Word: ghoulish
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...BUDGET summer shockers--Prophecy, alien, The Omen in its time--are all wrong: humorless, literal-minded disasters. Horror movies thrive on satire, wit, ghoulish irreverence (or else elaborately-stylized reverence, as in the Hammar films, to the point where it's funny). Or else lots of erotic overtones. (Alien had some, but they're mitigated by the film's frigidity. Prophecy is sexless.) The British can usually make funnier and more stylish horror films, because they're so good about being shocked: "A vampire you say? My word..." Here are a few of the most precious moments in horror history...
Some intermittent suspense is provided by the Backstairs makeup artists, whose work varies from serviceable (Buono's Taft) to rudimentary (Vaughn as Wilson) to outright ghoulish (John Anderson and Eileen Heckart as the Franklin Roosevelts). No matter how intriguing the cosmetics, however, the characters mostly remain lifeless: Backstairs at the White House might be more aptly titled Backstairs at Madame Tussaud's. - Frank Rich
...Economist struck the most sobering note. Attributing the rise of modern cults to the decline of traditional religious belief among educated people, the weekly observed: "What happened in Jonestown, Guyana, is a ghoulish cautionary tale for these people who, in these differing ways, are seeking God in a secular world. In that search for God, it is all too easy to blunder into the arms of Satan instead." Added the Vatican news paper L'Osservatore Romano: "Christianity is a religion of life, not of death." West Germany's Stuttgarter Zeitung philosophized less cosmically: "It was not just...
...spot-news event since Richard Nixon's resignation, with every form of media jumping on each set of gruesome revelations and/or body counts, screaming them out to a public drooling for more, repulsed and fascinated at the same time. Indeed, the publicity surrounding the event would obscure anything less ghoulish, but in this case, nothing can overwhelm the awesome image of nearly 1000 men, women and children (perhaps) choosing to die together...
Love scenes aside, Corky's exchanges with Fats provide the only riveting moments in the movie. The early dialogues inject some much needed, if admittedly ghoulish, humor into the film; the later ones are truly terrifying, as Corky literally spins out of control. The dummy looks amazingly like Hopkins, with exaggerated features that caricature the actor's perfectly. This mocking resemblance not only allows for several nice shots contrasting the two faces, but emphasizes the entire concept of Fats and Corky's alter-ego. Fats' face, like his personality, becomes a grotesque parody of Corky...