A baker's dozen ... FROM HELL
Revisiting my first horror movie, the gloriously silly 2001 remake 'Thir13en Ghosts'
This Halloween season, could I interest you in Mr. Monk and Shaggy visiting the world’s largest Hot Topic?
Impossible to resist that scenario, I know. That’s why I jumped at the chance to rewatch “Thir13en Ghosts” last week. Hyperreal Film Club screened the dyslexia-baiting 2001 horror movie on Thursday at their new East Austin clubhouse.
While I have a nostalgic appreciation for early 2000s pop culture in general — when your brain is still made of modeling clay, blink-182 sounds like Bach — this film is a special one. “Thir13en Ghosts” is the first proper scary movie I ever saw.
In seventh grade, a classmate neglected to invite me to her birthday party. She wasn’t a best pal; more like a longtime work associate. For whatever reason, the snub incensed me. In a moment of parent-child alignment that I now recognize as completely buck wild, my mom dropped me off at this girl’s house with the express intent of crashing the party.
(I recognize that I am not the protagonist of this story. Related: I once took a corporate personality test that said I am “provocative when challenged.”)
Crashing would not be my only transgression of the night. Once it was dark, we decided to watch a scary movie and landed on “Thir13en Ghosts.” I felt like I’d opened up Satan’s Tivo queue.
For the uninitiated — maybe you didn’t crash the same girl’s birthday party? — director Steve Beck’s “Thir13en Ghosts” is a garish remake of a 1960 William Castle film, “13 Ghosts.” We used to be a proper country, one that didn’t force numbers into words.
The 2001 movie was a moderate box office success but a critical bomb. “The experience of watching the film is literally painful,” Roger Ebert wrote upon its release.
Before I challenge Ebert’s estate, I should tell you what “Thir13en Ghosts” is about. Mild spoilers, I suppose. Also, I’m tired of typing “Thir13en,” so I’m not going to anymore.
“Ghosts” follows widower Arthur Kriticos (Tony Shalhoub) and his kids, Kathy (Shannon Elizabeth, whose fascinating Wikipedia page touts her work in the turkey adoption sphere) and Bobby (Alec Roberts). We learn through dialogue — set over a genuinely cool pan across an empty home — that the family’s matriarch recently died in a house fire. They’re struggling to get by.
Arthur learns that he inherited a mansion from his Uncle Cyrus (F. Murray Abraham, retreating to the mind palace where he keeps his Oscar). But wouldn’t you know it! Cyrus is a megalomaniacal occultist who trapped 12 restless spirits in the house, keeping them locked up in glass compartments like cursed Beanie Babies.
Simon only needed one more soul to open up a portal to hell. The whole inheritance thing? A trap. The Kriticos clan end up locked in the mansion trying to elude rampaging extras from a Slipknot video. Also ghost bait: wisecracking family nanny Maggie (rapper Rah Digga, given a stereotypical role but honestly acting circles around everyone); panicky medium Dennis (Matthew Lillard); and Kalina (Embeth Davidtz, but should be Carla Gugino), a paranormal rights activist of sorts.
And here’s the deal, folks. This thing rips. I’ve seen scarier movies in the 22 years since my first encounter with “Ghosts,” but few current horror films seem so interested in entertaining the audience.
Through modern eyes, it’s impossible to consider the film’s content and its “TRL”-era aesthetic as distinct objects. Director Beck is Dr. Frankenstein, sewing style and substance together into a specimen that spits in the eye of good taste. If these ghosts make a baker’s dozen, then they came in hot from hell’s finest Krispy Kreme. They’re a little Clive Barker, a little heavy metal, a little child’s nightmare fuel.
These spirits fill the slots of a “Black Zodiac,” Kalina tells the Kriticoses. Each ghost comes with an arcana-style name — The Withered Lover, The Torn Prince, The Bound Woman, and so on — and have the makeup and wardrobe design to match. The Jackal memorably wears a gnarly straitjacket and a cube-shaped cage over his head. The Hammer, who obvi wields a giant sledgehammer, is a hulking man run through with railroad spikes from head to toe.
“It’s impossible to consider the film’s content and its ‘TRL’-era aesthetic as distinct objects. Director [Steve] Beck is Dr. Frankenstein, sewing style and substance together into a specimen that spits in the eye of good taste.”
I imagine producers assumed that the audience of adolescent boys would most enjoy The Angry Princess, a nude, buxom lady who sliced herself to ribbons (and absolutely nailed that trendy wet hair look). I, however, spent my whole life thinking about The Juggernaut, a towering muscleman who looks like someone left Lurch out on the counter overnight.
We’ve been desensitized by greater horrors since (both real and fictional), so the Marilyn Manson school of horror design has unjustly become a punchline. An industrial sensibility runs through plenty of cultural artifacts from the time — cold, unrelenting, capable of grinding life to a pulp. Here, we can see it in the set design of Cyrus’ mansion, a glass-walled (and -floored, and -ceilinged) labyrinth that constantly shifts itself like a cursed Rubik’s cube.
The characters are told the house is a machine designed by the devil, decades before the Cybertruck found a way to market such a thing. Every interior surface is inscribed with Latin “binding spells” that keep the ghosts at bay. Metal elements slide and spin, from exterior plates to a giant clockwork engine powering this ectoplasmic Sing Sing.
“Ghosts” is also a great horror movie because everyone in the family is exasperatingly stupid. Bobby gets lost in the murder mansion. Arthur suggests they split up to find him. Kathy spends an entire scene touching her hair in a mirror while a ghost tries to kill her.
But Dennis is the real star of the show. What would turn-of-the-millennium cinema be without Lillard and his virtuosic twitchiness? In “Ghosts,” he’s a psychic Greek chorus, flinging saliva and complaints as he voices the audience’s concerns about running around a giant terrarium of dead psychopaths.
I just can’t call “Ghosts” bad. This film is my first reference point for scary movies. The dialogue is corny, sure, and the cultural sensibilities are frozen in time. Yet it’s got a distinct artistic point of view, as silly as that sounds. While some critics would call the jumpy editing style “erratic,” “tacky,” or “liable to induce a seizure,” I would say it’s chaotically effective.
And crucially, this film is as fun as Six Flags at Halloween — a genre victory. For my money, you can’t find a better movie where F. Murray Abraham gets dismembered by a massive gyroscope.
One rad thing
I’m pleased to announce our new reality TV road dog: Nelly on “The Great British Bake Off.”
The baking competition’s casting formula is rock solid. Every season includes some combination of a quirky grandma, a beefcake, a bland mom, an ingenue who acts surprised when she inevitably does well, some nerd who’s good at math, 2.5 homosexuals, a straight man who probably votes Tory, a saucy aunt type, and a charming oddball with a foreign accent.
Nelly represents the last two archetypes at once (like Helena and Saku before her), which speaks to her tremendous TV power. An immigrant from Slovakia, this mother of two is a warm, earthy personality who doesn’t take herself too seriously. See: joking that she can’t wait to show judge Paul Hollywood her buns.
Nelly also ticks a couple key production boxes. One, her bakes show skill in both flavors and aesthetics — check out that bread cornucopia she made in Episode 3. She’s also got an emotional storyline, which we witnessed when she dedicated a Biscuit Week showstopper to her stillborn children.
Then there’s her easy rapport with co-host Noel Fielding, which is always a glowing reference. And she doesn’t seem all that cowed by judge Paul Hollywood, either. IMO, Nelly has the sauce (ganache?) to go all the way. New episodes of the 15th season drop every Friday on Netflix. If you’re already at the polling place, stay in line!
Outbound message
I never expounded upon the shambling cinematic beast that is “Megalopolis” in Turning Out. As far as being held hostage by your friend’s dad goes, it was a nice 10 hours.
With most affairs of the soul, I look to writer John Paul Brammer. Thankfully, Brammer wrote the definitive “Megalopolis” assessment in ¡Hola Papi!, his Substack that I care more about than my own. Enjoy his take on Megalon, the miracle ore/plot device discovered by Adam Driver’s character, Cesar Catilina:
In the film, Cesar Catilina gets shot in the face by a child. It’s a bit much to get into (the fascist tuba player hired a twelve-year-old to do it). In any case, a bullet goes straight through Catilina’s dome, but, luckily, he has Megalon to fix it. He wears a bandage for a while and in one scene he unwraps it to reveal that half his face is now Megalon. It doesn’t stay that way, though. In the next scene, somehow half of his face has returned.
What I’m saying is that Cesar Catilina essentially discovered the cure for getting shot in the face, used on himself, then went right back to obsessing over its more urgent use, that being, as a substance to build moving sidewalks out of. The sidewalks do not even move people particularly fast.
Read the full thing, or “go back to the cluuub.” Choose well.
“dyslexia-baiting” ERIC 😂😂 That one really got me