Neighbour, How Stands the Union?

“And they say that if you go to his grave and speak loud and clear, "Dan'l Webster—Dan'l Webster!" the ground 'll begin to shiver and the trees begin to shake. And after a while you'll hear a deep voice saying, "Neighbour, how stands the Union?" Then you better answer the Union stands as she stood, rock-bottomed and copper sheathed, one and indivisible, or he's liable to rear right out of the ground.”

I have toyed with the idea of doing Desert Island Films for my blog one of these weeks, describing  my eight favourite films, and briefly articulating the reasons for my choice. However, that might be too ambitious. 

For as long as I can remember, I have relished ghost stories and enjoyed them on the page and on both the big and small screens. So today, I will list some supernatural films which have particularly resonated with me. Here goes. 

The Devil and Daniel Webster

The quote above is from the first paragraph of the short story by Stephen Vincent Benet, The Devil and Daniel Webster, filmed in the 1940’s with Edward Arnold as Daniel Webster. Webster was a real figure in American history, a prominent New England politician and lawyer, and such a champion of the Union that he became a folk hero. The story goes that a New Hampshire man, Jabez Stone, plagued by bad luck, sells his soul to the devil, played comedically as Mr Scratch by Walter Huston. When the time comes for the devil to claim his own, Stone in desperation recruits Daniel Webster to represent him. Webster demands a jury of Americans, and the devil recruits a dozen of the most notorious villains of American history from Hell. As I recall, they include Edward Teach, a.k.a. the pirate Blackbeard, of whom more below.

Such is Webster’s oratory that the jury, deeply moved by his assertion that they too have been duped by Mr Scratch, vote to acquit Stone.

This reminds me that there is a Scottish legend in which a tailor challenges the devil to a race to make a coat. The devil threads his needle with a mile of cotton, thinking that this will save him time, as he will never have to rethread his needle. However, he has forgotten that it also implies that he will have to run a mile and back with every stitch, and the tailor wins his bet. In most other cultures, the devil would win.

Anyway, it is a brilliant piece of film, drawing on the strong New England tradition of superstition, subsequently exploited with great success by Stephen King. It also has that blend of horror and humour which characterises the most successful ghost stories. Although the devil has been defeated, that is not the end of the matter. The final scene has Mr Scratch looking straight into the camera and pointing at the audience, indicating that he has the viewer in his sights.

Night of the Demon

This film is based on Casting the Runes, by the undisputed master of the English ghost story, MR James. A master of the black arts, Mister Karswell, sets a demon on an academic rival, by slipping a paper marked with a curse in ancient runic letters into his possession. In both the story and the film, the terror is made more delicious by the knowledge that the demon will turn up on a certain date, thus giving Karswell’s victim a strict and rather important deadline. The hero manages to return the paper surreptitiously to Karswell, who suffers the poetic justice of becoming the demon’s victim. The film does make the mistake of showing the demon explicitly, and it looks a bit silly, but the atmosphere, part cosy, part terrifying, is true to Monty James’ original story.

An American Werewolf in London

Directed by an American, John Landis, this movie tells the story of a young American backpacker, David, who after an attack by a werewolf on what appears to be the North York Moors (but I think was filmed in Wales), becomes a werewolf himself. Thereafter, he tears a number of people to pieces, and their ghosts continually appear to him in comedically unlikely environments, urging him to end his life so that the carnage can cease.

Shot in the early 1980’s, mostly in London, it is by turns stylish and brutish. The love interest is supplied by Jenny Agutter as Nurse Alex Price (if you are a British man of a certain age, Jenny Agutter turns your knees to jelly). It also contains some brilliant horror-film set pieces, including the transformation from human to wolf, and early on in the movie, before the werewolf attack, the pub which falls silent as you enter, and every eye in the place follows you up to the bar. I have had this experience in some of the villages of East Cambridgeshire.

I remember when the kids were still of primary school age, we had an Autumn holiday, renting a cottage in the village of Thornton-Le-Dale on the North York Moors. It was Halloween, and we had made a pumpkin lantern. However, we had no matches and the cottage only had a ceramic hob on the cooker. I walked down to the pub in the village in pitch dark, to buy a box of matches, and a pint to strengthen my nerve on the walk back to the cottage, and in both directions, I kept thinking of the American Werewolf.

Some that didn’t make the cut

I can’t do justice to some of the British or British-filmed classics of the 1940’s, like Dead of Night, and The Uninvited. These are so complex in addition to being scary, that each would merit a piece dedicated entirely to itself. Similarly, Scrooge, the 1951 adaptation of A Christmas Carol, starring Alistair Sim as Scrooge is a masterpiece which would need more space than I have here to do it full justice.

Blackbeard’s Ghost

It must seem strange to see a Disney romp here, but Blackbeard’s Ghost is more fun than its provenance would suggest. In this film, the ghost of Edward Teach, gloriously overacted by Peter Ustinov, comes to the rescue of a rash bet to win an athletics competition. The winnings are then used to save a local hotel from being taken over by the sort of unscrupulous businessman-cum-gangster, which one sees in many such films, notably It’s a Wonderful Life. 

The movie is alarmingly unreconstructed, including a fair where you can pay for kisses with a dolly bird. However, it seems to me that the scenes during the athletics competition, where the ghost, invisible to all except the hero, played by Disney stalwart Dean Jones, trips up runners, reverses the direction of races, and replaces relay batons with hot dogs, remain funny whatever the year and whatever your age. I remember watching it with the kids, Bill and Tom, when they were very young, and all three of us laughing our heads off.

One other ingredient of this movie is the theme of redemption, in that Blackbeard’s soul is freed by his good deed of saving the hotel, run by maiden aunts who may have been his descendants, from appropriation by the big bad gangster.

Any Hammer Dracula Film

When I was in my early teens, they showed Hammer films, mostly made in London, on television late on a Saturday night, billed as Don’t Watch Alone. The Dracula films had a cosiness along with the creepiness, with so much of the action taking place in central European inns, with quaint locals, unconvincingly knocked up castles, and the reassuring guru figure of Professor Van Helsing, usually played by Peter Cushing.

I recently reread Bram Stoker’s novel, Dracula, on which these films were based. It is a brilliant, multi-layered novel, with so many of the essential ingredients of the thrilling supernatural story: strange adventures in foreign lands; events narrated from different points of view; the evil spirit who cannot enter without invitation but who is allowed access to the house by mistake or malevolence; the comforting father figure in the form of Van Helsing; and a thrilling chase towards the denouement. 

The one complaint the modern reader might have is the cloying sentimentality of its treatment of relations between the sexes. The heroine, Mina Harker, never refers to her husband Jonathan as Beaky. Given the frequency with which Madam uses this name for me, I have a suspicion that she has forgotten my real name. Anyway, this sentimentality is a price worth paying for the brilliant multilayered narrative style and the unsurpassed plot.

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So that is a flavour of the supernatural films which have scared, comforted or influenced me. The ones omitted might feature in a later blog, but in the meantime, whether you watch alone or not, have a drink and a biscuit within reach, the central heating on, and the doors and windows closed against uncanny intruders.