Table of contents for #10: Women With Guts in RUE MORGUE

THE BEAUTIFUL THING ABOUT BEING A HORROR FAN IS THAT EVERYONE HAS A DIFFERENT ENTRY POINT TO THE GENRE. Sometimes that entry point is defined by a predilection for hardcore gore; others crave the irresistible thrill of suspense and tension; still others are drawn to style, pacing or aesthetics. And for many of us, all of these traits intersect to form our own personal swampy gumbo of horror fanaticism. It’s a lovely place to be. I spent a lot of my preteen and teen years sacked out on a couch in my parents’ basement in the dark, building the foundation of my horror education through books, TV shows and movies. I was irresistibly drawn to scary shit because of the many reasons listed above, and also because it protected and…

WHEN IT COMES TO THE LEADING LADIES OF CLASSIC HORROR (AND BEYOND), FEW FACES ARE MORE ICONIC THAN THAT OF BARBARA STEELE. Whether being pierced with a spiked death mask in Mario Bava’s iconic 1960 debut horror feature Black Sunday or slyly appraising a dance partner beneath a shiny sheath of hair in Federico Fellini’s 1963 masterpiece 8½, her uncanny (and controlled) onscreen allure has always made an unforgettable impression. A highly trained actress in the British theatre, Steele has often struggled with the horror queen mantle, which after Black Sunday included memorable outings in films such as the Roger Corman-directed The Pit and the Pendulum (1961) and a personal favourite, the Boris Karloff vehicle The Crimson Cult (1968). The interview below encapsulates Steele’s ample intelligence and charm, and unpacks…

WHILE WE HORROR FANS PRIDE OURSELVES ON EXPLORING THE BEST THE GENRE HAS TO OFFER, IT’S ALSO IMPORTANT TO PAY TRIBUTE TO THOSE MASTERS OF CHEESE. After all, where would we be without the Ed Woods, the Uwe Bolls and the various disaster-pieces hosted by Elvira? When it comes to female directors, there are few films that fulfill this notion of high fromage better than Stephanie Rothman’s The Velvet Vampire (1971). Hailing from the exploitation genre, Rothman deftly inserted social commentary and feminist values into her films and was the first of her kind to do so. These efforts certainly coloured The Velvet Vampire, which has become a cult classic. While Rothman’s name might not be immediately recognizable, her first (and only) mentor in the filmmaking community is familiar: Roger…

IF YOU IDENTIFY AS A WOMAN, CHANCES ARE YOU’VE SPENT SOME TIME CONTEMPLATING WHETHER YOU’RE THE “RIGHT” TYPE OF WOMAN. For some of us, maybe this means being smaller, skinnier or taking up less space in general. For others, it involves being tidier, quieter or more pleasant. For others still, it’s a matter of appearance, which can be impossible to change: having a smaller nose, straighter hair, lighter skin. Regardless of whether these expectations are imposed by society, celebrity culture, family, partners or one’s own damn self, they’re complex and often frightening to navigate. And they make an ideal premise for a horror film. Ira Levin wrote The Stepford Wives in 1972, in the wake of Roman Polanski’s hugely successful 1968 film adaptation of his novel Rosemary’s Baby. It too…

IN OCTOBER 2016, CASSANDRA PETERSON MARKED HER 35TH ANNIVERSARY PLAYING THE MISTRESS OF THE DARK. There are but a handful of celebrities playing popular personas that have lasted that long, and very few women. In an industry where most 65-year-old actresses are edged out by legions of younger performers, Peterson has maintained her status as beloved cult icon and merchandising giant. Her trademark wit was on full display in this interview, originally published on rue-morgue.com. Thirty-five years is a long time to play the same character! How do you feel about all of this? I feel great about it. As you probably already know, when it comes to show business turnover, I should have been done years ago. It’s typical for an actor to work five years; for it to…

IN THIS REMAKE-HAPPY CULTURE, THERE’S A LITANY OF REASONS TO BE WARY WHEN THE LATEST RETOOLED CLASSIC IS ANNOUNCED. Still, I was initially excited to learn that the much-loved 1982 haunted house film Poltergeist would be remade and released in 2016. The original film, directed by Tobe Hooper and produced/co-written by Steven Spielberg, boasts a timelessly wondrous quality coupled with moments of truly jolting horror, especially for a PG-13 film. Sadly, the remake ultimately fell flat. While there are many reasons it didn’t work, chief amongst them is the marked absence of the remarkable Zelda Rubinstein, who played the psychic Tangina in the original film, and who died in 2010 at age 76. Tangina is brought into the home of the Freeling family as a last resort after their youngest…

IT AIN’T EASY ADAPTING THE NOVELS OF STEPHEN KING TO FILM, AND ONE IMAGINES IT MIGHT BE A PARTICULARLY UNENVIABLE CHALLENGE taking on what is widely considered his most terrifying novel, Pet Sematary. The story of desperate father Louis Creed reanimating a dead cat – and later, his son, Gage – within the sour earth of a Mi’kmaq burial ground was so awful that King himself famously shelved the manuscript for a year. However, director Mary Lambert was up to the task, and the 1989 film version of the novel is arguably one of the most effective adaptations of King’s work. It’s unnerving, surreal and features some truly ghastly performances, including Andrew Hubastek as the character Zelda, twisted with insanity and spinal meningitis. Lambert was an unlikely choice for the…

THE EARLY ’00S WERE A GOOD TIME FOR NON-CONFORMING HIGH SCHOOL GIRL WEIRDOS – ON SCREEN AT LEAST. In films like Ghost World and TV shows like Daria and Freaks and Geeks, we saw fresh depictions of teen female outsiders navigating their way through high school hell. Then, there was 2001’s Ginger Snaps: a strange and shocking Canadian film about high school mores, the freakshow of female puberty and wolfing out in the Ontario suburbs. Conceptually, Ginger Snaps is both simple and diabolically clever. When we meet death-obsessed, got-has-heck sisters Brigitte and Ginger Fitzgerald (Emily Perkins and Katharine Isabelle), they’re scowling their way through high school, revelling in their non-conformity and holding a childhood suicide pact close to their hearts. When Ginger gets attacked by a wolf-like creature in their…

AS FAR AS HORROR FILMS – AND THIS WRITER – ARE CONCERNED, THE 2005 FILM THE DESCENT IS THE ULTIMATE WINNER OF THE BECHDEL TEST. Established in 1985 by cartoonist Alison Bechdel and Liz Wallace, the test asks these two crucial questions: are there at least two women or girls in the film, and do they talk to each other about something other than a man or a boy? Unsurprisingly, perhaps, a lot of horror movies don’t make the grade. The Descent, however, passes this test with flying colours: the film’s six-person ensemble cast, playing a crew of hapless cave explorers, is entirely comprised of women – and for most of the film, they talk about little apart from their own survival. In fact, there is only one man in…

IF YOU’RE ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE WHO THINKS THERE ARE NO GOOD IDEAS LEFT IN THE VAMPIRE GENRE, WATCH THE 2014 FILM A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT and think again. Written and directed by Iranian-American Ana Lily Amirpour and tagged as the “first Iranian vampire spaghetti western,” Girl follows the stories of the denizens of a depressed mining town known as Bad City, which is set in a fictionalized Iran (actually southern California). The titular Girl is a skateboarding vampire clad in a chador who glides through the streets alone at night, slaking her thirst and keeping a watchful eye on the town’s most down-and-out characters. When she meets Arash, a young man dealing with a swath of his own problems, including a heroin-addicted father, their connection propels…

WHEN JULIA DUCOURNAU’S RAW PREMIERED AT THE TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL IN SEPTEMBER 2016, A FEW UNFORTUNATE AUDIENCE MEMBERS EXPERIENCED WHAT COULD ONLY BE CALLED A HORROR MARKETER’S DREAM: THEY PASSED OUT. The film’s publicist Ryan Werner told The Hollywood Reporter that he had only previously seen this type of physical reaction with Lars von Trier’s Antichrist. I feel it’s no coincidence that such extreme reactions came from two films that explore the complications of the female psyche through female bodies, and specifically through a distinctly feminine brand of body horror. In Raw, sixteen-year-old Justine (Garance Marillier) is in the midst of a punishing freshman hazing at veterinary school when she is pressured into eating a piece of raw rabbit kidney. Justine – a previously virginal vegetarian – soon develops…

For Jetta Rae, my favourite incarnation of Mothra. WHEN I FIRST SAW MOTHRA, I WAS YOUNG. MY PARENTS DIVORCED WHEN I WAS TWO, AND IT WAS AT MY FATHER’S NEW HOUSE THAT I FIRST ENCOUNTERED THE QUEEN OF ALL MONSTERS IN THE 1964 FILM MOTHRA VS GODZILLA. In the fourth installment of the Godzilla series, the gigantic moth is summoned by her Shobijin (two tiny priestesses who communicate with her telepathically) to help save Japan from the monster’s rampage. Mothra is strong: with her poison powder, her claws, her wings creating powerful winds, and her ability to immobilize with her silk spray, she gave him a run for his money. While she ultimately dies in battle, her larvae emerge from her monster egg and wrap Godzilla up like a cocoon,…

I’VE ALWAYS BEEN DRAWN TO CLASSIC GENRE FARE, AND FELT COMPELLED TO SEEK INSPIRATION IN THE LIVES AND WORK OF FEMALE CREATORS – a tall order for a girl combing the vaults of midcentury horror. It wasn’t until I began writing radio plays for Tales From Beyond the Pale that I discovered the woman who has since become a major creative and professional influence. Lucille Fletcher, who scripted eerie audio dramas throughout the 1940s for the long-running radio series Suspense, wasn’t simply a woman who succeeded in the male-dominated field of horror radio, she was the undisputed queen of the realm. Fletcher entered the world of radio production in 1934, when she secured an entry-level gig in the music clearance department at CBS. Then an aspiring music critic, the Vassar-educated…

IN 1999, BRITISH FILMMAKER ANTONIA BIRD WAS SUMMONED TO FINISH A TROUBLED FILM SHOOTING IN THE MOUNTAINS OF SLOVENIA. The movie: a weird, unclassifiable horror/dark comedy about cannibalism, set in the Sierra Nevada mountain range following the Mexican-American war. While Ravenous flopped at the box office, it holds a special place in the hearts of many horror fans as a brilliant anomaly – a twisted, hilarious and diseased little beast that is impossible to forget. How did Bird – an activist, a director of films about gritty urban realities, a vegetarian – so ably grab the reigns of a nearly-doomed, bloody-as-hell cannibal period piece and elevate it to the realm of cult classic? While Bird sadly died in 2013 at age 62 after fighting a rare type of thyroid cancer,…

LIKE A LOT OF PEOPLE, I FIRST READ STEPHEN KING’S 1974 NOVEL CARRIE WHILE IN THE MIDST OF MY OWN HIGH SCHOOL HELL. Tall and lanky with matted black hair and a nasty dual case of psoriasis and crushing anxiety, I had a social capital of approximately zero. The story of teenage pariah Carrie White, her prom night humiliation and subsequent fiery wrath through telekinesis spoke to me deeply, as one might imagine. King’s novel is an impressive debut work, and also a problematic product of its time (for example, try not to cringe every time King describes the blood-drenched Carrie as a “tar baby”). Still, it remains one of the most vivid approximations of the nightmare of teen womanhood that I’ve ever encountered, both from the perspective of the…

ALL OF US SHOULD KNOW A LITTLE MORE ABOUT DEBRA HILL. Fans of John Carpenter’s slasher masterpiece Halloween know her name: we’ve all seen it scroll over the film’s opening credits as co-writer and producer. Of course, Hill, who died in 2005, was far more than a producer on Halloween; her many contributions to this film were crucial in building its effectiveness and long-term success, and undoubtedly helped solidify Carpenter’s own career. In general, she was a pioneer among female Hollywood movie producers and a legitimate powerhouse, who also co-wrote and co-produced Carpenter’s The Fog, Halloween II and Escape from New York, as well as some of my own favourite movies: Clue, Adventures in Babysitting and The Dead Zone. When it comes to Halloween, however, Hill’s name always remains unfairly…

IT WAS THE BUMP ’N’ GRIND THAT ROCKED THE (HORROR) WORLD. In the 1985 comedy-horror film Return of the Living Dead, the death-obsessed punk Trash (played by Linnea Quigley) sporting a faceful of black eyeliner and a Crayola-red flattop, rips open her vest and exposes her breasts in a frenzy of morbid ardour atop a tombstone. This role helped to establish Quigley as the ultimate ’80s “Queen of the B’s,” who’s since appeared in over a hundred low-budget horror and exploitation films. And yeah, many of her characters have a tendency to reveal their… assets. However, in a genre filled with women exposing their bodies (particularly in the slasher-crazy ’80s), the particular nature of Quigley’s appeal lies beyond her mere willingness to take off her clothes; there’s a no-bullshit fearlessness…

WHILE CAROL J. CLOVER’S 1992 BOOK MEN, WOMEN AND CHAIN SAWS: GENDER IN THE MODERN HORROR FILM GAVE BIRTH TO THE NOTION OF THE FEMINIST PROTAGONIST (“THE FINAL GIRL”) IN THE SLASHER FILM, IT HAS NEVER BEEN A LEVEL PLAYING FIELD. After all, you only get to be the Final Girl after the first girl, the penultimate girl and all the girls in between have ended up on the business end of a power tool. Of course, we all know the rules the Final Girl must live by: she can dress, talk and fight like a man with impunity, but to make love like one or imbibe like one has long remained off limits. Filmmakers have subverted the trope for decades. Long before Scream earned critical kudos and box office…

IT HAPPENED, LIKE SO MANY MILESTONES OF MODERN HORROR, IN THE ‘70S. An Irish-American Catholic writer named Anne Rice (neé Howard Allen Frances O’Brien) was 33 years old and grieving. Her firstborn, a daughter, had died of leukemia, at age six. She channelled the trauma into her first novel, a book about death, and immortality, and blood. It took five weeks for her to finish Interview With the Vampire. And when it came out, in May 1976, it flipped the script on vampire storytelling forever. From the very first page, Rice’s debut novel challenged and changed several well-entrenched elements of vampire mythology. The character of Louis de Pointe du Lac willingly switches on a light to reveal himself to a young reporter. Readers found Louis, and his partner in crime,…

SOMETIMES THE MOST SURPRISING – AND WELCOME – CONTRIBUTIONS TO HORROR CULTURE COME FROM ITS FANS: the obsessives, the compulsive creators and the collectors of detritus operating within a D.I.Y and underground framework. There’s no greater example of this than Hannah Forman and her seminal horror and gender 'zine Ax Wound. 'Zines – short for “magazines” – came to prominence in the early ‘90s, and were a preferred medium of expression for participants of the political/punk feminist riot grrl movement. Generally, ‘zines are handwritten, photocopied, assembled through cut-and-paste techniques and distributed by hand or in the mail. In 2002, Forman had immersed herself in reading about horror and feminism, an interest that had been stoked when she borrowed a friend’s copy of Carol Clover’s Men, Women and Chain Saws. In…

A FEW YEARS AGO, I WAS A SOCIAL SERVICE WORKER IN A PALLIATIVE CARE HOME IN HAGERSVILLE, ONTARIO. As a horror fan working with the soon-to-be-deceased, one might have thought I’d have no problem with the occasionally morbid environment but, in actuality, it made me realize how petrified I was of getting older. With mourning family members haunting every hallway, I couldn’t distance myself from the spectre of death. Eventually I decided to move to Toronto for a fresh start, but doing what exactly? Event planning? Should I start a business? Write about film? That last one stuck, so after a year of writing for horror websites for free, I moved to Toronto, into a tiny, overpriced apartment, and a sobering fear washed over me. What if I failed? To…

HORROR REIGNITED MY INTELLECTUAL RIGOUR WHEN I WAS A GRADUATE STUDENT AT TEMPLE UNIVERSITY. While I enjoyed the work, I noticed numerous publications on the genre lacked a variety of critical perspectives on race and culture. Were any academics building theoretical frameworks around gender and race in horror? It is important to address this invisibility, and to do the work of unearthing how Black women in particular use horror to discover our humanity. That’s when I discovered the work of Dr. Kinitra Brooks. Dr. Brooks has been a horror fan since she first witnessed Katrina, the magnetic and artful exotic dancer/vampire played by Grace Jones in the 1986 film Vamp. This awakening of intellectual curiosity led to a career path as an academic specializing in black literature, black feminism and…

THE HISTORY OF PREGNANCY IN HORROR FILMS IS SHORT BUT MIGHTY, WITH ROSEMARY’S BABY PERHAPS THE GOLD STANDARD TO WHICH ALL OTHER SUCH FILMS SHOULD BE HELD. Roman Polanski’s 1968 masterpiece, like most other horror films featuring pregnancy (1998’s The Seventh Sign, 2004’s The Devil’s Due and the 2009 film Grace), focuses specifically on the monstrosity growing within the womb, and the subsequent protection (and coddling) of the mother in order to bring the demon seed to term. There are very few horror films in which a pregnant protagonist endures actual harm to her own body (and her unborn child), likely for good reason: it makes people extremely uncomfortable. Enter the 2007 French horror film Inside (A l’interieur in French). Co-directed and co-written by Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury, Inside…

THE LATE 1940S ARE OFTEN CONSIDERED TO BE SOMETHING OF A PREGNANT PAUSE IN THE HORROR GENRE. Val Lewton, the decade’s most reliable producer of quality horror films, made his last genre title in 1946, and the ’50s-defining atomic-monster subgenre wouldn’t get underway in earnest until Godzilla emerged from the Pacific in 1954. Ray Bradbury’s 1947 horror collection Dark Carnival was barely a blip on the radar, Lovecraft was ten years dead by then, and the pulp industry was in sharp decline. So perhaps it’s not surprising that the decade’s most shocking piece of fiction appeared not behind a Weird Tales cover, but in the esteemed pages of The New Yorker. The story’s title, “The Lottery,” was unassuming enough, and so was its author: Shirley Jackson, a 31-year-old mother and…

THERE IS A FASCINATING DYNAMIC THAT COMES INTO PLAY WHEN BRILLIANT AUTEURS INTEGRATE THEIR LOVERS AND FAMILY MEMBERS INTO THEIR FILMMAKING. Dario Argento, one of the great masters of the giallo, did it more than most: in addition to working with his father Salvatore and brother Claudio, he also had some brilliant (and, well, not-so-brilliant) collaborations with his long-time partner Daria Nicolodi and his daughter, Asia. One imagines it’s not easy surviving in a celebrity family, particularly while working in giallo, a genre often lacking strong roles for women. Both Nicolodi and her daughter have left indelible imprints within Argento’s own complex legacy, however, and have gone on to establish themselves as fascinating and complicated figures in horror and beyond. Nicolodi met Argento in 1974 when he was casting for…

AS A KID GROWING UP IN THE 1970S, I WAS AFRAID OF DON’T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK. I’d never actually seen the 1973 made-for-TV film, but I’d heard it described as “the movie with the things in the fireplace.” That cryptic phrase was enough to scare me silly. I was a high-strung child who suffered from anxiety attacks and insomnia; one who frequently become fixated on things to the point of paranoia. One weekend, while I was at my grandparents’ house, a movie came on TV that showed a fireplace and a vague mist surrounding it. It was enough to send me into a panic and I begged my grandmother to change the channel. Decades passed, and I still hadn’t seen Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark. In the…

SOME ACTORS HAVE A PARTICULAR ENERGY SO DISTINCTIVE THAT THEIR PRESENCE IS ETCHED UPON THE VIEWER’S MIND LONG AFTER THE CREDITS ROLL. And truly, few inhabit the screen like Karen Black. The actress, who died in 2013, had a storied and highly respectable career that hit its peak during the heyday of American 1970s counterculture cinema. However, her unusual magnetism (those close-set eyes, that shark-tooth grin) and occasionally bizarre allure also lent itself perfectly to cult and horror films, and this became Black’s milieu after the gloss of the A-list faded. My favourite role from her latter-day horror era is Amelia from the 1975 ABC TV movie Trilogy of Terror. Directed by Dan Curtis, who also helmed the beloved horror soap opera Dark Shadows, and based on three stories by…

IT’S EXASPERATING WHEN ONE STARTS DISCUSSING SIGOURNEY WEAVER – THE ACTRESS WHO ORIGINATED THE ROLE OF ELLEN RIPLEY, ARGUABLY THE MOST COMPLEX, INDOMITABLE AND POWERFUL FEMALE HORROR HEROINE OF ALL TIME – and you realize there are some people who just want to talk about what her butt looks like in underwear. Case in point: a 1992 profile on Weaver in Entertainment Weekly promoting what was then purported to be her last appearance as Ellen Ripley in Alien 3. At the end of the piece, writer James Kaplan makes a ham-fisted attempt at praising her intelligence, even in her “creamier, dewier” younger days: “In the first Alien…you looked at her as she stripped down and thought, My God, all this — and lissome, too.” Now, let’s be clear: it’s one…

“YOU LOOK LIKE ELVIRA.” I was seventeen years old and my mom was referring to my monochromatic outfit, dramatic makeup and pitch-black hair. In all honesty, I didn’t look anything like Elvira – but what was likely intended as a thinly veiled jab read to me as sheer flattery. To my dear mom (and the rest of the uninitiated), Elvira was a gaudy late-night TV host: a busty bimbo-for-hire intended to bolster ratings with her plunging neckline. But to me, she was (and remains) the epitome of power and poise: a gifted comedienne and savvy businesswoman who has managed her image her way, with wit and candor to spare, for over 35 years. Cassandra Peterson began her career in showbiz as a go-go dancer in the gay bars of Colorado…

FROM ROUGHLY THE AGE OF ELEVEN, I DEVOURED HORROR FILMS AS FAST AS I COULD BLOW MY ALLOWANCE AT THE MOM-AND-POP VIDEO STORE THAT NEVER CHECKED IDS. They were my daily diet. It was during this hungry era that I discovered Jamie Lee Curtis, the actress who would become my first horror hero. Looking back, I’m not sure if I wanted to be her, be her best friend, or just have her teach me every single thing she knew about acting in scary movies; it was borderline obsession in that adolescent adoration kind of way. Personal anecdote aside, however, if you ask any diehard horror fan to name filmdom’s most influential scream queens, you can bet that Curtis will land somewhere on their list, if not at the very top.…

THE GENESIS FOR NANCY THOMPSON, THE FEMALE LEAD PLAYED BY HEATHER LANGENKAMP IN WES CRAVEN’S LANDMARK 1984 SLASHER FILM Nightmare on Elm Street (as well as the sequels Nightmare on Elm Street Part III: The Dream Warriors and New Nightmare) came from a seemingly throwaway comment – not by a producer, or a writer, or a colleague, but from Craven’s own daughter. Jessica Craven was six when she saw her father’s 1982 film Swamp Thing, and watched as the film’s heroine, Alice Cable, a government agent played by Adrienne Barbeau, ran away from a Jeep filled with evil military thugs and fell face-first in the mud. “I said, ‘Dad, why does the woman always fall down?’” the younger Craven says in an interview with Langenkamp in the 2011 documentary I…

THE SUMMER BLOCKBUSTER THAT MATTERED THE MOST TO ME HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH SUPERHEROES, EPIC ADVENTURES OR OVER-THE-TOP COMEDY. It was a small indie film that became a cultural touchstone of 1999: Eduardo Sánchez and Daniel Myrick’s The Blair Witch Project. I first saw Blair Witch in my local cinema, a month or so before I entered high school, and it reached me in a way that felt relevant, shocking and like nothing I had ever seen before. The found-footage story of three student filmmakers – Heather, Josh and Mike – heading into the Black Hills Forest outside Burkittsville, Maryland, became an international phenomenon, shot on a miniscule budget and eventually earning almost $250 million worldwide. As I watched my VHS copy of the film again (and again) I…

WHEN IT COMES TO INHABITING THE WORLDS OF WEIRD, SMART AND DECIDEDLY TWISTED WOMEN, ANGELA BETTIS DOES IT BETTER THAN MOST. Whether playing an embattled housewife in The Woman (directed by her frequent collaborator Lucky McKee), a quirky, queer entomologist in the Masters of Horror episode Sick Girl (also directed by McKee), or as Carrie White in the 2002 Carrie TV movie, Bettis’ onscreen presence is fragile and yet always skating the borders of a yet-unharnessed, unravelling power. Nowhere is this quality more evident than in McKee’s 2002 film May. In this gender-flipped, decidedly bent riff on Frankenstein, Bettis plays the deeply disturbed title character – a lonely young woman with a penchant for sewing and, later, dissection. It’s a wry and shattering performance that has rightly cemented Bettis’ status…

EVER SINCE MEDEA KNIFED HER KIDDIES TO DEATH TO GET BACK AT HER UNFAITHFUL HUSBAND, STORYTELLERS HAVE KNELT AT THE BLOODY ALTAR OF THE MONSTROUS MOTHER. What only a few filmmakers have done, though, is approach the story from the perspective of the mother in question, and explore what’s driven her to such wicked measures. Enter The Babadook, the remarkably effective feature debut from Australian writer/director Jennifer Kent. It’s a rare female-centric take on the mother-as-monster trope that turns a seemingly straightforward spookshow into a complex and disturbing psychological horror story. It’s not really about the boogeyman that lurks under the bed, but the demons that lurk beneath our own skin. Young Sam (played by newcomer Noah Wiseman) is a bit of a bad seed; he’s prone to violent outbursts…