1996, the best year in movie history, pt. 44: (a) The Canterville ghost; (b) The craft; (c) The Simpsons, “Treehouse of horror VII”
This month, three jolly horror pics: an episode of The Simpsons, and two movies with Neve Campbell.
Scream also came out in 1996. That movie made Campbell famous, but I didn’t mention her in my review of it.
The Canterville Ghost
I think Campbell is better in The Canterville Ghost, a pretty negligible piece of filmmaking. Wilde’s tale has been redone for cinema or TV at least twenty times. A British version was broadcast just one year after Campbell’s was shown on ABC.
Wilde’s material is too slight for ninety minutes. Thirty or forty-five would have been all right. This could have been a chapter in an “anthology” series, paired with some other nice story like “A Christmas Carol.” (The ghost, a wicked old man, ultimately repents and becomes a “friendly” ghost.)
Anyway, Campbell. She’s in little-rich-girl mode, very pouty and naïve. Her character is sixteen; in Wilde’s story, she is thirteen. It’s transparently an act – by 1996, Campbell is well into her twenties, and she looks her age – but the mimicry is good. Campbell gives nary a “wink.” Well, maybe just one. She yells out Sooorrriee with a Canadian accent after the script has mentioned thirty or forty times that her character is from Indiana.
Campbell is Canadian. The actors who play her family are mostly British or Irish.
I wonder if this has anything to do with the story’s satirical purpose, which is to make fun of U.S. citizens who come to live among the English.
Patrick Stewart is the ghost.
The Craft
I said “three jolly horror pics,” but this one gets less and less jolly as it goes along. Basically, it’s Mean Girls before there was Mean Girls, only with better performers (Campbell, Fairuza Balk, Rachel True, Robin Tunney) and with impressive special effects. And these mean girls are high school outcasts, not high school socialites. And they’re witches. They don’t wreak havoc through gossip, social betrayal, etc., so much as by casting spells.
Is anything gained by supernaturalizing the Mean Girls template? I think so.
The witches receive power from a benevolent deity but then use it for vengeful, banal purposes. This isn’t just meanness: it’s blasphemy. I doubt that the movie set out to teach any lesson, but this one is worth noting.
I don’t think viewers would get any vicarious social pleasure from observing the clique in The Craft. This is not a circle anyone would wish to belong to. It is almost contractual: the girls need each other because their magic is stronger when there are four of them. Each girl has her own agenda; none seems to care much for the others, or even to aspire to be accepted by the others.
What is compelling is the fantasy of gaining power over one’s enemies – and over one’s friends.
“Treehouse of Horror VII”
For me, this is the most memorable episode in the “Treehouse of Horror” series. It contains three mini-episodes. (1) Something strange lives in the Simpsons’ attic. (2) Lisa’s science fair project takes on a life of its own. (3) Space aliens abduct Homer. It would ruin these little stories to describe them further. But I will say that the third story is ultimately about U.S. politics – and that it reflects what in 1996 was a common belief: that, regrettably, the two major parties are indistinguishable from each other.
How different things seem today.
P.S. I grew up listening to the show in Spanish, and even then I understood how excellent the translating and voice acting were in that language. Here is a video about the voice actor who played Homer. He seems to have changed a lot of the dialog for his audience.
P.P.S. Look out for the space aliens, who appear briefly in the video.
Scream also came out in 1996. That movie made Campbell famous, but I didn’t mention her in my review of it.
The Canterville Ghost
I think Campbell is better in The Canterville Ghost, a pretty negligible piece of filmmaking. Wilde’s tale has been redone for cinema or TV at least twenty times. A British version was broadcast just one year after Campbell’s was shown on ABC.
Wilde’s material is too slight for ninety minutes. Thirty or forty-five would have been all right. This could have been a chapter in an “anthology” series, paired with some other nice story like “A Christmas Carol.” (The ghost, a wicked old man, ultimately repents and becomes a “friendly” ghost.)
Anyway, Campbell. She’s in little-rich-girl mode, very pouty and naïve. Her character is sixteen; in Wilde’s story, she is thirteen. It’s transparently an act – by 1996, Campbell is well into her twenties, and she looks her age – but the mimicry is good. Campbell gives nary a “wink.” Well, maybe just one. She yells out Sooorrriee with a Canadian accent after the script has mentioned thirty or forty times that her character is from Indiana.
Campbell is Canadian. The actors who play her family are mostly British or Irish.
I wonder if this has anything to do with the story’s satirical purpose, which is to make fun of U.S. citizens who come to live among the English.
Patrick Stewart is the ghost.
The Craft
I said “three jolly horror pics,” but this one gets less and less jolly as it goes along. Basically, it’s Mean Girls before there was Mean Girls, only with better performers (Campbell, Fairuza Balk, Rachel True, Robin Tunney) and with impressive special effects. And these mean girls are high school outcasts, not high school socialites. And they’re witches. They don’t wreak havoc through gossip, social betrayal, etc., so much as by casting spells.
Is anything gained by supernaturalizing the Mean Girls template? I think so.
The witches receive power from a benevolent deity but then use it for vengeful, banal purposes. This isn’t just meanness: it’s blasphemy. I doubt that the movie set out to teach any lesson, but this one is worth noting.
I don’t think viewers would get any vicarious social pleasure from observing the clique in The Craft. This is not a circle anyone would wish to belong to. It is almost contractual: the girls need each other because their magic is stronger when there are four of them. Each girl has her own agenda; none seems to care much for the others, or even to aspire to be accepted by the others.
What is compelling is the fantasy of gaining power over one’s enemies – and over one’s friends.
“Treehouse of Horror VII”
For me, this is the most memorable episode in the “Treehouse of Horror” series. It contains three mini-episodes. (1) Something strange lives in the Simpsons’ attic. (2) Lisa’s science fair project takes on a life of its own. (3) Space aliens abduct Homer. It would ruin these little stories to describe them further. But I will say that the third story is ultimately about U.S. politics – and that it reflects what in 1996 was a common belief: that, regrettably, the two major parties are indistinguishable from each other.
How different things seem today.
P.S. I grew up listening to the show in Spanish, and even then I understood how excellent the translating and voice acting were in that language. Here is a video about the voice actor who played Homer. He seems to have changed a lot of the dialog for his audience.
P.P.S. Look out for the space aliens, who appear briefly in the video.