chiller blog

Posted Feb 11, 09 11:55 AM

“May I Have the Envelope (First), Please.”

Back in the day, outside the portable classrooms that tucked away the University of Central Florida’s Film Department, I came across cosmopolitan fellow major Christa Myers. (Love that beret.)

“Hey, the Oscar nominations came out this morning. You’re not going to believe what got nominated for Best Picture.”

“… What?” asked she.

“Leprechaun.”

“Nooo!!!”

I giggled. “Just kidding. But it did get seven nominations: Film Editing, Make-up, Sound…”

“Well, yeah. That I can see,” Christa bought in.

Hyuck, hyuck. Oh, I crack myself up. Anyone else finding me funny is gravy.

But among all things gravy, the horror genre runs awfully dry in terms of Oscar respect. You know the adage -- the Academy doesn’t like to laugh (Annie Hall is the lone comedic Best Picture). Apparently, goosebumps and adrenaline are out, too. Somewhere along the line, greatness got misconstrued with heaviness, although the occasional high-heel-and-pump musical was, oddly, exempted. To put it mildly, any organization that thinks the rubber octopus and model train wrecks of The Greatest Show on Earth have more merit than the McCarthy era metaphors of High Noon is immediately suspect.

But it’s the Academy Awards. Iconic. An institution. And when they get it right, it’s mythic. Poetic. Elixir. So when will horror take that first drink?

Back in 1996, director John Carpenter co-sponsored a full-page trade chiding Academy voters for not recognizing horror films. (The timing would have been potent after Halloween and The Fog, not In the Mouth of Madness and Village of the Damned.) The Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror’s Saturn Awards, however, do. Any organization that cites Veronica Cartwright as Best Supporting Actress for her work in Alien earns kudos from me. But mention “Academy” to most people and the quick connect is “of Arts and Sciences”.

A horror film has never won Best Picture. The Silence of the Lambs is a gripping, masterful thriller about an FBI recruit tracking down a serial killer by courting an even more dangerous serial killer, but purists will happily wallop you over the head with “it’s-not-a-horror-film”. (And repeatedly so. And good for them.) I’ll give you The Sixth Sense --- but we’re still talking 0 for 7 when all of those envelopes were opened. The Exorcist came close in early 1974, but voters in serious need of growing a pair instead chose the lighter, “safer” (someone please retire that word) The Sting. William Peter Blatty’s screenplay adaptation and Best Sound were The Exorcist’s two (!) wins. The Board of Directors even went so far as to vote down a Special Award for the stunning transformations by make-up artist Dick Smith. (The category finally came along in 1981, with the first recipient – aptly – An American Werewolf in London.)

Six years prior, Ruth Gordon won Best Supporting Actress for Rosemary’s Baby. Eight years before that, the then critically-divided Psycho managed only a paltry four nods (including Best Director, Alfred Hitchcock and Best Supporting Actress, Janet Leigh) but no wins. Tracing further back – sadly passed The Thing from Another World, neglecting The Invisible Man, Freaks, The Old Dark House, Bride of Frankenstein, Dracula, and The Wolf Man – we arrive in 1931 where Frederic March was named Best Actor for Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde. In a tie.

For decades, horror was relegated to B-movie status. Established studios never went there. But two that did fully legitimized themselves. One was Britain’s Hammer, with bustier, more violent vampire and Frankenstein remakes, not to mention all of those Edgar Allen Poe adaptations. The other? Universal.

Universal’s summer blockbuster Jaws – one half horror opus, one half sea adventure – tallied five nominations in 1975 (Picture, Cinematography, Film Editing, Score, Sound) and won three (the latter-mentioned). The following year, Brian DePalma’s Carrie grabbed Best Actress (Sissy Spacek) and Best Supporting Actress (Piper Laurie) from the National Society of Film Critics, and the Academy carried over the nominations. But the Oscars went to Faye Dunaway and dark-horse Beatrice Straight (Network). At the same time, Jerry Goldsmith’s influential Latin-chorus orchestrations for The Omen finally brought the genre its first (well, non-hybrid) Oscar for Best Score. Subsequently, Goldsmith’s profoundly effective “Ave Satani” drew a nomination for Best Song… but it’s difficult to imagine the voting body casting their ballots for a piece that literally translates to “Hail, Satan”.

Where were the nominations for Halloween, just two years later the most successful independent film of all time (at least until Teen Wolf)? Alien had a sole Best Visual Effects statuette. Lalo Schifrin’s The Amityville Horror‘s score lost to A Little Night Music – anyone care to hum that one? The Shining was shut out. The ultimate haunted houser, Poltergeist, batted 0-for-3; how the puppetry of an Extra-Terrestrial is given more credence than the landmark supernatural phantasmics is beyond me. Yes, I believed the alien, in all of it’s touching heartlight, was a genuine character. But Richard Edlund, Michael Wood, Bruce Nicholson and their teams at Industrial Light & Magic engineered their field years into the future. JoBeth Williams and Heather O’Rourke fell from an entirely different plane and through a ceiling. A closet swallowed up an entire room. And that quick, unbroken shot where – with one breath to the side -- dining room chairs terrifyingly are discovered aligned in an impossible, acrobatic configuration. If the Academy lacks the foresight to pedestal these artists, then I’ll do so – happily, repeatedly, always.

But there are victories. The Fly won Best Make-Up, although it’s odd that director David Cronenberg – a thoughtful, soft-spoken man – finally receives critical attention when he stops making horror films. Sigourney Weaver landed in the Best Actress competition for her strong reprise of a maternal-minded Ripley in Aliens (2 wins, 7 noms). Coppola’s art house version of Bram Stoker’s Dracula won three of four Academy Awards (Make-Up, Sound Effects Editing, and Eiko Ishioka’s astonishingly transcending Costumes). Kathy Bates – with a deeply moving speech – took home Best Actress for Misery.

Few and far between, I’ll celebrate these celebrations that give back to a genre that’s pushed me forward.

But let’s not push too much. After all, it was Paramount who famously took out “For Your Consideration” ads, soliciting Academy voters for Friday the 13th, Part 3 in 3-D.

The above was not a joke.