harmless? Well, they were lying. Good luck sleeping tonight!"

So we get a scene where the father insists that the horrible gnarled tree right outside the children's window is actually wise and benevolent and looking after them - immediately followed by a scene where this same tree crashes in through the window and tries to eat a ten-year-old boy. This kid (played by Oliver Robins) does the best job of looking terrified that I think I've ever seen in a kid actor, and he does it a lot throughout the movie. Heather O'Rourke, who plays the 5-year daughter Carol Anne, is much more relaxed; even when things get really extreme, she seems more anxious than afraid.

There's a lot of black comedy throughout, from the death of the budgie right at the start to the EC comics gruesomeness towards the end. For a PG movie, this sure has a lot of disgusting images.

I should probably hate Poltergeist in a lot of ways, not least because the trend of big-budget thrill-ride effects-driven jokey-gruesome Boo!-horror movies can be traced directly to it. But I don't. It's a lot of fun. It's the fun of a rollercoaster, and none of the scares cut very deep. It won't stay with you for long. Unless, of course, you have a big scary tree outside of your bedroom window, in which case you're on your own.